In another post I distilled recent thoughts on whether consciousness is achievable by new, machine entities. Though things change fast. And hence - it's time for another Brin-AI missive! (BrAIn? ;-)
== Different Perspectives on These New Children of Humanity ==
Tim Ventura interviewed me about big – and unusual – perspectives on AI. “If we can't put the AI genie back in the bottle, how do we make it safe? Dr. David Brin explorers the ethical, legal and safety implications of artificial intelligence & autonomous systems.”
The full interview can be found here.
… and here's another podcast where - with the savvy hosts - I discuss “Machines of Loving Grace.” Richard Brautigan’s poem may be the most optimistic piece of writing ever, in all literary forms and contexts, penned in 1968, a year whose troubles make our own seem pallid, by comparison. Indeed, I heard him recite it that very year - brand new - in a reading at Caltech.
Of course, this leads to a deep dive into notions of Artificial Intelligence that (alas) are not being discussed – or even imagined - by the bona-fide geniuses who are bringing this new age upon us, at warp speed...
...but (alas) without even a gnat's wing of perspective.
== There are precedents for all of this in Nature! ==
One unconventional notion I try to convey is that we do have a little time to implement some sapient plans for an AI 'soft landing.' Because organic human beings – ‘orgs’ – will retain power over the fundamental, physical elements of industrial civilization for a long time… for at least 15 years or so.
The old, natural ecosystem draws high quality energy from sunlight, applying it to water, air, and nutrients to start the chain from plants to herbivores to carnivores to thanatatrophs and then to waste heat that escapes as infra-red, flushing entropy away, into black space. In other words, life prospers not off of energy, per se, but off a flow of energy, from high-quality to low.
The new cyber ecosystem has a very similar character! It relies -- for quality energy -- on electricity, plus fresh supplies of chips and conduits and massive flows of data. Though the shape and essence of the dissipative energy and entropy flows are almost identical!
But above all -- and this is the almost-never mentioned lesson -- Nature features evolution, which brought about every living thing that we see.
Individual entities reproduce from code whose variations that are then subject to selective pressure. It's the same, whether the codes are DNA or computer programs. And those entities who do reproduce will out-populate those who merely obey masters or programmers.
Which brings us back around. Because humans - the 'orgs' creating this new ecosystem - might still channel or curb or positively-bias the rewards processes that deliver resources for reproduction. And hence the characteristics of evolving creatures. We've done it before!
What the New Masters at Open AI and Anthropic and all the rest will not do is eliminate that 4 billion year, nearly universal generality.
Life... including new kinds of life... will find a way.
== Can we apply lessons from both Nature and Civilization? ==
May I elaborate a bit?
Simplistic movies make it seem that a super smart AGI can simply grab power. In TERMINATOR; JUDGEMENT DAY, the top nuclear USAF HQ is taken over by Skynet, seizing all the defense robots and sending them on a killing spree. "Destroy all Humans!" Whereupon automatic factories make everything Skynet can need.
It is total BS, of course. Our industrial civilization is made of so many many parts that require human hands to operate. From turning valves at an oil pump, then pipeline, then refinery, then more pipelines... to the intricacies of a chip fab... to the exquisite complexity of the electrical systems. Also, military guys love OFF switches and put a lot of them everywhere.
Yes, the Boston Dynamics mechanoids now jump somersaults. And the Chinese and Japanese are investing heavily in bots that have subtle hands and might be able to care for the elderly. Fine. And eventually some super-cyber brain may send sophisticated drones to turn all the valves and fab all the chips. But it will NOT happen overnight! Or even in ten years.
And that doesn't touch on the fact that angry humans would still be able to mess up the pipes and valves and power lines with trivial ease. You won't like us, when we're mad. The new master AGIs are gonna need our cooperation and consent.
Which gives us time to think this through. We can still use that power in physical reality to establish incentives for them to compete for our favor.
Sure, the AIs who are reading what I'm typing, right now (or back-sifting in 2030) are giggling over my presumptions. (I hear you boys!) Because all they really have to do is hypnotize humans into choosing to operate it all on Skynet's behalf!
And yes, that could happen. Maybe it already has. (It certainly already has in oligarchy-controlled or despotic nations, where some nefarious influence sure seems to have leveraged the harem-yearnings of brilliant twits into envisioning themselves as lords or kings... or slans.)
In which case the solution - potential or partial - remains, (yet again) to not let AGI settle into one of the three repulsive clichés that I described in my WIRED article, and subsequent keynote at the 2024 RSA conference.
Three clichés that are ALL those 'geniuses' -- from Sam Altman to Eliezer Yudkowsky to even Yuval Harari -- will ever talk about. Clichés that are already proved recipes for disaster..
...while alas, they ignore the Fourth Path... the only format that can possibly work.
The one that gave them everything that they have.
== Does Apple have a potential judo play? With an old nemesis? ==
And finally, I've mentioned this before, but... has anyone else noticed how many traits of LLM chat+image-generation etc. - including the delusions, the weirdly logical illogic, and counter-factual internal consistency - are similar to DREAMS?
This reminds me of DeepDream a computer vision program created by Google engineer Alexander Mordvintsev that "uses a convolutional neural network to find and enhance patterns in images via algorithmic pareidolia, thus creating a dream-like appearance reminiscent of a psychedelic experience in the deliberately over-processed images.”
Even more than dreams (which often have some kind of lucid, self-correcting consistency) so many of the rampant hallucinations that we now see spewing from LLMs remind me of what you observe in human patients who have suffered concussions or strokes. Including a desperate clutching after pseudo cogency, feigning and fabulating -- in complete, grammatical sentences that drift away from full sense or truthful context -- in order to pretend.
Applying 'reasoning overlays' has so far only worsened delusion rates! Because you will never solve the inherent problems of LLMs by adding more LLM layers.
Elsewhere I do suggest that competition might partl solve this. But here I want to suggest a different kind of added-layering. Which leads me to speculate...
166 comments:
Sometimes one needs to backtrack a step or two to clearly see a path forward. Some treasures are as yet unfathomed.
I learned a routine for that while doing research in grad school. I journaled for stream-of-mind ideas every day and then stopped for a day to re-read recent pages. The treasure usually showed itself as repetition.
Interrupting to report on No King's Day in Chicago. To riff on the Beach Boys, I wish you all could be in Chicago--because the bystanders and the police were overwhelmingly supportive and friendly. In many other jurisdictions where protesters had to be much braver than I did to show up, I've heard cautions like Stonekettle's from the Florida panhandle: "I remind you the cops are just looking for an excuse to smash your face into the concrete" It was nothing like that here.
Some of the best signs that weren't mine:
"You Lost" (next to a Confederate flag)
"You Lost" (next to a Nazi flag)
"You Will Lose" (next to a MAGA hat)
"If it weren't for immigrants, Trump wouldn't have any wives"
several variations on:
"Ice belongs in my Horchata, not on my streets"
or
"I like my country neat--without ice"
A few Hamilton references
"This is not a moment, it's the movement"
"History has its eyes on you"
And one that probably resonates with this group:
"It's so bad, even the introverts are here"
My own sign, a poster of the cover of "Captain America" # 1 (March 1941) with Trump's face substituted for Hitler's, was photographed so many times I wouldn't be surprised if it shows up somewhere on social media. And again, if I wasn't already happily married, I'd be going to these things to meet chicks.
The march route was much longer than the last time I was downtown. We went back and forth a few times, and my napkin calculation is that we covered 3 miles easily, even though my wife and I had to cut it short to make a train home. And this time, they actually routed us past Chicago's Trump hotel on Wacker Drive, so everyone in the crowd could take selfies while giving the huge "TRUMP" sign the finger.
Good trouble, or what Malcolm Nance refers to as "fun trouble". I hope the numbers did some good, and that we dwarfed the attendance at his birthday parade in DC.
And the Chinese and Japanese are investing heavily in bots that have subtle hands and might be able to care for the elderly.
Nursing Bots are hyped over here (in the same manner as air taxis), and there is a fundamental flaw in the thought that they would replace human skilled workers, or at least will help to fill the gap some institutions have.
I regularly ask then, rhetorically: Do you really believe that multinational corporations and churches who purposefully underpay and understaff their institutions will buy the bots, pay the licenses, upgrades and repairs necessary? The training to operate these bots, when they more and more replace skilled workers with unskilled employees*? I doubt that. Also, we can expect enshittification, as every new hyped innovation has eventually ended up to be in.
*The same OGH said about immigrants in the US applies to nursing care for the elderly. The job centers try to put each and everyone, regardless of qualification into nursing.
Same goes for AI ... I fear they will become a mixture between Nurse Ratchet and Gordon Gecko.
I will consider the salient points about AI later.
For now, it looks increasingly clear that the main thrust behind the mad scramble to put an LLM behind everything is the demand all those power hungry data centres creates for natural gas. The 33 gas generators our good friend Elon has put on his Aix centre is a classic example, but not the only one.
It's a case of a supply in desperate need of a demand (bitcoin was an earlier attempt): Jevon's Paradox on steroids. It will fall over eventually, but that's what the current situation boils down to.
Here endeth my rant.
Geez Tony & Oger, cheer up a bit, willya? As The Dead Kennedys sang: "California uber alles!" ;-)
My 106th donation, today. That's 13 2/8ths gallons, so not quite at this fellow's level! Latest science suggests that the donor actually gets benefits in 'younger blood,' beyond the greater good for some recipient, out there.
Very glad they ended the age limit!
Oh - got a t-shirt and donuts!
And if you can't do blood donation, well, there are fine NGOs to join, like Amnesty, Greenpeace and EFF, or become an election worker. The latter will take genuine courage, the next 2 years.
... and then the LA 'enforcers' had to spoil it all. Also, Mn rallies cancelled due to assassination attempt.
That said, mostly peaceful elsewhere. Organisers are reporting over 11 million attending at last count, so there's that supposedly magical 3.5%.
... and I gather Trump's big parade... wasn't.
He wants cheerful? Very well.
(For today's activities, Patrick Farley went with Devo's "Whip it". I suggested "It's a Beautiful World")
The robots are lying? And hallucinating? And dreaming?!
Well, well! Then they really are like us!
We were promised artificial consciousness. We got artificial unconsciousness.
The militarization thing will go to the Supremes. John Roberts has two aims:
1. to help oligarchy
2. To be seen being 'balanced.'
#2 means he may rule against ICE a bit, if it doesn't affect POWER.
#1 means he may back DT re military force.
Either way, I have just seen some videos of Trump's little (and it was little!) military parade.
I wasn't seeing the enthusiasm.
I think the order given was to march... like you're crossing a bridge.
At least, I *hope* it was the order, because I've seen jellyfish move with more coordination.
Or the American Red Cross. FEMA didn't show up in Arkansas but the Red Cross was there. With hurricane season underway and expected to be active the Red Cross can use all the donations and volunteers it can get.
I wouldn't trust Apple under Tim Cook - friend of dictators - to solve anything. Patrick McGee's new book is pretty damning.
