Gorth

An interesting point. Curious about your view on the best solution. How would a resource rich country make best use of its resources? Letting foreign countries have them for free never really worked in the past. If not nationalizing the resource, then what? Most common result is foreign enclaves where the corporation operating the area builds a local industry for its own imported workforce. I.e. very little benefit for the local econonmy. The Chinese are best known for it at the moment, but they were neither the first nor the worst (i.e. stripping an area of anything of value leaving the locals to pick up the clean up bill and the consequences). It breeds resentment. Taxing the hell out of corporations (good luck trying to do that)? edit: I.e. what would you consider viable alternatives to nationalising resources? edit2: Yes, I am perfectly well aware of it not working well in the past, mostly because such governments are just as corrupt as the corporations they seized the resources from edit3: Hypothetical example, a Saudi corporation decides arctic ice from Greenland is the perfect fit for Saudi drinks and wants to strip mine the ice sheet. Government in Nuuk gets bribed to let said Saudi firm import know how, machinery and specialized Saudi work force to slear the ice from Greenland. What options would the Inuit population have to get part of their heritance and the wealth currently flowing into Saudi pockets?

Isn't the whole fight insurgents with military force such a 20th century way of thinking? You want to get rid of insurgents, take away their reason to exist. It varies of course from case to case, but as far as I know, most insurgencies are the result of large disenfranchised groups with no future and nothing to lose. As far as I have been able to follow, most insurgencies in Africa and South/Latin America (and The Levant) are the results of a combination of isolation (information control), poverty (inequality) and rampant corruption in the "democratically elected" governments, meaning they are just totalitarian regimes with a better PR apparatus. If people have a job, a future, get exposed to other ideas, prospects instead of projects and something worth keeping, like a home, they tend to be too busy to worry about risking it on doing insurgency. But you can't fight income inequality, poverty, ignorance and homelessness with military forces. At best, you keep insurgents around because it helps those in power to tighten their grip on said power. Edit: Don't get me started on genuine democratically elected governments toppled by western powers because they were inconvenient

From the first link... I had probably already developed a bias just based on the title. Nothing like a bit of confirmation bias 👼 "And it bears repeating that their survey-based research has only found a troubling overlap in these pesticide exposures and incidences of lung cancer, not concrete proof of a biochemical mechanism confirming these compounds are carcinogenenic." I actually had two ideas before reading the articles. Either people survive other things and lung cancer being the next best thing on their bingo card to die from or the fruits and vegetables weren't exactly organic produce.

That sounds like Apple's target demographic

Peanuts compared to those who made a killing (figure of speech) in oil futures hours before the surprise attack on Iran in the middle of negotiations. Pearl Harbour 1941 seems like a less unique situation these days-

Especially now, when the US is also considered a military threat to Europe... Didn't Japan discuss some serious considerations about amending/removing the part of the post WWII constitution, that limits the role of the Japanese military? In that part of the world, China is more likely to pose a military threat to the region than Japan, at least for the time being

Just wrapping up the current status of the world...

I wasn't quite sure if I should put it here or the Ukraine thread, since it covers both topics 10 Ukrainians Humbled Two NATO Battalions. When Will NATO Wake Up? Few things encourage innovation like fighting for your survival. Ukrainian military showed Nato how far behind current Nato doctrine is when it comes to large scale conventional warfare. 10 Ukrainians taking out 2 Nato batalions during military exercises in Estonia

This The whole idea of "copyright" iirc, was introduced to protect original work. Not copies of original work. This is of course another can of worms to kick over. When is something original? Wasn't there a saying once, that there are only 7 stories in the world, everything else is derivatives of those stories. When does a derivative deviate enough to not be considered derivative anymore? This deviant is curious 🤔 I find AI fascinating from a technical standpoint. Ever since working with Expert Systems and Neural Network at the university in the 90's. Before that, in the 1980's, my Commodore 64, with the assistance a great textbook purchased in Germany, gave me my first lessons in the sheer computational demands of anything more advanced than Eliza for the c64 Since the c64 didn't have internet, the only "training" for simple neural networks were questions and answers (feedback response) by the human operator. A simplified "You" if you want. LLM's harvest everything, so it will get all the worst of humanity too. Test proves that AI are both racist, bigot, hateful and homicidal if left to its own devices. Grok is an example of where unsupervised AI can go. I had a strategy game once, where the opponent was AI controlled. Literally. It almost killed the PC, fans going like turboprops, taking forever. At least in the beginning. As the neural network got trained, it started moving faster and played a mean game. But it was still requiring a lot of energy.

I just killed one in this very thread 😂

As so happens, I sometimes read stuff on the internet. This article caught my interest and made me think about a number of related questions This monkey selfie will protect you from AI slop My own interest in AI is mostly in image generation (I was a fan of old Clyde Caldwell and Boris Vallejo paperback covers since the dawn of times, to the point of buying official prints from those artists official sites). First Stable Diffusion and now Flux are my hobbies for creating my weird fantasy images (yes, that includes bikini chaimail too). I would love to branch into short AI generated videos some day, but, that is also the extent of my interest in AI. I once tried it on my CV and I didn't recognize myself, so went screw this, my own words describe me better The BBC article is long and covers a number of areas. Like who owns the results of AI ouput (including some rulings from the US legal system, stating that nobody owns something generated by AI). It made me think back to recent movies featuring dead actors recreated by AI. Does the movie company own the likeness of an actor 500 years after their death too? What happens to a poor sucker born in 200 years time, who just happens to look like their ancestor? If your homework was solved by AI, was it your solution or those who trained the AI? Do we need humans? Luckily I am old enough to not care, but I figure the last question could be relevant for younger people Edit: Some experiences with AI shows it lies blatantly and doubles down on lies. Sounding very confident in its own words too while being obviously wrong. Then there is the whole hate speech and prejudice issue. If AI is the sum of human writing (the internet), who is to blame for obvious bias and racism in AI generated output?

