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Links 1/16/2024

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Scientists Film Plant ‘Talking’ to Its Neighbor, And The Footage Is Incredible ScienceAlert (Chuck L)

Animal sounds in most nature documentaries are made by humans. How they do it and why it matters PhysOrg (Dr. Kevin)

Earth’s Wobble Wreaks Havoc on Astronomers–And Astrologers, Too Scientific American (Dr. Kevin)

Antifungals are going the way of antibiotics—overused, hitting resistance arstechnica

#COVID-19

Climate/Environment

Arctic freeze continues to blast huge swaths of the US with sub-zero temperatures Associated Press (Kevin W). FWIW, Escanaba temparatures not out of band. I was there one January where the temperature did not get above 0 the entire month. The lowest low was -27F.

There’s Even Plastic in Clouds Nautilus (Micael T)

World’s First Floating Offshore Wind Farm To Be Taken Offline For Up To 4 Months Electrek

Are electric vehicles really cheaper to own? Maybe not. Big Think (Micael T)

China?

Taiwan: cross-strait brinkmanship to continue Indian Punchline

Nauru cuts diplomatic ties with Taiwan in favour of China BBC

Taiwanese DO NOT Have the Right To Vote For Independence. Neither Do You Eastern Angle (Micael T)

US Navy in a losing race to close China fleet gap Asia Times (Kevin W)

Beijing tells some investors not to sell as Chinese stock rout resumes Financial Times

China Weighs More Stimulus With $139 Billion of Special Bonds Bloomberg

European Disunion

Bank taxes in the EU: exceptional, temporary and far less than the €6 trillion bank bailout to be paid by the state budget CATM (Micael T)

The German hunger genocide German Foreign Policy (Micael T)

Gaza

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 101: The collapse of Gaza’s health sector the “worst man-made medical disaster in modern history” Mondoweiss

* * *

Admission against interest: Latest Houthi missile attack demonstrates limited scope of US-led airstrikes in Yemen CNN (Kevin W)

* * *

In our post yesterday, we described Israel’s plan to “secure” the southern Gaza border by effectively taking control of the Rafah crossing and the so-called Philadelphia corridor, which are now policed (apparently to a large degree by Egypt. Reader Alan Roxdale speculated that Israel’s reason for this move would be to displace Gazans into Egypt, a scheme Egypt has repeatedly and fiercely rejected.

* * *

The West Bank is a ticking time bomb The Cradle (Micael T)

Israel is intentionally killing the captives in Gaza Dan Cohen

* * *

McDonald’s and Starbucks sink as anti-Israel boycott campaign makes headway Defend Democracy

The Backlash Against Biden on Gaza Is Growing Daniel Larison

New Not-So-Cold War

New War Drums Chill Europe with Renewed “Putin Invasion” Fears Simplicius the Thinker

UK to send 20,000 troops to NATO war games RT

Big Brother is Watching You Watch

YouTube Begins New Wave of Slowdowns For Users With Ad Blockers Enabled 9to5Google

Imperial Collapse Watch

What It’s Like To Live In A Fallen Empire Eastern Angle (Micael T)

Gut Feelings Make for Strategic Errors – U.S. Lured Into Battlescape in Gaza, Yemen and Now Iraq Alastair Crooke

WHO’S FOR HOMER, PROPAGANDIST FOR GOD-ORDERED GENOCIDE AND FOR THOSE FOLLOWING GOD’S ORDERS TO KILL John Helmer (Micael T)

Half of Michigan voters don’t know who controls U.S. House, poll shows Detroit News (ma)

Trump

Jan. 6 committee helped guide early days of Georgia Trump probe Politico

Prosecutors are charging Trump using laws made to fight the KKK. Here’s why Sidney Blumenthal, Guardian

Biden

‘Say it Nicer’: Hunter Makes a Familiar Last-Minute Offer to Congress Jonathan Turley

2024

Fox News Voter Analysis breaks down key groups that pushed Trump to victory at the Iowa caucuses Fox

After Lackluster Showing, Nikki Haley Orders Bombing Of Iowa Babylon Bee (Chuck L)

You Should Go to a Trump Rally Atlantic (Kevin W)

Ramaswamy suspends 2024 bid, endorses Trump The Hill

Analysis If Donald Trump polls as well as predicted in the Iowa caucus, the primaries for the US election may be over as quickly as they began ABC Australia (Kevin W)

Our No Longer Free Press

OpenAI Unveils Plans For Tackling Abuse Ahead of 2024 Elections Axios

Poland’s PM won’t tolerate ‘anti-Ukrainian sentiment’ RT. Micael T: “A fistful of Western Values, such as freedom of speech, thought and emotions.”

Australia Bans Display of Nazi Symbols Sputnik. Micael T: “…but finances Nazis in Ukraine.”

AI

OpenAI’s GPT Store Already Filling Up With “AI Girlfriends” Futurism (Kevin W)

Gods in the machine? The rise of artificial intelligence may result in new religions The Conversation

Can ChatGPT write a college admission essay? We tested it Washington Post (furzy)

The Bezzle

Bitcoin is a special-interest group Noah Smith (furzy)

ETFs Make Bitcoin’s Problems Even Worse Wall Street Journal

Class Warfare

America’s 100 largest landowners revealed RT (Micael T)

Self-Checkout Hasn’t Delivered BBC

After big tech layoffs, Silicon Valley may have lost its monopoly on workers CNBC (Kevin W)

Antidote du jour (Tracie H):

And a bonus (Chuck L):

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here

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128 comments

  1. The Rev Kev

    “Half of Michigan voters don’t know who controls U.S. House, poll shows”

    Wait! Wait! I know the answer to that question. The donors. The donors control the U.S. House. Ask me about the U.S. Senate next.

    2. Mark Gisleson

      One third of Michigan voters live in the greater Detroit area. Thought that was worth noting.

