If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have used the time machine.

Vatican Says Pope Francis in ‘Critical’ Condition — Receiving Blood Transfusions and ‘High-Flow Oxygen’
February 22, 2025

□ [“Zelensky Folds — Will Sign Ukraine’s Mineral Rights Over to U.S. as Compensation For Military Aid"]

Zelensky had refused to sign the deal, just like Canada and Mexico wouldn't secure the borders despite the tariffs.  And the left was so proud that they were standing against Trump.  Then reality showed up and the left looked for something else to whine about.  Essentially they're being left behind.

The rare metals are important, I get that, but otherwise I hadn't seen much point in Trump demanding them.  But now it occurs to me that this might be a real solution.  We'd need someone to watch over our property on a war zone and Trump runs the military, he could drop some of them in to secure the region.

Tell Russia and Ukraine not to try anything unless they want the US to shoot back at them.  Ukraine would obey, they have no reason to start shooting at US troops.  Russia might be a little worried, suddenly they'd have more incentive to look for a peace deal.  And the US troops get to protect US property, sounds like a win-win-win.

There's some potential objections to this, the US just grabbing part of Russia Ukraine to use for ourselves.  Congress might need to be involved.  This is Ukraine so there'd be money laundering involved.  But this is a place to start.  It's not like Europe has anything to offer, so they won't help.  Zelensky had better hope there's no elections or he might lose his job.  They'll also need a lot more abortion clinics if US soldiers are allowed to be there.

Anyway, this may not go the way I describe, but I suspect it'll be similar.  Like it or not, we probably already have US troops on the ground.  We had 'em before Trump and we probably have them now.  At least this wouldn't be to keep the war going.  Not sure it's a great idea but it's better than we've had for the last few years.

Associated Press Files Lawsuit Against Trump Admin Over Being Barred from White House Events
February 22, 2025

Just wasted some time with Meta AI, the artificial intelligence program that's supposed to help our creativity.  My goal was to actually recreate some of my comics and see how that worked.

Well, it didn't.  This program is not capable of copying existing art, nor of creating anything specific.  It might be able to do some images that are reasonably close to what you request, but any thought you've put into expressing an idea is completely wasted.  I tried to reproduce one of my comic strips that I'd made on Microsoft Paint and one page of a comic book I drew a long time ago.  The program could describe the art with a surprising amount of detail, but it could not copy it, much less change the styles.

It was very strange.  The program clearly knew what it was looking at and could describe the work in some detail, even down to mentioning pencils I hadn't fully erased on the comic page.  Yet it's not capable of redoing the image?  I asked why it was capable of remaking music in a different format and it answered that audio was just a different medium.  It works differently.  By the way, A.I. comes disturbingly close to making coherent believable conversations.  It won't be long before you'll think you're talking to a real person, or at least realize that there's no noticeable difference.

One thing that did work was when I threw in a random idea for an image, just to see how it would work.  Sidney Sweeney, in t-shirt and jeans, in an alleyway, as a blonde, done as a Marc Silvestri comics page.  [Note to Marvel, I have an idea who you should get to play Dazzler.]  It threw out a much of possible images, some of which don't look much like Sweeney, but they come surprisingly close to working.  Not sure how close they are to Silvestri's actual work but the best of these was certainly passable.

But so far, I cannot find an A.I. that is usable for work like this.  At some point I assume it will but for the time being, it's worse than useless.  Just doing this much took up so much time that I've barely done any writing tonight.

Trans Activist Says “Why Not?” to Combining Paralympics and Olympics
February 22, 2025

□ [“Connecticut Grants Conditional Release to Black Cannibal Who Ate His Victim's Brain and Eyeball"]

He should be sent to the judge who released him, he obviously sees nothing that can go wrong with this.  The left is just showing off how insane they are and they're willing to subject everyone else to such monstrosity.  The murder happened in 2012, the killer shouldn't even be alive by now, much less freed.

And you know the left just sees this as an ideal to be aspired to.  The next step will be to criminalize anybody who disagrees.  The cannibal is just living out his alternate lifestyle and anybody who opposes that will be sent to be reprogrammed.  Or jailed permanently.  When asking how we ever got this far, just realize that the judge is only slightly different from the murderer he just freed.

□ [“WI Governor Wants State Law to Change ‘Mother’ to ‘Inseminated Person’'"]

And neither of them are that far from this guy, erasing women from the law.  They need to keep the semen, can't get anything done without that, but afterwards they can just be erased and the left doesn't care.  Of course he (if he self-identifies as male) wants to get rid of other words, "father" and "mother" become "parent" and "parent who gave birth to the child."  No husband or wife, just "spouse."

They can't hold back on this anymore and will just keep going downhill.  As the saying goes, there's no ground floor in Hell.  I'm not sure if it's horrifying that they've been allowed to get this far or we should be grateful that Trump is finally letting them go off the cliff.  I don't even know what to add to that, it's just monstrous.

Over 5,000 Firings Expected at the Pentagon Beginning Next Week
February 22, 2025

□ [“Trump Is Selling the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building in San Francisco"]

That's funny.  It's too expensive to maintain and isn't really used.  It's like they only made the building to honor the rich old white woman for no reason.  I'll assume she's not happy to hear this.  It'll be interesting to see if she buys the building.  It's not like she can't afford it and it was clearly aimed at her ego.  Can't imagine San Francisco needing another office building so it'll probably be torn down otherwise.

The building was constructed 2003-7, it was named after Nancy in a 2023 omnibus bill.  Uh...  I have a question, what does renaming a building have to do with spending?  Did Nancy push it because of self-absorption or was someone else sucking up to her because of that self absorption?  'If this building isn't renamed after her, we can't fund Guam and transgender comic books and such!'

It's San Francisco, so we might as well assume the building is being used for criminal activities.  That's just an obvious guess when we're talking about leftists and their icons.  I guess we'll have to wait until Nancy says something about it.  That must suck, her name was supposed to be there permanently and now it's gone.  Life's a lot like that.  But maybe she can sponsor a bill in Congress to get it back, see how many will support that.

Maine Boy Scores Dominating Win in Girls’ Pole Vault Championship as Governor Defies Trump Over Banning Men from Women’s Sports
February 22, 2025

□ [“Trump Announces 'Our Southern Border Is Closed!!!'”]

Wow.  It's only taken a month to make that happen.  It's like he had an actual goal and worked for it right from the start.  Who could have expected anyone could do that?  Even though he insisted he would and had already blocked the border in his last term.  Protecting the country is a good thing, who knew?

□ [“DOGE to Email Questionnaire to Federal Workers With Short Deadline"]

Every federal employee received this email today, asking “What did you do last week?” and expecting five bulletpoints listing your accomplishments.  Make sure to cc your manager and respond by 11:59AM Monday.  Failure to respond will be considered a resignation.

That's harsh but cool.  At this point, how many federal employees will think they're too crucial and they can just ignore this?  If they're competent and dedicated to the job, it would be a given to respond to the boss.  They might even have achievements to point to.  Otherwise, what is there?  "I sat through a bunch of *woke* meetings and didn't play on my cellphone"?

The left is just getting demoralized, even though they refuse to admit it.  That's why so many are pushing everything they can for the *woke* agenda, what else do they have to offer?  If there's anybody in charge who usually has some sensibility, they're too dazed to get involved.  The rest are just left to break down.

Transgender ‘Euphoria’ Star Complains Gender Marker on Passport Has Been Changed to ‘Male’
February 22, 2025