Ray Balzer

Tragic events show what happens when people lack inhibitions or moral norms—harm follows. AI, with no brain-like brakes, risks worse as it gets smarter. We need safety built in! Pic: Brain with stop sign vs. AI with go arrow. #AISafety

@TristanSnell We restarted the moon bit because of geopolitics with China. That's gov't stuff; mostly done the gov't way. Musk & Bezos are providing commercial services people pay for. Apples and oranges.

Elon Musk didn’t go to the moon. Jeff Bezos didn’t go to the moon. NASA went to the moon.

@katieporterca You said the words: 'the rate is the same'. By simple math it means if they earn more, they pay more. Explain why that is wrong. You need to start by even justifying why they don't pay the same dollar amount, but have to pay a percentage; then explain why that is insufficient

California currently has a flat 8.84% corporate tax. Whether a company makes $100 or $1 billion in profit, the rate is the same. It’s time for a tax code that recognizes the difference between a local shop and a global giant.

@SaraForTexLege The rich are already taxed and top earners pay the vast majority of the income tax. Get your facts straight. Explain whether you want to continue to tax EVERYONE via inflation (budget deficits) until national backruptcy or how you will cut the spending to balance the budget.

Me: Tax the rich Q: But what about all the waste, fraud and abuse? Me: investigate and prosecute waste, fraud and abuse AND tax the rich. Q: But the rich create jobs Me: Great. So they can enjoy the profits created from that labor AND pay taxes on that profit. Q: It will just make them leave America. Me: There is no tax haven in the world like the American tax haven. No they won’t. Q: Our national debt is because spending is out of control! Me: It is, but that is also something that rich people have trained you to say so that you’ll argue that they shouldn’t be taxed. Create Medicare for all ($600 billion in savings), cut the military budget in half ($500 billion). There’s a trillion right there. AND tax the rich. Q: …. Me: Exactly. Tax the rich.

@SenSanders Not radical, but ultra-conservative. You want education to stay firmly rooted in a 19th and early 20th century structure THAT DOES NOT WORK (except for indoctrination) and is vastly too expensive. How about be for the BEST teachers teaching nationwide and fire most of the rest?

Call me a radical, but NO. We should not be replacing teachers in America with robots. We should attract the best and brightest in our country to become teachers and pay them the decent wages that they deserve.

@JBPritzker It's not courageous to mindlessly and reflexively oppose your political opposition. It's stale. It takes courage to reach out to find agreements and compromises.

People ask why I push back so hard on Donald Trump. It's simple: Tyranny requires your fear, your silence, and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage.

@cmclymer Once you have categories of competition, there's no reason to stop at two, if you deny that there are only two sexes. So add as many NEW categories as you need for trans, etc. Let them freely compete against their own. It's only fair.

At the first women-inclusive Olympics in Paris in 1900, 22 women competed. Since then, about 62,000 women total have competed in the Summer and Winter Olympics. Only one of them was a trans woman. Just one. She didn't medal. She didn't even rank. One trans woman out of 62,000 women athletes over 126 years of the modern Olympics, and no medals. This ban on trans women isn't about fairness. It never was. It's about politics and pandering. It's about the IOC needing to get in good with the Trump admin. It's about a needless "solution" to a problem that didn't exist in the first place, and history will not be kind to this embarrassing abdication of morality and ethics.

@SenWarren And then you will find more things to spend money on -- and they you'll need to raise taxes further. IF you were doing this as a one time thing and used the funds to not only balance the budget, but start reducing the debt, it might be worthwhile. But otherwise, bankruptcy.

Today, I'm introducing my wealth tax — and more than 50 members of Congress are joining me. It’s time for the government to start working for American families, not just the ultra-rich.

@elonmusk Th founders thought the judiciary weak because of it's lack of power of the purse or enforcement power. But today's judiciary has obviously taken power without pushback. We must take it back. I know of ways, but I can't find anyone interested in actually implementing solutions

If the American public is unable to influence the outcome, we do not live in a democracy. The House, Senate and Presidency are Republican and yet a single activist masquerading as a judge is able to force massive fraud to continue …

@honeymoon250 I think I've done all but #12. But I'm older than you are -- been around for generations of tools. But you probably have used many many more modern tools (apps, etc.) than I. For example, I don't use a smart phone. But I do make youtube videos.

7 for me!!….I feel confident nobody Has all 20!! How many for you?

@Jindo_1307979 "Brian Test"?! You obviously fail.

Brian Test 99% will fail

@SenSanders Haven't any of you learned that the market system works -- in so many ways. If you want people to get more money than they can earn, that's where gov't can do more welfare. But forcing businesses to pay more than they want to is bad policy and worse.

Congratulations to the 19 states raising the minimum wage in 2026. But let’s be clear: a $7.25 federal minimum wage is a national disgrace. No one who works full-time should live in poverty. We must keep fighting to guarantee all workers a living wage — not starvation wages.

@Dr_Gingerballs You might be right, but history is full of stories of the impossible happening. Companies have gone bankrupt as a result. Did you know that it was proven that heavier than air craft could not fly? Competition in AI is a strong driver. They will push every way to innovate.

