Wednesday, April 24, 2024

Meta smart glasses update

The Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses Have Multimodel AI Now (theverge.com)20

The Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses now feature support for multimodal AI -- without the need for a projector or $24 monthly fee. (We're looking at you, Humane AI.) With the new update, the Meta AI assistant will be able to analyze what you're seeing, and it'll give you smart, helpful answers or suggestions. The Verge reports:First off, there are some expectations that need managing here. The Meta glasses don't promise everything under the sun. The primary command is to say "Hey Meta, look and..." You can fill out the rest with phrases like "Tell me what this plant is." Or read a sign in a different language. Write Instagram captions. Identify and learn more about a monument or landmark. The glasses take a picture, the AI communes with the cloud, and an answer arrives in your ears. The possibilities are not limitless, and half the fun is figuring out where its limits are. [...]

To me, it's the mix of a familiar form factor and decent execution that makes the AI workable on these glasses. Because it's paired to your phone, there's very little wait time for answers. It's headphones, so you feel less silly talking to them because you're already used to talking through earbuds. In general, I've found the AI to be the most helpful at identifying things when we're out and about. It's a natural extension of what I'd do anyway with my phone. I find something I'm curious about, snap a pic, and then look it up. Provided you don't need to zoom really far in, this is a case where it's nice to not pull out your phone. [...]

But AI is a feature of the Meta glasses. It's not the only feature. They're a workable pair of livestreaming glasses and a good POV camera. They're an excellent pair of open-ear headphones. I love wearing mine on outdoor runs and walks. I could never use the AI and still have a product that works well. The fact that it's here, generally works, and is an alright voice assistant -- well, it just gets you more used to the idea of a face computer, which is the whole point anyway. 

Gen AI + CRISPR

Forget about EVs. Pretty soon, we'll all fly to work with wings on our backs.

Oops, don't mind the nutsack dangling from my forehead. That was a typo.


Generative AI Arrives In the Gene Editing World of CRISPR (nytimes.com)7

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times:Generative A.I. technologies can write poetry and computer programs or create images of teddy bears and videos of cartoon characters that look like something from a Hollywood movie. Now, new A.I. technology is generating blueprints for microscopic biological mechanisms that can edit your DNA, pointing to a future when scientists can battle illness and diseases with even greater precision and speed than they can today. Described in a research paper published on Monday by a Berkeley, Calif., startup called Profluent, the technology is based on the same methods that drive ChatGPT, the online chatbot that launched the A.I. boom after its release in 2022. The company is expected to present the paper next month at the annual meeting of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy."Its OpenCRISPR-1 protein is built on a similar structure as the fabled CRISPR-Cas9 DNA snipper, but with hundreds of mutations that help reduce its off-target effects by 95%," reports Fierce Biotech, citing the company's preprint manuscript published on BioRxiv. "Profluent said it can be employed as a 'drop-in replacement' in any experiment calling for a Cas9-like molecule."

While Profluent will keep its LLM generators private, the startup says it will open-source the products of this initiative. "Attempting to edit human DNA with an AI-designed biological system was a scientific moonshot," Profluent co-founder and CEO Ali Madani, Ph.D., said in a statement. "Our success points to a future where AI precisely designs what is needed to create a range of bespoke cures for disease. To spur innovation and democratization in gene editing, with the goal of pulling this future forward, we are open-sourcing the products of this initiative."

Friday, April 12, 2024

home quantum computing

 

New Advances Promise Secure Quantum Computing At Home (phys.org)13

Scientists from Oxford University Physics have developed a breakthrough in cloud-based quantum computing that could allow it to be harnessed by millions of individuals and companies. The findings have been published in the journal Physical Review Letters. Phys.Org reports:In the new study, the researchers use an approach dubbed "blind quantum computing," which connects two totally separate quantum computing entities -- potentially an individual at home or in an office accessing a cloud server -- in a completely secure way. Importantly, their new methods could be scaled up to large quantum computations. "Using blind quantum computing, clients can access remote quantum computers to process confidential data with secret algorithms and even verify the results are correct, without revealing any useful information. Realizing this concept is a big step forward in both quantum computing and keeping our information safe online," said study lead Dr. Peter Drmota, of Oxford University Physics.

