A summer anecdote: when on holidays in France, on a sunny August day, we visited a castle garden in rural Normandy. When buying the tickets, we got the usual: “Your postcode or country of origin?” We said “Germany,” and suddenly the face of the young woman at the counter lit up. “Would you mind doing us a favor?,” she asked, while fishing a piece of paper from a big pile – it turned out to be a German version of the leaflet about the garden. “We’ve recently made those, but they need to be checked. Would you mind having a look?” “Sure,” we said, and asked for a pen to insert whatever corrections might be needed.

Quite a few, it turned out. We spend far more time in this garden than we had anticipated. But it was lovely: we took turns looking at the flowers and reading through the leaflet, helping each other out with formulations or googling the names of plants to see whether the translations were correct. All along, we were musing whether the translation had been done by a French person who had learned German the way French people learn German – or by AI. The longer we went on, the clearer it became that it was AI (as the woman at the counter later confirmed). As is often the case with AI, it got most factual statements right but could not deal with context. On a little plan that showed a “lookout point,” it had translated it as “point of view.” “We’re probably robbing a local translator of their job,” my husband said afterwards, and suddenly my heart sank. I had thought a lot about how algorithmic management might change the future of work (see some thoughts here), but I had not yet taken into account how customers might be part of the picture, too.

For us, it had been fun: almost a gamified activity that was pleasurable to do on a sunny summer morning, without any pressures. But the dynamics in this story can play out in far less benign ways: tasks that were bundle into jobs get rebundled, not only between different workers, but also by being redistributed to customers or volunteers. They end up being cheaper – but not because less work has been done.

If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of AI system, trying to deal with some problem at a bank, insurance company, or service provider, you probably know that value can not be added, but also be destroyed – at least in the sense of people’s time being massively wasted. A few days after our holidays, I stood in the queue of a postal office, and at the counter next to me a rather desperate elderly man told the – also increasingly desperate – officer about his odyssey of failed phone calls, many of which obviously with automated systems, in his attempts to get a mistake corrected. Nothing had worked, spelling mistakes had gotten in and made things worse, his battery run out when waiting endlessly in the phone line. The redistribution of work to customers can be brutal if the systems don’t work well, if people feel left alone, and if things that matter to them are at stake. Meanwhile, service workers have to deal with more cases of people who are frustrated and angry because the systems failed them.

The longer AI is around, the longer I’m waiting to see the cases where it would really bring progress to humanity, on dimensions that really matter – rather than make work worse and alienate human beings from each other. The greater ease at finding information is undeniable, but it is undermined by the lack of reliability. The reshuffling of tasks can mean that jobs that included some elements of creativity and agency – such as translation – risk becoming a matter of error-correction under increased time pressure. In countries where union exist, they struggle how to protect employees against employers’ expectation that everything can be sped up when AI gets used, failing to consider that somewhat simpler tasks in between things can also be moments that allow people to breathe.*

I’m very much hoping that my pessimism will be proven wrong, but when I look at the power relations – in workplaces, but also in many company-customer relations – under which AI gets introduced these days, I don’t see much hope. Apart from the fact that large language models have been a massive operation of expropriation, the risk is real that they will be used to survey and control ever more areas of human life. Maybe some jobs will become nicer because “boring” elements can be done faster – but overall, the number of “bad” jobs** is likely to increase, and the divide between “good” and “bad” jobs to widen, because AI can be used to instruct, but also control, employees in ever more fields of work.

I’ll therefore end with a shoutout to this excellent essay by Jelena Belic and Kritika Maheshwari, about what universities should do when called up to prepare students for an AI-driven labor market. Maybe not only critical thinking, but also strategies of resistance, need to be included in the curricula!

• An example that was given to me by a union representative was the writing of minutes of conversations between nurses and patients, which can be replaced by AI-produced transcripts.

** Or not even jobs, but gigs algorithmically managed on platforms.

An impaired-driving collision may happen at an intersection or on a highway, but the chain of decisions leading to it can begin hours earlier. Someone drives to dinner knowing they’ll probably drink. Another person assumes they’ll “figure out” the ride home later. By the end of the night, leaving the car behind suddenly feels inconvenient.

