the cats and dogs of government

and the answer to an age old question

i’m doing some deeper work on some data and hope to be able to drop some conclusions in the next few days. (it’s also perfect mountain biking weather, so we have competing uses of time)

so, i’m going to be a incommuni-gato for a bit, but hope to have a some work to share shortly.

for today, i’ll address an age old question:

“where on earth do you get all these cat memes?”

the answer is simple:

everywhere.

the entire internet is one vast feline support system.

i asked the new text AI image engine that everyone is playing with to generate some cat images. and it was right on point:

but then assigned it some more human ideas and it, frankly, seems to have muffed it.

this is because cats are the internet’s dominant species and so AI has an easier time parsing feline concepts. when the artificial sentence singularity comes, the writing is on the wall about which species skynet is going to pick to ally with. (hint: it does not rhyme with “cumin”)

plan accordingly.

but we also get by with a little help from our friends.

not only is the internet made of cats but of gatopals™ and they send me bales of the good stuff.

today’s examples come from gatopal™ jay bhattacharya with whom i have enjoyed many wide ranging conversations and debates around epidemiology, public health, economics, and governance and in whom the toxoplasmosis is clearly starting to take a toll…

these videos constitute a perfect example of the two types of government:

dog:

Buitengebieden @buitengebieden

Border Collie herding ducklings to the water..

cat:

Buitengebieden @buitengebieden

Follow the leader.. 😅

it’s a keen insight on coercion vs consent and following of one’s own free will vs being chased (often at the behest of some hidden, whistling boss).

the overall allegory is really quite piquant.

apparently, they don’t hand out stanford professorships for nothing…

jay joins the ranks of other notable lovers of both cats and freedom:

ronald reagan

and calvin coolidge who i would argue was the last president to preside proudly and with deliberation over what was truly a small government america.

and now i will blend into the background for a minute.

back soon with what i hope is something useful.