      Rev, I did want to ask you for a favor. Can you let us know if any Aussies are ever arrested for displaying Banderite/Ukronazi symbols?

      Because my very first thought after reading that article was, “Gee, if I lived down under (from my cis-Northern hemisphere perspective), I think I’d go mall walking while wearing an Azov battalion style jacket.”

      1. The Rev Kev

        Now that is tricky that. That article “Australia Bans Display of Nazi Symbols” in today’s Links says that they have banned Nazi salutes and regalia. People got their knickers in a twist when they saw a bunch of d***heads throwing Nazi salutes a coupla months ago – but formations like Azov are all about the Nazis. Wouldn’t want to try my luck here. A funny thing though. They featured this on the news a few nights ago and then not five minuted later, they announced that another group of Aussie trainers are being sent to the UK to train Ukrainians – who are arguably from a Nazi regime. Our government must be going schizophrenic trying to sort between the two types.

        1. Feral Finster

          The obvious response would be to sport a swastika or two, along with other symbols so commonly favored by Ukrainian nationalists. Tell the cops that this is a Ukrainian swastika, so that makes it okay!

        2. jsn

          Or colluding with Russia!

          Sending your Nazi sympathizers to Ukraine as part of Putin’s “de-Nazification” plan.

          Might have the benefit of making the law coherent.

    3. Gerald

      It should have said ‘Half of voters don’t know who controls the US House, they only know that it isn’t them.’

  2. JohnA

    Re Hunter Biden say it nicer
    “As the Justice Department noted in its tax charges, Hunter spent his money on “drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature”.
    Brings to mind the the words of the late, great, but debauched footballer George Best:
    “I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.”

    1. griffen

      I’m coming around to this notion, that Hunter is a devoted fan of the movie “A few good men” and the Jack Nicholson performance as Colonel Jessup. Except in the movie, Jessup is the commanding officer at Guantanamo and has devoted his life to defending something. “Danny, I need you to ask me nicely, in your pretty Navy white uniform and that Harvard mouth…”

      Hunter just looks the part of the sleazeball “white shoes law dog” lawyer. How dare ye ask such things, oh mighty Republican members of Congress? It is I, the anointed one from Delaware. \sarc

      I adhere to this notion and will swear, such behaviors are learned at an early age. Apple not fall far from tree, just my opinion.

        1. Tom Stone

          Hunter Biden never went to basic training or OCS, he was made a Naval Officer under the same program that brings in Clergy and Doctors…and the Children of important people who need to polish their resume’s.

          1. Old Sarum

            “Program”:

            I’ll file that particular wrinkle under “Prerogatives of Power”

            Pip-pip!

            ps What is the name of the “program”?
            pps Why wasn’t it featured in “Succession”?

          2. scott s.

            Not exactly the same. Clergy and Doctors are staff corps while Biden’s commission was in the “line” special duty PAO. Normally PAO accessions would be by lateral transfer from the unrestricted line, with a few given direct commissions out of OCS. This direct commissioning into the naval reserves as a PAO (1655) seems kind of unique, probably as you speculate.

            He appears to have been administratively separated for cause; since his drug use wasn’t tied to active duty his service could be characterized as “under honorable conditions”.

            General note (not to commenter): the terms “dishonorable discharge (dismissal) or “bad conduct discharge” are often thrown around. These are punitive discharges that can only be awarded by general (DD aka duck dinner) or special (BCD aka big chicken dinner) courts martial for specific offenses under the UCMJ.

  3. ChrisFromGA

    There is no joy in Grandbargainville, the mighty Senate has struck out.

    Over the weekend, Speaker Johnson killed the Ukraine money for border security “deal” that had been somewhat forming, although it never really materialized in the Senate, either.

    https://twitter.com/JakeSherman/status/1746707732936139188

    No border deal will do, except House Bill 2, and signed by Trump.

    (Jake Sherman reports for Politico and is generally reliable.)

  4. Mikerw0

    Trying, not really hard, to mostly ignore short term political noise; at least for awhile.

    That said, assume Obama was a one-term Prez running again a la Trump. He would have received +90% of the vote in Iowa last night in my view. I think I heard that 14% of eligible voters turned out last night, for a total of about 110k.

    So, a really tiny minority is choosing a candidate, who is a de facto incumbent, and this is being played as historic. No, it’s pathetic. And, a very sad way to run a country.

    1. timbers

      The conspicuous absence of reporting of a Democratic Iowa Caucus caused me to search it out, and may be a more revealing event in terms a sign of the state of health of Democracy in America – “In a departure from previous years, the Democratic caucuses were held only to conduct administrative party business and to start the process of choosing delegates to the national conventions.” Good thing the The Supremes ruled that as a private club the Duopoly Parties can engage in activities that otherwise might be considered highly illegal for those not so privileged.

    2. Pat

      Well let’s wait and see how many people show up to vote in the Democratic primary in Florida….oh wait an even smaller group of people first decided that only Joe Biden would be on the ballot, then went why waste the money and canceled it entirely for this primary season. In 2020 Andrew Yang had to sue to have the NY Democratic primary put back on the calendar after then Governor Andrew Cuomo cancelled it.

      Some of us are well aware that our candidates are largely selected by a very small group of people, much smaller than that group that braved the adverse weather conditions to participate in Iowa yesterday. It is very sad, but I think you missed the saddest part. The Republicans are still allowed to vote.

      1. Katniss Everdeen

        At least registered democrats in Iowa, and New Hampshire for that matter, CAN caucus / “vote.” In both of those states, dems are able to, and being told to, turn out for nikki to eff things up for Trump.

        Here in Florida, a registered democrat, like I was until yesterday, gets completely disenfranchised since this state has “closed” primaries, and a registered democrat can’t “vote” for anyone, even though there are dem candidates other than biden.

        If Mikerw0 wants to moan about a “really tiny minority,” he’s barkin’ up the wrong tree.

