Category: Military Might

Kyrsten Sinema AND Victoria Nuland announcing their retirement on the same day?!

Well, I'll be. Maybe there is a god?

What's that? Nope. Sorry. Without clearer proof, "maybe" is the best you'll get from me on that topic, but only because I refuse to adhere to any one group's version of a god.

My own God, however, totally hates me. That, I believe. Time for a reformation, maybe?  

I didn't follow up on Sinema's case but I'm assuming that the local venom got to her, but the corporate dollars were there to console her? Despite some having pinned her as a moderate-centrist tethered to a non-crazy reality, that's not quite what I or many see. Rather, she essentially betrayed her party and blocked what the Dems had clearly made their campaign promises, deceiving and disappointing many, though she got richer because of it. Her position between the two poles hardly matters past that.    

Nuland, however, that's a surprise. Not sure what to think about her decision yet other than "get out before the crap really hits the fan."

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Trump.

But, Nikki. Still.

Something odd there. Hope she's not slated to be the next Sec. of State or Defense Queen, or anything like that.

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Unfortunately, being the beings we are entails a course along the lines of the one that I feared, and quicker than we all expected, it would appear. I'm speaking of AGI.

There seems to be some confusion—which I share—in regard to which milestones have been crossed, hence, Elon Musk suing Sam Altman is something I applaud, I think... from what I can gather.

The problem: It really is unclear whether or not AGI has been achieved or if it's to be achieved within three months, or two to three years. Frankly, even the latter would be way ahead of the time frame in which most expected to see the technological singularity materialise.

Personally, I expected a loud pop or large flash along with the event, maybe a fetus appearing in the night sky, next to a monolithed moon, who knows?  

I'm now limited in regard to internet access and can't really check everything out, but I did see a headline that was meant to be taken as Altman announcing that ChatGPT 5.0 is full AGI. Given how these things go and that one is taking a gamble by assuming that a headline's intended interpretation matches the article's content, that may not be the case, but it's clear that full transparency isn't what's been offered, until after the fact.

Any which way, and although I'm not certain that Sam Altman deserves all of the blame, Musk's suit should be stamped Humanity vs. OpenAI, Microsoft, US Gov. et al.

The next step in our evolution that this singularity entails isn't one that should be rushed into in isolation, and certainly not within a global atmosphere that's teetering on the brink of a full-scale war.

You can bet that war efforts are what's feeding the true motivation to fund such hubris, by-passing all that shouldn't despite Altman's claims that safeguards are being carefully implemented. If for war, machines will learn how to best kill. Can we really contain that past that point?  

Previously discussed but here it is again: the 2023 756-page "Final Report" by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, which is chaired by Eric Schmidt, of Google fame.

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There's a data problem. What's needed to train the system "doesn't exist". Synthetic data is what all are finding themselves having to rely on.

I'm still unsure what could be, realistically, the potential ramifications of that.

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Gemini 1.5 Pro not only solved the needle-in-a-haystack test, it achieved 99.7% recall pushed to 10 million tokens within a context window of up to 1 million.

Beats the pants off of humans. Socks and undies, too.

I'm not sure how OpenAI's Q fares in comparison, but the Q system architecture is, apparently, the key that accelerated matters.

In medical spheres is where humans are quickly becoming embarrassments to the field.

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A 4-Feb-2024 Wall Street Journal opinion piece by Andy Kessler called "Power Corrupts, Absolutely" clearly established just how ridiculously-obsessive and deluded by a belief in free-market magic that a segment of right-wing libertarians manage to be.

Kessler begins with:

...OpenAI CEO Sam Altman suggested that a “global regulatory body” was needed to monitor artificial intelligence. This is a colossally dumb idea. But Mr. Gates doubled down: “If the key is to stop the entire world from doing something dangerous, you’d almost want global government.” Wait, global what? ... In fact, of his 2023 world tour meeting heads of state, Mr. Altman noted, “there was almost universal support for it.” Well of course there was. Demand for power is insatiable. (Microsoft is a major investor in OpenAI.)

The article sees Kessler make the same, tired argument regarding "government bad" without really establishing the fact or considering the difference between "a bad government", "government bad", and "efficient government" beyond some vague notion relating to "size".

He affirms that "[g]overnments don’t like to govern, but they like to control. Human freedom always takes a back seat" while being "reminded of something P.J. O’Rourke told [him] in 2009" about government always wanting to tell others what to do, O'Rourke's conclusion for this behaviour being: "Government is just a form of bullying for weaklings. Politics is the art of achieving power and prestige without merit.”

In closing, Kessler offers:

I prefer limited government. Spend enough on defense to keep us safe and secure, help the truly downtrodden, do some basic research and then, as Grover Norquist so eloquently suggested, get government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” For the economy, the government should set the rules of the sandbox, then get out of the way and let markets and competition do their magic.

In Kessler's own words: colossally dumb.

The self-adjusting free-market lunacy is just that, perhaps due to short-term-memory issues or little knowledge of recent history, but deregulation led to deeply corrupt, lobbyist-run  government that's responsible for globally-affecting market crashes and the geopolitical and economic now that people like Kessler do nothing but whine about.

There are some areas that shouldn't be left to magic or idiocy.

And there are areas that demand total, global cooperation. For all.

That the more radical elements have been eager to get their hands on long-range weapons has been made clear through the damage that they've inflicted on Belgorod, on the Russian side, since the early months of the SMO.

