The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –

“What could possibly go wrong?”

Donald Trump and Elon Musk could learn a thing or two from British animated comedy team Wallace and Gromit. That is if they were the least bit interested in learning, as opposed to destroying education and the concept of human learning in favor of artificial machine learning. My new acronym for this is A.M.L.

By the way, the New York Times on Sunday declared A.I. or artificial intelligence, otherwise known as machine learning or artificial general intelligence, to be running on fumes and about out of gas, mainly because the electrical power needed to keep it going does not exist and we do not have the capacity to keep powering it.

The Tech Fantasy That Powers A.I. Is Running on Fumes

In case you have not seen one of these films on Netflix or elsewhere, creator Nick Park has clearly been watching what’s going on politically in the United States, and keeping up with the news about this new technology. Wallace is a good-natured, eccentric, cheese-loving inventor, and Gromit is his loyal and intelligent anthropomorphic beagle.

In the latest installment in the claymation film series, “Vengeance Most Fowl” released in 2024, Wallace has invented a robotic garden gnome called Norbot. Seeing its economic potential, he opens a business hiring it out to work in gardens around the neighborhood, making Gromit feel left out and concerned about Wallace’s reliance on technology.

“What could possibly go wrong,” Wallace declares, as Gromit shows his skepticism with a sideways glance.

In the opening scenes, we learn that Wallace was considered a local hero for helping to capture the criminal penguin Feathers McGraw, not too unlike the Penguin in the DC Comics Batman series, who tried to steal the famous and valuable Blue Diamond. He is locked up in a high security area of the local Zoo.

But when Feathers over hears on the zoo jail television news that the Blue Diamond is about to go back on display, and that Wallace has created a “good” robot to do garden work, he has an idea. Late one night, he hacks into the local zoo computer system and reprograms Norbot to serve him and mass-produce an army of gnomes to help him escape, to steal the Blue Dimond and exact revenge against Wallace and Gromit.

While working at homes around the city, the gnomes steal tools to build a submarine to run in the sewers under the city (not unlike Gotham) to aid in the escape of Feathers from the zoo jail. Not so intelligent Chief Inspector Albert Mackintosh, and his new deputy recruit PC Mukherjee, surmise that Wallace is no hero after all, and vow to hold him responsible for the tool thefts. They confiscate most of his inventions, but do not at first find the guilty, evil gnomes.

The smart dog Gromit reclaims Wallace’s tracking device from the police station and tracks the gnomes to the local zoo, where Feathers is imprisoned, discovering that they have used their contraband to build a submarine for Feathers to escape through the sewers. Feathers spots Gromit and has Norbot cut down the tree he’s hiding in. Gromit ends up locked in a shed, but Norbot lands on his head, resetting his programming from “evil” to “good.”

He helps Gromit escape, and they go to the museum where the Blue Diamond is about to go back on display. When he opens the safe, however, Chief Inspector Mackintosh discovers the diamond had been replaced with a turnip. Feathers hid the real diamond in an old fashioned and no longer used tea pot in Wallace’s house.

When Gromit returns home, he and Wallace are captured by the evil gnomes. Feathers recovers the diamond and detains Wallace and Gromit in a wardrobe. But ever the smart one in the pair, Gromit figures out how to use a leaf blower to escape with Wallace and Norbot.

They pursue Feathers down a canal on narrowboats while Mackintosh, unaware of the escape, and Mukherjee, still believing in Wallace’s innocence, pursue on a bicycle, old technology. After Gromit and Wallace come up with a way to reprogram the gnomes, Gromit jumps aboard Feathers’ narrowboat. With the boat teetering over the edge, Wallace persuades Gromit to surrender the diamond to Feathers. Satisfied about his apparent victory, Feathers then jumps off the narrowboat, which falls, but Gromit is rescued by Norbot and his fellow gnomes.

Feathers escapes to Yorkshire on a train, but discovers that Gromit had given him a turnip instead of the diamond. Mackintosh praises Mukherjee for trusting her instincts and retires from the force, passing the torch to her.

Wallace is released from criminal responsibility, and returns to inventing, admitting that machinery cannot replace the human touch.

What will it take to get rid of Elon Musk? He may still be the richest man in the world, although he is now the most hated man in the world. And his wealth is falling by the day as Tesla’s stock price tanks. He had to sell off X to another company he owns to write off the millions in loses in unpaid taxes. The rich are not required to pay taxes anymore in America, while Musk helps Trump find a way to destroy Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Education Department, USAID, the Voice of America and anything else they can think of = to Make America Russia (MAR) or lets send him to Mars.

According to an email in my inbox, NASA just awarded Musk another multi-billion dollar contract for SpaceX, now based in Texas. How many people have to die before someone figures out how to stop him? Come on Wallace, Gromit and Norbot.

If you support truth in reporting with no paywall, and fearless writing with no popup ads or sponsored content, consider making a contribution today with GoFundMe or Patreon or PayPal.