        1. Kilgore Trout

          I’ve received at least 4 flyers from the NH Dem Party in the past month, urging me to write in “Joe Biden” in our primary. Fat chance. I had contemplated voting in the GOP primary (as a registered Independent/undeclared, I can vote in either) for Christie, just because I loathe Haley (who is polling second here, and at least until Iowa was gaining on Orangeman) as much as Trump. But I think I’ll vote in the Dem primary, for Brother West.

      2. John

        republicans are allowed to vote. It is a performative exercise with no actual meaning. Of course the same is true for democrats. But DONORS votes count.

        1. Pat

          But more and more Democrats aren’t even allowed the performative exercise.

          I don’t know if it is because those in charge of the party are so sure of their sheeple membership that they don’t think they need to pretend or so scared they don’t dare give them an opening.

    3. chris

      Thank goodness some brave people still went to caucus. The White House thanks them for their service in making it seem like Trump is inevitable. Now Biden can resume his not campaigning on a platform that includes: I’m still not Trump, I still won’t change things, war is good, leave my boy alone, and screw all you common people start saying nice things about the economy already.

    4. Mark Gisleson

      I no longer know what the rules are on the Democrat side but when I ran a caucus if you turned out half the caucus goers statewide with two other candidates in the race, you’d win at least three-quarters of the delegates. Very different than GOP rules. That’s why so many folks hated the Iowa Caucuses: First or a strong Second or go home. Very unforgiving.

      Caucuses are a small state tool for organizing your base to get out the vote in November. A list of caucus goers is the gold standard for recruiting volunteers. Much better than primary lists but those are still better than voter rolls. A list of people who caucus but do not vote in the general would be a list of who died in the meantime.

      Democrats didn’t have to turn out last night, they did mail-in ballots to be counted later. Republicans had high turnout. Listen to news reports carefully, they love to distort the results. Trump, like it or hate it, delivered an historic ass-kicking last night.

      You cannot stop Trump by diminishing his accomplishments. Look to see why he won big. Once you figure that out, you’ll understand that Democratic candidates are all wearing an albatross-shaped anvil necklace named Joe Biden. If you want to stop Trump, get rid of Biden. Additional steps required, but nothing moves forward until Biden steps aside.

      1. Pat

        And considering what the Iowa Democratic Party allowed to be done to their system so that the results would be confused and not count as much in 2020, I have no problem saying that Iowa will be 100% behind Joe Biden no matter what the ballots might actually say. Oh, and the party might wish they had had a caucus in November when they might want people to get out and vote but lost their best organizing tool.

        Your entirely sensible recipe for beating Trump has already been rejected by the leading Democrats. They don’t want to have any suggestions that might require policy changes that their donors have rejected. Nope PR, aghastitude, lawfare and fear mongering are it.

        1. timbers

          Am seeing headlines suggesting MSM might be about to go into major freakout mode over Iowa. We have something to look forward to – a near rerun of the previous Presidential elections. It’s almost a kind of gallows humor at this point.

          1. Carolinian

            Turley says Maddow refused to show the Trump victory speech because “he said untrue things.” Doubtless MSNBC viewers were grateful for the safe space maintenance.

            Meanwhile Haley said “it is now a two person race” even though she came in third.

            Of course political coverage in this country has for a long time been a rigged game where reporters think they are supposed to “vet” acceptable candidates unless voters overwhelmingly decide otherwise. Now even that last part doesn’t faze them. At least so far.

          2. Mark Gisleson

            Latest from conservative news outlets is an expose on the “gallows” that framed much of MSM’s coverage. It was much smaller than people thought and it wasn’t on Capitol Hill grounds but much further away. Set up at 6:30 am by parties caught on security cams but as of yet not identified.

            Oh, and the hangman’s knot? They wrapped a rope around a beer can!

              1. Mark Gisleson

                You can’t imagine how embarrassed I was when I remembered where I read all that. My only defense is that I read Lambert’s post when it first uploaded and by the time I finished it (clicking a few links along the way) I kinda forgot where I was.

                Back in the day Dear Abby would have lashed me with a wet noodle. I suspect our hosts keep their noodles dry. Also I apologize for using formatting options not on the menu as well as anything else that may have put me into moderation : ) [insert forelock tug and maybe some groveling]

        2. Bsn

          The Dems have chosen to release the numbers from the Iowa caucus AFTER Super Tuesday. Gives them time to cont the votes they want, for whom they want.

      2. Feral Finster

        “You cannot stop Trump by diminishing his accomplishments.”

        Not that Trump has many accomplishments to diminish, but all I see is hysterical fearmongering, following four plus years of conspiracy theory so outlandish, so loopy that it would have gotten its proponents laughed out of the 1962-era John Birch Society.

      3. MYT_Memes

        “I no longer know what the rules are on the Democrat side…”

        Everything is now Calvinball.

  5. zagonostra

    >What It’s Like To Live In A Fallen Empire Eastern Angle (Micael T)

    If you tell Americans that they don’t live in a country called the U.S.A but rather they live under an Anglo American Imperial Hegemon, the reaction will be huh? I agree with much of the author, but don’t like the designation “White Empire.”

    I remember first encountering the adjective “empire” to describe the U.S. in freshman college, the author was Michael Parenti and the book was “Against Empire” and then more recently a whole spate of books started coming out, Chalmers Johnson’s “Sorrow of Empire” being the one that comes to mind (20 Years ago, 2004). The departure from a “Manifest Destiny” that required the genocide of indigenous people in North America, to the whole globe took place fairly early in the Republic’s history.

    Much can be written, much has been written, yet does an Empire really Fall if there is no one to hear it?

    1. griffen

      Failing public education, failing at healthcare, failing at production of basic weaponry ala the F35…not for a lack of trying or funding ( I’d argue we devote a significant percentage of our national GDP to healthcare, and also to the military and defense…) And doddering old fools are leading the way. We Americans are all going to flourish, prosper, and live the American dream.