The researchers created a system comprising a fiber network link between a quantum computing server and a simple device detecting photons, or particles of light, at an independent computer remotely accessing its cloud services. This allows so-called blind quantum computing over a network. Every computation incurs a correction that must be applied to all that follow and needs real-time information to comply with the algorithm. The researchers used a unique combination of quantum memory and photons to achieve this. The results could ultimately lead to commercial development of devices to plug into laptops, to safeguard data when people are using quantum cloud computing services.
"We have shown for the first time that quantum computing in the cloud can be accessed in a scalable, practical way which will also give people complete security and privacy of data, plus the ability to verify its authenticity," said Professor David Lucas, who co-heads the Oxford University Physics research team and is lead scientist at the UK Quantum Computing and Simulation Hub, led from Oxford University Physics.


I've been wondering when predictive analytics will be available to consumers. Here's a starter conversation.

 https://medium.com/illumination-curated/prediction-ai-is-coming-are-you-and-the-world-ready-93da983994b8

Thursday, April 11, 2024

Joker films released before US Presidential elections


The previous Joker film builds up the Joker as a bullied victim who ultimately leads a violent mob.

The new Joker sequel trailer alludes to 'change' and mob violence in such a way, I couldn't help but check the release dates relative to the US elections...I can only speculate what cake is likely to build up ahead of the election that this film will serve to ice.

Bring in Lady Gaga and really sell a romantic revolution.

No coincidence, the first film was released October 4 of 2019, and the sequel will be released October 4 of 2024.

No doubt, the film and actors will win awards. Genius! Stupendous! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UInBwhQQ0A



Thursday, April 4, 2024

Apple home robots

 

Apple Reportedly Exploring Personal Home Robots (cnbc.com)55

As reported by Bloomberg (paywalled), Apple is exploring the development of personal home robots following the shut down of its electric vehicle project. CNBC reports:Engineers at Apple have been looking into a robot that can follow users around their homes and a tabletop device that uses robotics to adjust a display screen, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the research team. [...] Apple's hardware engineering division and its artificial intelligence and machine learning group are overseeing the work on personal robotics, Bloomberg reported. The home robot project is still in the early research and development phase, according to the report.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Face of AI

I have the idea of connecting a face to an LLM that can offer real-time emotional expression to represent the system's reaction to verbal and visual input.

My original purpose is to provide realistic feedback to my presentation of content. 

A practical use case would be to provide analysis and evaluation while simulating emotional responses to storytelling, comedy, instruction, explanation, etc., thereby offering presenters a natural target for content development and providing a medium for practicing and refining a presentation.

The concept, however, approaches the challenge of simulating personality and raises the question of sensibility - i.e. - different personalities respond differently. What about simulating a crowd? What about an intoxicated crowd? Hecklers? Perhaps these variants may be filtered with settings, but the concept also raised the question of innate bias in LLMs, and the need for unfiltered or 'objective' LLMs.

Can an LLM have a philosophy, or an attitude, or sensibility?

Can an LLM recognize, comprehend or appreciate the humor of impressions or funny noises given a voice or computer vision input?

Can an LLM recognize and appreciate humorous delivery of a joke, for example, subtle sarcasm in the tone of voice or facial expression, regardless of the context of the words?

If an LLM had such capabilities, sentiment analysis, etc., could it laugh and how would it laugh? What would account for the manner of laugh? 

How might different LLMs have different 'senses of humor'?

For that matter, how might human laughter be analyzed and taxonomized by an AI system?

It's interesting to think of an LLM having involuntary responses, as if it had a parasympathetic nervous system.

Certainly, given a context, ChatGPT can analyze and evaluate, but can it express a reaction in real-time or does it wait until it receives the entire spiel? Is the LLM self aware of it's own bias?

I searched 'Does ChatGPT have a face' and found this article about a company called Zero Distance.

Here's their YouTube channel.

Here's the product website, WEHEAD.



