TRAINING FOR WINTER WAR: Someone in Michigan likes the chilling effects of black and white photography. Soldiers from the Wisconsin Army National Guard fire a M119 105mm howitzer while training at Camp Grayling, Michigan. Photo taken Jan. 23, 2023. HISTORICAL CONTEXT FOR FIGHTING IN THE SNOW: Heavy anti-aircraft gun position during the Battle of the Bulge.
Archive for 2023
January 26, 2023
READER FAVORITE: Coofandy Men’s Hawaiian Floral Shirts. #CommissionEarned
YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE UTTERLY IGNORANT TO SUPPORT GUN CONTROL, BUT — OH, WHO AM I KIDDING, YES YOU DO: After Two Mass Shootings, California Rep. Judy Chu Demands Gun Control Laws That Are Already On the Books.
WAR MATERIAL STOCKPILES: They’re vital.
No matter the outcome on the battlefield, the Ukraine War already has a clear winner: that small band of long-range planners, logisticians and military analysts who have insisted “cutting corners in maintaining war reserve stocks was a false economy…”
Read the entire essay.
IT’S LESS THAT WE SPEND TOO LITTLE AND MORE THAT WE DON’T SPEND WELL: The U.S. Military Is In Decline. Cutting Defense Spending Would Be A Disaster.
APOLOGIZING ISN’T REALLY IN THE SPIRIT OF THE RAZZIES: Razzie Awards Apologizes For Nominating a 12-Year-Old Girl for ‘Worst Actress.’
THE COUNTRY IS IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Controversial expert is appointed to Biden food panel after claiming that obesity CAN’T be treated with exercise and good diet because it’s genetic – will now tell Americans what to eat. “Dr Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity medicine physician at Mass General Health in Boston, was appointed to the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, which will develop new recommended eating habits for Americans over the coming years.”
IT’S COME TO THIS: Member of Congress reads AI-generated speech on House floor.
When U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss decided to deliver a speech on a bill that would create a U.S.-Israel artificial intelligence center, he opted to let the AI do the talking.
The brief two-paragragh speech read by the Massachusetts Democrat on the floor of the U.S. House on Wednesday was generated by the online AI chatbot ChatGPT. His staff said they believe it’s the first time an AI-written speech was read in Congress.
Auchincloss said he prompted the system in part to “write 100 words to deliver on the floor of the House of Representatives” about the legislation. Auchincloss said he had to refine the prompt several times to produce the text he ultimately read.
The bill, which Auchincloss is refiling, would establish a joint U.S.-Israel AI Center in the United States to serve as a hub for AI research and development in the public, private and education sectors.
Auchincloss said part of the decision to read a ChatGPT-generated text was to help spur debate on AI and the challenges and opportunities created by it. He said he doesn’t want to see a repeat of the advent of social media, which started small and ballooned faster than Congress could react.
To be fair, ChatGPT could be an upgrade to many in DC: This is fine: Biden judicial nominee can’t answer Sen. Kennedy’s questions about the Constitution.
USE IT OR LOSE IT: Research Reveals That Early Retirement Can Accelerate Cognitive Decline.
TO BE FAIR, HE SAYS A LOT OF STUPID STUFF: Biden Said Sending Tanks to Ukraine Would Start World War III.
MUSIC HATH CHARMS TO SOOTHE: Study shows that listening to music during stressful times can boost your mood and reduce stress.
Email Shows Bucks County School Closures Weren’t Just Bad For Kids, They Were Illegal.
Emails uncovered by concerned parents in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, home of the state’s third-largest school district, reveal district leaders knew they were violating state law when they locked students out of the classroom after the 2019-2020 academic year. Years later, it’s finally coming to light.
In July 2020, an email from then-Central Bucks Superintendent John Kopicki acknowledged the legal limits to online instruction for the upcoming school year.
“Hybrid options and staggered schedule options are NOT legal as of today, absent a waiver or legislative change,” the email read. No waiver from the state house ever came, but the schools shut down anyway.
Apparently, they cared about law almost as much as they cared about the kids.
HOW ABOUT NO? “Mutating” the Covid virus to produce new strains. “Jordon Trishton Walker, Pfizer Director of Research and Development, Strategic Operations – mRNA Scientific Planner: ‘One of the things we’re exploring is like, why don’t we just mutate it [COVID] ourselves so we could create — preemptively develop new vaccines, right? So, we have to do that. If we’re gonna do that though, there’s a risk of like, as you could imagine — no one wants to be having a pharma company mutating f**king viruses.'”
Plus: “Don’t tell anyone. Promise you won’t tell anyone. The way it [the experiment] would work is that we put the virus in monkeys, and we successively cause them to keep infecting each other, and we collect serial samples from them. . . . You have to be very controlled to make sure that this virus [COVID] that you mutate doesn’t create something that just goes everywhere. Which, I suspect, is the way that the virus started in Wuhan, to be honest. It makes no sense that this virus popped out of nowhere. It’s bullsh*t.”
UPDATE: Some people in the comments are skeptical, saying this seems too good to be true and wondering if Project Veritas was scammed here. I certainly can’t know, but given the drunken admissions PV has gotten in the past. . . . I’m sure we’ll find out.
FROM THE HOME OFFICE AT CYBERDYNE SYSTEMS, THE TOP TEN REASONS WHY SKYNET SMILES: BuzzFeed to Use ChatGPT Creator OpenAI to Help Create Some of Its Content.
BuzzFeed Inc. said it would rely on ChatGPT creator OpenAI to enhance its quizzes and personalize some content for its audiences, becoming the latest digital publisher to embrace artificial intelligence.
In a memo to staff sent Thursday morning, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Chief Executive Jonah Peretti said he intends for AI to play a larger role in the company’s editorial and business operations this year.
In one instance, the company said new AI-powered quizzes would produce individual results.
For example, a quiz to create a personal romantic comedy movie pitch might ask questions like, “Pick a trope for your rom-com,” and “Tell us an endearing flaw you have.” The quiz would produce a unique, shareable write-up based on the individual’s responses, BuzzFeed said.
Mr. Peretti expects AI to assist the creative process and enhance the company’s content, while humans play the role of providing ideas, “cultural currency,” and “inspired prompts,” he wrote in his memo. In 15 years, he wrote, he expects AI and data to help “create, personalize, and animate the content itself,” rather than just curate existing content.
How would anyone know the difference between a human-written and a ChatGPT-written BuzzFeed article?
I BLAME MEDIA-INDUCED STRESS: Nearly 1 in 5 Americans use a medication to help them sleep.
SOME SOLID PICKS HERE: McCarthy Reveals Who Will Be Investigating Biden’s Weaponization of the Federal Government.
HAHA, THEY’RE TOO WOKE TO WAKE UP: British ‘single-payer’ health care program is cratering. That should be a wake-up call for US liberals.
INSULT TO INJURY: Soldiers Fired For Refusing Covid Vaccine Forced To Pay Back Recruitment Bonuses.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Meanwhile we’re having recruiting shortfalls now. This won’t help. It’s almost like they want to break the system.
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: There’s Nothing Beyond Meat: Plant-Based ‘Meat’ Sales Take a Serious Pruning. “Fake cattle, it seems, graze in the Uncanny Valley.”
LIGHTNING DEAL: YTD Mens Long/Short Sleeve Henley Shirts. #CommissionEarned
BUY AMERICAN: European Food Will Now Contain Crickets.
If you’ve not yet consumed crickets, you may soon — particularly if you’re a partaker of European fare.
The European Union is putting the “pow” in “powder.” It’s giving eaters an explosion of insect compliments of a pinch of arthropod. From now on, those overseas will be bound to eat ground cousins of grasshoppers.
Following a three-year review, Implementing Regulation (EU) 2017/2470 went into effect Tuesday. It allows food producers to put cricket powder in flour-based products.
Previously: “The plan to convert us all to insect-eaters is real.”
READER FAVORITE: krosa -10℉ Winter Gloves Men and Women. #CommissionEarned
A VERY PUBLIC EDUCATION: Parents feel ‘villainized’ by teachers who think they know best. “Jessica Bradshaw’s daughter — now a son — was diagnosed as on the autism spectrum, as well as with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, PTSD and anxiety, the California mother told Baker. Her teenager ‘had struggled with loneliness during the pandemic’ and ‘repeatedly changed his name and sexual orientation.’ School officials had put her child ‘on a path the school wasn’t qualified to oversee,’ rather than let the family decide what was best, Bradshaw said. She resents being made to feel like a bad parent.”
Plus: “As several autism experts have explained to me, those on the spectrum tend to fixate, and when a contagious idea is introduced to them — such as the notion that they might be a ‘girl in a boy’s body’ — they are particularly susceptible to it.”
WHY DOES CREIGHTON UNIVERSITY HATE THE CONSTITUTION? Nebraska university refuses to lift ban on pro-Second Amendment posters. “Creighton University will not remove its ban on pro-Second Amendment posters despite a student libertarian group fighting over the last several months to overturn the policy on First Amendment grounds. . . . Additionally, the university informed then-chapter leader Mason Wood that he had to fill out paperwork to host a distinct ‘Controversial Event’ when seeking to distribute a petition to end the university’s campus ban on images of defensive weapons.”
Creighton’s president, Rev. Daniel S. Hendrickson, SJ, PhD, needs to learn a bit more about America.