That’s what makes impaired driving different from many other roadway risks. The dangerous situation often doesn’t begin with a split-second mistake behind the wheel. There may have been several earlier opportunities to prevent the vehicle from ever entering traffic.

Understanding that timeline is important when thinking about DUI accidents . Alcohol or drugs can affect the abilities needed for safe driving, but one of the most important decisions may happen before the engine ever starts.

Impairment Changes the Skills Driving Depends On

Driving looks almost automatic when you’ve done it thousands of times. In reality, even an ordinary trip requires constant judgment. Drivers monitor speed, maintain lane position, estimate distances, recognize hazards, follow signals, and react to dozens of small changes around them.

Alcohol and other impairing substances can interfere with those abilities. Reaction time may slow, coordination can suffer, and attention may become less reliable. Vision and the ability to accurately judge distances or changing situations can also be affected.

That creates a dangerous combination. A driver doesn’t need to completely lose control of the vehicle for impairment to matter. Being slightly slower to notice brake lights, judge a turn, recognize a pedestrian, or react to another driver’s mistake can be enough to turn an ordinary roadway situation into an emergency.

The Most Important Decision May Happen Hours Earlier

Once someone has been drinking, deciding whether they’re capable of driving can become a poor safety strategy. The substance affecting driving judgment may also affect the judgment being used to make that decision. Planning transportation beforehand avoids that problem.

A designated driver, rideshare, taxi, public transportation, overnight arrangement, or ride from a friend can remove the need to make a difficult decision at the end of the night. The specific option matters less than having one available before impairment enters the equation.

It can help to think about transportation as part of the original plan rather than something to solve afterward. People make reservations, choose where they’re going, and decide when they’ll meet. Deciding how everyone will get home can be another part of that preparation.

Investigators May Reconstruct the Hours Before the Crash

Observations at the scene may become relevant, including a driver’s behavior, speech, coordination, or other circumstances noticed by officers and witnesses. Depending on the situation and applicable law, alcohol or drug testing  may provide additional information.

Other evidence can help reconstruct the timeline. Surveillance video may show where the driver had been. Witnesses may describe what they observed before the person drove. Receipts, electronic records, or other documentation may sometimes provide context about the hours leading up to the collision.

No single detail necessarily tells the entire story. The goal is often to compare multiple sources and determine whether impairment contributed to the driver’s actions. A crash investigation may therefore stretch backward well beyond the few seconds immediately surrounding impact.

One Driver’s Decision Can Spread Far Beyond One Car

Passengers have no control over the decisions being made behind the wheel. Another driver traveling home may suddenly encounter someone drifting across the centerline. A pedestrian crossing legally or a cyclist riding nearby can become involved without having any opportunity to anticipate the danger.

The consequences can continue outward from there. Serious injuries can mean surgeries, rehabilitation, missed work, and long-term limitations. Families may suddenly become caregivers. A fatal collision can permanently change several families because of one decision made before a relatively ordinary drive.

Conclusion

Alcohol and drugs can interfere with reaction time, attention, coordination, vision, judgment, and other abilities drivers rely on constantly. Once those abilities are affected, simply promising to “drive carefully” doesn’t restore them.

Planning another way home removes the problem before it reaches the roadway. Arrange the ride, choose the designated driver, stay overnight, or leave the vehicle behind. Those decisions can feel unnecessarily cautious hours before anyone is ready to leave.

Photo: beyzahzah via Pexels

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The post The Crash That Begins Before the Driver Even Starts the Car appeared first on DCReport.org.

Natalie Harp would be just another of those adoring faces behind Trump at a rally, ever smiling, laughing at the weakest of his jokes, delighted when he breaks into his absurd Trump-dance, fists jutting out, jowl-flaps quivering. Instead, as has been pointed out ad nauseum over the last few days, there she is seated at his side in Marine One, at his heels on the tarmac, even included in his stealth exit from the G-7 summit in an airline food service container, carted off to a lesser version of Air Force One as the real plane served as a decoy.

That Harp was among the select few in Turkey is what publicly reintroduced her as ever-present in Trump’s life: his “human printer,” Trump’s “binkie,” according to the increasingly acerbic Maggie Haberman, who seems to have delightfully discovered her inner-snark since the book she wrote about Trump with Jonathan Swan, “Regime Change,” hit the number one slot on the Times bestseller list.