Folks, heres a list of things not happening by 2030 that you can take to the bank: -AGI or any AI at all -Autonomous vehicles deployed generally -Autonomous robots of any kind -datacenters in space All of these technologies currently rely on regression to work. The first 3 use regression to compute predictions. The last one relies on the regression compute to be practical. All automation up until this point more or less relies on regression. It is incremental, not revolutionary, and IT DOESN’T SCALE. We are seeing this now, as models have now consumed all of the data on the planet and still can’t quite do anything correctly. In small domains with lots of data, it can be practical. Nearly all automation we have today leans on small domains to remain tractable. Once the domain expands, the problem blows up. Variance is the death of regression, data be damned. And the future is more variance than trend. Humans excel because they are not statistical. They are superstitious. Adaption is quick, but leaves many data points unexplained. Most people who are extremely productive go their whole lives strongly believing a whole host of things that are not true. It is precisely our lack of statistical rigor that makes us effective. So when you try to recreate human superstition with statistics, compute will blow up and edge cases will snuff it out in the night. It is a certainty that regressive methods are a dead end. A certainty. It is not practical to require 10,000 humans worth of energy to recreate 1 human output. Now could someone discover how the mind works and the methods it uses? Absolutely. But no one is looking for it because they are getting paid millions a year to bark up another tree. And once discovered, then a roadmap must be built to get us to systems that can perform it. We must design new chips, develop new material systems, new compute structures, how to interface them with conventional computing, and on and on and on. It’s a decade+ job once the roadmap has been developed. We don’t even know where to start! The sooner we abandon the bankrupt religious belief that AI will save us, the better we will be. Because every day we ignore reality is another day for our problems to metastasize. AI will not solve our problems. Robots will not solve our problems. We must solve our problems ourselves. And we could start building a roadmap for that today.

@JSIncUSA @naretevduorp You paint with too broad a brush. some are for/some not. Trump is partly using power to rollback gov't expansion -- and sometimes not. T didn't run on shrinking gov't so no mandate to do that.

@BalzerRayJ96162 @naretevduorp And now Trump is gaining power and scope and Republicans are all for it. So much for small government.

@SenSanders It's yet another second order effect of gov't programs/policies. This started because benefits weren't taxed, so companies starting offering health and other benefits to attract employees. There's a clear lesson for Gov't: STOP MEDDLING

Millions of Americans remain at jobs they hate for one reason: the health insurance they receive. That’s absurd. Universal health care will give Americans the freedom to choose the work they want without worrying about health care coverage. Another reason for Medicare for All.

@spoonfulofhan Yeah, right. I suspected there was no reason to value your judgements. Is it also true that if a person "could not give a single shit" about other people trying to contribute to a conversation about society and values, that she is not a good person?

Also, for the people that will and are whining in the responses, just know that you can spend the time writing but I truly could not give a single shit

If you think access to food has to be earned, you’re not a good person If you think access to housing has to be earned, you’re not a good person If you think access to healthcare has to be earned, you’re not a good person

@libriscent I'm reminded of this: There was a woman looking for the perfect man -- and then found him. The problem was that he was looking for the perfect woman!

The number of women who are not interested in pursuing anything with men right now is honestly astonishing. It is not just a trend, it is a quiet, collective shift. Women are tapping out mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. They are not bitter, they are not heartless, they are simply exhausted. Exhausted from the constant cycles of disappointment. Exhausted from giving love that is not reciprocated. Exhausted from having to play roles they were never meant to play, lover, healer, therapist, mother, peacemaker, all while getting the bare minimum in return. You really turned women all the way off. It was not just the lies or the cheating. It was the gaslighting. The breadcrumbing. The emotional unavailability. The way men pursued them passionately, only to neglect them once they had them. The way effort became a foreign language, and consistency felt like a rare luxury. Women are tired of explaining how they deserve to be treated. They are tired of reminding grown men about basic respect. They are tired of lowering their standards just to say they have someone. So they are stepping back. And stepping up for themselves. Now more women are pouring into themselves. They are choosing peace over partnership. They are traveling alone, healing alone, building alone. They have stopped waiting for a man to choose them, because they have already chosen themselves. It is not that they do not want love. It is that they refuse to settle for something that looks like love but feels like emptiness. And until someone comes along who adds peace instead of problems, who brings security instead of stress, they are perfectly fine staying single. And honestly, that is not a loss. That is self respect.

@randyhorst3 @broadwaybabyto You're assuming she wants us to conclude the government should take care of that. That's likely true for her -- but we could give her the benefit of the doubt that she's trying to get people to be more charitable. Just go back 190 years and see a model of that: private charity.

@broadwaybabyto Society would collapse due to huge debt.

Imagine if we could all agree that hungry people should be fed. Homeless people should be housed. Sick people should receive medical care. If basic needs were guaranteed and taken care of, society would be healthier and happier.

This balances preserving a push for bipartisanship as well as protects against being helplessly stuck while crises build. This will encourage dealmaking and being part of passing a solution rather than stonewalling. It also doesn't BREAK the filibuster; it's responsible.

One example is this:  starting 15 days after a shutdown, reduced the vote needed by one (to 59) and then again by one for every three further elapsed days.  Thus, by 45 days after the shutdown, the required vote will be down to a simple majority.

Pass a new Senate rule that's targeted at budget laws such as this only where the government is partially shut down and citizens are at risk of losing needed money and services and perhaps worse, such as debt default.