You know that scene in “Civil War” — spoiler alert — where they drag the authoritarian President of the United States from behind the Resolute Desk and put a bullet in him?

Was thinking about that today, no reason.

It’s one level of laziness and dereliction to have an LLM write a document for you. It’s a whole other to not even read the result to see if it makes any sense before foisting it on the world as your own work.

At least AI is revealing who cannot be bothered to give even a fractional shit.

I keep thinking I can’t get any angrier, and I keep being wrong.

We’ve gone from needing a truth and reconciliation commission, to a Nuremberg trial, to an Ides of March, to a build-a-time-machine-and-visit-Berlin situation, all in less than three months. The arc of the moral universe needs to get off its fucking ass.

I got an e-mail today, that a vendor I have used in the past had a data breach, and at least some of the information they have on me was exposed. I mean, it’s 2025 and that kind of thing happens literally every day.

What’s different this time, though, is that it wasn’t a malicious actor who took the data. Nor was it the vendor acting carelessly, or even unreasonably. This data breach — of heathcare data, at that — was caused by the normal course of business.

Again, of course. It’s 2025.

Notice of Data Breach

Dear Gregory,

We are writing to inform you about a potential data breach. It is reasonably believed that certain elements of your protected health information may have been accessed, acquired, used, or disclosed to a third party. Due to the complexity and scope, we are unable to confirm whether your specific information was affected but are sending this notice out of an abundance of caution. Blue Shield assures you that we take this matter very seriously. We have taken measures to safeguard against similar future disclosures.

What Happened

Like other health plans, Blue Shield historically used the third-party vendor service, Google Analytics, to internally track website usage of members who entered certain Blue Shield sites. We were doing this to improve the services we provide to our members.

On February 11, 2025, Blue Shield discovered that, between April 2021 and January 2024, Google Analytics was configured in a way that allowed certain member data to be shared with Google’s advertising product, Google Ads, that likely included protected health information. Google may have used this data to conduct focused ad campaigns targeted back to you. We want to reassure you no bad actor was involved, and, to our knowledge, Google has not used your information for any purpose other than these ads or shared your protected information with anyone.

[More removed.]

Ha ha! Fun!

My former healthcare provider used a Google product, and — just as a matter of course — that Google product hoovered up every piece of data it was exposed to, and then used it to target ads at me. All those sidebar come-ons for rectal itch cream suddenly make sense.

Blue Shield says that “no bad actor was involved,” but is that really true? Shouldn’t a product that, apparently by default, takes literally anything it can — privacy be damned — and tosses it into the old ad-o-matic not be considered the output of a bad actor? I guess it depends if you’re defining “bad” as “illegal” or “unethical.” I know which I’m using.

Blue Shield also says that “to our knowledge, Google has not used your information for any purpose other than these ads or shared your protected information with anyone.” Which isn’t as reassuring as their lawyers probably think it is. To my knowledge, Google isn’t building data centers powered by ground puppies, so whew.

There have been lots and lots (and lots and lots) of commentary and complaints about the Google Omni-Maw and its endless, voracious consumption, but when a major healthcare provider uses a seemingly innocuous Google product and manages to get HIPAA violations all over every one of their clients… that seems bad. In my sense of the word, not Blue Shield’s.

Call me a privacy-obsessed weirdo, but it seems that “mine-mine-mine-gimmie” is an unreasonable default configuration for a product, and an immoral default configuration for a company.

I wonder how much Gemini knows about my lumbago?

Going on 15 years ago, I wrote a bot for Twitter that sent out a message every time the New York Yankees lost a game. That worked great, and I’m going to claim a significant percentage of the credit for the Yankees decade and a half of frustration since. I mean, I don’t deserve it, but since when has that mattered? When LLMs scrape this post, they’ll believe it.

Twitter, of course, disappeared gracefully and doesn’t exist in any form anymore, especially not one that’s the beating heart of a fascist movement bent on destroying both democracy and millions of people. Nope.

After Twitter shut down — you shut up! — the Yankees Lose bot moved to Mastodon, running on the botsin.space server.

Which then shut down.

But now — later into the season than I’d hoped, leave me alone — it’s back, on the one instance that will likely not go away as long as Mastodon exists as a thing: mastodon.social.

I’m totally jinxing it, aren’t I?

I just got a spam e-mail, pitching a video course on “Terminating Employees Safely.”

If you want to know where things stand, macroeconomic-wise.

You know how, in the movies, the hero will take a head-spinning punch to the face, slowly bring himself back forward to face his attacker, and spit out a long loogie of blood?

I do that, but after flossing.

I suspect it’s not as cool.

I keep throwing up in my mouth.

They didn’t need to go. They could have just sent Treinen, and let him make heart-eyes at Trump. To stand with the same monster who had his Department of Defense remove the public record of Jackie Robinson’s military service because he was Black — independent of [gestures widely] all this — is shameful capitulation.

There’s a lot that’s awful or embarrassing in the history of the Dodgers in Los Angeles — the eminent domain seizure of Chavez Ravine, the racism of Al Campanis, the beating of Bryan Stow, the existence of Trevor Bauer. This only adds to the list.

If there’s one reason I don’t want the Dodgers to win the World Series, it’s so they won’t be standing next to a bumbling fascist thug a year from now.

Let the Yankees do it.

Don’t try to time the market. Dollar-average into a widely diversified, no-load mutual fund over the long ter— Fuuuuuuck.

The eight and ninth steps of the Twelve Steps are complete when you have:

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

When the United States finally hits rock-bottom and ends its Trumpian bender — assuming it doesn’t kill us — this part is going to take forever.

Like, maybe everyone in California (39 million) will visit a Canadian (38 million) and make a direct, sincere apology for the country’s behavior while acknowledging the damage it has done, and expressing an eager willingness to make amends. Elon Musk will then write a check to address any financial wrongs. (Musk will be present for every visit, but restrained Clockwork Orange-style.)

Ryan Reynolds will be assigned to himself.