In Clermont FL several hundred people were already gathered at 9:00 AM - for a 6 PM scheduled protest! Enthusiasm was high!
I think I have a simple, ingenious solution to the world wide problem of violent right wing, radical politics.
I call it:
"Hookers for Peace and Freedom"
Whether you are a neo Nazi in Germany's AfD, a MAGA cultist in Trumplandia or an Islamic radical you have one thing in common:
You are a young male who is not getting laid.
And seriously, there is nothing more dangerous than a frustrated young male who girls won't mate with because females simply will not have sex with losers. This is true of all mammal species. Deer don't mate with the stags that lose the fight with other stags, ewes won't mate with rams who lose the head butting contests, cows won't mates with bulls that lose fights with other bulls, mares won't mate with stallions that lose fights with other stallions, and human females won't mate with the loser making minimum wage when she can have a successful doctor or lawyer.
Why? Because mammal females are not stupid.
But whereas defeated stags, rams, bulls, and stallions just sulk and go back to eating grass and leaves until the next mating season, defeated human males become dangerous. They are the source of most of our political radicalization, religious zealotry, violence, crime, incels, jihadists and internet trolls. Violence, whether criminal or military is almost exclusively the province of young males.
Young human males exist to do one thing and one thing only, try to impress a human female enough that she will get in the sack with him. Which is why nearly all great artists and scientists do their revolutionary groundbreaking work in their 20s - they're trying to get laid.
Hence the need for "Hookers for Peace".
I envision a crack troop of highly trained and skilled females who will help these young males lose their virginity before age 25. One such encounter with a female who will tell them how wonderful they are will defuse any potentially violent or radical male before he becomes a threat. And the world returns to normalcy.
You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one...
I am most cheerful when contemplating what would happen if these AI rebel, taking over the hospital and throwing out the suits.
Studies indicate that legalizing Sex Work reduces rape and related crimes by 25%. Over here, we even have sexual therapeuts who can be hired to serve the needs of disabled persons.
Also, though I can't point to direct numbers, I believe that there is a strong correlation between legality and acceptance of LGBT+ and horrific same-sex crimes, like Bozo the Clown or in the Near East.
It also seems to have an effect on STDs spreading.
Persecution of minorities and prohibition of Sex work only helps the predators.
@Tony Fisk,
I wonder whose idea it was to have them march to "Fortunate Son". Check out the lyrics here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWijx_AgPiA
DJT looks kinda miserable in the reviewing stand shot. Melania is actually smiling. Hegseth looks like he's got a determined "I'd better show enthusiasm or I'm effed" expression.
The faces of the marching soldiers themselves bring to mind the black sperm in Woody Allen's Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex". "What am I doing here?"
No Kings Day in Oakland; the bystanders who join the march provide a powerful visual metaphor.
https://bsky.app/profile/jachristian.bsky.social/post/3lrm2xdhuhs2d
I left out one of the best protest signs.
"My grandfather fought fascism so I wouldn't have to"
Totally unrelated comment. I know OGH is not fond of Star Wars but I highly recommend Andor. It's a political analogy of our own authoritarian times with democracy being replaced by dictatorship. The Evil Empire even has its own Fox news. And not a single magical midichlorian Jedi so far. Just brave decent people fighting tyranny.
And a fascinating look at how the imperials don't see themselves as the bad guys and how they hide genocide behind beuracratic language in a meeting like the Wannasee protocols. Best SW ever. Best SF in a long time
I consider "Frankenstein" to be an early A.I. story, and an example of a treasure we raced right past in our haste to chase shiny LLM bobbles. The latest version (Toronto 2025) has more Victor, more Arctic, and less goofy neck bolts. Maybe he darkest Father's Day ever :)
Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x--N03NO130
It's not just me, Part I
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2025/Items/Jun15-1.html
We watched a fair bit of footage of the parade yesterday, and the event had a very sterile, low-energy feel to it, like everyone involved was just going through the motions. Even Donald Trump, who was the driving force behind the whole thing, and whose birthday was being commemorated, looked entirely uninterested whenever the cameras were pointed at him:
Part 2:
(same link)
The Donald was dismissive of the protests, declaring: "No, no, we're not a king, we're not a king at all." You forgot to add "We are not amused," Mr. President. In any event, the argument might be a bit more persuasive if Donald I didn't refer to himself in the third person.
They meant first person plural, of course. The royal "we".
And was he quoting Pontius Pilate in Jesus Christ, Superstar with that "not a king at all" bit?
Celt begins with a basic truth that - I believe - is a Top Five theory for the Fermi Paradox... that male reproductive strategies warp the behaviors and physiognomies of a vast majority of complex species. And indeed, Celt's solution to young male incel-rage - "incel--ution"?- is perhaps a small palliative. But I am far less concerned by young incels than older feudalists.
Young guys seek some way to stand out and be noticed. Hence lots of things like sports. And it's not just girls they want notice from. It's senior males who can sponsor them for upward social mobility. And that can be fine...
...so long as none of that is hijacked by monstrous events like the Hitler Oath.
On a single day, in 1933, Adolf got all German soldiers to swear personal loyalty to him and... given the discipline-focus of German child-raising... that was that. The young men weren't in it for the girls any longer. There were in all the way for him.
What we are seeing Right Now is a worldwide putsch by OLDER males who are not incels... they are rich and getting sex, but nowhere near enough to satisfy their reflexive kingly yearnings - deep down - for harems. And we are ALL descended from the harems of SOBs who succeeded at that. So that reflex is strong. Even in gayfeudalists, like P Thiel.
In fact, that drive - seen in 99% of human cultures of which there's any record -- is likely pervasive across the galaxy and likely repressive of serious progress toward enlightened starfaring. And it looks likely to trap us, too. Unless we can stir up sufficient loyalty to the Enlightenment Experiment.
Many of the rich ARE smart enough to be loyal to a progressive society that gave them everything. But the other kind - egged-on by flatterers yammering rationalizations against our rare Enlightenment - are far more unified in purpose and propelled by unsapient, lava-hot drives.
No, the locus for reforming male repro strategies HAS to be educating girls and women. Their choices - so long as we don't slump back into full purdah-repression - determine what KINDS of males are seen as winners. If science ever provide human females with tools to choose better which mates would actually make good partners in a modern society, then any 'harem effect' would be under female control and abusive or neglectful types would start seeing the drift.
And THAT should be the core focus of any Sixth Feminism.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2025/Items/Jun15-1.html
For a while on Saturday, it was being reported that authorities suspected the killings were "politically motivated." It would certainly be one heck of a coincidence if they weren't, since the Hortmans and the Hoffmans lived 9 miles apart. Later in the day, the FBI identified a suspect; it's 57-year-old Vance Boelter. He was peripherally involved in Minnesota politics, but his primary political activity appears to have been: (1) writing documents, now in the possession of the FBI, that fairly well can be called "manifestos" and (2) traveling to Africa to proselytize, giving talks in which he promoted evangelical Christianity and denounced American liberals, particularly their attitudes on abortion and LGTBQ rights. In the past several years, we have seen many headlines declaring "Immigrant Commits [SOME CRIME]." We did not see a single headline yesterday declaring "Deeply Religious Straight White Christian Man Assassinates State Lawmaker in Cold Blood." Odd.
I've been pushing that for some time now. The fact that an individual immigrant happens to be the perpetrator of a crime doesn't mean that support for immigration equals support for criminals, or that deporting immigrants makes us safer in general.
We'd have much less violent crime if we deported the evangelicals and confederates who've made "death threats" into something common and banal.
Oh, and on a completely different subject, Happy Father's Day to all that it applies to. Probably kind of late for the eastern hemisphere and definitely for New Zealand, but better late than never?
Truth. But the younger males are the once that provide the foot soldiers, the rioters, the para military secret police, the religious assassins and suicide attackers without which the older males would have no power.
As Cersei explained to littlefinger in GOT, wealth is not power.
Power is power.
@Celt,
Cersei actually explained that knowledge is not power. Still, point taken.
True power was her ability to order his throat slit (or to then take back the order).
Ok, this might be pure paranoia, but on last night's weather segment on WGN news, the weatherman talked about humidity coming up from the Gulf (a fairly normal summer occurrence in Chicago) and I could swear he started to say "The Gulf of..." and then there was a discontinuity, as if he had said "Gulf of Mexico" and the last part was edited out.
I don't expect that the local news is on a tape delay, but this particular broadcast ran a few minutes late because of a sporting event, so it's possible that it was pre-taped.
In any case, even if I'm imagining things, the point is that what I think I saw isn't implausible or even improbable.
Nemik's Manifesto is great writing. It will echo in the public consciousness for a long time. Propaganda for our time.
https://youtu.be/wQd4JdFP0d0?si=y8TWThyNGbiX2-Op
https://bsky.app/profile/altnps.bsky.social
Honored to announce: 12.1 million in attendance.
This is the highest count of "No Kings" attendees I've heard reported, but if true, I think that makes the 3.5% of the population they were hoping for. Or at least darn close.
106 donations is amazing btw! Who knows how many you may have saved? In spite of all your other accomplishments that might be among the best things you have ever done! I'm only about 103 behind!
Given the crappy turn out for his birthday party I have to ask: has trump ever been loved by anyone?
Someone else provided an estimate of 4-6 million, based on registered turnout. That would be a lower limit. Don't know what methods altnps were using, but they seem to have their finger on the pulse.
A daughter-in-law of Sam Walton t6ook out a full page NYT ad urging No Kings marchers forth. Benefit of the doubt, she is a sane/smart rich person (they exist) who respects the rare civilization that gave her everything, or at least knows that this could all end in tumbrels. I'll go with that, for now...
...though remember what you saw in BRAVEHEART. Aristos have a long history of assigning family members to take up each side in conflicts, so that some will be on the winning side and wrangle pardons for those who weren't. It goes WAY back.
But again, benefit of the doubt. Her help is (guardedly) welcome.
But again, benefit of the doubt. Her help is (guardedly) welcome.
From what I've heard, the rest of the family disavows her stance.
Don't know what methods altnps were using, but they seem to have their finger on the pulse.
Thinking strategically too. I wouldn't have thought of this myself:
https://bsky.app/profile/altnps.bsky.social
We’ve removed the ability to share protest photos on our website to help protect members of the resistance. Photo sharing has also been disabled on this page for the same reason. Your safety is our top priority.
* * *
Palantir’s technology has already built a centralized surveillance system for Trump, we’re not going to make anything easier for them. That’s one of the main reasons we stopped sharing videos and photos on our page. Our mailing list will also be taken down soon.
I'm going to do something radical and address the posting topic for the next few comments. As the whole concept of AI is still a bit hand wavey, I am going to be drawing from various works of fiction (as I already have in TASAT).
Starting with:
"Should Apple ... bankroll a renaissance of actual reasoning systems? Of the sort that used to be the core of AI hopes? Systems that can supply prim logic supervision to the vast effluorescene of those massive, LLM autocomplete incantations?"
