Back in 2022, after my first encounter with ChatGPT, I suggested that it was likely to wipe out large categories of “bullshit jobs”, but unlikely to create mass unemployment. In retrospect, that was probably an overestimate of the likely impact. But three years later, it seems as if an update might be appropriate.

Source: Wikipedia

In the last three years, I have found a few uses for LLM technology. First, I use a product called Rewind, which transcribes the content of Zoom meetings and produces a summary (you may want to check local law on this). Also, I have replaced Google with Kagi, a search engine which will, if presented with a question, produced a detailed answer with links to references, most of which are similar to those I would have found on an extensive Google search, avoiding ads and promotions. Except in the sense that anything on the Internet may be wrong, the results aren’t subject to the hallucinations for which ChatGPT is infamous.

Put high-quality search and accurate summarization together and you have the technology for a literature survey. And that’s what OpenAI now offers as DeepResearch I’ve tried it a few times, and it’s as good as I would expect from a competent research assistant or a standard consultant’s report. If I were asked to do a report on a topic with which I had limited familiarity, I would certainly check out what DeepResearch had to say.

Anzac Day again, and war still ravages the world. Someday, peace will come.

Having finished off the Easter eggs (or bunnies/bilbies) and Hot Cross Buns (though these are a year-round thing now), I ought to be turning attention back to what’s happening in the world. But that’s too depressing to look at, a view our aspiring leaders have endorsed by resolutely ignoring anything more geopolitical than the price of petrol.

So, I’m going to turn my attention to the various absurdities created by having a four-day holiday that floats all over the calendar, from March 22 to April 25, depending on arcane calculations about the full moon. These in turn can be traced to the calendar used by one subgroup of a religion now practised by only a small minority of the population (according to this survey, only 17 per cent of Australians attended an Easter services in the three years to 2023)

Easter is late this year, meaning that we have only three days between Easter Monday (a holiday of no religious significance whatsoever) and Anzac Day, (a date genuinely held as sacred by many Australians). The gap is long enough that most of us will have to go back to work, but leaves a long interval in February and March with no holidays at all in most states.

The fluctuating date of Easter makes a mess of school calendars, in particular making it difficult for Christmas holidays as well.

As it happens, the UK has a law on its books, passed in 1928 but never brought into effect, setting Easter as the first Sunday after the first Saturday in April. It would be a great idea to adopt this timing. A further improvement would be to shift Australia Day to 3 March, the anniversary of the Australia Act which established our independence from the UK once and for all.

Back in November, when I concluded that Trump’s dictatorship was a fait accompli lots of readers thought I was going over the top. In retrospect, and with one exception, I was hopelessly over-optimistic. I imagined a trajectory similar to Orban’s Hungary, with a gradual squeeze on political opposition and civil society, playing out over years and multiple terms in office,.

The reality has been massively worse, both in terms of speed and scope. Threats of conquest against friendly countries, masked thugs abducting people from the street, shakedowns of property from enemies of the state, concentration camps outside the reach of the legal system, all happening at a pace more comparable to Germany in 1933 than to the examples I had in mind.

The one exception is that I expected Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act on Day 1. Instead, perhaps to preserve a veneer of legality, he has commissioned a report from the Secretary of Defense (Hegseth) and the Secretary of Homeland Security (Noem), due by 20 April. Unless he faces massive political blowback in the next few days, he will doubtless order these flunkies to recommend invoking the Act, effectively the equivalent of Hitler’s Enabling Act.

Meanwhile, two other crucial issues are coming to a head. First, Trump is openly defying the courts over the illegal deportation and imprisonment in a concentration camp of legal migrant Abrego Garcia and others and is now threatening the same even for native-born US citizens. Second, elements of civil society (notably universities and law firms) that have previously engaged in shameful capitulation are now standing up.

If Trump is defeated on all three fronts, there is a good chance that US democracy could survive his onslaughts, though it will take many years to recover. But a Trump victory on even one of them will spell the end. Defeating the courts would render any legal constraints on his power irrelevant. The Insurrection Act would permit him to use troops to suppress protest and to arrest his political opponents. A victory over civil society would turn the US into a totalitarian state, in which all organisations are controled by the Leader and his followers.

I haven’t given up hope, but I don’t expect that Trump will be stopped. The vast majority of Republican voters support everything Trump is doing, even though he has signally failed to deliver on the economic prosperity he promised. And while it would only take a handful of Republicans in Congress to change sides and stop him, there is no sign that this will happen.

Once Trump’s dictatorship is established there is no way back within the current US system. When his regime finally collapses the models for reform will be those of post-war reconstruction of a defeated and discredited state, a process which is sometimes successful, sometimes not, but always painful