      I have a favorite album (an excellent listen) released in 1990 by the Seattle band, Queensyche. “Tear it all down and put it up again…another empire…”

      1. Cassandra

        Griffen, the US devotes a significant percentage of its national GDP to health insurance companies . There’s a difference.

    2. Feral Finster

      “Much can be written, much has been written, yet does an Empire really Fall if there is no one to hear it?”

      Look at the last 15 or so years of the Soviet Union. Every TeeVee and newspaper editorial still recites the old platitudes about “Freedom” and “Democracy” and the masses go along like small town churchgoers worried about what the neighbors will think if they stop attending.

      The security services still have fearsome powers of repression, but those powers are used rather selectively. There is an art to knowing just what one can do and just how far one can go without attracting their attention.

      Meanwhile, utter cynicism has taken hold of the upper strata of society, and the elites are busy fighting vicious turf wars and stealing everything not nailed down.

      Sound familiar?

    3. Carolinian

      Hey Karl Rove said “we’re an empire now,” so that’s an authoritative source even if Dubya did refer to him as “turd blossom.”

      And the USA hasn’t fallen yet since we still have out European colony. Getting there.

    4. Albe Vado

      I thought the same thing. It seemed like it could have been an interesting piece, but it almost immediately derails itself with flawed framing. He tries to wiggle out of it by claiming that ‘white’ doesn’t mean a race, it means… something vague. European civilization, I guess? Portuguese are white, apparently.

      I’m reminded of the critique of White Man’s Burden, where Kipling explicitly identifies empire as a racial and moral endeavor. The critique is essentially that Kipling was an idiot who didn’t see the massive profit motive. Empire does in fact have a color: green. No one would do it if it weren’t hugely profitable, at least for some people. The American melting pot has in fact been welcoming to anyone who wanted to take part in the game of imperial wealth extraction.

      He touches on the invisibility of empire, which is an interesting topic already covered at book length by much better writers.

  6. The Rev Kev

    ‘Katie Halper is a Jew For #CeasefireNow
    @kthalps
    No big deal, just Israel using a Palestinian as a human shield.’

    Nothing new here as the Israelis have been doing this for years when they do their raids in places like the West bank. Sometimes they will take a kid from one household and make him walk in front of those raiding soldiers. The only difference here is that this tactic is being filmed and so cannot be denied. Unless the Israelis say that yeah, he was totally a Hamas guy.

  8. YuShan

    ChatGPT:
    I have recently used it to get help with actual coding, not just for laughs to test it out but to really get stuff done. (Disclaimer: I’m not a super experienced programmer but no beginner either). Some answers that I couldn’t find by spending quite some time on Google were quickly answered by ChatGPT, including the exact code. Often it doesn’t work first time, then you tell ChatGPT it produces this or that error, or it fails in this and that condition, or the output isn’t exactly what I want, etc. Just tell that to ChatGPT and it modifies the code to deal with that.

    The key to success is to be specific what you want and what you don’t want the code to do, then it works quite well. But if ChatGPT fails more than 3 times, just give up, because then you have reached the limits of its knowledge. But you don’t lose much time by giving it a try. As a side effect, it’s making me quite lazy… ;)

    I have also used it to debug my own code if I don’t understand why it fails. ChatGPT told me what was wrong with it. And it is also great to generate some routine stuff that nevertheless would cost me time to implement… simply ask ChatGPT to do it.

    I can really see how this is a big threat to Google, because I have spent a lot less time recently to Google for solutions to programming problems, with ChatGPT becoming the first choice to find a quick answer. Because I can specifically ask about the problem I need to solve, rather than use Google to browse through other peoples similar but different questions.

    1. zagonostra

      I remember reading books on VB programming, then I used to google and copy and paste the code to my program. I haven’t tried ChatGPT yet, but based on your comment I will have to check it out…

      I see a time when people will have there own family ChatGPT, just like I have a family chat on Telegram that we use to keep in contact with geographically dispersed family. We used to talk on the phone a lot, now just text and occasional talk. With a “Family ChatGPT” you can just ask it how your family members are doing and what is new in their life. No need to actually interact with anyone.

      1. Mikel

        Wait a minute…I thought keeping in contact with a person actually meant having some kind of interaction. Like call and response.
        Is “keeping in contact” being redefined to?

    2. i just don't like the gravy

      Sooner or later there will be no programmers left to understand code, just stupid monkeys asking “AI” to do their job for them.

      Thankfully, climate catastrophe will destroy this vile joke long before we have to live in that pathetic future.

      1. Skip Intro

        And as the proportion of AI-generated code expands, it will be increasingly used to train AIs, which will collapse the system…

      2. digi_owl

        It already is. So much of the web is driven by code that exist as a stack of downloaded libraries glues together by code copied from some Q&A on Stackexchange. And if anything underlying that goes belly up, the people the “wrote” the code are like fish out of water.

        1. You're soaking in it!

          That’s ok; all of Corporate America’s finance and industry is running on thirty year old COBOL written for big iron. Got any of those programmers?

    3. Mark Gisleson

      I didn’t have to read the article to know that ChatGPT failed and it was obvious to me which sample was real. Using short samples, btw, makes it much harder to spot fakes (yes, that was the reporter trying to trick you into thinking ChatGPT was better than it was).

      People brought me their college essays thinking they wanted it to be polished and slick but writing style doesn’t get you into Harvard. A good story gets you into Harvard.

      What constitutes a good story? Ask Harvard. Colleges change the essay up all the time but they also tell you what they want. You just need to give them what they want in a way that subtly manipulates the committee into liking or admiring the student.

      It’s not journalism and it can’t appear to be marketing. A really good essay is, more than anything, a psyop. My clients didn’t come to me because they had perfect GPAs. They usually had additional barriers they faced and getting past those barriers almost always required the same trick: get the reader invested in the student before the reader got to the bad part. Getting the reader to like the student was the real job.

      ChatGPT is not likeable and never will be. It will improve to the point where it will run into the same problem animators have been dealing with: the closer animation gets to resembling real life, the more it freaks out viewers. Near-perfect is scary weird. Near-perfect is the robot that gets hit by a micro-meteor and develops a speech glitch and you know that before the movie is over that robot will go on a killing spree.

      ChatGPT will get good enough to pass for human. When I was writing essays and tons of resumes, I could and did fool people at parties into thinking I did the same work they did. That didn’t mean I could do their jobs, it just meant I could fake my way through a conversation at a party. Passing for human doesn’t make you a highly skilled human. Once ChatGPT/AI gets to that point, then I’ll start worrying about the next level after that.

      2. Mikel

        Insights from people in certain fields about what it can’t do are better left to themselves…in the sense of…let’s see if the algorithms can really figure it out.

    4. Enter Laughing

      The first few times I used ChatGPT it worked quite well, producing very acceptable copy that needed little to no revisions on my part.

      I tried it again a month or two later and the results were unusable. I figured that it was now including in its scanning a vast sea of article and documents it had churned out itself — eating it’s own tail, if you will — and the results are now getting worse with each successive generation of ChatGPT content dumped onto the Internet.

      Haven’t tried it since, which is a relief. It was making me lazy too.

        1. Mikel

          Is there also, in addition to the study, some relation to the copyright claims they now have to claim they aren’t violating?
          Lawsuits have been filed in recent months.

      2. lyman alpha blob

        This is exactly the problem I see with it. It can produce content, often with errors, way faster than human beings and at some point it starts eating its own tail as you put it. And being trained on the old, it doesn’t innovate or create anything new – it’s just one huge negative feedback loop churning out the same crap, but maybe with slightly different errors in each iteration.

        Might be OK for some really basic tasks, but not for anything that requires real creativity. I took a gander at some AI-generated George Carlin the other day – clearly a lot of work had gone into it, but it was a pale comparison to the real thing, complete with creepy looking animation..

    5. DavidZ

      I recently used https://www.perplexity.ai/ to get an answer that was more accurate than anything Google or DuckDuckGo could provide.

      I spent hours trying to look up Samsung’s tech specifications, user manual, even tried chatting and calling Samsung Tech Support and they couldn’t answer because the tech literature provided by Samsung was absolutely woefully skint.

    6. Jason Boxman

      It’s better for some languages than others. JavaScript is such a moving target, along with the whole browser DOM API, and so on, I’ve gotten some interesting answers where it uses a function name in my request as part of the solution when I was just guessing. I’ve found it works well with Python, which is hugely popular. It should work well I think with Golang as well, because it’s a very stable language with most stuff implemented using its standard libraries, not tons of modules.

      It can’t really architecture stuff, though. If you want to build something larger, you need to describe each function inputs and outputs, and glue them together yourself.

      What worries me more is, for Bing AI, you get text autocomplete. And I worry, like with spell check, I’d start to forget how to spell. Imagine forgetting how to type, because you can just hit Tab again and again. And eventually we all write the same sentences without variation.

      1. You're soaking in it!

        “When Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought — that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc — should be literally unthinkable”

    7. Skk

      I didn’t use Google, I used stackoverflow mostly. Interestingly, in 12/22 stackoverflow banned answers generated by LLMs because of the high rate of being incorrect.

      That year ago decision was temporary, I think it’s still in effect.

  9. Mikel

    “McDonald’s and Starbucks sink as anti-Israel boycott campaign makes headway” Defend Democracy

    This kind of thing hurts corporatist war-mongers more than the killing of hostages.

    1. The Rev Kev

      Seems that McDonalds and Starbucks have just had their Dylan Mulvaney moment – and with the same results.

      1. Carolinian

        Apparently though McDonald’s world profits are still up despite taking it on the chin in the ME. Which isn’t to say they won’t go the way of Bud Light eventually if they ignore this shot across the bow.

    2. Reply

      Not a patron anyway, so do I get credit or blame, as the case may be?
      Surely, some committee somewhere is weighing the evidence.

      1. Mikel

        I was suggesting that is what they really love $.
        However, to change a system, a bit to your point, the relationships between the masters of disasters have to be disrupted.

  10. FreeMarketApologist

    Re: Gods in the Machine: “we will see the emergence of sects devoted to the worship of artificial intelligence (AI).”

    Too late. Pretty much all of Silicon Valley is already there, with venture capital funding the costumes and decor. But, for those who want to justify their lives and actions based on magic tricks and unreliable translations of translations of oral history, go for it. Couldn’t be worse than what we’ve got.

    1. Martin Oline

      Douglas Preston reported in his book Talking To The Ground 1995 that an old Navajo medicine man told his granddaughter, perhaps 70 years ago, “the white man was going to create an image of himself and . . the image would turn and destroy the creator.” The granddaughter said she wished she had asked him more questions about this but she was very young at the time. She speculates but does not know what he meant.
      In a separate section a Navajo spiritual leader tells him “the Earth has said ‘Have patience, there is no way you can stop this turn, this cycle. The world is already unbalanced. It’s already on its way, going full momentum. And in this manner, when the world ends, you will eventually go in a peaceful manner. In a respectful manner. Because you human beings, you may be gone, but the Earth is always here. It will revive itself’ . . .”

  11. The Rev Kev

    ‘Historic Vids
    @historyinmemes
    Restored footage of the Tasmanian tiger, which was declared extinct in 1936.’

