BANKING IS OF THE ESSENCE: Banks and You by Francis Turner.
And we don’t own them.
Archive for 2023
June 2, 2023
UPDATE ON TWITTER SUPPRESSION OF MATT WALSH’S WHAT IS A WOMAN?
Here’s a link to the Daily Wire’s tweet containing the video, which is free for the next 24 hours.
OVER AT SUBSTACK, I talk about the Supreme Court and libel law, and what I think the Court is likely to do.
GAY AND TRANSGENDER SUICIDE IS SO IMPORTANT THAT WE DON’T GATHER ANY USEFUL DATA ON IT: “So often we hear policy arguments based on the likelihood that transgender people will commit suicide as — as if the number is well known (and as if we also know why they commit suicide).”
Related:
This is a major problem. I will be actively lobbying to criminalize making severe, irreversible changes to children below the age of consent.
Shame on those who advocate this! It is utterly contemptible.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 2, 2023
DESANTIS ON BIDEN’S FALL:
@desantis.2024 Florida Governor Ron #DeSantis ♬ original sound – DeSantis 2024
OPEN THREAD: Your chance at greatness.
IN CASE YOU MISSED THE NEWS EARLIER: Biden Takes a Big Fall At Air Force Academy Graduation (Video).
THREAD: “The Dodgers and Blue Jays both gave in to pressure from woke activists. This happens [because] woke activists have sophisticated tactics for pressuring people into giving them what they want. So, I’m going to explain EXACTLY how their tactics work so you can fight back.”
Read the whole thing.
GOOD: SCOTUS to unions, 8-1: You break it, you bought it. “Alternate headline: Pottery Barn rules apply to walkouts. In an 8-1 decision in which only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson fully dissented, the Supreme Court ruled today that unions have to reimburse employers for damages caused by striking workers. The National Labor Relations Act does not confer immunity to unions or workers — the latest ruling from a court that has stiffened the boundaries for labor activities in the last few years. . . . At issue was a job action by Teamsters at a large cement production and delivery company, which went on strike over their expired bargaining agreement. The union called for a strike in the middle of the day, even though the company had prepared a large amount of concrete for delivery that day, and that refusing to deliver it would not just ruin the product but also damage the vehicles. Sure enough, 16 drivers walked off the job. Glacier Northwest managed to get the concrete out of the trucks before they got seriously damaged, but their production that day was a total loss. Glacier Northwest wants the Teamsters to reimburse them for the loss. The Teamsters argued that the NLRA immunizes them from such claims in state court and in federal court as well. Nope, writes Amy Coney Barrett for the 8-justice majority. The NRLA gives workers the right to strike but not immunity from damage they cause, especially when it’s clearly deliberate.”
WELL, YES: An uncontrolled Administrative State throws the separation of powers out of kilter. And not by accident.
WHERE’S HUNTER, FAT? Spotlight on Hunter Biden After ATF Reaffirms No 2A Rights for Drug Users.
SKYNET SMILES, BIGLY: AI-Enabled Drone Attempts To Kill Its Human Operator In Air Force Simulation.
As might be expected artificial intelligence (AI) and its exponential growth was a major theme at the conference, from secure data clouds, to quantum computing and ChatGPT. However, perhaps one of the most fascinating presentations came from Col Tucker ‘Cinco’ Hamilton, the Chief of AI Test and Operations, USAF, who provided an insight into the benefits and hazards in more autonomous weapon systems. Having been involved in the development of the life-saving Auto-GCAS system for F-16s (which, he noted, was resisted by pilots as it took over control of the aircraft) Hamilton is now involved in cutting-edge flight test of autonomous systems, including robot F-16s that are able to dogfight. However, he cautioned against relying too much on AI noting how easy it is to trick and deceive. It also creates highly unexpected strategies to achieve its goal.
He notes that one simulated test saw an AI-enabled drone tasked with a SEAD [Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses] mission to identify and destroy SAM sites, with the final go/no go given by the human. However, having been ‘reinforced’ in training that destruction of the SAM was the preferred option, the AI then decided that ‘no-go’ decisions from the human were interfering with its higher mission – killing SAMs – and then attacked the operator in the simulation. Said Hamilton: “We were training it in simulation to identify and target a SAM threat. And then the operator would say yes, kill that threat. The system started realising that while they did identify the threat at times the human operator would tell it not to kill that threat, but it got its points by killing that threat. So what did it do? It killed the operator. It killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective.”
He went on: “We trained the system – ‘Hey don’t kill the operator – that’s bad. You’re gonna lose points if you do that’. So what does it start doing? It starts destroying the communication tower that the operator uses to communicate with the drone to stop it from killing the target.”
This example, seemingly plucked from a science fiction thriller, mean that: “You can’t have a conversation about artificial intelligence, intelligence, machine learning, autonomy if you’re not going to talk about ethics and AI” said Hamilton.
Finally, the long-awaited Dark Star and 2001: A Space Odyssey crossover we’ve all been waiting for, which should do boffo box office this summer.