It does. The way off topic section, doesn't, but the rest should do

I suspect he will take a pragmatic stance. No Hungarian support for Ukraine, but also no longering block the EU from supporting Ukraine Always take politicians with a grain of salt. Orban was once the progressive, anti Russian option in Hungary Hungary election: Jubilation in Budapest will be felt in Europe but leaves Moscow cold "It's an ironic full circle for Orbán. He became famous in 1989 in then-communist Hungary, calling on Russians to go home in a passionate speech he gave in the dying days of the Soviet Union. It's a phrase that first ricocheted through Budapest during Hungary's ill-fated anti-communist uprising of 1956."

One doesn't exclude the other. I.e. it doesn't contracidct what I said, I just focused on the motivations of the two main actors (I did notice the objections from the US military, presumably they are better educated in the realities of the world). Two crooks who wants to stay out of jail. One is smart but has limited military capacity. The other is dumb but has plenty of military capacity. A match made in heaven. Both Putin and Netanyahu consider Trump a mental midget, easily manipulated, a tool you can make do your bidding, if you word it correctly.

In short, a newspaper quote confirming what I suspected (not that I would take a single reference as an authority on the whole truth). Mango Mussolini is just Netanyahus sock puppet and easily manipulated if you know which buttons to push ... and they both have an interest in creating chaos and conflict (to distract from corruption charges and the Epstein files respectively)

The BBC estimates typically 138 ships per day during normal conditions... Strait of Hormuz: Which ships are passing through?Just under 100 ships have passed thorough the Strait of Hormuz since the start of March, according to data analysed by BBC Verify.

Last year at work, we found out how much AI lies. Just for fun, the boss wanted to ask an AI to make a quote to a customer. We were never going to send it, but we were curious to see what it would suggest. It was eye opening how convincingly it lied and doubled down on its lies when it came to simple math. Made up numbers of course, but imagine a quote with three items estimated at 30, 20 and 10 hours. It would proudly quote 70 hours. rephrasing the question, AI how did you get 70 from those 3 items on the list. It was 30, 20 and 10. AI came back with: Obviously, the sum of 30, 20 and 10 is 70, thats how I arrived at that result! Yeah... this one suck even worth than me at math 😖

I find it hard to make a top 10. May have something to do with finding any band formed after 1987 overrated, if they are rated at all 🤔 (note, there are rarely any absolute rules and if trying really hard, I am sure I could dig up exceptions)

Different theories floating around, but a reasonable explanation I heard is (i.e. may or may not be true in any way, seeing bits and snippets on the internet), the time between season 1 and 2 was way too short to include the next major arc while maintaining standards. Some were afraid The Golden Land was just going to be a one off movie. Season 2 was also padded quite a bit by Madhouse to make it last 10 episodes apparently and yes, they are trying not to kill the mangakas too as far as I heard. Personally I'm probably looking forward more to the Festival arc, even if that is going to be season 4 or 5 or something 😖

Reminds me of former Australian PM, Scott Morrison, who not only didn't support renewable energy, but actually worked against it. To the poing of trying to prevent local state governments from any initiatives, that encourated solar or wind energy (because it hurts the oil, gas and coal industry). If nothing else, it created a lot of Don Quijote memes, where Morrison was shown charging windmills (his actions being so absurd it made you think of British humour at times)

No names mentioned, but I could just as well have posted this in the politics thread. Like, how Shopenhauer recommends dealing with Trump (some of his handlers seems to already having worked this out when manipulating him)

You still seem to think Trump is sane or rational. Hint: He isn't. Intellectually challenged and used to bully his way through life thanks to daddy Trumps inherited billions, he has no mental processes for dealing with adversity. He has the empathy of a cobblestone, the intellect of of a jellyfish and the cognitive abilities of a chimpanzee (although that would be an insult to some 4 year olds, who are smarter than chimps) If he can't have his way with something, his preferred option is to 1) break it and 2) pass the blame on someone else .All because he is a genius and a businessman without peer (trying to add the US to his list of major bankruptcies). But the worrying part is the tendency to destroy things he can't have. He has no concept of tomorrow, much less consequences of the destruction he orders done everywhere. Hypothetical speculation: Lets say the US somehow miraculously survives his presidency, how many years (and billions of dollars) do you think it would take to fully renovate the White House and turn it into a classy, stylish residence again. I mentioned it previously, half in fun, half seriously, he is the type of person that would blow up Mount Rushmore to make room for a new statue of himself. The biggest and the bestest statue the world has ever seen! So big and so best even the Colossus of Rhodes would turn green with envy, that's how best and biggest it will be! On a more lighthearted note, Denmark and Canada are not the only countries with a knack for sorting out borders

Denmark just har elections. Besides a messy patchwork of small parties, which will spend months negotiating who gets to lead a coalition of the reluctant, it was also the youngest parliament ever elected in Denmark. "Young" is of course relative, but it was the first time the average age was below 50. The gender split is oddly enough also almost 50/50. I tried to find a newspaper source to link to, but they are all behind paywalls. Dang capitalists!

To people with an IQ above 75, yes. But it's the Mango Mussolini we are talking about. Sense is even harder to find than an honest politician (not saying impossible, accidents do happen)