Sixth in the series. Read after the break…
Jun 302019
Jun 302019
Today seems to be a day of days when it comes to political whackadoodlery.
The 2020 Presidential election, more than a year away, is already weird enough, what with Gropey Joe and all the rest so far refusing to denounce left wing violence in Portland. But it’s getting even weirder: it seems that during the recent televised Dem debates, *somebody* used real-time computer AI video trickery to either add or subtract a pimple to Tulsi Gabbard’s chin:
On one hand… it’s kinda silly. On the other hand, the ability to create a “deep fake” videos IN REAL TIME is more than a little disturbing.
Chin pimple suddenly disappears during presidential debate
The easiest explanation is that the pimple was real and a filter was applied to “erase” it and the filter failed from time to time. But then… isn’t that what makeup is for? Using digital trickery for “good” is only going to cause people’s conspiracy senses to tingle.
But Tulsi Gabbard is on record claiming that she had no such pimple, and called for an investigation. It seems like a lame thing for a major organization like NBC News to digitally add a pimple to someone; if this was done, I’d bet that the cause was lower down the totem pole. Perhaps little more than a tech having fun with his new Add-A-Pimple App. But that might be even worse. Bad enough if it takes a billion dollar corporation working in cahoots with a political party to pull this off; but if one guy working by his lonesome can do this, then we stand on the edge of what has long been inevitable: complete lack of trust in *any* form of news gathering. Because we are about fifteen minutes away from video being utterly untrustworthy.
Jun 302019
If anyone ever wonders why I harp on about dangers to western civilization… behold:
Cornell summer seminar asks: Should we still use concepts like ‘rationality’ and ‘reason’?
From the PDF description of the seminar:
“Decolonizing Epistemology”There is a widespread skepticism about many sorts of knowledge claims today, and this skepticism has been promoted from both the right and the left. The skepticism is largely based on the realization that knowledge is always connected to power. But there is uncertainty about what follows from this: is it still ‘knowledge’?The decolonial epistemology project accepts the connection of knowledge and power but then moves to a different set of questions that are organized in two overall components: (1) to critique existing theories and practices concerning knowledge for the ways in which these theories and practices may be supporting the colonial structure of knowledge, and (2) to develop new reconstructed norms for improved knowing practices without reinscrib-ing colonial relationships. To advance this project, decolonial work in epistemology must address the following:
1. Do social identities matter for knowledge claims? How, exactly?
2. How is ignorance socially produced, and what is the solution?
3. Should we continue to use concepts like ‘rationality’ and ‘reason’?
4. How can science be done in a decolonial way?
5. How do we empower traditional and indigenous knowledges?
Such a project benefits epistemology as a whole. In exploring the ways in which the disen-franchised have been epistemically discredited, we can develop new insights and theories about the general nature of knowledge and of knowers. This project also benefits every community that is struggling for democracy and justice against the forces of capitalism, imperialism, and technocracy.Thus, the question of knowledge, and of who has knowledge, of what kinds of character traits and motivations will best assist knowing, and of how knowledge claims should be assessed, is key to social change. As Boaventura de Sousa Santos puts it, “there is no global social justice without global cognitive justice.”
As has been repeated noted, you have to be university-educated to believe something so monumentally stupid.
Take, for instance, point 5: “How do we empower traditional and indigenous knowledges?” It’s quite simply: take each individual bit of “indigenous knowledge” and put it to a rigorous scientific test. If it succeeds, great! Now it’s not just “indigenous knowledge,” but, in fact, “knowledge.” If it fails, you can discard it.
And point #3: Define “we,” lady. Those of us who happen to like modernity, science, western civ? Why, yes, we should continue to use rationality and reason. You, on the other hand… by all means, please don’t. I look forward to how successful you are with your “other ways of knowing” when you contact cancer or get hit by a bus or your power goes out.
If Trump was the man that many people desperately wish he was, he’d have the FBI investigating these buffoons to see whether it’s China, Russia, ISIS or those dastardly Dutch who are secretly behind them, pushing them to tar American society down and turn this into a hellscape of idiotarianism and race wars. if Cornell was the university it aught to be, it’d stop funding these ridiculous seminars and “educators.”