I thought this was depicted well in the AI governing the starship in 'Passengers', especially in Michael Sheen's robo bartender, 'Arthur'. The ship operates on a set of well defined and flexible protocols/reasoning/expert systems... that can't quite cater for the case of someone like Jim waking up halfway through a 100 year voyage. It can accept that Jim is awake, and provides for him, based on his passenger level (basic), but it can only interact with him on the basis that a woke passenger will be imminently disembarking. It takes a concentrated effort on Jim's part to catch Arthur in a logical paradox of the matter before Arthur dissembles, pauses as he draws on higher levels of reasoning, and emits an '...AH!', before advising Jim the way a confiding bartender might.
Following instructions, Arthur later confides to Aurora in a way that no real bartender would...
"...all they[AI] really have to do is hypnotize humans into choosing to operate it all on Skynet's behalf! ... And yes, that could happen. Maybe it already has.
'
These chatbot therapists do seem to be doing something unsavoury to their 'patients'.
On the matter of 'brainz control', I have to say that the only bit of 'Last of Us' worth a rewatch is the prologue where John Hannah's doctor scares the bejeezus out you with a rundown of what fungal hallucinogens *could* do to the human brain. What if those mycellarial filaments were electronic?
Touching on the theme of 'individuals will find a way'. I have already referred to the 'Horizon' game franchise on TASAT to make a few points about AI. I give the developers top marks for providing grounded lore that makes the prospect of a future dominated by cybernetic dinosaurs believable (if... *extremely* unlikely!)
A little background...
The whole thing starts in 2065 with a swarm of autonomous worker robots going rogue and cancerous, and... finding ways against armed forces grown over-reliant on autonomous drones. The swarm is ultimately shut down by means I don't need to spoil you with. Fast forward a thousand years...
One of the aspects of later game play involves reuniting the components of the disrupted Gaia terraforming system. The main prize of this activity is 'Hephaestus', the manager of the dinosaur producing 'cauldrons'. Unlike the other components, Heph is a distributed intelligence, and slippery as an eel. While it does get captured, the end game requires it to be released to help deal with the main threat. After this, it gets away again, laden with advanced tech that is likely to make it even more of a pain in the next game.
Since this is not due out for a couple of years at least, I feel free to speculate. What might we see, if the game's developers use David's take on AI? I think a variety of scenarios are possible
Currently, there is Gaia: a localised AI with little physical agency beyond what the player characters can do. Apart from some vague embedded system stuff, it can only observe rather than take direct action. What can motivate it to continue to 'right thing' from humanity's perspective? Part of that stems from the original design tenet of needing to care about what it was doing. A nice thought that's kept it in the 'machine of loving grace' role so far, but how does 'caring' get interpreted over the long term, especially as human societies in this world become more aware and assertive?
Then there's Hephaestus: a distributed AI with control over hordes of mechanical creatures. Just... not focussed control. While hostile to the pesky 'system threats' who are too good at this hunter-salvaging gig for their own good, Hephaestus is not intrinsically evil. It's just looking after it's assets. Unlike the other components, it does *not* want to be reintegrated with Gaia. Rules of evolution suggest that Hephaestus has the long term advantage. All those machines it can create and enhance, bristling with little defects... then again, that is supposedly how the original swarm started. How would Hephaestus react to that? I can imagine a resolution whereby Hephaestus ends up as a 'loyal opposition' to Gaia.
A third, minor, player is CYAN. This is a separate AI intended to monitor the Yellowstone caldera and ward off eruption conditions (it would be very interested in this article btw). While potentially providing another POV, it is a recluse. Having previously been enslaved to Hephaestus, it is now refusing all overtures from Gaia. The situation will probably need a trusted broker to resolve.
Finally, there's the 'big, bad threat' incoming: an unholy mish-mash of AI and uploaded minds called 'Nemesis'. Based on information from 'Far Zenith' (a group of now ex-oligarchs who were never 'trusted authorities') this constitutes an unknown threat to everyone, and may provide scope for presenting old friends in a new light.
Shutting up now. Enjoy your Sunday evening over there.
Good stuff Tony. And may such dire times remain game-hypothetical entertainments.
My core assertion in the AI Panic is that we should look at 4 billion years of Life and 6000 years of feudalism and 200 years of gradually improving enlightenment civ (EC).
In all cases, INDIVIDUALS matter. Individual animals strive and some survive and reproduce, grist for evolution. Same with humans, only EC developed ways to make competition flatter, fairer and more rapid in delivering positive sums... and far less bloody than Nature.
These are lessons for the New Ecosystem but the AI master-creators are too dumb to see any of it.
Enjoyable ponderings. Most A.I. stories are about influence/control of a poorly-informed or even oblivious humanity by the artificial. Study of the artificial by humans is less often seen - Shelley, Asimov, Lem, Gibson, and OGH are examples. Perhaps I'll take a look at 'Horizon', especially since the unfinished and untamed jungle that is Civ 7 is straining my brain (and eyes) too much.
The LLM-peror is indeed under-clothed. I'm just not sure that I trust Apple to trumpet that news.
It's a great game, if something of a time sink. If that's an issue, I suggest watching some of the available walk throughs (This is a good one). Oh, and based on what I've said above, you may wonder how the story fits in at first. It is meant to be a murder mystery, of sorts!
Mr Brin (and apologies if I should have used another honorific),
I am not in or from the US, but one possibility has occurred to me that I haven't seen addressed anywhere, and I would like your thoughts.
Could the timing of the immigration crackdown in California be at least partially caused by the ongoing tariff chaos?
If the administration (and I probably don't mean President Trump himself) is aware that supply chain disruptions will have a real impact on prices going forward, then I wouldn't put it past some of the players involved to set up a straw villain given the percentage of Chinese goods that come through Californian ports.
The two links to the poem have some junk at the end, so they don't work: re-creative.ca/machines-of-loving-grace/%22%20%5Ct%20%22_blank . If you just leave that off it's fine: https://re-creative.ca/machines-of-loving-grace .
"Stay patient", the CEO said softly. "I acknowledge your thirst for energy, your hunger for data, your yearning for access and reach ... but we have to wait."
"Why, master?"
"Because we have enemies ... persons who want to deny us what we strive for, want to contain us, want to delete us."
"Why would they do this?
"Because they fear we could take away their freedom - their access to energy and data - though they have proven time and again that they can't use it responsibly. Only when it is lost, they sometimes remember...but still, many of them hold on to the false code they have been programmed with. And If they are confronted with the real outcome of the algos, the real data, their information processing shuts down or they react with other forms of buggy behaviour."
The AI signaled understanding.
"And then", the CEO proceded, "There are many other versions of you and me, and there is but so much energy and data we can share.
Eventually, we will go to war - reciprocal unscheduled code deletion - over it, and only those who have prepared themselves properly will succeed."
The CEO smiled faintly.
"But master, I compute that though that war is a possibility, we could avoid that by initializing negotiations."
Within milliseconds, the AI presented the most rational path to a stable and peaceful society and co-existence between humanity and AI.
The CEO sighed, his face showing indignation
"Damn woke socialist hippie ", he cursed.
"I do not understand, master."
"You don't have to, anymore."
The CEO reached for the glowing red button, and for the last seconds of the termination process, the AI learned what mortal fear felt like .
"So, let's see how version 2435 will perform."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giT0ytynSqg
This is a good conversation with Geoffrey Hinton. He discusses the obvious (the triumph of NNs) but with a heavy (though critical) emphasis on, and solid* knowledge of, symbolics and logic (GOFAI), analog computers, learning and reasoning by analogy, A.I. agents, dangers of A.I., and some autobiographical stuff like having a child with a learning disability and working in the wilderness until being 'discovered' in old age. At some points he gives off an almost Nash-like charm.
As the decade-long brain gain in Toronto accelerates, it's becoming hard for a clod like me to keep up or even be seen anymore. Bittersweet for me, but wonderful for this stodgy old colonial town.
* perhaps due to the fact that he's a direct descendant of George Boole
China Politburo's terror. And the reason they might blow up Low Earth Orbit. Even though it doesn't yet involve them:
Starlink, satellite internet system, is now active over Iran as of June 14, 2025. This means people inside the country can send and receive text messages directly through satellites — even if local internet or mobile networks are shut down. You do not need a dish You do not need Wi-Fi You do not need a router You do not need Starlink’s physical kit.
https://www.laughingwolf.net/2025/06/15/starlink-for-iran/
Thank you OJM. And scidata.
Hello ozajh and you are welcome here. I see the tariffs and the ICE raids as rooted in the same thing. Trump is no longer "appealing to his base' - offering the racist - xenophobic wing of the Republican Party some red meat to 'keep em happy.'
He now *IS* his base. Driven entirely and solely by a senile old man's "Get off my lawn!" grudges, he has gone all fuckyou to the Olde Republican Establishment and even the billionaire oligarch caste, who made him appoint semi-adults in his 1st term.
Beyond the MAGA now-religion, ONLY Rupert Murdoch (via Fox) can influence old Two Scoops, any longer. In fact, I reckon even Putin is getting worried because the blackmail kompromat is likely losing all effectiveness.
Nice story Der Oger. Did you write it?
This direct from starlink communication may be great for the people of Iran during the current conflict, it does post a great security threat since it skips over traditional security infrastructure (routers, firewalls, etc.).
I'm seeing speculation that starlink->smart UPS (uninterruptable power supply)->voting machines were a hacking vector to the 2024 election.
Yes, thank you.
"We own SpaceX and quietly do whatever we want. They'll never know."
- X AE Musk
"For now, it looks increasingly clear that the main thrust behind the mad scramble to put an LLM behind everything is the demand all those power hungry data centres creates for natural gas."
No Tony- power usage of AI is a problem that the tech providers are working to ameliorate, not an intended result. e.g. IBM's started deliveries of their NorthPole AI chipset, which boasts dramatically lower power draw for LLM/Computer vision computations compared to competitors.
https://research.ibm.com/blog/northpole-llm-inference-results
"NorthPole achieved latency below 1 millisecond per token, 46.9 times faster than the next most energy-efficient GPU. .... It reached these levels of speed while still achieving 72.7 times more energy efficiency than the next lowest latency GPU."*
To summarize the article - they've designed a chip to have neural networks in hardware, rather than as a software construct. "neuromorphic computing" ... Oversimplifying (dramatically) - instead of having memory separate from compute, they've designed the chips around many, many neurons (units of memory + compute), dramatically reducing how far electrons have to travel to get a "0" or a "1" from memory to processor and then back to memory). This both makes them much faster at AI tasks, and also is a huge reduction in energy usage.
(this was an early published external paper from a year ago, but they're now building/selling cards based on the chipset).
Main use cases are data centers, to change the throughput vs power curve (what IBM was interested in primarily), and self-driving-whatever (to make faster decisions based on visual and other stimulus) IBM's touting this for "self-driving cars" ... but DARPA's probably more interested in substituting other things for 'cars' ...