Cognition AI launches Devin, AI software engineer

https://siliconangle.com/2024/03/12/cognition-launches-devin-generative-ai-powered-coding-engineer/

https://www.youtube.com/@Cognition-Labs

Monday, February 26, 2024

Scientists Create DVD-Sized Disk Storing 1 Petabit (125,000 Gigabytes) of Data

Scientists Create DVD-Sized Disk Storing 1 Petabit (125,000 Gigabytes) of Data (popsci.com)95

Popular Science points out that for encoding data, "optical disks almost always offer just a single, 2D layer — that reflective, silver underside."

"If you could boost a disk's number of available, encodable layers, however, you could hypothetically gain a massive amount of extra space..."Researchers at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology recently set out to do just that, and published the results earlier this week in the journal, Nature. Using a 54-nanometer laser, the team managed to record a 100 layers of data onto an optical disk, with each tier separated by just 1 micrometer. The final result is an optical disk with a three-dimensional stack of data layers capable of holding a whopping 1 petabit (Pb) of information — that's equivalent to 125,000 gigabytes of data...

As Gizmodo offers for reference, that same petabit of information would require roughly a six-and-a-half foot tall stack of HHD drives — if you tried to encode the same amount of data onto Blu-rays, you'd need around 10,000 blank ones to complete your (extremely inefficient) challenge.

To pull off their accomplishment, engineers needed to create an entirely new material for their optical disk's film... AIE-DDPR film utilizes a combination of specialized, photosensitive molecules capable of absorbing photonic data at a nanoscale level, which is then encoded using a high-tech dual-laser array. Because AIE-DDPR is so incredibly transparent, designers could apply layer-upon-layer to an optical disk without worrying about degrading the overall data. This basically generated a 3D "box" for digitized information, thus exponentially raising the normal-sized disk's capacity.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader hackingbear for sharing the news. 

Bezos, Nvidia Join OpenAI in Funding Humanoid Robot Startup

 

https://www.figure.ai/

https://www.youtube.com/@figureai

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq1QZB5baNw&t=15s


Update: China's fastest humanoid:

https://www.youtube.com/@unitreerobotics

https://m.unitree.com/


Bezos, Nvidia Join OpenAI in Funding Humanoid Robot Startup (msn.com)6

OpenAI, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Jeff Bezos are all part of a pack of investors in a business "developing human-like robots," reports Bloomberg, "according to people with knowledge of the situation..."

At the startup — which is named "Figure" — engineers "are working on a robot that looks and moves like a human. The company has said it hopes its machine, called Figure 01, will be able to perform dangerous jobs that are unsuitable for people and that its technology will help alleviate labor shortages."Figure is raising about $675 million in a funding round that carries a pre-money valuation of roughly $2 billion, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private. Through his firm Explore Investments LLC, Bezos has committed $100 million. Microsoft is investing $95 million, while Nvidia and an Amazon.com Inc.-affiliated fund are each providing $50 million... Other technology companies are involved as well. Intel Corp.'s venture capital arm is pouring in $25 million, and LG Innotek is providing $8.5 million. Samsung's investment group, meanwhile, committed $5 million. Backers also include venture firms Parkway Venture Capital, which is investing $100 million, and Align Ventures, which is providing $90 million...

The AI robotics industry has been busy lately. Earlier this year, OpenAI-backed Norwegian robotics startup 1X Technologies AS raised $100 million. Vancouver-based Sanctuary AI is developing a humanoid robot called Phoenix. And Tesla Inc. is working on a robot called Optimus, with Elon Musk calling it one of his most important projects. Agility Robotics, which Amazon backed in 2022, has bots in testing at one of the retailer's warehouses.
Bloomberg calls the investments in Figure "part of a scramble to find new applications for artificial intelligence."

Sunday, February 25, 2024

High-sugar product ingredients printed using low contrast colors

 

After deciding to cut any foods with corn syrup from my diet, I've noticed many products print their ingredients with low-contrast colors, such as white text on light-colored backgrounds.

My awareness of web accessibility requirements further brings the problem to my attention and I suspect that companies are deliberately masking their ingredients to prevent buyers from avoiding high-sugar products. 

The simple solution is to list ingredients using black text. 

Arizona Tea may not encourage their customers to read the ingredients, but they sure as hell ensure scanners can read the bar code.