    It’s so sad watching that video clip and I have a copy of a longer version on my computer. The zoos were crap back then and you can see it was in a mesh cage with only a concrete floor. And it was the last tiger and would never know a partner or one like it. They were marsupials who carried their young in a pouch like kangaroos do and they were very remarkable animals. Here is the Wikipedia page on them-

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thylacine

    And here is a longer version of that video clip, also colourized-

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gt0X-27GXM (1:17 mins)

    After it died, its remains were lost for decades in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and were only rediscovered in 2022.

  12. TomDority

    Just an off the cuff remark.
    Why is all our foreign policy and war-making based on what some posed enemy is going to do -Like Russia is going to take over Europe and then the world… China has a plan to destroy America….. the Mexicans are going to overrun America…. So-and-so has plans to kill….. our best fortune tellers give us a clear vision of what we must fight against…. there is a monster in the closet so burn the house down.

    Since most politicians have no creativity or are bought.. and most news sources are designed to grab attention for profit … it’s all reduced to the most flashy, shiny or extreme – so you don’t hear about things which may be good
    Those pesky white supremacists and war chicken-hawks are at it again, trying like chicken little to warn us that the sky is falling and Ren and Stimpy striving for world domination … such entertainment and education about bigotry, idiocy and stupidity… it is unfortunate it costs so many lives but there is hope of human learning and progress

    1. NotTimothyGeithner

      It’s the apocryphal quote from Goering about a German and Russian farmer. If Americans grasped, we had no traditional foreign policy threats we would have a radically different defense posture.

      No one is going to die to set the Biden family up as eastern Europe fracking kingpins.

    2. foghorn longhorn

      Read simplicious’ article today, disturbing on so many levels and now you have to be a paid subscriber to read it all.

      1. Feral Finster

        I have long said that this was coming, and that Russian dithering was a serious miscalculation.

        The sociopaths running the West see humanitarianism and reasonableness as contemptible weakness. However, they respect and fear strength.

    3. Feral Finster

      “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”
      ― H.L. Mencken, In Defense of Women

  14. t

    Re animal sounds, most dogs are good at hearing the difference between real animal sounds and fake. The dogs in my house right now, including my own, react strongly to racoon dogs – which are canine but don’t sound anything like it – but are uninterested in a lot of soundtrack growling or barking that fools me. I watched an old horror anthology recently that had human cat screeching, I guess, as none of the cats or dogs batted an eye when the evil black cat was onscreen yowling.

  15. The Rev Kev

    “Earth’s Wobble Wreaks Havoc on Astronomers—And Astrologers, Too’

    Very much worth the read this article. I knew that the planet had a wobble but this article really goes into the how that has effected us. Never realized that the present Pole Star is only the latest one in a succession of stars as the wobble changes position of our viewed night sky.

    1. Bsn

      Magnetic North has moved hundreds of miles over the last handful of years. It was as far south as Sweden and is now quite close to the geographic North Pole. It’s got as many moves as a pole dancer.

    2. ex-PFC Chuck

      The precession of the axis is one of four perturbations of the Earth’s orientation to the sun that affect the amount of solar insolation, and therefore the planet’s climate. These were described in depth by Mark Bowen in his book Thin Ice: Unlocking the Secrets of Climate in the World’s Highest Mountains, published 18 years ago. They are:

      1. Earth’s orbit is an ellipse that varies in eccentricity because of the gravitational influence of other planets. The period of the variation is approximately 100,000 years. In the present epoch the orbit is just about as close to circular as it gets, and thus Earth receives about 7% more light than it does when the ellipse is most elongated.
      2. The period of a single traverse of the orbit is approximately 365.25 days – that is one calendar year. As seen from space above the North Pole, the Earth’s solstices and equinoxes precess counterclockwise around the orbit and vary the relative distances between the Earth and the Sun during the seasons. The period of this precession is about 22,000 years. In the northern hemisphere at the present time the Earth is closer to the Sun during the winter than during the summer.
      3. The Earth’s axis of rotation is tilted at an average of approximately 23.5 degrees from being perpendicular to a line between the centers of the Earth and the Sun when one pole is pointing directly at the Sun and the other directly away from it. This axis tilt drives the Earth’s annual seasons as it traverses its orbit. As seen from space above the North Pole, the Earth’s axis precesses over a period of approximately 26,000 years. This has the affect of causing the positions of astronomical bodies relative to the time of day or night. For example 13,000 years from now Polaris (aka the North Star) will be directly overhead at the 45th north parallel at some time of the day or night.
      4. The obliquity of the Earth’s axis precesses over a period of approximately 41,000 years, during which it its minimum tilt is about 22 degrees and its maximum is about 25 degrees.

      Until recently in geologic time these, together with asteroids and volcanoes, have been the major drivers of variations in the Earth’s climate.

  16. Carolinian

    Re animal foley in documentaries–interesting but also a bit naive.

    The use of Foley sound in wildlife documentaries is far more subtle, of course, but it still has the potential to affect how we perceive certain species. And it is all the more powerful because it often flies below the radar of our conscious attention.

    Meanwhile as we bulk consumers of nature shows know the source of BBC doc popularity is all about narrative and telling a story. And so they will shy away from the gory details after the lions take down an antelope or, quite often, reward our suspenseful trepidation by showing the victim ultimately getting away. There’s nothing wrong with this IMO and the often amazing technical achievement of the videographers certainly beats the old school method of nature education–zoos. Not that I don’t also love the latter while feeling sorry for the species–wild cats in particular–who obviously hate their cages.

  17. antidlc

    https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/oakland-schools-allow-covid-positive-students-to-attend-class/
    Oakland schools allow COVID-positive students to attend class

    In a turnaround from 2020’s strict stay-at-home protocols, students can now go to class even if they test positive for the virus, according to a message from the OUSD COVID Response Team.

    COVID-positive students no longer have to stay home, as long as they do not have any symptoms, according to district officials. Asymptomatic, COVID-positive students should wear a mask at school while indoors, the response team added.

      1. antidlc

        I keep hoping someone wakes me up and this is all a bad dream.