Every blog on the planet has taken on the phenomenon of Natalie this week. Jonathan V. Last at the Bulwark weighed in with “Trump’s Human Printer is Cray-Cray.” Jo Jo from Jerz wrote a hilarious take-down of the woman she calls “Trump’s flowers in the attic fluffer,” counseling that she should be, at age 35, drowning herself in a margarita in a “glass the size of a Home Depot lighting fixture” and “spending six disastrous weeks with a personal trainer named Bryce” she met on Hinge.

Everyone is taking note of Harp’s apparent devotion to The Man Who Doesn’t Deserve It, Donald Trump, whose own wife has decamped permanently, or just about, to New York to be with Barron as he studies for his classes at NYU and makes crypto trades on inside information he gloms from his brothers and his daddy.

Harp is said to be the one who stays up late with Trump in the White House helping him post his insane Truth Social rants. She was at his side at Mar a Lago when Trump posted more than 40 attacks on E. Jean Carroll after he was found liable of sexually abusing and defaming her. When he travels – which is at least weekly to one of his golf resorts -- Harp follows him around carrying a portable printer she uses to supply him with a never-ending plethora of stories praising him that she prints out from right wing media such as Gateway Pundit.

In other words, her job – she is a government employee working in the White House – is to keep the President of the United States happy.

Senator Jon Ossoff brought Harp to the fore last week in a campaign speech in Georgia when he noted that given his druthers, Trump would rather “travel with Natalie” on his flying Qatari bribe palace than do the actual job of overseeing a war on Iran that has driven the price of gas and everything else through the roof and caused the deaths of 18 U.S. servicemembers.

In response, Trump compared Ossoff to Pew Wee Herman, and the right-wing media went performatively nuts, defending…well, what exactly were they defending? Trump’s right to be attended by a Stepford person outfitted in tight skirts and skyscraper heels and blond hair and perfect makeup, just the way Trump likes them?

Yes. That’s what they’re defending, because Natalie Harp fits in with the right-wing uber-narrative that Donald Trump is entitled to Whatever He Wants, whether it’s destroying the White House or slapping his name on everything in Washington from the Kennedy Center to neighborhood trash receptacles. Jonathan Last at The Bulwark got close to it with this: “Trump’s defenders are eager to pretend that Ossoff was suggesting an affair between Trump and Harp because the reality of the relationship is so much worse.”

But beyond all the juicy inside-Washington hint-dropping about the relationship between Trump and Harp, whatever it is, what’s really going on here?

If you expand the definition of what an abusive relationship is, this is one of them. Trump is the problem, not Natalie Harp. We don’t know what goes on between them behind closed doors. They might do a little light petting, or he might find ways to belittle her the way he does to every female media figure. We’ll never know unless Harp one days treats us to a tell-all, revealing their secret love-texts or the inside details of his twisted take on women.

But it’s clear that Trump is taking advantage of her. He is using her in the way that abusive men use women who are dedicated to them as spouses or bosses. The gigantic bag Harp is photographed carrying around behind him could contain a portable printer, or it could be his laundry, or as the snark-set speculates, a supply of his Depends. She is his porter, and he obviously enjoys seeing her in that role. Whatever the bag contains could be transported to Marine One or to his limousine or through the doors of Mar a Lago or Bedminster by an actual porter, an employee hired for the purpose of carrying luggage and other accoutrements of a traveling executive.

Trump gets off on Harp’s self-negating devotion. He doesn’t have to belittle her in public to bend her to his will, the aim of every abuser. She does it to herself. Natalie Harp is a victim in a sick relationship. She is not to blame. Trump is.

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It’s a heartrending story that has been making headlines across the country: A nurse from Alaska was working as a surrogate mother for a California couple when the fetus was diagnosed with a serious heart condition that would require multiple surgeries and would likely impact his health for the rest of his life. The biological parents demanded an abortion. The surrogate fought them, making her way to anti-abortion Texas for maximal protection. The parents said they would withhold medical treatment if the surrogate didn’t go through with the abortion; she defied them. Baby Gabriel has now been born, and while the surrogate has not succeeded in claiming parental rights, he is getting the treatment he needs in Dallas.