Today, I noticed Arizona Tea Fruit Snacks, below.

Reading the ingredients online, I see:

PEAR JUICE FROM FRUIT JUICE CONCENTRATE, GLUCOSE SYRUP, SUGAR, MODIFIED FOOD STARCH (CORN), GELATIN, DEXTROSE; CITRIC ACID, GREEN TEA EXTRACT; NATURAL FLAVOR, FRUIT & VEGETABLE JUICE FOR COLOR (ELDERBERRY, GRAPE, SPIRULINA, TURMERIC); COLOR (PAPRIKA OLEORESIN); CARNAUBA WAX.

With turmeric, spirulina, and the anti-oxidants from the green tea extract, I'd better double up on my Arizona Fruit Snacks to prevent cancer.

The product description refers to the snack as "guilt-free" on the basis of being fat and gluten-free - a similar argument listed on candy packaging such as candy corn and gummy worms (which I love):

"From your favorite beverage to your next healthier snack time staple. AriZona Green Tea Fruit Snacks gives you 100% real fruit and only 100 calories per serving in the perfect little package. Enjoy Original, Apple, Mandarin and Plum Blueberry in this bite-size, fat free, gluten free, preservative free and 100% guilt free treat!"

Online reference suggests glucose syrup and corn syrup have equally adverse health effects.

I'll likely add additional example photos to this entry.




Thursday, February 15, 2024

Amazon LLM's 'emergent Abilities'

 

Largest Text-To-Speech AI Model Yet Shows 'Emergent Abilities' (techcrunch.com)46

Devin Coldeway reports via TechCrunch:Researchers at Amazon have trained the largest ever text-to-speech model yet, which they claim exhibits "emergent" qualities improving its ability to speak even complex sentences naturally. The breakthrough could be what the technology needs to escape the uncanny valley. These models were always going to grow and improve, but the researchers specifically hoped to see the kind of leap in ability that we observed once language models got past a certain size. For reasons unknown to us, once LLMs grow past a certain point, they start being way more robust and versatile, able to perform tasks they weren't trained to. That is not to say they are gaining sentience or anything, just that past a certain point their performance on certain conversational AI tasks hockey sticks. The team at Amazon AGI -- no secret what they're aiming at -- thought the same might happen as text-to-speech models grew as well, and their research suggests this is in fact the case.

The new model is called Big Adaptive Streamable TTS with Emergent abilities, which they have contorted into the abbreviation BASE TTS. The largest version of the model uses 100,000 hours of public domain speech, 90% of which is in English, the remainder in German, Dutch and Spanish. At 980 million parameters, BASE-large appears to be the biggest model in this category. They also trained 400M- and 150M-parameter models based on 10,000 and 1,000 hours of audio respectively, for comparison -- the idea being, if one of these models shows emergent behaviors but another doesn't, you have a range for where those behaviors begin to emerge. As it turns out, the medium-sized model showed the jump in capability the team was looking for, not necessarily in ordinary speech quality (it is reviewed better but only by a couple points) but in the set of emergent abilities they observed and measured. Here are examples of tricky text mentioned in the paper:

- Compound nouns: The Beckhams decided to rent a charming stone-built quaint countryside holiday cottage.
- Emotions: "Oh my gosh! Are we really going to the Maldives? That's unbelievable!" Jennie squealed, bouncing on her toes with uncontained glee.
- Foreign words: "Mr. Henry, renowned for his mise en place, orchestrated a seven-course meal, each dish a piece de resistance.
- Paralinguistics (i.e. readable non-words): "Shh, Lucy, shhh, we mustn't wake your baby brother," Tom whispered, as they tiptoed past the nursery.
- Punctuations: She received an odd text from her brother: 'Emergency @ home; call ASAP! Mom & Dad are worried... #familymatters.'
- Questions: But the Brexit question remains: After all the trials and tribulations, will the ministers find the answers in time?
-Syntactic complexities: The movie that De Moya who was recently awarded the lifetime achievement award starred in 2022 was a box-office hit, despite the mixed reviews.
You can read more examples of these difficult texts being spoken naturally here.

AI chatbot data harvesting personal data

 I'm sure chat isn't much better.