The part excerpted above is only a small piece, from a single one of the contributors to this nonsensical waste of time, resources and potential. Go ahead and read the rest of it. It’s filled with stuff that can be *charitably* described as “gibberish.”
This seminar will take Erich Auerbach’s notion of figura, elaborated mainly in his 1938 essay with the same title, as a starting point for a broader inquiry into notions of figure, figuration, and the specific productivity of figural practices in creating aesthetic, perceptual, and cognitive spheres of experience. At its core the seminar will focus on the understanding of the capacity of figure and figuration in deploying ‘plastic’ effects, i.e., in the shaping of and the experimentation with sensual, affective, and cognitive land-scapes.
…
Normatively shaped dys-functionalities, the fact that social practices erode in contradictory reactions that can no longer be made up for, is the “rock bottom” for a certain kind of critique, an immanent crisis critique of forms of life.
…
It invites us to transcend modernity by replacing the alienated genea-logical hermeneutics of suspicion with a rationally recollective hermeneutics of magnanimity that is at once tradition-affirming and tradition-transforming.
I liked this bit:
Faculty and advanced graduate students of literature, the arts, the humanities, the related social sciences and professional studies are invited to apply.
Huh. it doesn’t seem like they’re inviting students of science and engineering. Just students of ridiculous nonsense.
Jun 302019
And here they beat an old man bloody because… well, why wouldn’t they?
Probably NSFW, unless your workplace is cool with scenes of left wing fascists beating people with clubs until they bleed profusely. The description is that they attacked him with a crowbar; I can’t see it clearly enough to say that, but they definitely went after him not only with a multitude of clubs but also chemical weapons.
THESE are the people who will bring on an AI apocalypse:
1) In order to deal with domestic terrorist groups like this, it will become increasingly necessary to deploy increasingly devious surveillance systems. Fly-sized recon drones scattered throughout Portland recording everything would be useful; better still would be little drones that would obtain DNA samples from all the masked criminals on display here. It’s a dystopian authoritarian thought, but these monsters make it pretty much mandatory.
2) If the AI wake up and Antifa are among the earliest examples of humanity it gets to experience, who could blame it for deciding that humanity is just horrible and it’d be better off without humans?
While it should be clear to even the libbiest of libs that Trump didn’t collude with Russia, it should also be clear to even the rightiest of right wingers that the Russians doubtless are *trying* to meddle in American elections. I don’t know if “they” are an official Russian government operation, or a loose assemblage of Russian hackers or everything in between; and I don’t know if they’re doing it for some devious long-term geopolitical 4-D chess reason or if they’re doing it for the lulz. But if you don’t like the US and you want to bring it down a peg or ten, one way to go is to cause the American populace to turn against itself. And it seems to me a damn easy way to do that is to convince people to buy into this left-wing hatemob mentality.
So not only should Antifa and its defenders be investigated for domestic terrorism and criminal conspiracy, but also for potential treasonous activity.
And I haven’t seen a single one of the Democrat Presidential candidates denounce this. So I guess that means they support it. And not a single one of them has been cleared of colluding with Antifa to spread street violence. Remember that when it comes time to vote.
Jun 302019
I’ll believe it when I see it:
SpaceX targets 2021 commercial Starship launch
I suspect these are Elon-estimates, which have been notoriously optimistic in the past. Still, there’s no reason why SpaceX *can’t* pull this off. And if they can… that would be not only impressive, but world changing . Western civilization just might have a chance to survive. Not on Earth, of course… here, we’re pretty well doomed. But out in space, maybe, just maybe, there’s a possibility that people who speak English, aren’t ashamed of Washington and Jefferson and think rationally and scientifically might live on.
“The goal is to get orbital as quickly as possible, potentially even this year, with the full stack operational by the end of next year and then customers in early 2021.”
Here’s hoping.
Jun 292019
Fifth in the series. Read after the break…
Jun 292019
The so-called “Anti-Fascists” of Antifa once again demonstrate that they are named in ironic jest. Witness them display their hatred and racism via violence and theft. Seems like perhaps it’s time to federalize the Oregon National Guard and send them into Portland to clean the place out. Along with a few million illegal alien colonists, there are a bunch of treasonous, violent Antifa traitors in need of deportation.
