Artificial? Yes. Intelligent? Not So Much. 0
The Dot-Com Bubble v 2.0? El Reg reports that
“These actions do not signal reduced confidence in AI. Rather, they suggest a growing willingness to evaluate where AI creates meaningful value and where it does not. Organizations appear increasingly focused on concentrating investment where expected returns are strongest,” the report said.
Much more at the link.
The Me Veneration 0
The Rude One looks at Donald Trump’s conduct and concludes
Follow the link for his reasoning.
This New Gilded Age 0
Are we possibly seeing the return of the sweatshop?
A Tune for the Times 0
For some reason, I woke up thinking of this tune this morning.
The Voter Fraud Fraudsters 0
Steve M. decodes de code.
Independence Day 0
When I was in elementary school studying Virginia history (mumble) years agom in third grade, 1619 was taught as the “Red Letter Year” because of three events:
- The arrival of the first English women to the Virginia colony.
- The first sitting of the House of Burgesses, the Virginia colony’s legislature.
- The first arrival of Africans to be sold as slaves (at a spot not far from where I type this).
The legacy of the last item on that list continues to exact its toll, as the stain of America’s original sin of chattel slavery and the myth of racial superiority fabricated to justify it continue to pollute our polity.
One of my local broadcast stations has compiled a report which I think is worthy of attention, for it addresses events that many want to pretend didn’t happen.
You can ignore history or you can lie about it–many do every day–but you can’t make it unhappen, you can’t make it go away.
Carnage Nation 0
Rebecca Watson discusses a recent report showing that the increasing size of cars and trucks, particularly the height of their front ends, in contributing to increase accidents and pedestrian deaths.
Or you can read the transcript.
Jingo Jangles 0
At the Psychology Today website, Dominic Packer and Jay Van Bavel wonder at what point national pride morphs into a form of what they refer to a national narcissism. Methinks it a timely and worthwhile read in these Trumpled times. Here’s a tiny bit:
But here’s the twist: Once the researchers disentangled the healthy form of national identification from the narcissistic one (by putting them both in the same analyses), they found that people who felt a genuine bond with their nation were actually less willing to conspire against fellow citizens. National narcissists, on the other hand, were the ones willing to wiretap and lie. In short, these types of social identity predicted the exact opposite pattern of results.
Tool Time 0
David discusses J. D. Vance’s (somewhat poorly received) attempt to use America’s military as props for his propaganda. (Warning: Very short promo about halfway through.)
Afterthought:
That the pforces did not seem to pfall for his pfiffel gives me a straw at which to grasp
Artificial? Yes. Intelligent? Not So Much. 0
Capable of kidnapping your data? El Reg reports that (s)mooth AI criminal drives ‘first’ end-to-end agentic ransomware attack. (To put that another way, once it got the prompt, an AI bot ran a rensomeware scam from start to finish all on its ownsome.)
AI doesn’t stand for “ariticial intelligence.” It stands “amoral instrumentation.”
A Divider, Not a Uniter 0
In the Las Vegas Sun, Tom Harper points out that that has been the long-standing strategy of today’s Republican Party.