Your AI Girlfriend Is a Data-Harvesting Horror Show (gizmodo.com)102

"A lot of that AI chatbots that you spend days talking to push hard on getting more and more private information from you," writes longtime Slashdot reader michelcultivo, sharing a report from Gizmodo.

"To be perfectly blunt, AI girlfriends and boyfriends are not your friends," says Misha Rykov, a Mozilla Researcher from the company's *Privacy Not Included project. "Although they are marketed as something that will enhance your mental health and well-being, they specialize in delivering dependency, loneliness, and toxicity, all while prying as much data as possible from you." Gizmodo reports:Mozilla dug into 11 different AI romance chatbots, including popular apps such as Replika, Chai, Romantic AI, EVA AI Chat Bot & Soulmate, and CrushOn.AI. Every single one earned the Privacy Not Included label, putting these chatbots among the worst categories of products Mozilla has ever reviewed. You've heard stories about data problems before, but according to Mozilla, AI girlfriends violate your privacy in "disturbing new ways." For example, CrushOn.AI collects details including information about sexual health, use of medication, and gender-affirming care. 90% of the apps may sell or share user data for targeted ads and other purposes, and more than half won't let you delete the data they collect. Security was also a problem. Only one app, Genesia AI Friend & Partner, met Mozilla's minimum security standards.

One of the more striking findings came when Mozilla counted the trackers in these apps, little bits of code that collect data and share them with other companies for advertising and other purposes. Mozilla found the AI girlfriend apps used an average of 2,663 trackers per minute, though that number was driven up by Romantic AI, which called a whopping 24,354 trackers in just one minute of using the app. The privacy mess is even more troubling because the apps actively encourage you to share details that are far more personal than the kind of thing you might enter into a typical app. EVA AI Chat Bot & Soulmate pushes users to "share all your secrets and desires," and specifically asks for photos and voice recordings. It's worth noting that EVA was the only chatbot that didn't get dinged for how it uses that data, though the app did have security issues. [...]

Political parasite, Huma Abedin, 47, dating Alex Soros, 38.

 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-13084859/anthony-weiner-wife-huma-abedin-dating-alex-soros.html

Just goes to show how politicians choose relationships for power.

Those damn Clinton interns.

Monday, February 5, 2024

AGI: Are we there yet?


If we're not already there yet, Sam Altman sure talks a lot of smack. You and your magnificent seven.

Elon, hurry up and network those human brains to some quantum computers, hamster wheels, and whatever it's gonna take, let's get this show on the road. 

China, bypass those ethics laws, fire up CRISPR and play-doh fun factory us a pot of big noodles.

We've got worlds to conquer!

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2023/12/the-real-research-behind-the-wild-rumors-about-openais-q-project/#:~:text=On%20November%2022%2C%20a%20few,able%20to%20solve%20math%20problems

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/agi-we-yet-vikram-saraf/

Deep fake theft: $25M

 https://www.wionews.com/technology/hong-kong-office-employee-loses-more-than-25-million-after-video-call-with-deepfake-chief-financial-officer-686908

Sunday, January 28, 2024

'24 U.S. Pre-election predictions


Sunday, January 28th, 2024.

Given the scale of escalations leading up to the '20 elections, I can only speculate about what to expect as we approach November '24. But I expect the left will be pulling out all the stops and driving hoaxes, violence and division at an unprecedented scale.

Corporate-sponsored BLM was weaponized leading up to the '20 final verdict. The number of claims by violent protesters intensified, driving the sense that their terror would spill into our neighborhoods if the outcome wasn't satisfied in their favor. Cities across the country were burned, including black-owned businesses, stores were vandalized and mobbed at the cost of billions, people were attacked and killed.

The action was symbolic: Racism = Trump = police = unwarranted attacks on poor, innocent black people drinking tea and eating Skittles (because of the color of their skin). 

Once Biden was declared victorious, BLM went silent, as though the racist police were raptured all at once. And of course, since then we've seen a 30% increase in violent crime, especially in Democrat-led cities.

Oh, and COVID. Wear a mask and take a vaccine or you're a racist. Shut down the economy and shut yer pie hole; we're all in this together.