Heartrending indeed. And basically none of it is true.

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The baby’s name is not Gabriel; it’s Rumi. His parents, Omar Ahmed and Nausheen Gilkar, did not demand that the surrogate, McKenna West, terminate or else they would allow a newborn baby to suffer without treatment; they in fact want him getting treatment at a top-rate facility in Los Angeles, not at a less-excellent one in Texas. The surrogate parents legally could not have forced West to terminate in the first place, no matter which state she was in, and when she said she didn’t want to have an abortion they said that was fine. She didn’t decamp to Texas because it bans abortion, but because Texas often confers parental rights onto whoever gives birth. Rumi’s parents are in fact getting him the treatment he needs, which has been complicated by the fact that West insisted on birthing in Texas instead of in California, where Rumi’s care would have been better. And it strikes me as… interesting… that the anti-abortion movement gave the baby a strongly Christian-coded name without having any idea of what his actual parents planned to call him.

The story is a story because it’s a mess, but it’s also a story because the anti-abortion movement has latched onto it and exploited it. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is currently running against James Talarico for a US Senate seat, has put himself in the middle of the whole debacle in order to score campaign points. Some of the country’s most prominent “pro-life” activists have made this their latest cause as a way of demonizing both abortion and surrogacy. The degree to which abortion opponents have manipulated and outright invented facts in this case is stunning, even from a movement rife with dishonestly and manipulation.

They have, however, succeeded in directing the public’s attention to this case, and by extension to commercial surrogacy. And defenders of women’s rights are perilously off-guard. Unlike our counterparts across most of Europe, American feminists have not deeply grappled with the surrogacy issue, instead layering it onto American abortion politics, if we think about it at all. That winds up with simplistic and unsatisfying conclusions, like “her body her choice” — when commercial surrogacy is complicated by money, contracts, power, biology, and truly complex ethical questions about paying for reproduction and whether something can even be fairly considered paid work if it comes with no seconds let alone days off, no labor protections, no way to simply quit, and significant physical risk up to and including death.

The anti-surrogacy movement, which overlaps significantly with the anti-abortion movement, has an easy answer: Babies shouldn’t be commodities; surrogacy should be banned. It’s tempting for supporters of women’s rights and abortion rights to simply negatively polarize ourselves here — if “pro-lifers” are against surrogacy, then we should probably be for it. That would be a mistake. And it’s women who will end up paying the price.

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I will tell you up-front that I have no ideal legal framework to regulate commercial surrogacy. It is banned in almost all of Europe. Countries that allow it with little regulation have found themselves turned into hubs for human trafficking, as women from poor nations are moved to surrogacy-friendly ones to turn out babies for foreigners. It is hard to overstate what a total nightmare a whole lot of international commercial surrogacy is for the women who are coerced into it.

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I am fully cognizant of the uselessness of expecting the daily mutterings of the President of the United States to make sense. He doesn’t, and his mutterings don’t.

But this is getting ridiculous.

In a speech earlier this summer at the far-right Christian nationalist Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Washington, Trump referred to the entire Democratic Party as “hardcore, Godless Communists.” At his midnight Fourth of July speech on the National Mall, Trump again referred to Democrats as a communist “cancer” on America. He calls Mayor Mamdani a communist, the winner of the Democratic Senate primary in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, a communist. He’s got Senate and House candidates sounding like Joe McCarthy, kicking the C-word around like a political hackey-sack.

And then last night on Truth Social, he’s praising a real, actual Communist dictator, Kim Jong Un as someone “who has always treated me with great respect” and is “very positive,” while taking a shot at South Korea for not joining his war on Iran, after not informing South Korea he was going to attack Iran or asking for South Korean aid beforehand, as if South Korea was supposed to read his mind and send him money, or missiles, or Diet Cokes…or something anyway. Then he ordered Hegseth to reduce the U.S. involvement with South Korea in long-planned exercises that prepared for war with North Korea.