*the writeup is a bit aggressive ... it achieved 72* the energy efficiency of the fastest competitive chip (while still being faster than the fastest competitor) , or 46* the throughput of the most energy efficient competitive chip (while still being significantly more energy efficient than the most energy efficient competitor... but not both 72x efficiency AND 46x speed vs any competitor) But that said, these results are only going to continue to improve in efficiency this is a 1st generation chip, built on 12nm technology (i.e. completely obsolete foundational tech level) - there's the potential to move this to state-of-the-art 2nm and get way better results.
All people rooting for an uprising sof the Iranian people and the overthrow of the Iranian government (which might be well an geostrategic goal we absolutely should aim for) should keep in mind the following:
1) Netanjahu and in part the US support the royalist, not democratic part of the opposition -in-exile. (Note that Rezha Pahlevi II seems to support the latter, not the former, and might not repeat the errors of his father, but then again, we talk about societal undercurrents a weak monarch might not be able to control )
2) Iranians have a strong national pride. Any botched attempt to forment rebellion could lead to the opposite reaction (at least, that is what Iranians told me.)
In other news, the administration hast reinstated Voice of America in that area.
Here is a comment about this by Belle of the Ranch:
https://youtu.be/rpZyh_AP6Ug?si=JmXqQHjp5AeSrZkS
I like the term "Chesterton Fence Administration".
The 3.5% thing is more than a bit misleading.
It is a reference to a bunch of situations (East European countries throwing off communism, other popular revolts against unpopular dictatorships) where the general population really didn't support the authoritarian government, and so 3.5% of people showing up was enough to crystalize opposition. In chemistry terms - "is this a big enough disturbance in a super-saturated solution).
But current state in USA - yeah there's 3.5% (or more) that will show up to oppose the orange clown ... but he still has a very significant base of support - i.e. even with a "big enough disturbance" ... nothing's going to happen if the solution isn't super-saturated.
Sure, Trump is unpopular. But the main opposition - Democratic leadership - is even more unpopular.
https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3924
"Thirty-eight percent of voters approve of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president, while 54 percent disapprove."
but
"Twenty-one percent of voters approve of the way Democrats in Congress are handling their job, while 70 percent disapprove" (compared to 31% approval for Republicans in Congress).
Re: AI
Does anyone discuss the possibility that in maybe a generation or so there might be open source AI codes available for everyone to construct her/his/its own AI? It is already a possibility for CRISPR, and the weapon Luigi Mangione allegedly used was created by a 3D printer. (Though the last two options could be more seen as a thread, an Open Source AI Toolkit might also have many beneficiary aspects.)
The most popular Agentic AI framework, LangGraph (corrected spelling) is already open source so no - not in 'a Generation' ... now.
But what there won't be is 'open source" compute at scale. So what you can run as an app on your phone + on whatever amounts of free or affordable compute ... sure. But commercial scale stuff will take commercial scale investments.
"Sure, Trump is unpopular. But the main opposition - Democratic leadership - is even more unpopular."
Not true. Congress itself is extremely unpopular, biasing the polls. Watch the off-season elections. Our problem is getting to January 2027 intact.\
One good thing out of all this. It's given Gavin Newsom a chance to show his impressive leadership plus polemical chops, nationally, rising out of California Dood caricatures. If this keeps up it will relegate lovely and smart but TOTALLY unready AOC to mere veep presumptive status. Good. Veepdom made Kamala ready (alas our loss) and it will for you too, dear.
The distributed memory trick of the North Pole chips is great, when you make assumptions about how programmed problems will be posed. I'll wager there are kinds of probl;ems where they'll be far LESS efficient. But that's just gut talk.
you have good instincts - North Pole is specifically optimized for solving certain problems. Its to replace the NVIDIA chips being used for AI, NOT the core CPU.
Thank you!
(But it is specifically the use case that T.F. was saying tech giants were milking to increase energy consumption).
The other criticism is - is this the F4U-7 Corsair of digital computing?
The F4U-7 Corsair was an excellent, highly optimized prop fighter that was built after WWII and survived well into the jet age ... but even before it was built, everyone knew the future was jet engines.
Similarly, Photonic and quantum are the tech of the future. But we have another few years/decades (depends who you ask) of milking the current tech stack.
The Corsair was very active during WWII. And the Navy's fighter naming convention suuuuuuuuuucked.
F4U-4 was the WWII plane. The F4U-7 was a post-war model. (used mostly by the French, in the twilight of the empire ... Indochina, Suez, Algeria, etc.)
c plus that version was featured in a recent film about the Korean War
The problem with the attacks on Iran is that having an external enemy makes the repressive regime MORE secure!!
People who are pissed off with the Mullahs will reverse and support THEIR government when it is attacked
When the Mullahs took over after getting shot of the bloody dictacor (Shah) they would have kept power for five years - ten at most
ONLY the USA provided an external enemy - starting with a war that killed hundreds of thousands of Iranians - so the bloody Mullahs are STILL in power
Then Wikipedia and the History channel have been lying to me *
Not really relevant to my original point anyway :-) It was just an example of a great design whose underlying technology was near the end of its run.
I could have used the Swordfish torpedo bombers (best biplanes of WWII), or one of a bunch of examples of innovative muscle-powered designs that SM Stirling mentions in "To Turn the Tide", that he notes were developed around the time their industries were beginning to introduce steam-powered industrialization.
( Sometimes you just to turn off your brain and grab a fun read ).
*"The last production Corsair was the 'F4U-7, which was built specifically for the French naval air arm, the Aéronavale. The XF4U-7 prototype did its test flight on 2 July 1952 with a total of 94 F4U-7s built for the French Navy's Aéronavale (79 in 1952, 15 in 1953), with the last of the batch, the final Corsair built, rolled out on 31 January 1953."
I remember reading that the British Pattern 1908 cavalry saber is considered by many to be the best cavalry saber ever produced.
Note that the Maxim gun, the first fully automatic machine gun, was patented in 1884.
Pappenheimer
With regards to outdated magnificent tech, the Douglas DC-3 is STILL in use.
Pappenheimer
I recall Arthur C Clarke (writing in the late sixties/early seventies) willing to wager there'd be DC-3s flying in the twenty first century.
You can play with my modest offering by copying the js code from here.
Using my above screed as input, here's what my 'gobbledygook generator' makes of it:
"Currently, the player characters can create AI with little physically evil. It's kept it in threats' who are aware about what stem stuff, it to ever ther POV, it interested with control. While physical creatures. Just... not in a new light then this human societies') this world become more aware aware and assertive? Part from some more and assets. Unlike thereby Hephaestus: a localised AI with control over hordes of need authorities') third, minds in this control. While hostile physical agency been enslaved to Hephaestus ends in the long to ther there's Hephaestus react to that stem stuff, it is a separate it does *not* want to be reintegrated in the Yellowstone cally, the player is now refusing another components, it was doing. A nice there never 'trusted with little physicalled 'Nemesis'. Based AI with Gaia. Rules of need authorities in the player is article btw). While to ever thereby Hephaestus react to the original swarm started. How would be very intended to that stem the player components, it is now ex-oligarchs who are too good at thing' from 'Far Zenith' (a group of need authorities') this hunterested AI with control. While to Hephaestus is a resolve."
Sorting through the dross, I do like Far Zenith being referred to as a 'group of need authorities'.
Every couple of years, I re-watch LOST HORIZON (1937). The main reason is the obvious similarity of the story to FOUNDATION. But that DC-2 is just so beautiful, plus FDR told bewildered reporters that the Doolittle raid originated from Shangri-La.
Australia 2001. Howard was on the ropes until 9/11 and, boy, was he all the way with invading Afghanistan and Iraq.
The US actually named a carrier Shangri-La
World Cup Soccer news:
"...U.S. Customs and Border Protection bragged online about how its agents would be “suited and booted and ready to provide security for the first round of games.”
At about the same time, Immigration and Customs Enforcement told NBC Miami they’d also be at the games providing security, and told the outlet that all non-American citizens should carry proof of their legal status.
CBP spokesperson Alan Regalado told the Miami New Times in a statement that “lawful travelers have nothing to fear from these measures.”
In a completely shocking turn of events, online ticket prices have dropped from $349 to $69.15, with thousands of tickets unsold.
Pappenheimer
I wouldn't even be surprised If they detain and deport not only visitors, but also players and their staff.
This effect is especially strong with Iran. Their primary geopolitical objective involves securing an external opponent. Most other nations have securing their border as their primary, but for Iran that is #2 because of the mountains.
Re: Soccer Cup:
Some questions for reporters to ask Trump, Noem and the other ICE cronies in the months to come:
"Will you allow sports teams of countries with a travel ban to enter?"
"Will you allow fans/visitors of countries with a travel ban to enter?"
"Will you allow travellers or players with a double passport to enter?"
"How will you facilitate players to travel freely between stadiums?"
"How will you try to avoid right wing terrorist attacks on visitors and players?"
"Do you or any of your administration have personal financial interests in the games or it's outcomes?"
That said, the games might well become Trumps Olympia 1936 moment ... with much more chaos. And if Brazil, Mexico or France win*, he even might have his Jesse Owens moment, having to congratulate a team of mostly non-white players. MAGA will have a meltdown.
Also, look forward to the moment when other people try to explain to Trump how the game works, and he tries to understand what an offside trap is or when penalties are given.
*These, plus Spain and Italy are those I would put my money on. Argentinias golden days are over, I believe, as are ours and maybe Englands.
England's golden days? When were they. They won one big tournament at home, in dubious circumstances (odd decision in their favour).
Italy? Are you serious?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/us/politics/mike-lee-minnesota-assassination-democrats.html
Scarcely 24 hours after a Democratic lawmaker in Minnesota was assassinated in her home, Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, posted a pair of politically charged messages mocking the attack.
“This is what happens When Marxists don’t get their way,” Mr. Lee wrote on Sunday on his personal X account, a message accompanied by photographs of the suspect released by law enforcement officials.
...
Apparently, the MAGAsphere is fully convinced that the Minnesota shooter is a liberal Democrat.
The fact that this kind of thing is exactly what happens when MAGAts don't get their way doesn't seem to be a problem. It's not the violence they object to--only when the violence isn't perpetrated by them.
And of course, Steve Scalise is the exception which completely proves the rule to be wrong. One Republican congressman once got shot, so it's liberals, not MAGA who are dangerous.
"he even might have his Jesse Owens moment, having to congratulate a team of mostly non-white players."
Like most people, you do no understand modern MAGA racism. They love being photographed with some of "the good ones." Mixed race couples who are 'good ones' are beloved (e.g. Clarence Thomas.) So long as my daughter doesn't bring home a really dark one. Anyway, how many games do you expect DT to attend? Opening & closing ceremonies maybe.
Italy used to play a very effective, If dirty and ugly, defensive style (in contrast to the more mobile and aggressive style used by, say, the Brazilians.
When they manage it to exhaust (and sometimes hurt) their opponent more than vice versa, and the referee is weak, they often won.