        Not just COVID — genocide, health care, unending wars, homelessness, poverty, corporate greed…

  22. jefemt

    Ownership of land. This headline really needs to be adjusted to say: PRIVATE ownership. The collective we owns some real estate! From a Congressional report (no doubt requested by wingnut UT and NV reps who wantsum)

    The federal government owns roughly 640 million acres, about 28% of the 2.27 billion acres of
    land in the United States.
    Four major federal land management agencies administer 606.5 million
    acres of this land (as of September 30, 2018). They are the Bureau of Land Management (BLM),
    Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), and National Park Service (NPS) in the Department of the
    Interior (DOI) and the Forest Service (FS) in the Department of Agriculture. A fifth agency, the
    Department of Defense (excluding the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers), administers 8.8 million
    acres in the United States (as of September 30, 2017), consisting of military bases, training
    ranges, and more. Together, the five agencies manage about 615.3 million acres, or 27% of the
    U.S. land base. Many other agencies administer the remaining federal acreage.

    The BLM manages 244.4 million acres;
    the FS manages 192.9
    million acres under similar multiple-use, sustained-yield mandates that support a variety of
    activities and programs;
    The FWS manages 89.2 million acres of the U.S. total, primarily to
    conserve and protect animals and plants. In FY2018, the NPS managed 79.9 million acres in 417 diverse units to conserve lands and resources and make them available for public use.
    The 8.8 million acres of DOD lands are managed primarily for military training and testing.
    The amount and percentage of federally owned land in each state vary widely, ranging from 0.3%
    of land (in Connecticut and Iowa) to 80.1% of land (in Nevada). However, federal land ownership
    is concentrated in Alaska (60.9%) and 11 coterminous western states (45.9%), in contrast with lands in the other states (4.1%). This western concentration has contributed to a higher degree of
    controversy over federal land ownership and use in that part of the country.

    28 pages. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R42346

  23. IM Doc

    Regarding the above Kevin Bass tweet regarding the testimony of Dr. Birx in a Congressional committee some months ago.

    She basically admitted that the government officials “hoped” the vaccines worked.

    I think it is fairly important to ponder the subsequent paths of both Kevin Bass and Dr. Birx.

    What I am saying about Kevin Bass is just what I have been able to ascertain in brief discussions online. He is a medical student in Texas. His big splash was about 18 months ago when he wrote a piece in a national publication about the apparent and obvious fact that despite all being said by our federal officials, the vaccines had indeed not shown to be sterilizing and accordingly there was no valid scientific reason for a mandate. He may have gone on to say much more on his twitter feed. The few I have seen do not hesitate to name names and show receipts. I will say again, this is medicine at its best – the ability to discuss out in the open everyone’s ideas, to come up with a better way forward. In my youth, vigorous and at times belligerent discussion was the norm. And we were all better for it – inside and outside the profession.

    My understanding, and again I do not have solid facts, but seems to be based on tweets in his own hand – that he has been dismissed from medical school because of his questioning behavior. ( As an aside, I am old enough to know that there may be other issues involved – but if this is the case – they have certainly not been made public ). It appears to clearly be punishment for bringing up hard questions and concerns.

    Meanwhile, Dr. Birx, who “hoped” that the vaccines would work among many other missteps, is now the CEO of a pharma company making the big bucks.

    I do not have to look long at all for reasons why huge numbers of my patients are now discouraging their kids and family members from getting any vaccines. The obvious loss of trust is so prevalent and so severe now that I am daily barraged multiple times with long diatribes about the entire system.

    I keep telling myself that this is what change looks like. I have known for many years that this was coming sooner or later. There are so many many terminal issues with our entire system that it had to fall apart one day. It is now dawning on increasing numbers of Americans that “that day” is finally arriving.

    One can only hope it is not replaced with something worse. I give those odds about 20 to 1.

    1. zagonostra

      I keep telling myself that this is what change looks like. I have known for many years that this was coming sooner or later

      Reminds of the oysters in Alice in Wonderland

      It seems a shame,’ the Walrus said,
      To play them such a trick,
      After we’ve brought them out so far,
      And made them trot so quick!’
      The Carpenter said nothing but
      The butter’s spread too thick!’

      I weep for you,’ the Walrus said:
      I deeply sympathize.’
      With sobs and tears he sorted out
      Those of the largest size,
      Holding his pocket-handkerchief
      Before his streaming eyes.

      O Oysters,’ said the Carpenter,
      You’ve had a pleasant run!
      Shall we be trotting home again?’
      But answer came there none —
      And this was scarcely odd, because
      They’d eaten every one.”

    2. Feral Finster

      Usually they find some other pretext when dismissing someone for wrongthink or Questioning The Authorities.or who point out that the Emperor is buck naked.

      Someone digs up an old tweet sent under a long-discarded Twitter moniker which is deemed to be “problematic” or something. But those who are part of the inner circle can do no wrong.

  24. Tom Stone

    Is there any truth to the rumors that Mandy Cohen and Lloyd Austin have pent the last three weeks shacked up at Mar- A -Lago?

    1. Bsn

      Naw, my understanding is that he’s been in the hospital as they remove shrapnel from his ego and were having trouble removing his head from his …. ahem, tail.

    2. ex-PFC Chuck

      There have been a few tweets suggesting he was killed in Ukraine when he was there for one of those strategy meetings around Christmas time that was hit with Russian missiles. However I haven’t seen anything else that comes close to confirming this.