Let’s play the “what if” game, shall we? What do you think would have happened if Joe Biden had launched a shooting war on Iran that immediately lead to the closing of the Strait of Hormuz and a 50 percent rise in gas prices and significant increases in prices of food, rare metals, fertilizer for farmers, and pretty much everything else that keeps the world’s economy humming? Do you think Trump and every single one of his MAGA allies in Congress would have called for his impeachment?

Of course they would have.

What do you think would happen if it came out that Senators Mark Kelley and Jon Ossoff, both of whom appear to be readying runs for the White House, were close buddies of Jeffrey Epstein, and their names appeared in the Epstein files 30 or 40 thousand times? Do you think there would be screaming and yelling from the MAGAsphere for their political scalps?

What do you think would happen if a Democrat…any Democrat…had put the USS Abraham Lincoln to sea for more than 250 days and reports came out that there were food shortages on the ship, that sailors didn’t have hot water for showers, that the ship was moldy and unsanitary?

How about this: What if a Democrat had gone to war against Iran and said the war wouldn’t let up until that country “surrendered and waved the white flag,” and said one of the goals of the war was to eliminate Iran’s missile program, and then a few months later, said it was understandable if Iran wanted offensive missiles because “other countries in the region like Saudi Arabia” had them? What if a Democrat agreed to end the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf? What if a Democrat had lifted sanctions on Iran’s sale of oil, and ended banking and insurance sanctions that had constrained that country for decades? What if a Democrat had agreed to lift restrictions of Iran’s use of its funds in foreign banks and unfroze all its assets around the world?

What if a Democrat had pulled out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that had been signed by France, the UK, Russia, Germany, the European Union and China, and allowed Iran to return to enriching uranium to near-nuclear weapons grade, putting the country on a path to develop a weapon within months, not years? What if a Democrat signed a document that allowed Iran to restrict access to its nuclear sites by the International Atomic Energy Agency, essentially ending all intelligence about the status of Iran’s nuclear program and accepting whatever Iran decided to tell the world about it?

What if a Democrat learned that Russia was assisting Iran’s war effort against the U.S. and had even provided targeting data on U.S. installations in the Middle East that resulted in the deaths of American soldiers, and did nothing in response?

What if a Democrat, having started a war with Iran, expended 90 percent of U.S. long range missiles and more than 50 percent of our country’s anti-missile defenses, not to mention spent $100 billion, and then lost the war?

What if a Democrat, knowing that North Korea had sent more than 10,000 of its soldiers to fight against Ukraine and had provided Russia with missiles and other weapons, declared that North Korea was essentially an ally and let it go? What if a Democrat learned that North Korea planned to send as many as 30,000 more soldiers to join Russia’s war on Ukraine, and then the Democrat declared that North Korea’s dictatorial leaker was a good guy? What if a Democrat said that because the North Korean leader “respects” him, he could do anything he wanted in providing aid and comfort to Russia’s war on Ukraine? What if a Democrat was in charge when it became obvious that North Korea was aiding Russia’s threat to NATO nations in defiance of the U.S. treaty with NATO?

What if a Democrat repeatedly treated allies of this country such as Canada and Germany and France and Sweden and Italy as enemies rather than friends?

What if a Democrat enriched himself in office to the tune of $2.2 billion in a single year in defiance of norms and laws that had been respected by every president for more than 240 years?

How long do you think it would take for Republicans to impeach that Democratic president?

See what I mean about this getting ridiculous?

Here is a sad truth we have lived through before. We can vote in a new Congress controlled by Democrats. We can vote in a Democrat as president. And then, as happened in 2008 and many times before, going all the way back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Democrats will be saddled with the duty of repairing the damage that Republicans have done to everything that matters in this country, from foreign relations to the economy to the health of the American public to the need to repair America’s place in the world and rebuild the U.S. government, brick by brick, from the ground up.

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The people who voted for Donald Trump apparently don’t see anything wrong with an old man staying up all night using artificial intelligence to compare himself to the first president of the Republic.

This stuff was all over the internet today. You couldn’t not see it. He froze up at one of his rallies, staring unblinkingly, speechless for 21 seconds. He leans forward so far when he walks, he looks like he’s going to fall over, a clear sign of dementia. And yet, there he is every day, our president.

He has taken leave of his senses. I am at a loss confronted with this certifiable insanity.

I’m taking the night off to rest my brain. It hurts.

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