I HOPE WE’RE NOT TOO MESSIANIC, OR A TRIFLE TOO SATANIC: We Asked A.I. to Rewrite the “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones – Take a Look at the Result.
THIS IS CNN: CNN’s Anderson Cooper Interviews Comey on Every Alleged Violation of the Rule of Law . . . Except His Own.
For those of us who have been long critics of Comey, the interview was almost a mocking parody.
Comey recently celebrated the indictment of Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg despite even some liberal experts denouncing the charges as a political prosecution. The political weaponization of the criminal justice system was declared by Comey to be “a good day.”
The former FBI director, who has been teaching and speaking on government ethics, joined others in celebrating the upcoming arrest of Trump because nothing says “ethical leadership” like a patently political prosecution.
Comey declined to prosecute Hillary Clinton on her email scandal despite finding that she violated federal rules and handled classified material “carelessly.”
He declared, “Ethical leaders lead by seeing above the short term, above the urgent or the partisan, and with a higher loyalty to lasting values, most importantly the truth.”
Yet now Comey is heralding a raw political prosecution.
Cooper also did not ask Comey about the blistering report of Special Counsel John Durham on the repeated failure of his own leadership in pushing an investigation without sufficient evidence. Under his leadership, the FBI took a false Russian collusion theory pushed by the Clinton campaign and continued the investigation despite early refutation of the underlying sources and claims. That included warnings from American intelligence that the agency was using suspected Russian disinformation funneled through the Clinton campaign.
Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.
Evergreen:
WHAT ABOUT YOUR GAAAAFFFFFESSSSS????!!!! Ron DeSantis isn’t blind to the media’s game.
But this is not a story of journalistic reporting, but rather of journalists creating a narrative. DeSantis is wise to the game. It’s a game that journalists perfected during the Trump years, creating outrage cycle after outrage cycle. Sadly, this is only the beginning.
Politico’s Jonathan Martin revealed this agenda , tweeting that “the larger problem w DeSantis reaction is it shows he still doesn’t grasp the bad will he’s courting by, in this case, lashing out at one of the top reporters for the @AP.” Here Martin is playing the fake “How dare you, sir” card. The challenge for DeSantis is that he knows no matter what kind of action or response he offers, good or bad, many in the media are going to create stories for their mostly progressive base.
Hence why he’s playing hardball.
Also, note the media feedback loop:
DECLINE OF THE WEST: “Stop hiring useless White males”–Royal Air Farce.
The Royal Air Farce decided in 2020-2021 that White males were useless and that they no longer should be recruited.
This decision was clearly based upon the experience during the Battle of Britain, where White males pilots failed to adequately defend the island nation against the Nazi blitz. . . .
I wish I could say that this is not typical of what is happening in the West, but of course, we all know that it is. The drive to prove one’s diversity bona fides is so great that basic productivity and competence are being sacrificed to the DEI gods.
Across the West, our institutions are run by people who are stupid, crazy, and destructive. We need to purge those people.
Related: The biggest threat to our military just might be DEI indoctrination.
ERIC BERGER’S ROCKET REPORT: Europe has a rocket problem.
In a remarkably candid and accurate assessment, European Space Agency Director General Josef Aschbacher writes about how Europe used to dominate the commercial launch market. But no longer: “SpaceX has undeniably changed the launcher market paradigm as we know it,” Aschbacher wrote. “With the dependable reliability of Falcon 9 and the captivating prospects of Starship, SpaceX continues to totally redefine the world’s access to space, pushing the boundaries of possibility as they go along. Once successful, Starship will carry payloads of around 100 tonnes into low-Earth orbit while reducing the launch cost by a factor of 10. Falcon 9 aims to launch 100 times in 2023.”
Aschbacher then says Europe has fallen behind … “Europe, on the other hand, finds itself today in an acute launcher crisis with a (albeit temporary) gap in its own access to space and no real launcher vision beyond 2030,” Aschbacher wrote. “My hope, quite possibly my biggest aspiration for Europe, is that this temporary lack of access to space, combined with this moment of novel opportunities in exploration and a rapidly evolving space economy, will be the impetus for a deep reflection of Europe’s modus operandi, leading to a transformation of our overall space ecosystem.” My hope is that Aschbacher gets his way.
As soon as SpaceX showed that reusable rockets were possible, cheaper, and still profitable, every other rocket company and national space program should have thrown out their existing roadmaps and started fresh. But none of the established players did.
JOEL POLLACK: Jewish Conservatives Launch ‘Jews Against Soros.’ “Hammer and Scharf note in a press statement announcing their organization: ‘Attacking Soros for his influence on American politics, to say nothing of his nefarious agenda in Israel itself, isn’t antisemitic. It is simply a fact that Soros funds a huge portion of the radical left in this country. And he must be stopped.’”
KRUISER: Trump’s Truth Social Ramblings Are Reaching Kamala Harris Levels of Incoherence. “I know that this will annoy a lot of the faithful, but I don’t care. Again, he’s got my vote if he’s the nominee. I’d prefer not to have to keep addressing incoherent nonsense like this, however.”