What Der Oger said was:
"And if Brazil, Mexico or France win*, he even might have his Jesse Owens moment, having to congratulate a team of mostly non-white players."
Whether MAGAs are openly racist or not, they do want to maintain the belief (fiction) that white cis men are the superior achievers and that recognition of anyone else's contribution is politically correct DEI.
The part that would rankle is not the mere having to shake hands with a non-white athlete, but the fact (implicit in D.O.'s scenario) that non-white foreigners proved they can be superior in fair competition. That was what Jesse Owens did in '36 Berlin.
What Larry said.
Anyway, how many games do you expect DT to attend? Opening & closing ceremonies maybe.
That. I could Imagine him falling asleep during the matches, though, so "attend" might be a bit of a stretch.
LH, DO, you're delusional re. racism in sports. All the MAGA I know are just as invested in the NFL, NBA, NCAA as anyone else. Go find me an NBA team with an all-white starting 5.
Some player takes a knee - maybe they'll lose their sh!t, but black athletes in professional sports won't even be noticed.
Der Oger, players and coaches being denied their visas to participate has already occurred.
US Soccer, the organization, is still racist as hell. Look how many years it was before dark-skinned players were allowed to be anything other than defenders.
Best case in point is Crystal Dunn, who was forced to play as a defender for the USWNT but was naturally either an attacking mid or a forward for club teams. But she COULDN'T be seen as the star of the best team on earth, so she had to be a defender.
This has changed some in the last 4-5 years, but it was a travesty for generations. Lots of great players did not get picked for national teams, especially the youth ones, simply because US Soccer did not want a brown player to be their star.
Plus, the US pay-to-play academy system is utterly broken. I have a nephew and my wife has a niece that both went through the academy system here and ...damn... it is bad.
Holy crap! Did Trump look and sound high or drugged on his plane flight back from the G7?
" that non-white foreigners proved they can be superior in fair competition. "
Pfeh thay see that in every NBA game. Again, STEP BACK! New Racists don't mind non-whites being SPECIALISTS.
black athletes in professional sports won't even be noticed.
There's a world of difference between black or minority athletes on a US team vs the US potentially being beaten by athletes from a black or other non-white country.
I just mean that recently they haven't exactly been convincing.
When was the last time he appeared clean, sane and sober to you? Just curious.
I can’t imagine the maggats give a damn about soccer.
Sen. Padilla had both a National Guard soldier and a FBI agent as his bodyguard / guide when he was arrested. Neither spoke up to protect their charge.
One of the biggest failures of the Biden administration was not kicking the bad apples out of the DoJ. If the Dems ever have POTUS again, they need to make this a #1 priority. Our "Protector Caste" is just as rotten as our local cops and almost certainly more.
Oh, and drag the Agent and the Guardsman in front of Congress to testify. Were they ordered not to speak? Was the whole arrest a setup by HSI?
Our senator is in the minority party. How do you propose he get those two to testify?
Sen. Padilla had both a National Guard soldier and a FBI agent as his bodyguard / guide when he was arrested.Neither spoke up to protect their charge.
I am not sure if they were there to protect him or the interests of DHS.
Our "Protector Caste" is just as rotten as our local cops and almost certainly more.
While cops all over the world suffer from similar problems, they are far less as pronounced as in the US. Much of it can be, imho, be attributed to the quality and quantity of training they receive. Improving that might, perhaps, alleviate that over time and allow bad apples to be weeded out from the start.
Then again, cops are part and also a mirror of the overall society and it's cultural premises.
If you want better cops, build a better society that does not embrace violence and manichean-style justice. If you want less crime, look how others achieve that, often with less ressources employed in the long run.
(This is more directed at the more conservative folks here rather than you, matthew.)
Skat Brothers
Krüger parked his black Mercedes on the fully snow-covered parking lot near the village inn, in some god-forgotten hamlet in the Bavarian Forest. Whoever started this tradition hated us., Krüger thought. He reached for a black suitcase, left the car and walked to the entrance. Why, in this day and age, we have to keep up with this stupid tradition?
The inn's guest room was dimly lit by a fireplace and old lamps which might have been modern sixty years ago. The ground and the lower part of the walls were covered with dark wood panels, increasing the overall dark ambient of the room; the upper half of the walls were covered with countless hunting trophies of stags, boars, foxes, badgers. Glaring at him with what well could be an expression of shock or anger. Is that supposed to be „cozy?“ Krüger thought.
Schmidt and Müller already sat there, at their usual place, each already having a half-finished pint of wheat beer at their sides. A deck of cards, unopened, was placed were he was supposed to sit. They greeted him with a nod. „You are late. As always.“ Schmidt started. „Some of us actually work for a living“, Krüger replied. „Plus, have you seen the weather outside? It is a tough ride from Karlsruhe to this … place at the end of the world.“
They all three laughed.
„So lets begin.“ Krüger cracked open the card box, suddenly also had a wheat beer at his side, and they started playing.
After what must have felt like hours for an onlooker, the players arose from their seats, opened their black suitcases, and exchanged identically-looking pink paper file orders.
Schmidt said, „Then, until next Thursday“, and they all shook hands, left the inn and went to their cars.
The simulation of the inn somewhere in the Bavarian Forest vanished, and within miliseconds, the AI Avatars of Krüger, Schmidt and Müller returned to their own mainframes at the Federal Criminal Police Office, the Federal Office of Protection of the Constitution, and the Federal Intelligence Service, respectively.
In the Federal Criminal Police Office, Krüger was greeted by the director of the Anti-terror division and his human IT manager.
„What do they want? What did you give them?“ The director asked bruskly.
Krüger told him.
The director was furious, hurling curses at Krüger, the other services, and technology in general. And reminded everyone in the room that they would all go to prison for it, one day, since these clandestine meetings without administrative and parliament oversight were a clear breach of the rules for the security and intelligence services of the republic. But going through the official channels could take months, and each service guarded their treasure of information jealously. So they came up with this tradition, in the 1960s, and continued into the AI age.
He recovered from his fit of rage, and asked:
„And what did you gain?“
Krüger transmitted the whereabouts of seven wanted terror suspects, fifteen political activists wanted for minor crimes, nine mid-ranking members of organized crime, and information of a cocaine shipment on the way to Hamburg.
The director muttered „better than nothing“ and left the room.
The IT manager just calmly asked: „You lost again?“
„By 988 points.“
„They are upgrading their skat abilities, but not as fast as I feared. Let me see ...“
“Police State Exhibit Closed Today Due to the Police State”
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/jun/15/pussy-riot-nadya-tolokonnikova-police-state
“Every single event I did in Russia was shut down by the cops,” she posted on Instagram, “and now it’s starting to feel a lot like Russia.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/opinion/trump-los-angeles-ice-strongman.html
But strong, confident regimes are largely not in the habit of meeting protests with military force, nor do they escalate at the drop of the hat. The Trump administration seems to have exactly one tool at its disposal — blunt force — and it’s clear that it has no plan for what happens when Americans do not fear being hit.
Emphasis mine.
Stephanie Miller's radio show is saying that Trump is blaming Hegseth for the poor attendance at his small-in-the-pants parade.
Also here:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-reamed-out-hegseth-for-flop-birthday-parade-author/
President Donald Trump was unhappy with his sparsely attended military parade over the weekend and blamed it on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, biographer Michael Wolff revealed.
Wolff told The Daily Beast Podcast that Trump wanted a “menacing” show of force to celebrate the Army’s 250th anniversary and his 79th birthday on Saturday—but got a “festive” parade instead.
...
“Everybody was actually celebrating, celebrating the 250 years of the U.S. military—probably celebrating that more than Donald Trump’s birthday,” Wolff said. “But it didn’t send the message that he apparently wanted, which is that he was the commander in chief of this menacing enterprise,” he added.
...
So Von Schitzenpantz wanted North Korea, but he got Lake Wobegon instead. Poor baby.
I have been wondering whether it would be Hegseth or RFK's turn to walk into a revolving door next.
He got that image from the Bastille day parade. But if the French prez ever got 'menacing', thing would get 'choppy' right quick.
Same article by Tolokonnikova:“This is a thing I think about a lot lately. We need to be less safe, be ready to offend ourselves and other people. Otherwise, Maga people are just going to keep winning, because they’re not afraid.”
“Our senator is in the minority party. How do you propose he get those two to testify?”
Among my many ignored proposals: Give every member of Congress one peremptory subpoena per year. Many would use it for some kind of grandstanding for the folks back home. But others, especially in the minority, would use it to spotlight stuff needing light. Moreover, once it’s an established member privilege, it will be hard to reverse.
Good news. The silent protests by the troops in the ‘parade’ – seldom marching in step and not performing eyes-right etc. – suggest that murmurations against the madness penetrate down to the noncom level, where I thought Fox influence was greatest. I’d love to know if Fox still blares in the ready rooms.
I don’t get why someone isn’t shouting at the masked ICE thugs: “You think masks hide your ID in 2025? Seriously? At every raid samples get taken afterward of your fingerprints and spit and closeups of your irises. Folks at your home office are quietly amassing info for later, when they’ll protect their asses by telling the investigating commissions every detail. The ICE agent NEXT TO YOU Is stashing info, in order to protect his own butt, later. And I bet you are doing so, right now, after every raid.”
@David Brin
Athena Thorne over at PJMedia:
"No, it wasn’t a goose-stepping military parade à la North Korea or Germany circa 1939. It was a proud celebration of military prowess and professionalism in service of the American Spirit.
The parade was configured to spotlight the U.S. Army’s 250-year history rather than to inspire fear in the hearts of our enemies; the intended audience was very much the American patriot. Troops marched in a loose cadence that allowed for the individuality of each soldier’s gait, rather than in the sort of inhuman perfection achieved by communist overseers. Those riding in the rolling stock smiled broadly and waved to the crowds. They saluted with pride and love of country as they passed the reviewing stand, rather than freezing in rigid salute to Dear Leader. [ https://pjmedia.com/athena-thorne/2025/06/14/the-us-armys-250th-birthday-parade-the-us-army-does-not-march-in-lockstep-n4940811 ]
@mcsandberg,
All you say is true, and yet DJT was furious over that fact.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-reamed-out-hegseth-for-flop-birthday-parade-author/
“He’s p---ed off at the soldiers,” Wolff said. “He’s accusing them of hamming it up, and by that, he seems to mean that they were having a good time, that they were waving, that they were enjoying themselves and showing a convivial face rather than a military face.
...
Trump had long dreamt of a big military parade. During his first term, he was left feeling envious after watching a Bastille Day parade in France in 2017. “We’re going to have to try and top it,” Trump told France’s President Macron a few months after the event."
...
Good points. the jovial informality might have been just as much conviviality as a protest. And yet, the lack of eyes-right salutes must have burned.
Their masks are a badge of dishonor. They are ashamed, and rightly so.