Fast forward to '24. Despite claims that the economy and jobs are booming, the dollar is in the toilet amidst the rising BRICS economy, spear-headed with a digital currency backed by gold. Food, housing and rent are unaffordable, we're seeing mass layoffs and holding our breath in anticipation of an economic crash. At least gas prices have gone back to normal. Or, are we still running on our reserves? Let's just continue denying we're in a recession and reassure everyone that the economy is strong, gas is cheap, and life is dandy. When and if Trump returns to office, they can claim he inherited their great economy, as per usual.

Meanwhile, we watched Biden run to Venezuela and drill in Alaska to compensate for cutting our fracking and losing the 11% we rely on from Russian. I remember George W. drilling in Alaska when he first stepped into office and the Dems lost their minds over the environmental impact. Great idiots think alike. Or maybe it's a uni-party thing.

And we have war in Ukraine and the Middle East, Palestinian protests worldwide, looming concern over Taiwan, and our border bursting with 300k migrants per month being ushered in by the cartels from every country in the world with the cooperation and funding of the federal government. 

And A.I. is accelerating, if not already equal to human intelligence, it's not far away, led by the 'Magnificent Seven' tech companies. 

How does it all fit together? With so much happening at once, it can be tricky to guess what might be coming to the U.S. as we approach the next U.S. election. Another round of COVID, terror cell activation, war escalation, BLM, power grid collapse? Aliens? The Rapture? Richard Simmons? 

I've read speculations of Michelle Obama replacing Biden. With overtures of another civil war being floated in a film produced by the Obamas (including a helpful hint not to trust the honkeys), references to Trump followers as 'Confederates', Mark Zuckerberg building a Hawaiian underground compound, and Elon Musk's bulletproof getaway truck, maybe there's a framework under construction to drive division at such a grand scale that violence is unavoidable. 

I've not been overly preoccupied with this Civil War theme, it's been floated for the last several years, but the tension regarding state versus federal sovereignty over border control in Texas may be the perfect polarity powder keg. Let's hope not, I'd hate to see a swarm of Eric Schmidt's White Stork attack drones deployed against American citizens. 

Of course, that is, if we don't end up in a big ass war in the Middle East first. I guess that's the supersize strategy to put the U.S. in as vulnerable a position as possible. 

I've always thought the push for global power and cheap labor was led by the big tech companies. That's why retail is dying and Apple postures progressive with their gay CEO while relying on Chinese slave labor. All the Leftist virtue signaling is designed to hide their thirst for total power. Once A.I. goes full tilt, we'll all be on leashes, but at least we'll see amazing things along the way.

That's all I've got for now. Sounds like the U.S. is backing off on funding Israel - maybe that one was getting a little too dicey for certain Leftoids here in the U.S. who've historically enjoyed immunity from foreign threats and pushed for open borders like they were bringing down the Berlin Wall or ending Apartheid until it occurred to them not everyone coming through is their pal. These are the same knuckle heads who champion the notion that men with tits are women and other no-brainer, commonsense bullshit. 

I might like to think I'm a good guesser but if my past speculations were validated, Trump would be finishing his second term and Oprah would be fin' to plop her ass behind the desk at the Oval Office. Let's watch the border situation and I'll update this page as the plot thickens. 

Brief update: I previously suspected Dwayne Johnson would run as a Democrat after watching his ridiculously melodramatic 'Where Are You?' YouTube video, slamming Trump for his handling of Covid. Maybe he'll rear his opportunistic, bald head yet again. Go to 13:30 to hear his answer about a possible Presidential run, claiming he's been approached by both parties and has no intention to run. Considering his new return to UFC, he'd be stepping into Trump territory. At least he has the flip-flop thing going for him, mastering the art of talking out of both sides of his mouth.


Saturday, January 27, 2024

Google Eric Schmidt: White Stork: AI attack drones


https://www.businessinsider.com/google-eric-schmidt-ai-attack-drones-white-stork-2024-1

Anyone remember, "Don't be evil?" 

"In a 2013 NPR interview, Eric Schmidt revealed that when Larry Page and Sergey Brin recommended the motto as a guiding principle for Google, he "thought this was the stupidest rule ever", but then changed his opinion..."

