Author Archive: Stephen Green

THERE’S JUST NO PLEASING SOME PEOPLE:

Especially this guy:

NIFTY: From folding boxes to fixing vacuums, GEN-1 robotics model hits 99% reliability.

Robotic machine-learning company Generalist has announced GEN-1, a new physical AI system that it says “crosses into production-level success rates” on “a broad range of physical skills” that used to require the dexterity and muscle memory of human hands. Generalist is also touting the new model’s ability to respond to disruptions by improvising new moves and “connect[ing] ideas from different places in order to solve new problems.”

GEN-1 builds on Generalist’s previous GEN-0 model, which the company touted in November as a proof of concept for the applicability of scaling laws in robotics training, showing how more pre-training data and compute time improve post-training performance. But while large language models have been able to effectively process trillions of words collectively written on the Internet as part of their training, robotic models don’t have a similar, readily accessible source of quality data about how humans manipulate objects.

To help solve this problem, Generalist has relied on “data hands,” a set of wearable pincers that capture micro-movements and visual information as humans perform manual tasks. Generalist now claims it has collected over half a million hours and “petabytes of physical interaction data” to help train its physical model.

This is important because replicating what the human hand can do — from wielding a hammer to separating an egg — is extremely difficult. Particularly at scale and affordability, which is exactly what Tesla wants to do with Optimus.

PERSPECTIVE:

THEY TOLD ME THE REPLACEMENT THEORY WAS JUST RIGHT-WING PARANOIA:

Hard to dispute this from the replies: “Oh, so cousin marriage is ok, but white people having kids with white people is not. Got ya. They want everyone to be clinically retarded.”

The Danes could use that Viking spirit again.

IT’S JUST CATCHING UP TO NATO’S SUPPORT FOR THE US: Republicans’ Support for NATO Falls Sharply.

Thirty-eight percent of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents say the U.S. benefits at least somewhat from NATO, down from 49% last year.

At the same time, 60% now say the U.S. benefits not too much or not at all from the alliance, marking the first time a majority of Republicans have expressed that view.

The survey was conducted in late March, shortly before President Donald Trump said he was strongly considering withdrawing the U.S. from NATO.

Overall, 59% of Americans say the U.S. benefits from NATO membership, with support driven largely by Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents.

Democrats support NATO more than they did during the ’80s because the alliance — or at least the Western European members — is almost as anti-American as they are.

AN IMPORTANT REMINDER FROM DATA R:

Takeaway line: “You cannot describe the actual mechanism through which J6 would have actually resulted in a coup or insurrection, because there was no planning at all involved. Unlike in actual color revolutions.”

TO ASK THE QUESTION IS TO ANSWER IT: Why is it That So Little of the ‘Science’ Around ‘Gun Violence’ Can be Replicated? “Last week, NRA-ILA pointed to new research showing that the social ‘sciences’ exhibit woeful, and increasing, political bias. Compounding this problem, this week, a large team of researchers published another study showing that roughly half of social ‘science’ research can’t be replicated. Replication is vital to determining whether a study’s conclusions are in fact valid.”

Or to put a finer point on it, whether the researchers did anything approximating science.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Gavin Newsom’s Wife Is a Real Piece of Work Also Plus Maybe a Witch. “Oh, where to begin with this one. If California Governor Gavin Newsom and his wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom were starring in a reality television show, an apt title for it would be, The Worst White People in America. You could actually rotate quite a cast of pasty, privileged Democrats through various episodes, but California’s first fascist family would always be the most awful of the bunch.”

SAD: Young and glum in the Anglosphere.

No English-speaking country ranked among the world’s 10 happiest nations. New Zealand placed 11th and Australia 15th, while the US ranked 23rd, between Saudi Arabia (22nd) and Poland (24th).

Happiness scores are up in most countries around the globe — except for the Anglosphere, where young people are distinctly less chipper, write Howe and Ford.

In other surveys, young Anglospherians also report “lower life satisfaction and growing distrust in institutions,” they write. “Generation Hopeless” is “down on democracy and drawn to populism.”

Young people are happier now than 20 years ago in a majority of countries, but not in North America or Western Europe, according to the report.

Heavy social media users seem to be less happy.

No surprises there.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): The Anglosphere has been the subject of nonstop memetic warfare for longer than I have been alive. The original source of that warfare, the Soviet Union, is gone, but the memes live on.

REPORT: Eric Swalwell About to Be Hit With ‘Shocking’ Number of Sexual Harassment Allegations.

Cheyenne Hunt, a lawyer, former congressional candidate and executive director of the left-wing nonprofit Gen-Z for Change, revealed on X Sunday, that she has been working with a number of women who are in the process of sharing their accusations with major news outlets. Hunt said she knew of a separate and “much larger group” of women who are also currently in the process of sharing their stories.

Swalwell’s alleged inappropriate sexual behavior is apparently an “open secret” in Washington DC, as is his practice of forcing underlings to sign nondisclosure agreements.

Hunt posted an initial video on Instagram in late March accusing Swalwell of having “a known history of being predatory towards women.” She cited a woman who told her: “You know Eric Swalwell has slept with many of his interns and makes them all sign NDAs so they don’t speak up, right? And when I was 19 he tried hitting on me and sliding into my DMs and I have so many other friends that have similar experiences with him.”

Hunt said the allegation was “not an anomaly” but “part of a pattern.”

The only number that should shock you is zero. And you ought to at least express a little wonder if it turns out to be anything less than a baker’s dozen.

THAT SEEMS ABOUT RIGHT:

And from the replies: “Always great to see the so-called antifascists talk so openly about how they will seize more power when given the opportunity.”

Today’s Democrats certainly aren’t shy about how brutally they’ll wield power, the next time they take it.

JUDGE HIM BY THE WAR-CRIME APPLAUDING COMPANY HE KEEPS:

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: A deep dive into Colorado’s billion-dollar budget deficit.

In a recent episode of Independence Institute’s* public affairs TV show, Devil’s Advocate, host Jon Caldara and the state’s chief economist, Greg Sobetski, dive deep into Colorado’s more than one billion-dollar budget shortfall, finding, among other things, pandemic-era funding, rising Medicaid costs, and federal tax changes as major culprits.

Sobetski explains that during COVID, Colorado enjoyed a glut of federal aid and higher-than-expected revenues. Rather than using that money for short-term needs, the legislature instead spent down those reserves propping up ongoing spending obligations, leaving lawmakers scrambling to sustain a bigger state budget without the one-time money that had been keeping things afloat.

The two also look at runaway Medicaid spending, with Caldara arguing Colorado expanded the program too far, including able-bodied adults and illegal immigrants, and now risks harming more vulnerable recipients when the inevitable cuts come.

The podcast is titled, “Is Colorado Broke?”

We’re still on the “gradually” part, but the “suddenly” part always comes, well, suddenly.

COLONIALISM, STRAIGHT UP:

Ask yourself why Western elites freak out about any kind of colonialism — except Islamic.

RELIGIOUS FERVER: The Legacy of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” 20 Years Later. “Gore’s orations perfectly followed the script of the “New Apocalypticism”: The identification of an existential crisis, the diagnosis of human sin as its cause, the urgency of transformation, and the comfort of redemption for those who heed the warning. The climate science community readily embraced this script and adopted the language of believers and deniers to differentiate those with faith and those yet to be converted, and who risked excommunication.”

Whatever that is, it ain’t science.

GRAY ZONE? NO, THAT’S RIGHT IN THE RED: