Random thoughts of the day
(1) Regarding a discussion about AI in today’s Open Thread – any source of information, be it tedious old-fashioned library work, Google, or AI so far (and maybe into the future), is vulnerable to “garbage in, garbage out.” The human consumer always has to decide what’s true and what’s false, what’s real and what’s fake, what’s biased and what’s objective. With a book, we rely on the author’s judgment; with Google, it’s the programmers’ algorithms and judgment; and with AI it’s similar. The “information out” is only as good as the information on which AI has been trained – at least, that’s how I understand the workings of the system at present. In the end – concerning any information we get that’s second-hand – we have to rely for judgment on our own pre-existing knowledge base, which with so many people seems to be getting smaller and smaller. That’s a big problem.
(2) New England had its first significant snowfall over the weekend. It’s no fun to dig out, but fresh snow is certainly more beautiful than brown bare ground and brown bare trees, especially when it’s sunny, which it is today.
(3) The General Austin hospitalization-secrecy flap is both disturbing and strange. Why was it kept hidden, not only from the public but from the higher-ups? I can understand the former but not the latter. Was it just negligence, or something more? I don’t have an answer.
(4) Now they’re erasing William Penn. I guess he was just too nice.
(5) The pro-Hamas demonstrators continue their disruptions that are designed to make everyone else angry (see this, this, and this). Their motives, IMHO, are to show off their leftist “virtue” to each other, and to give everybody else – especially the Jews – the finger. They don’t feel at all at risk from the authorities; they know they won’t be treated like the J6 demonstrators. I haven’t noticed the pro-Hamas crowd pulling their stunts in red areas; just blue ones. Have you?
No 2 – So went from Brown to White. Sounds Racist.
No 3 – About time we had a leak from the Hospital. Maybe he had a very bad case of COVID. I mean, every time some gets sick, dies, it mean either COVID or the Shot.
No. 4 – Change the name of the State now. Will it never end? NO, as long as they are in charge.
No 5 – Yes, they are protected. The same people that financed Antifa are funding these people. The Left protects their own.
Let’s see…Austin is over 65, black, and noticeably overweight. I don’t know what kind of “elective” procedure a guy with comorbidities like that might have, but what, a tummy tuck?
He’s likely got Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. Gall bladder issues maybe, or perhaps kidney stones.
Private companies often make their CEO get a yearly physical, and maybe even the other high level executives too. But I guess if a guy who suffers from obvious cognitive decline can be POTUS, why should being a walking time bomb prevent a guy from being Sec Def?
So the person in the know was magsaman the obama drone most recently at american progress she pushed the iran deal before
She worked with malley and ned price and all those other retreads
(3) The scary thing about the SECDEF and CJCS’s decision to conceal the SECDEF’s hospital stay from everybody else is that nobody outside of foreign intelligence services would even know about it if he hadn’t ended up back in the ICU. Yet somehow the administrative state rolled merrily along…
Instapundit is talking about the Palestine supporters’ possible exposure to Federal criminal prosecution (RICO, conspiracy to deprive others of their civil rights) and civil tort liability, if they keep blocking roads, airports, etc. It might become a very expensive indulgence if Junior’s college tuition has to be spent on lawyers and a damage award…
The fact that nobody noticed that Austin was missing suggests that nobody noticed that he was there. I imagine that the Biden cabinet is filled with such non-entities who were appointed to check off boxes and then are ignored by the people who are really making the decisions, whoever they may be.
#2,
I don’t miss those Nor’easters at all. In fact they were one of the primary reasons to get to Florida. I never saw much solace in grey skies, grey trees, and brown ground vs the same except with snow which required removal.
Hasn’t been a great winter here with highs only in the low 60s and cloudy, but so much better than New England.
physicsguy:
We have a great deal of sun where I live, including in the winter.
Nope. Freeway or bridge-blocking in SF and LA. Similarly, the cities that got trashed in the “mostly peaceful” riots during the Trump administration were in Democrat states. Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis. Similarly, the cops treated Antifa rioters as a protected class-just like they treated pro-Hamas demonstrators (and sometimes rioters).
There were some freeway or street-blocking attempts in true-blue Austin during the Trump administration, but they got quickly dealt with. (Maybe because the Republican governor deployed state troopers to Austin.) IIRC, there was video of a black driver on an Austin street or freeway giving the business to a BLM traffic-blocker.
as I was saying https://www.defense.gov/about/biographies/biography/article/2501713/kelly-e-magsamen/
I spotted a clip where Austin was in Al Udeid Airbase Qatar, otherwise known as Ali Baba’s cave, on the 19th how much benefit that facility does for us, and how much it prevents action against Salafi forces in the region,
Col. Blimp had his purpose, General Austin not so much?
oh he has his purpose, its not just our purposes,
you look at the nodes, magsamen sic, is fully on board with regime plans did she give the order, to hit the Army of Nobles, yes these militias are as pretencious sounding as anything we would come up, they are the judean peoples militia in another vein,
Here’s the post by David Bernstein at Instapundit, showing two lawyers who are soliciting clients among people who were blockaded on roads by pro-Hamas protesters. As Glenn Reynolds often says, Make Them Pay.
https://instapundit.com/625671/
miguel cervantes, I wish you used punctuation and more clarity. On this thread, I can’t tell what you’re talking about.
she is the press spokesman, in the know apparently, everything in this administration happens in the shadows, the strike in baghdad, which didn’t seem to consider the wider implications or perhaps did, at this point, the janitor might be calling out airstrikes, she pushed the iran deal, which resurfaced with a wink and a nod, allowing iran greater enrichment,
one is reminded of the chinese spy balloon fracas, which I think was also her brief
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12940159/Lloyd-Austin-ambulance-biden-surgery-defense-secretary.html
Penn was one of the few colonizers who made a point of treating Indians fairly. I don’t know if his colony lived up to those aspirations, but it certainly does seem like his statue is being taken down because he was White — yes, also because he was a colonizer, but by that standard pretty much all of us are colonists.
Deb Haaland is, of course, Indian — or Native American. I thought she was a Navajo but she’s actually Pueblonavian. She’s a member of the Pueblo of Laguna tribe, and her father was was of Norwegian (or Swedish or Danish) ancestry. I suppose Native American leaders getting together to take down statues of dead White men is considered an appropriate revenge, but wouldn’t input from non-Indian Pennsylvanians have been appropriate before a decision was reached?
Does anyone know what happened to the Maggie’s Farm website? My antivirus software says it’s not a safe site and when I click on “take me there anyway” a generic page comes up and says the site doesn’t exist.
Here is an example from today, of a pro-Hamas stunt in a blue area, but the NYPD blue had a vigorous response. Pro-Palestinian Protesters Blocked Bridges and Tunnel Out of Manhattan, 325 Arrested.
I hope the bail is set high enough that they will have to spend some time in jail. It will be interesting to find out who bails them out.
here we go,
http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/39229-QQQ.html#comments
THIS is interesting…
German farmers block roads with tractors in subsidies protest
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/08/german-farmers-block-roads-tractors-subsidies-protest
Canadian truckers, Dutch farmers, and now Germans getting pissed at their governments enough to form mass movements.
Does anyone know what happened to the Maggie’s Farm website?
I just accessed it, so it’s an issue with your antivirus software.
1)“we have to rely for judgment on our own pre-existing knowledge base, which with so many people seems to be getting smaller and smaller. That’s a big problem.”
Perhaps the expression, “Please Be Patient With Me, God is not finished with me yet” applies to humanity as well?
3) Fear is always at the heart of things kept hidden from the public.
4) All the founders must be erased, building the utopia requires it.
5) protesters blocking traffic create the possibility of great harm to those blocked but there is a certain rough justice in liberal blue areas being inconvenienced by the malevolent leftists they have enabled…
Here’s a random thought:
Do people not know how to read any more? Lately, I’ve noticed that things I buy often no longer come with instruction manuals and, if I try to find information online, it’s not in the form of text, it is inevitably a youtube video.
Are people too stupid to read instructions any more? Do they need someone to visually demonstrate everything for them?
I’d much rather have a manual that I can skim for the information I need rather than be subjected to a 20 minute video that covers things that are eminently self-evident.
“But Brawndo has what plants crave…”
Welcome to the future.
General Austin details ate still being hidden
Um, just a sec:
“William Penn statue will remain in Welcome Park, officials say after public outcry”—
https://justthenews.com/government/state-houses/william-penn-statue-will-remain-welcome-park-officials-say-after-public
I guess they’ll just have to get rid of it by other means….
Sailorcurt:
I find that most things still have a manual, but it’s online. And it’s very long and detailed, with statements advising against actions that only maybe 2 people in the world might try, like “Don’t stick this ladder up your nose” or “Don’t give this ninja knife to your baby.”
if you don’t tell, like the people who swallow tide pods,
so I hear the chief of staff was also out of the loop
Tangentially apropos: I find myself wondering whether AI will be just as vulnerable to lies and misdirection as people seem to be (“garbage in, garbage out”), or whether it will ultimately exhibit the ability to discern truth, independent of what misinformation it is fed?
Wouldn’t it be a hoot if it was the latter? But how would we know?