'24 Eric Schmidt: Ah, fuck it, let's take the crown.

Maybe Eric Schmidt remembers the Aesop's fable, "The Frogs Who Desired for a King."

White Stork is a carnivorous bird that picks off a wide range of animal prey, including insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, small mammals, and small birds. 

Sounds like a good name for an AI attack drone to me.

But wait, here's a humanitarian aid organization named for Ukraine's national bird, the White Stork:

https://whitestork.us/about

While everybody's squabbling over the symbol, let's get one thing straight:

Is the mission of a White Stork to deliver aid, attack drones, or babies?

No doubt, plenty of babies are being delivered to Ukraine, and they're wearing boots.

Schmidt may claim to have formed White Stork Group in the name of Ukraine, but Swift Beat Holdings LLC was the name of the original vision, and it wasn't on a mission of passing out pickles.






Saturday, January 13, 2024

Bukele vs Soros

 About Bukele's political orientation...


Here, Bukele recognizes how Soros pays media and journalists.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWc0Jvx3LSM

https://elsalvadorinenglish.com/2024/01/03/president-bukele-addresses-media-tabooed-matters-from-an-x-space/


Soros organization responds:

https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/newsroom/open-society-foundations-response-to-comments-by-president-bukele

Panama vs Nicaragua canal

With the current drought impacting the use of the Panama Canal and thereby impeding the U.S. supply chain, I looked again at the status of the Nicaragua Canal. I found that the project has not been abandoned, as previously reported about a year ago. 

Further, the situation puts greater pressure on securing the Suez Canal and explains the U.S. military action against Yemeni Houthi missile attacks. 

Searching the topic, there's been a drop off in stories, leading back to 2014-15, when interest in the Nicaragua Canal originally surfaced and drew criticism of the environmental impact.

China continues pushing the connection between Colombia and Nicaragua to accomplish a new shipping channel.

https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2023/08/14/chinese-project-to-link-pacific-atlantic-oceans-through-a-new-shipping-channel/

https://a-z-animals.com/blog/another-panama-canal-will-nicaragua-build-one/

https://jamestown.org/program/china-and-nicaraguas-deepening-embrace/

Further, I found that Lake Nicaragua is said to have enough water to supply the would-be canal despite the drought impacting Central America, which apparently also drives migration.

https://www.bnamericas.com/en/news/theres-enough-water-for-nicaragua-canal-says-developer

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/eye-of-the-storm/fifth-straight-year-of-central-american-drought-helping-drive-migration/

Wouldn't it make all the more sense that we drop the Paris Agreement and return to fracking? Let's get the hell out of the Middle East and concentrate efforts at home and on strengthening relations and investments with our southern neighbors.

Friday, January 12, 2024

Hertz replacing 20,000 EVs with Gas Cars

 

Hertz is Selling 20,000 Electric Vehicles To Buy Gasoline Cars Instead (cnn.com)159

quonset writes:Hertz rental has announced it's selling off one third of its 20,000 electric vehicle fleet and replacing them with gas powered vehicles. The reason? It's costing them too much to repair damaged EVs and their depreciation is hurting the bottom line.

"[C]ollision and damage repairs on an EV can often run about twice that associated with a comparable combustion engine vehicle," Hertz CEO Stephen Scherr said in a recent analyst call. And EV price declines in the new car market have pushed down the resale value of Hertz's used EV rental cars.

Friday, January 5, 2024

Thursday, January 4, 2024

5GW

 

books by Michael Flynn

Israel's origin linking the Rothschild and Rockefeller families:

https://thefuelproject.org/know-your-enemy


Cloward & Piven strategy:

Lululemon’s billionaire founder slams the company’s diversity and inclusion

 https://finance.yahoo.com/news/lululemon-billionaire-founder-slams-company-123500897.html

Here's a highlighted comment from the founder:

Wilson previously declared that when founding Lululemon back in 1998, he specifically came up with a brand name that has three L’s because the sound does not exist in Japanese phonetics.

"It's funny to watch them try and say it,” he told Canada's National Post Business Magazine.

-

Hmmm. "Ru-ru-remon..."