Then, in May, two drones had reached the Kremlin; these, managing to impact the roof, doing very little damage, but they'd provided what became some of the most watched footage of drones, and the act had scored an important point for Ukraine under the rubric "psychological warfare".

In the early morning of last Monday, 24-Jul-2023, Moscow stopped a two-drone attack although one struck a skyscraper in Moscow that's said to house government offices, shattering glass on two floors , Russian officials reported.

The drone had been brought down close to the headquarters of the defence ministry. The wreckage of a second drone was found on Komsomolsky Prospect, a main traffic vein in central Moscow. In all, the attack had lightly damaged the fronts of two non-residential buildings, resulting in no casualties.

This morning, Sunday, a three-drone attack was again attempted by Kyiv—the second in a week—this one also resulting in only minor damage to the facade of two office buildings in the Moskva-Citi business district, according to Moscow Mayor, Sergey Sobyanin.

For now, at least, the drones aren't capable of inflicting considerable damage, but when will that change, and it's a good thing Kyiv doesn't have NATO's nuclear missiles planted on the border Ukraine shares with Russia?

Setting aside the long chain of causes and effects leading to now and what qualifies as “invasion” and “oppression”, Israel's responses to any Palestinian acts taken against their Zionist invaders have long been disproportionate. But they were allowed; the world shielded their eyes because “Israel was good”, the white in an otherwise black Middle Eastern world… And the full weight of Washington was behind it.

As such, given the persistence of the badly-biased, Western-controlled, post-Holocaust-guilt-fueled dominant impression of right and wrong within the region—and the world—Tel-Aviv's post-7-Oct conduct, for all the bad, did deliver some good. Finally.

It's not a question of "America bad" or that the concept conveyed by the slogan-turned-derogatory-label has been adopted and converted into a tribal anti-West, anti-Capitalism belief or an anti-Democracy faith, it now representing a firm tenet of far-right or radical-left ideology as each accuses the other of hating nation or race and of being the driver of such sentiments... Grow up; it's a much bigger world than your navel allows you to see. And the West isn't all rainbows and unicorns. If it were, there'd be a segment complaining that rainbows and unicorns are too LGBTQ+, hence, things wouldn't be all 'Rainbows and Unicorns' even if things were all rainbows and unicorns.

Outlets that focus on the West's misdeeds tend to be equally or more pro-West than those who accuse them of anti-ness. What really separates the two are the types and degree of othering. These types of outlets fall mostly in the "niche" category while they've also been gifted an aura of "lunacy", being run by "conspiracy loons" 

And automatically labelling anyone who counters institutionally-accepted mainstream views an "anti" is very "othering" and tribalistic behaviour, this being so no matter how patriotic it's dressed up to be. Actually, it'd be more so the more saturated with patriotism such use of "anti" labels are, no?

Despite the interesting arguments that could be made for or against that last statement, one's things now real clear and inarguable, and it's the nature and depth of hypocrisy that drives and frames the variable, ad hoc single-standard adopted and applied by Washington and by those who belong to the West, which usually entails US might being behind them.

That's the good that's come out of Gaza.

Events in Ukraine had laid bare some of that, but whatever real benefit could truly be had by the West—a rude awakening—was easily overshadowed and drowned out by an easily-stoked hatred of Russians, so that those who attempted to inject any degree of reason into Westerners were clumped like caca to be flushed out of proper Democratic society activities and out-housed from freedoming meetings.

The Palestinians, however... well, even with all that's been blocked; even with all the attempts to control any reporting; even with journalists being systematically killed, the limited images coming out of Gaza can't be easily countered and justified unless turned zany by Zionism, the religious version of "Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs".

They tried, though, and continue to do so, but "Putin did it" doesn't seem to find many takers in order to excuse Israel's genocidal insanity, and even dragging Iran into the Evil Understudy #2 role drew more skepticism and calls of cynicism than the "death to" venom that had been expected by Western establishment ideologues, it seems.

Even among those whose default political/global position on anything is "America #1" and "Criticism of us = Against US", even they have changed their approach in light of what's witnessed, their zeal closer to zilch than zoo-zapper albeit being all zealotry. Because, there are some things that one simply can't defend, or just doesn't wanna defend given that, unless totally blinded by a Zionist fanaticism, one ought to be able to see quite clearly just how intolerable and unforgiving the sum of Zionist comments and acts now add up to, even with an event like 7-Oct-2024, as it was an act of desperation, not savagery, this being true no matter how brutal and condemnatory the actions of members of the Qassam brigade were that day.

So, not only have the Zionists established themselves to be intolerant, insufferable navels with a penchant for the types of actions that 

I'm in the camp that believes that Iran did what it did because it did what it had to do, but that it acted in the most diplomatic way possible 

No one died and only military installations were 

Because Iran is filled with incompetent and overly-religious boobs? Sure, OK, but  then, the US isn't because...???

This kind of this was expected

“In response to the recent missile and drone attack by Iran, the United States and its allies plan to impose new sanctions on Iran, including targeting its missile and drone program.”

Israel’s War Cabinet has also vowed that Iran will not get away “scot-free” and promised to respond at a time and in a manner of Israel’s choosing

John Kirby, the jalopy salesman  Morning Joe, ““an extraordinary military success” that sent “a strong message about where Israel is in the region versus where Iran is in the region, which is increasingly isolated.”