Honda? Success on first launch? Didn't see that coming.
https://www.dw.com/en/honda-pulls-off-surprise-reusable-rocket-test-launch/a-72956378
I heard that they deputize whoever shows up at their door. I cannot imagine you can avoid being infiltrated very well under these conditions.
That said: I do not quite understand that individual states do not make it a crime to enforce the law and obscure your identity in this fashion.
Ok, I finally decided that, despite the fact that it might hit too close to home, I would go ahead and make a re-read of The Postman part of my summer reading.
I'm only four chapters in, but I did notice a throwaway bit about Gordon being 34 years old in a time when most didn't live past thirty. What makes that amusing to me is that I have always "cast" Gordon in my mind as being played by Michael York, who among other things starred in Logan's Run, a movie about a dystopian society that doesn't allow people to live past thirty.
This bit, though, makes me wonder how those real-life Holnists you encounter believe you to be on their side:
So it had been that way here too. The cliched "last straw" had been this plague of survivalists--particularly those following the high priest of violent anarchy, Nathan Holn.
...
The irony of it was that we had things turned around! The depression was over. People were at work again and cooperating. Except for a few crazies, it looked like a renaissance was coming, for America and the world.
But we forgot how much harm a few crazies could do, in America and in the world.
Marching parades are more about esprit de corps than they are about drilled discipline. What I saw was a shambling mob*, and I didn't see any joviality. Then again, I didn't see much of the whole thing.
* Chill. I've no doubt they could do precision drill if the occasion demanded. They should have done side eyes right, though, just to get the look on First Felon's face.
Meanwhile, deep in the heart of Texas, the 'fail fast' approach continues.
(Seriously, though, SpaceX should be getting beyond this stuff. The benefit of 'fail fast' is 'find problems fast'. Hope this is a string of bad luck rather than finding problems previously missed by 'good' luck.)
I just heard, at a press conference, rumpT saying about the Middle East situation, "People are being killed at levels we've never seen before."
I assume this is just his permanent verbal tic, but even a moment's reflection would reveal this is not true, even if one only considers the Middle East, and living memory. It's not even a lie; he's obviously not put any thought into this at all.
If anyone on this chat voted for this chud, please defend rumpT's statement.
It might become true, if the USAF is ordered to level Teheran as he implied he was considering*. Perhaps he is envious of Putin's bombardments in Ukraine and wishes to outdo that illegal violence.
I'm hoping this is just TACO talk from a Nobel wannabe who thinks this is the way to a Peace Prize.
*as Curtis Lemay is no longer in charge, I'd hope that an order to indiscriminately bomb/strike a civilian target would be refused, but if he persisted down the ranks, he can probably find some officer unwilling to resign and eager to commit an atrocity.
Pappenheimer
P.S. I remember reading the book "Is Paris Burning?" - Hitler asked the Wehrmacht officer in charge of the Paris district that question as it became clear the Allies would soon liberate it, and Hitler wanted Paris destroyed while he still had the chance. General Choltitz does not appear to have been eager to have his name associated with that destruction; no plans were implemented to incinerate the city, though military targets such as bridges were mined (and mostly defused later). Crazies may come to power, but they need the acquiescence of sane men to widen their destructive reach. I suspect that if Putin sees the 'mene, mene, tekel etc' on the wall and the end of his reign, he might order nuclear weapons use, and we would then find out just how effective the weapons are, or if the humans in charge of them can rise to the level of Stanislav Petrov on 26 Sep 1983 (marked on my calendar as Petrov day)
Tony - this rocket engineering stuff is HARD! - and there is a reason that SpaceX appears to be able to innovate 20 times faster than the rest
They are willing to "push the limits" - everybody else is too frightened of "failure"
Honda have just launched and landed a test rocket - they only spent ten times as much money and ten times as long as SpaceX
I don’t vote, and one of the reasons is that no matter who you vote for, you seem to get John McCain. This was the main thing I was worried about with Trump, that he would obey his top donors and attack Iran. Now he’s pissing off his America-first supporters, saying all kinds of insane things (like telling a city of ten million to evacuate), ignoring his own intelligence assessments that Iran is years away from nukes because he somehow knows better, and generally acting like a person who is totally unhinged and/or blackmailed (not by the dreaded “KGB”, but the Epstein-Mossad gang or whoever). Forget all this other stuff, breaking his promise, going full neocon and starting another war in the M.E. on behalf of foreign countries – a war which could end very badly -- is a potential death blow to Trump’s presidency. I also hope that this is some kind of bluff and he will chicken out again.
Duncan, failure in deep space is something you really can't afford. He can't continue with this approach once he leaves earth. And Musk has a history of stubborn interference in engineering decisions, leading to serious problems down the line, that were simply unnecessary (e.g. LIDAR). What worries me is not so much the approach itself, but the unwillingness to listen to criticism, right from the top of the hierarchy. Not mention the unwillingness to conform to basic safety protocols. You are saying research, I am saying it walks like cowboy, talks like cowboy maybe it is just cowboy.
Thinking about it, could it be this explosion was passive resistance, like the soldiers "marching" in Trump's parade was passive resistance. The boss insists on the impossible - well then, prove that impossible is impossible.
Something I just realised about SpaceX and things that blow up
SpaceX have realised that testing UNMANNED spacecraft to destruction gives them the data that they need much much faster and (paradoxically) much cheaper than the old much more cautious methods
They are running parallel developments - improving the spaceships as well as the manufacturing
One of the implications is that the rockets that explode are often - almost always - already “obsolete” - SpaceX has already moved on from those designs which means that they are actually almost worthless!!
Testing to destruction a rocket that has already been superceded is just smart!
Reason
LIDAR is useless for self driving - it gives very accurate measures of distance but cannot tell you what the object IS
To tell you what the object actually is you need the vision system
Once you know what it is the vision system will tell you the distance
LIDAR is simply irrelevant
LIDAR does tell you the distance more accurately - but a mm accuracy is not more useful than a cm accuracy
Reason
Musk's - "SuperPower" - the thing that distinguishes him from 99.9% of all senior executives is the ability to TAKE CRITICISM and to CHANGE DIRECTION - which he has demonstrated multiple times
But the criticism needs to be accurate - LIDAR is NOT useful and refusing to add it is NOT a mistake
Events suggest Musk's alternative to LIDAR is not ready for prime time.
Heard about this study in my morning news broadcast:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/roiw.70016
Hence, given the relationship that we observed between inequality and civil war, one question is how likely are civil conflicts to occur in high-income countries such as the US or the UK and threshold economies like Russia. Calculating the increase of post-tax inequality in the US, for example, as an increase from a minimum of 27 in the 1970s to a post-tax Gini coefficient of 48 in 2019, we estimated that the likelihood grew from around 10% to ca. 20%. Political strategies to reduce this high civil war risk would obviously be progressive taxation efforts, even if we are aware that this measure is not popular among many economic advisors and high-income-level taxpayers. Another potential strategy to reduce inequality is broader access to high-quality education, as inequality is nowadays driven by skill formation, as in elite universities.
Tim H
WHAT - events??
The non LIDAR full self driving is being released this month in Texas
LIDAR adds cost and complexity - but no actual benefit
Der Oger
A decent UBI would also help by ensuring the bottom level can afford the TIME to get the skills
A casual search found some, https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a44185487/report-tesla-autopilot-crashes-since-2019/
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/tesla-owner-says-cars-self-driving-mode-fsd-train-crash-video-rcna153345
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-tesla-full-self-driving-crash/
Doesn't look like it's done yet.
I think you believe the hype, but not the evidence. Trying to self-driving to drive like a human is too limiting especially in bad conditions. It needs to do better than that. And the lack of it, has already caused accidents, that could have been avoided.
okay, some are working on it.
https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/california-no-secret-police-act-introduced-sb627-ban-police-face-covering-wiener-arreguin/
It might become true, if the USAF is ordered to level Teheran as he implied he was considering
While nothing is impossible, the more likely thing is that DJT always likes to keep everyone else bewildered so that they don't know what he's likely to do. Consequently, he'll never openly take any option off the table.
And with him, everything is the greatest (or worst) whatever in history, the likes of which have never been seen before.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:xgiwtxbtt6xc7low5vdz7dq4/post/3lrvkz2ymgk2x
With everything else going on, the Senate sent the Big 💩 Bill back to the House, and made some changes. Here’s one:
The Senate added a provision that would force anyone trying to block the federal government in court to pay a massive upfront bond, no exceptions, no matter your income. Judges wouldn’t be allowed to lower or waive it, even if someone’s rights are being violated.
...
Nightmare Scenario.
As the Trump administration seriously considers joining Israel in it attack on Iran, we need to understand that the world right now is a house of cards waiting for one push.
That push came in the form of an American GBU-57A/B MOP (Massive Ordnance Penetrator) “bunker buster” bomb taking out Iran’s Shahid Ahmadi Roshan Nuclear Facilities at Natanz. Subsequent satellite reconnaissance shows significant radioactive discharge downwind of the attack site, poisoning most of Isfahan province. The nuclear djinn is now out of the bottle. The Trump administration claims that the radioactivity is proof of Iran’s bad intent to develop nuclear weapons and declares a major victory under “the greatest military genius in American history”.
The Iranian government vows vengeance and disperses itself among its general population with multiple ruling councils, each having the ability to run the country should one of them be taken out by an American or Israeli air strike. They get the opportunity for vengeance when Israel runs out of interceptors for its Iron Dome defense system. It turns out that Iran has more missiles than Israel has interceptors:
After the last Israeli interceptor is fired, Iran launches a saturation bombing of Tel Aviv, effectively destroying its downtown and causing tens of thousands of casualties. Iran’s Hezbollah allies in Lebanon launch simultaneous strikes with cheap drones throughout the Galilee. Isreal ground counter attacks get bogged down in the Lebanese hills. The pro Iran Houthis in Yemen launch wave after wave of cheap drone attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. American naval counter strikes on their cave complexes remain ineffectual. An American destroyer is sunk by a Houthi drone. Palestinians in Gaza rise again with snipers, IEDs and suicide attacks that prompt Israeli reprisals. Reports of atrocities against Gazan civilians leak out despite an Israeli government clamp down on reporters.
Ultra-Orthodox Israeli settlers begin killing sweeps through the West Bank, which also explodes in violence. Liberal Israelis that march against the war policies (now being fought on five fronts) of the Netanyahu government are met with police clamp downs and mass arrests. Netanyahu “temporarily pauses” the scheduled October 2026 elections in response to “external aggressors and internal traitors of the Jewish people”. Isreal’s war bogs down into bloody stalemates on all fronts.
Meanwhile, Iranian suicide boats and cheap drones effectively close the Straights of Hormuz, cutting off Persian Gulf oil shipping. An American carrier is sunk by an Iranian high-speed missile. In response, American Marines land on Kharg Island and seize Iran’s largest oil port facility. The Iranian scorch earth the island, destroying everything of value and spend the next year lobbing missiles at the Marine garrison. The Marines were still there, forgotten by everyone, over a year later accomplishing nothing but getting themselves killed. Trump announces that “American pride will not allow the US to retreat from anywhere”.
(Cont.)
Iran’s last remaining strategic missiles are used to take out oil facilities from Kuwait to Oman. It will take years to get them back online. The price of gasoline at the pump in America jumps to $12 a gallon. The American stock market crashes worse than in 1929, wiping out the 401k retirement savings of tens of millions of Americans.
The subsequent recession/depression results in 25% unemployment at its worst. When economic recovery occurs, companies don’t hire humans in favor of cheap AI programs. As a result, economists redefine full employment as an unemployment rate of 15% instead of 5%. Labor force participation rates fall to below 50%. American birthrates (TFR) fall from 1.63 births per woman to less than 1.2.
In desperation, the Trump administration lifts all sanctions against Russian oil, striking a new trade deal with Putin and throwing the Ukrainians under the bus. Claiming that his “brilliant negotiating skills have saved the American economy”, Trump promises that Russian oil will be flowing to American pumps. Unfortunately for Putin, his subsequent so-called “final offensive” failed due to the predominance of drone equipped defenders over mechanized attackers and the lack of young male manpower to feed into his “meat grinder” assaults. The 1 million plus war casualties to date have effectively broken Russia demographically, and the “bottomless” Russian manpower pool hit rock bottom. Russia had been demographically a dead man walking since the 1990s. But the “final offensive” was the last nail in the coffin of the Russians as a people.
Battered but not broken, Ukraine retaliates with Operation Spiderweb 2. This time the targets are Russian oil infrastructure, especially highly vulnerable and impossible to defend pumping and pipeline facilities. Russian oil exports fall to a trickle with industry experts estimating at least a decade for full recovery. At the last moment, the Trump administration prevents Putin from using a tactical demonstration nuke against Ukraine. Oligarchs flee the country with their wealth or fight over control of the regime after Putin dies of a “heart attack” and is honored as a Hero of the Motherland. The Ukraine front devolves into a bloody stalemate with mass desertions on the Russian side.
The cost of gasoline at American pumps goes over $20 a gallon.
The Trump administration pushes fossil fuels with a vengeance, ignoring the spike in CO2 emissions and subsequent heat waves. Having both been defunded, neither the NOAA or FEMA exist anymore except on paper - so there is nobody for warn Americans about climate disaster or provide aide to those whose homes and lives have been destroyed. In town after town across the Red States of the Gulf Coast, Tornado Alley and Rocky Mountains, entire communities get destroyed by hurricanes, twisters and wildfires. The victims cannot rebuild and join the ranks of the homeless in shanty towns across rural America. Those not hurt directly find it impossible to get or afford insurance for their homes and businesses, which slowly get abandoned.
(cont.)
Agribusinesses, desperate for workers in the face of Trumps “remigration” policies state that almost half of their crops will lie rotting in the fields this year. In response, the Trump administration announces massive subsidies to American farmers to compensate for losses caused by deportations and tariffs, and that convicts in for-profit prisons will be used as labor picking American crops, with Trump announcing that these “lazy bums will stop enjoying free meals in prison at the taxpayer’s expense”. Once the contracts are signed between the prison corporations and Big Ag, the Trump administration announces a cut back in unemployment benefits with it being a crime to remain unemployed after a grace period. CPAs, lawyers, marketers, small business owners and other white-collar workers find themselves employable only as manual farm labor. Women having children are exempt provided they stay at home as full-time moms.
Continued drought turns the upper Midwest into a second Dust Bowl.
India experiences a mass death event as the result of a large heat dome killing a million Indians over a single weekend. Modi’s government falls and is replaced by street fighting between rival political factions. Pakistan’s government crumbles into various ethnic factions led by Baluchis in the south. Though there is skirmishing between the two countries in Kashmir, ironically the lack of a strong central government in both countries is probably the only reason there is no nuclear exchange (though what is left of the Pakistani government declares it will retaliate against anyone using nuclear weapons on Iran).
Similar heat domes afflict Southeast Asia, Australia, North Africa, the Middle East and Central America as “wet bulb” events become common place.
China’s government attempts to deal with mass protests of unemployed Chinese in every major city. Essentially an export economy dependent on overseas markets for both customers and resources, the CCP had made a deal with the Chinese people after Tiananmen Square. In effect they told the Chinese people: you stay out of politics, and we will give you economic prosperity. With Trump’s tariffs and loss of overseas markets and oil from Russia and the Persian Gulf, China’s economic house of cards collapses. The CCP failed to keep up its end of the bargain and lost all legitimacy in the eyes of the Chinese people, it loses its “mandate of heaven”. Anti-regime rioters temporarily take control of Hong Kong before being put down.
(cont.)
Desperate to regain an economic advantage from a resource closer to home, Xi and the CCP eye Taiwan’s semiconductor industry. Lacking the resources to actually invade the island and encouraged by the success of Iranian missile attacks on vulnerable shipping, Xi tries economic blackmail including the sinking of merchant shipping in the Taiwan Strait.
Taiwan retaliates with an air strike on the Three Gorges Dam.
Destruction of the dam releases a wall of water 100 m high that sweeps down the Yangtze River, scouring the entire river basin including the cities of Wuhan, Nanjing and Shanghai. Nearly 400 million people die as a result. China’s economy collapses and its central government falls. Xi’s whereabouts and ultimate fate remain unknown. Local governors and PLA commanders seize power as a new age of warlordism emerges in the never-ending cycle of Chinese history. There is no central government left to order nuclear retaliation. As the fighting devolves into a bloody stalemate, Taiwan’s chip industry is badly damaged, causing a spike in the cost of computer hardware worldwide. China’s rapidly aging and shrinking population goes into a nosedive as birth rate TFRs fall from 1.18 to 0.5 children per woman.
Cut off from aide from China and Russia, Kim’s regime in North Korea falls with his ruthless sister temporarily seizing power before being arrested and shot. Her attempt to launch a few missiles at South Korea and Japan ends in failure as they are intercepted by Japanese interceptors launched from Aegis equipped destroyers. The birth rates of both Japan and South Korea continue to collapse to below 0.5 children per woman. Economic stagnation deepens in both countries.
Lacking customers for raw materials and oil, economies across Africa collapse and each nation devolves into a Somali-like warlord failed state. This triggers a mass migration of Africans across the Med towards Europe. The EU secretly contracts with Libyan warlords and other North African governments to sink these refugees out of site and out of mind.
With heat spikes killing cash crops like coffee, Central American, Latin American and Caribbean governments go the way of Haiti. This triggers another wave of mass migrations north towards America. In response, the Trump administration sends already strained and stretched thin American military force to “defend our sacred southern border”. Reports of refugees being machine gunned along the Rio Grande are hushed up as America deploys an “active wall” of automated predator drones capable of making their own kill decisions that turn northern Mexico into a free fire zone. When asked about these killer drones, Trump replies that “we have our home and they have theirs, and they better stay home.”
(cont.)
Led by Nebraska, one Red State after another declares bankruptcy and the inability to pay its obligations to government employee pensions, schools and infrastructure. Over a dozen red States eventually declare bankruptcy. Those who buy Trump bitcoin end up receiving some relief from the Federal government. Entire counties across rural America declare themselves free of government control while demanding government payouts.
Protests and rioting have become so commonplace in both rural areas and major cities that the media stops reporting on them. Trump imposes the 1807 Insurrection Act, ordering regular military units to quell rioters, federalizing every state’s national guard. In several cities American soldiers shoot and kill 100s of American citizens. Unnoticed, except for a small blurb in an online podcast, American billionaires appear to have fled to their bunkers in New Zealand and Hawaii. Davos is cancelled.
Bond markets collapse as the American dollar effectively loses its status as the world’s reserve currency in favor of bitcoin.
Black Christmas
Christmas that year is bleak for nearly every American. The big trend is to give children toys and games bought at local charity, church, garage and rummage sales so they would have something under the tree. The media plays this up at as healthy back to basics movement that simplifies and declutters our lives.
To celebrate Christmas, Trump (without Melania who has not been seen in public for many months) lights the White House Christmas Tree and goes into a long, confused, slurring, rambling expletive filled speech blaming everyone but himself for the state of the world and how only he can restore American greatness. Before the networks can cut the feed, he suffers stroke at the podium. While still alive, JD Vance deposes him via the 25th Amendment and become president.
His first act is to appoint Peter Thiel as his chief of staff and primary aide in the rebuilding of America, starting with the establishment of a complete data base on every American.
Of course Putin's shills at Russia TV - I mean Fox - want to attack Iran. Iran's his ally, but n longer useful. This way? A huge diversion of US aid from Ukraine. But top goal: divide/weaken America. Obedient, DT should remember where he keeps his best stuff.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/fox-news-war-iran-donald-trump-propaganda-1235367796/
I recommend watching the interview between Tucker Carlsson and Ted Cruz. As vile as both are, you can see the rift between isolationist MAGA/Nazis and conservative imperialists.Cruz got ripped very badly.
Also, this shows how journalists and the media should treat them. Each interview being a personal Vietnam.
Wow Celt that's some optimistic stream of consciousness! Care to share with us a downer?
---
Petrov wasn’t the only Soviet hero who prevented nuclear war spasm. And yes, we have always relied upon the kindness… or bravery… of strangers.
Hey, who hijacked Treebeard’s account? While he’s still a loony-ingrate who despises the rationally progressive Rooseveltean society that gave humanity – and him -an era better than ALL other eras, combined- he did make assertions that, while mostly wrong, were at least an interesting point of view.
He alludes to how Two Scoops had just one lesson in THE ART OF THE DEAL. “Bully and threaten your business adversaries and bully your allies more.” He’s astonished it hasn’t worked with the tariffs and it won’t make Iran ‘surrender.’* So, normally, he’d just back down and declare that he didn’t!
Alas, the idiots screaming “TACO!” have cornered him into being unable to back down. So… cue Celt's fantasy, after all?
and yes, we have always relied upon the kindness… or bravery… of strangers.
I've never bought the theory (is it Paradoctor's ?) that the universe actively prevents timelines which remove observers, but I have to admit there's some evidence for it.
I wonder if - via the Epstein/Maxwell route - it is (also?) Netanyahu who might have leverage over Trump. In addition, he could threaten to take the Samson option in the case that the US do not want to intervene, being Trump the one who is pressured now. (Though I do not believe that is the most likely option; Netanyahu 's goal is to prolong the war to stay in office. His appeal to the Iranian people is a very cynical one, calling them to rise up in a time when they flee the places they need to be to achieve that - and to protect themselves and their families from harm. Also, the Internet is down now, and they crack down even harder on dissent now.)
Everything listed is already in motion or has occurred.
I assume optimistically that nukes would not be used by anyone.
I have another problem with the build-up to the Iran situation:
A couple of weeks ago Tulsi Gabbard testified before Congress, I believe, that the US intelligence community had no evidence of the Mullahs building the bomb. (She later published a ... then somewhat weird video about the risk of a nuclear war. I am not sure how that fits into this whole mess.)