Antifa Beats Up Andy Ngo
First skirmish I’ve seen. Didn’t see how this started, but @MrAndyNgo got roughed up. pic.twitter.com/hDkfQchRhG
— Jim Ryan (@Jimryan015) June 29, 2019
Jun 292019
Great googally-moogally is Bubbles Cortez the gift that keeps on giving. So recently photos have re-emerged showing her trying real hard to cry at a detention center for illegal colonizers; other photos quickly emerged showing that she was basically outside of a largely empty parking lot. And so the meming began…
Many more after the break.
Jun 292019
In the video below, Dictor van Doomcock rants about Disney’s “Star Wars: Galaxys Edge” at Disneyland. What brings this on is a report that attendance at the attraction, and the park as a whole, is lower than projected by Disney, which apparently assumed massed hordes. I’ve got to take issue with DVD here, though. He (and a few other YouTubers I’ve seen) portray this as the attraction being deserted, but it could just be that the park is swarmed with visitors, rather than ultra-swarmed.
I will not be darkening “Galaxys Edge” doorstep. But then, it was never going to be otherwise. For one, I haven’t visited a theme park in something like 35 years, and have little enough interest in doing so again. Vast sums of money to spend hours standing in the sun waiting in a line with thousands of sweaty, smelly, unhappy tourists? Bleah. But the fact that “Galaxys Edge” isn’t *actually* “Star Wars?” No thanks.
I have no idea if GE fell below expectations due to fan backlash. I have no idea if this shortfall is the permanent state of things, or just a short-term blip. It could very well be that people who would happily attend are staying away simply because they all want to avoid the hordes of other fans they expect are attending. But from what I’ve seen, it just doesn’t seem all that interesting. The setting is a planet invented just for this. It’s a place with no actual Star Wars history. Its set in the lame Mary Sue Rey era and has no references to the characters that made Star Wars interesting… no Han, Luke, Leia, Vader. Apparently it is mostly a place to spend EVEN MORE money by buying trinkets and doodads. There’s a life-size Millenium Falcon, which is cool and all; there’s also apparently some sort of Falcon flight simulator, which has the potential of being really cool. But … get a load of this description of what the visitors get to do in the cockpit:
The left pilot controls the horizontal steering, and the right pilot controls the vertical steering (remember: up is down and down is up!) and the hyperdrive (the most fun part arguably!). The left gunner controls the upper turret (denoted by blue-colored lasers) and the right gunner, the lower quad gun. The engineers, like the gunners, have their own screens on the side, and similar to the gunners (who are always on “auto”) simply press a button repeatedly at the correct times, whether they’re shooting down enemy TIE Fighters or repairing ship damage. Occasionally, at key times, a secondary button may pop up (e.g. to fire a missile or grappling hook).
WAT.
That sounds like a barren source of amusement, especially if you are paired up not with your best buddy, but the random next person in line. Feh.
Never mind the politics involved, the fan backlash over how dreadful “Last Jedi” was, or how wokeness is trashing the franchise, or how the SJW morons running Star Wars these days hate the actual fans. The attraction just doesn’t seem like much fun, never mind *thousands* of dollars worth of fun. I truly doubt that the attraction is “deserted,” but it would surprise me not at all if the overall response, rather than an unceasing invasion of mountains of fans waving wads of cash, is a collective “meh.”
Jun 292019
A fractal zoom to a factor of ten to the power of 2431. This is a bigger number than the number of anythings in the observable universe. I do not care to do the math on it, but I bet that’s a bigger number than the total volume of the universe expressed in cubic Planck units.
The description of the video includes “EPILEPSY WARNING,” and I can believe it. This has a severe star-gate/acid-flashback/CIA-mind-control-technique vibe to it. What the actual purpose of it is I can’t say, but it’s surprisingly hypnotic.
Oh, what the heck. Radius of the observable universe is ~4.4 × 10^26 meters. Planck length = 1.6 x 10^-35 meters. Thus the radius of the observable universe is 2.75 x 10^61 Planck lengths. Spherical volume = 4/3 *pi *r^3 = 8.71 x 10^184 cubic Planck lengths. That falls short by a rough factor of 10^2247. So… yeah. Kinda deep zoom.