Month: June 2024

2024 China shenanigans, part 23

So what’s going with the totalitarians over there right now?

– EU tarrifs on Chinese EVs are making the CCP unhappy and Beijing is discouraging other countries from going to the Global Peace Summit in retaliation. It is promoting a Ukrainian-sponsored peace plan instead.
– The PLA has deployed J20 fighters around the border with India.
– China has been accused of selling more garbage counterfeits goods, this time (intentionally?) to Boeing and Airbus.
– New Zealand is having to deal with security interference and intimidation of Chinese ethnicities in New Zealand.
– PLA is still continuing its expansion into the South China Sea with building up its island bases and nuke vessels of deterrence.

Besides that, they’re “friends.”

The Inbetween Times

“Oh that’s fake.”

Needs some repeating: Deepfakes and fake video are on the edge of indiscernibility. It’s a sea change coming. We won’t know disinformation when we see it.

The public may not be thinking of the immensity of this. “Oh, it’s just online memes.” Memes aside, real news and information are closer to truth oblivion. It’s still a fiction thing. AI has moved beyond audio; AI video will be widely available.

Concomitant with this is the normalization of insularity due to the pandemic’s effects.

Please, get outside. I’ll join you.

Try as you might, the out there becomes life

Neil DeGrasse Tyson brings the truth, the need for reconciliation of the biblical world and science. You can’t be afraid. 13.8 billion years ago the fire brought galaxies to bear.

How can we speak to those who are sold out on the scientific method. Why is this even a concern? The gravity of discussion calls to that high place where we can say “I don’t know.” But fear erupts when we see the whittling away of supposed biblical narrative. But those in the peer-reviewed community don’t get a satisfactory answer to their questions.

I’m not sold, I can’t be. Everything should go on as needed. Everything should cause us to welcome questions.

The new immigration

Recently seen more on European immigration. The scale is very similar to ours. But the type of immigrant is different from the past. How is the West going to survive in the same way at these levels? We and the Europeans were previously able to absorb and integrate people much different than us. In Italy for example, the population has dropped precipitously and other ethnicities are changing the fabric. Culture is changing in each Western nation. It’s a brave new world and I can’t see where it’s all going.

Calling all aliens

The problem of authority.

With models like Google Gemini and ChatGPT how can we determine 1) what is just nonsense, 2) when user generated content is helpful, and 3) when we need guardrails?

First, we need some level of “normalcy.” What do we appeal to? Second, we need to separate user opinion from relation of fact from perhaps, “private journalism.” Third, normalcy and fact checking need to guard against extremes.

The need for nonpartisanship is apparent. We need gatekeepers, but who are they? We need an alien intelligence.