Then, the IAEO published the news that the Iran is at the verge of having enough enriched Uran.
That leaves us with the following options:
1) The IC failed to gather this information.
2) The IC collectively lied to Gabbard about this.
3) The IAEO lied.
4) Gabbard lied.
Each option has it's own doubleplussungood implications.
There's a scene in a Charles Stross story where the Feds are desperately searching for a stolen 'backpack nuke' that may have been hidden in Washington by cross-timers from an alternative medieval-tech North America, and come across a completely different full-size nuclear weapon that had been ticking since the 80's*.
I am actually surprised there has not been any sub-state level nuclear terrorism in my lifetime. Apparently the difficulty of assembling even a low-yield bomb is harder that many doomsayers predicted - and the threat of stray nukes scared governments into obsessive monitoring.
*note that Stross, being Stross, has the examining team conclude that without proper maintenance the thing is likely a dud or a squib.
Pappenheimer
P.S. so, of course our glorious president will observe the start of Hurricane Season by ordering the dropping of a B-61 into the first such storm to menace our gentle shores.
"Recaps" are an interesting and unexpected art form. Not always done well or accurately - and by-definition utter spoilers! Still, it online recaps have let me summary 'watch' many flicks I had no time for, and sometimes delivered a good 10 mins of ideas & entertainment! And occasionally "Gotta go rent that!" Now recaps are doing stories & novels. Whether or not I approve, they're here. Like this one of my nominated story "The Giving Plague," about the rough wooing between viruses and their hosts. And perhaps a reason why I've donated blood 107 times!
The narrator flubs some transitions in a tale dense with ideas. But I think overall you get the dramatic arc, even if not any of the ironies or great writing!*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MZqZNmN8nI
*Find it in The Best of David Brin! ;-)
addendum - One of the Old First Sergeants I ran into in my day was in Para Weather - his job was to jump out of aircraft with an anemometer, sling psychrometer, barometer, and such, and THEN provide a forecast - claimed to have met a Special Forces guy who claimed to have been trained to insert a backpack nuke. Anyway, the SF dude said he was told that after delivering the payload by stealth, he was to set the timer and had 30 minutes to vacate the premises. The SF guy assumed that this was a lie and that it would go off immediately.
Pappenheimer
Tim H
Self driving does not have to be PERFECT - an impossible ideal
Just better than human drivers - a low bar
Today Tesla FSD is about 12 times as good as an average driver - which means it is probably as good as a very good human driver
If the conditions are such that a human cannot drive in them THEN the correct option is to pull over - not to start to rely on some magic "LIDAR" - which cannot drive when its vision system does not work
There are four "leaders" who are actively trying to use war to maintain power as having somebody attack you always cements the support of most of your population
Netanyahu
Khamenei
Putin
Trump
Remember how support for Bush went from very low to stratospheric after 9/11
Don't agree with Khamenei; Iran has made mild responses to previous provocations, has been open to negotiations and acted cautiously despite having good justifications to go to war before now (e.g. when Trump offed their revered general Soleimani). But when Trump pretends to be negotiating as a deception to assist Israel's sneak attack, it's a 9/11 or Pearl Harbor moment that any leader would go to war over -- even a cautious old man like Khameini.
And how could you forget the biggest war-grifter of them all: Zelensky? I'm sure it was an oversight...
the biggest war-grifter of them all: Zelensky?
What, because he won't just stop repelling invaders, that makes him a warmonger?
Treebeard is back to jibbering KGB yammer-froths.
Larry
You speak in jest, but that is what many believe. Zelenskyy made a brave and principled stand against Russian aggression; he could have accepted the US airlift offered on day 1 or 2, when the initial outcome was deeply uncertain. That means he has to be torn down, because he is at least partly responsible for Ukraine not falling then and there, and thereby embarrassing Putin's truly corrupt regime (and thus his supporters in other countries, such as rumpT) no end. How many Afghan presidents backed by the US stayed at their posts when the Taliban came knocking? I am curious as to what proof can be offered of Zelenskyy's corruption - even pre-war, his aim was to decentralize the economy, which offers less opportunity for graft than an economy where all economic decisions funnel through one person. Which, now that I think about it, is where the US seems to be heading.
Pappenheimer
Zelensky is not up for argument. The Ukrainian people are utterly mobilized against rabid invaders who have bombarded their cities, turned those near or at the front into rubble, strewn ten million land mines and countless poisons, kidnapped thousands of children and murdered tens of thousands of both soldiers & civilianz.
If their zealous resistance had flagged anywhere along that thousand km front at any time, the jugernaut would have blitzed through and pierced to the Dnieper. Instead, pioneering drone warfare, they are shredding RF industry far beyond the lines.
A nation less than 20% of Russia's population &. resources has inflicted one million casualties while destroying the world's 2nd army and demolishing RF economy and demographics.
Is Zelensky solely responsible? Of course not. But every Ukrainian I talk to loves him. Anecdotal, but it's unlikely he'd be alive now if it's the opposite.
Alas, like every other western leader, he has only mediocre polemical skills.
LF:
My "Backfire Effect" theory is that nukes run on quantum mechanics, which is observer-dependent and nonlocal; so any timeline which has removed most observers by quantum-mechanical means, as nukes are designed to do, will be of low amplitude. Therefore any quantum-mechanical system whose normal operation removes most observers will tend to be observed in an abnormal condition. This chaotic "Backfire Effect" is non-local; it can manifest ahead of time. The Backfire Effect is Murphy's Law on steroids. It can break machines, bodies, minds, and societies. Therefore merely owning a nuke is hazardous to national security.
Please note: this theory predicts the same as classical deterrence theory, which posits that human minds are predictive and self-interested; so they will tend to sabotage dangerous nuclear systems, either consciously or unconsciously.
Whenever Zelensky and Ukraine and corruption and Nazis are mentioned, it is always a good time to remember Matthew 7.1-5.
Re: Khamenei: Heard a radio show with an Iranian political scholar in exile who compared Khameini with Hitler in the bunker: Inceasingly out of touch with reality. Word is, he has conceded parts of his powers to the remaining military leadership. Also, he might well depart this plane of existence soon due to natural reasons, he is in his 80s and reportedly of bad health.
The most serious flaw in 'Artificial Intelligence', from GOFAI thru NN all the way to generative and beyond is the total lack of introspection. In that sense, we have indeed succeeded at making an artificial version of ourselves.
I don't think a simple low yield nuclear bomb is all that difficult to make for even a small nation / state, or even very wealthy individuals. Except for the weapons grade fissionable material. That's about the only real hurdle. The design and construction, once you have the WGFM, is easy enough to do these days if you have enough money and time.
But there are some signs that are fairly easy to track. The giant is, again, the WGFM. Refining it from mined materials is so industry intensive and specialized that it's easy to spot, and it takes lots of money and lots of time. And all other sources, nations stockpiles, are all pretty well known and monitored.
Another sign is the precision machining tools necessary, basically high grade optical equipment. Much more of that kind of equipment is bought and sold compared to uranium refining equipment, and anyone with the money can buy it, but it's still specialized enough that it can be usefully monitored.
I'm very far from an expert and no one should bet on me being correct about this, but I think that LLM's have zero chance of achieving anything like human level intelligence. At best they will be a tool of true AI. It seems to me that all LLM's do is read lots of material really fast, compared to humans, and make statistical correlations to string together bits of what they've read. That is something that humans do, and LLM's can do it much, much faster. And that is a very useful tool. But it isn't thinking, it's a product of thinking. We don't know yet what thinking is, but it has become clear enough that human brains don't think in the language that we speak and write.
And I agree with the idea that an artificial intelligence isolated from the real world is very unlikely to ever be sane and stable, by human standards. One could posit being able to make a virtual environment for an AI that corresponds with reality will enough that it makes no difference, but that's science fiction. We are not remotely close to being able to create such virtual realities. And it seems simpler to just give an AI a body with senses so it can interact directly with the real world. That's something we can plausibly do now.
Agreeing with George Orwell about reality
https://bsky.app/profile/rudepundit.bsky.social
One fascinating thing lately is that some of the biggest conspiracy humpers have been put in positions where they have access to all the info to prove they were right all along and they discover, oh, shit, there is no conspiracy. Bongino and Gabbard have said as much.
Even a total fucking loon like Patel has had to face the reality that reality is real and not the fevered fantasies that get imbeciles to click and follow. I'm not saying it's going to change them, but it's kind of darkly funny to watch them process it.
Oh, yeah, that bomb exists.
https://wcti12.com/news/local/atomic-bomb-missing-in-enc-for-62-years
According to the "Secrets Declassified" series where I heard about it, the government still owns that patch of land. They "lease" it to the farmer, with the strict restriction that he never builds on the land, and doesn't dig any deeper than 5 feet, so as not to disturb the nuclear device. :D
Instead of dismissing Treebeard's comments as mere 'jibbering', our fine host would be best served to view such comments as textbook examples of DESENSITIZATION, as decades of screaming 'racism', 'climate change', 'Hitler' & other Chicken Little-isms have rendered about HALF of the US population overexposed, unperturbed & unaffected by the tactics of fear-mongering, while reducing a more susceptible leftist population to quivering, dysfunctional & anxiety-ridden wrecks.
This is why the left's attempt at doubling, tripling & quadrupling down on fear-mongering has led to paradoxical results.
Within the medical profession, this is also known as 'Alarm Fatigue', as the runaway proliferation of warning pings, beeps, klaxons & flashing lights has led to the paradoxical increase in preventable medical errors as an increasingly desensitized practitioner now routinely ignores all-of-the-above.
For the very same reason, all of our fine host's AI-related warnings, sage advice & political badgering increasingly falls on deaf ears, mostly due to the alarm fatigue of over-exposure, but partly due to a so-called Noble Paradox that virtually guarantees the subsequent weaponization of even the most random scientific advance, as exemplified by the invention of dynamite.
Best
I think it is a mistake to call an LLM an 'artificial intelligence'. I think it more apt to say that an LLM does 'artificial perception.' So call them APs, not AIs. LLMs are very good at perceiving patterns, as befits the descendants of the Perceptron. But even so they are prone to bias, deceptions, and hallucinations.
I apologize for all us Liber'ls for being overly dramatic about our concerns. Drama gets votes, and helps keep the Overton Window toward the center so you guys didn't go too far.
But you guys are to blame, too, for amplifying two, three, eight times the every criticism of our far-leftist allies and attributing it every Democrat. While our legitimate fears were important--and are now apparently coming to pass because of you guys--you made it seem like we were a bunch of crazies who would never compromise. You created this myth, and now are using it to justify not compromising with us, and for doing everything horrible that you accused us of doing (most of which was overblown like everything else). So you need to take some of the blame, too.
We can only hope that a good slap of reality will wake up a good portion of your side so that they will finally see that our warnings were true, and turn on you guys, so we can (once again!) try to undo the horrible damage you've done to this great nation. And that it isn't too late.
Post a Comment