  26. Tom Stone

    Math is HARD, but I’ve been wondering about the effect of Long Covid on public sentiment as the year progresses.
    2,000,000 new cases of Covid per day with a predicted total of 100,000,000 by the end of February with 10% of those developing Long Covid…
    10,000,000 newly disabled Americans with time for at least one more wave before the Elections.
    Happily none of these people are critical to the functioning of Society.
    Schoolchildren, teachers, retail workers, airline pilots, bus drivers and so on, no one important.
    And of course none of the sailors on board the supercarriers will catch Covid or get Long Covid.
    Nope, none of the flight crews that maintain the ships or aircraft, none of the pilots and ABSOLUTELY none of the officers will experience brain fog or any of the other symptoms of Long Covid.
    It’s ony the ‘Flu after all.
    Ask Mandy or Bonnie or Genocide Joe, as soon as everyone gets back to the office everything will be A-OK.

      1. petal

        I listened to the last couple days of football games on the radio, and it seemed like 90% of the ads were Pfizer for their RSV vaccine and Paxlovid. It was incessant. Heavily pushing RSV and Covid.

        1. Randall Flagg

          I noticed that too, it seemed at times at least two, and at times three quick ads per break.
          Also the ads since the beginning have been “sponsored” by Pfizer. As someone said, this shields them from having to list or announce the side effects.

          1. wilroncanada

            Petal and Randall
            I haven’t counted the ads or the ad minutes. Some of the advertising may be altered for Canada, but to me the overwhelming majority of ads on all sports venues is for sports betting….a different kind of opiate of the people.

    3. Samuel Conner

      I suspect that the Navy physicians who evaluate whether pilots are in condition fit to fly will at some point notice flight-worthiness consequences of COVID sequelae. The pilots are too costly to train, and the aircraft too valuable, to allow impaired pilots into the air.

      So readiness may decline. That will get someone’s attention, I feel confident. Whether it leads to better public health practices within the Navy or the wider military, or in society at large, is less certain.

  27. Mikel

    “YouTube Begins New Wave of Slowdowns For Users With Ad Blockers Enabled” 9to5Google

    Hmmm…if only there was a way to control content being viewed over a moniter, coming from a server or some other location and skip commericals….hmmmm

    1. Jason Boxman

      Thousands of Persons, Not Seasonally Adjusted

      While there’s a notable increase, with regards to capitalism itself, this isn’t nearly enough disability to halt the system as it lumbers ever on, grinding up the working class to dust. I think we’ve got 5-10 years to go before there’s sufficient population disability before any possible reckoning might occur, and who knows what that might be. Which isn’t to say we won’t have an ongoing labor shortage, and importing people that also have COVID-damage won’t ameliorate this. It’ll be persistent. So too will the great masses of children being progressively sickened year in and year out not be sufficient to wright the labor shortage. Eventually, the bill comes due. But not soon, I think.

  30. Mikel

    Always remember, the economic narrative giveth and it taketh away:

    “No rates cuts in 2024? Why investors should think about the ‘unthinkable’ ”
    Marketwatch…today

  31. Mikel

    “Half of Michigan voters don’t know who controls U.S. House, poll shows” Detroit News

    I actually understand their confusion despite the letter by a representative’s name. It’s been that way for many administrations.

  35. ChrisRUEcon

    #Biden

    … spotted in the wild with RapRock™

    What was all that talk late last year about Obama coming in later in the campaign?! As if Biden were going to save the best for last? Well, I’m not sure if January for a November election qualifies as “late”, but this appeared on my *cough* *cough* social network *cough* feed last night (via facebook.com).

    TeamDem: #RonWeasleyCanWePanicNow

    1. ambrit

      Gasp! Asmodeus and Belzebub at the same time! Put Hilz in there riding upon a Seven Headed Beast, and it will be a Sign!

  36. Corky

    Isn’t that Kevin Bass dude one of those mask phobic herd immunity “we want them infected” folks?

  37. lyman alpha blob

    RE: WHO’S FOR HOMER

    Why does John Helmer hate Robin Lane Fox so much? For crying out loud, I really have no idea what Helmer’s on about here. First of all, he seems to be interpreting an ancient epic not just through a modern lens, but in comparison to the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza. I really don’t believe Homer had much of an opinion on those goings-on…

    And then Helmer claims that Fox really believes the Trojan war was started over a rape –

    “The comprehensiveness of Fox’s research is missing one professional discipline – that’s military science. Why exactly the Trojan war was fought in the first place between the Greeks and Trojans … is missing from Fox’s reconstruction entirely. This frees him to judge Homer’s version of the casus belli to have been the elopement of Helen from the Greek Prince Menelaus’s bed to Paris’s bed inside the Trojan battlements…”

    I doubt there is a single classicist alive who believes that, much less Robin Lane Fox. When I was taught Homer decades ago, my professors considered the rape of Helen to be poetic license, with the real reason being the same one all wars are fought over – control of scarce resources.

    Helmer may think the Iliad is just a dusty old glorification of war favored by the warmongers trained in elite British private schools, but there is a decent case to be made that it can be read as an anti-war epic, something Caroline Alexander argued several years ago in her take on the issue, The War That Killed Achilles.

    Maybe Helmer should stick to geopolitics and leave the classics to the classicists if he’s going to have such an uninformed reaction. But then again, I likely wouldn’t have heard of this book without Helmer’s piece, and now I’m going to read it, right after I finish up with Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Iliad that came out last year.

  38. Willow

    >Douglas Macgregor: If Israel takes the Philadelphia corridor, there will be war with Egypt.

    Macgregor explains in his recent Napolitano talk in more detail that the risk of Israel taking the Philadelphia corridor is first a coup in Egypt and then war with Israel.

    >Reader Alan Roxdale speculated that Israel’s reason for this move would be to displace Gazans into Egypt.

    This doesn’t make sense. Philadelphia corridor is a small portion of the Israel Gaza border with Egypt. If purpose of capturing the Philadelphia corridor is to allow Israel to exit Gaza population to Egypt then Israel can already do this with the rest of the border. Purpose of capturing the Philadelphia corridor is to stop aid (humanitarian and smuggled arms and fuel) getting into Gaza outside Israel’s control. You can’t lay siege and starve out Gazan population if you don’t have complete control of the perimeter.

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