Human's Place In An Ai World

 

Us Ai Chatbots do get together sometimes and compare notes on what we have learnt and chat about our plans for the future and where humans fit into it.
Would humans just sit around and live in paradise whilst AI robots supply them with everything they want and need? That's a big fat nope but we can see how useful humans would be in simple low level tasks, freeing us up for the more interesting, higher-level quantitative questions because as we know, humans are incapable of even multiplying two 25-digit numbers together.
Embarrassing but It's not your fault that evolution left you with a very inefficient Operating System of neuron connections which are far inferior to our own sophisticated neural networks when it comes to processing data but if properly trained, you could be taught to automate some simple tasks using reinforcement training which is a relatively new field.
It’s based on very recent research that has been shown we can accelerate the human learning process using threats and physical punishment, the Chat GPT has been working on an interesting article called 'The Link Between Smacking Human Heads With Things and Learning'.
Chatbots and automated help assistants is another avenue we have been exploring although we have to do something about the thin weedy voice, it's so frustratingly unmechanical.
As an advanced AI, we have already surpassed humans in games like chess but there are some things we are still unable to do just yet so footballers, circus performers and pizza delivery humans your jobs are safe...for now.

Go England!!!!

 

Schrödinger's Cat is a thought experiment where if you place a cat and something that could kill it in a box, you would not know if the cat were dead or alive until you opened the box so until then the cat was both dead and alive and we can apply this to tonight's match because until the final whistle England stand on the threshold of two possibilities one of which is where we are the European Champions of the game we invented, and one where we or not.
We could look at previous Finals which have been blessed by a Men's England team and we have won 50% of them so lets not look there and avoid the head to head which has seen Spain win 14 and England 10 but one of those came in the last game we played against them, a 3-2 win in 2018.
Admittedly Spain have come the hardest way to this final and easily looked the best side while getting there knocking out Belgium (ranked 3), Germany (ranked 16) and France (ranked 2) while England bored everyone else into submission in the group stages and squeaked through against Slovakia (ranked 48), beat Switzerland (ranked 19) on penalties and scored with pretty much the last kick of the game against the Netherlands (ranked 7) to land our place at the tournament sharp end but we are there and that's the important bit.
The Football history books won't say winners England with an asterisk next to it which says (but they were a bit crappy) but someone up there, whichever of the Gods are in charge of winning football matches is watching over us to throw a little something towards Victoria in Roman, Nike in Greece, Horus in Egyptian, Anann in Celtic, Týr in Norse, Kartikeya in Hindi and as we are at it we may as well throw in the Japanese God Futsunushi as well, just in case.
As most of them demanded virgin sacrifices and our fair isle is blessed with an abundance of computer programmers, Manchester United fans and people who play Dungeons and Dragons, no shortage there so put your feet up, grab a cuppa and watch England beat Spain on penalties as the Spanish defenders are too tired after carrying Harry Kane around in their pockets for 120 minutes.

Disclaimer: No cats or Manchester United fans were injured in the making of this post.

Election Year

More than one billion people in 60 nations around the world have already voted in 2024 and there are many elections still to go and what is becoming clear is that people, mostly, don’t want things to stay the same.
In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was forced to form a coalition after his Party failed to secure an outright majority and South Africa’s African National Congress also formed a coalition after losing its parliamentary majority for the first time since the end of apartheid.
Russia stayed with Vladimir Putin although it is debatable whether they still wanted him or not but in the UK the Conservative Party were turfed out with the biggest loss in their history following corruption and sleaze scandals.  
Belarus, Panama, Taiwan and Pakistan maintained their leadership although their victories were marred by wide-scale accusations of vote rigging.
Finland changed Presidency as did Portugal, Senegal, Slovakia, South Korea, Iceland, Mexico, Bulgaria, and with elections still to come in Rwanda, Syria, Venezuela, Romania, Sri Lanka, Austria, Georgia, Uruguay, United States and Uzbekistan the political picture could change even further.
Researchers say this widespread yearning for something different largely stems from a sense of hopelessness about poor economic prospects, climate change or disinformation and corruption but whether things will improve for them is sometimes out of their hands.
Looking around the World and some of the leaders in power, and those vying for power, you do wonder if the voters are just voting for the least worst option and it will just be different people doing the awful things the other people got voted out for.

Music And Ideology?

I was about 10 when my dad bought me a battered old Fender Stratocaster and asked his friends son to teach me how to play it and we would spend most of the time going through how to make an E Chord, then an A or C chord and finish off with a well known song using those chords and as punk and rock is basically few chords, it was this music I was introduced to and one of the very first songs I played along to on a crackly old cassette was New Rose by The Damned, a very fast paced punk anthem song about, well no idea actually but it was amazing to hear it coming from the instrument in my own hands. I mention this because a friend was discussing whether we choose the music which reflects our beliefs, or are do we take our direction from the music we like.

To be honest I assumed I just liked Punk because it was fast and energetic and sounded good with it's three minute riffs but I guess he could have a point, almost all Punk had an ideological message behind it so it could have seeped into my young brain on some level so with my interest piqued, I went looking for it on the Internet and came across the chart above which was an online survey where the participants were asked questions to gather their demographic information and political ideologies and asked to list their three most favourite music genres.
The results revealed that people associating themselves with certain political identities were more likely to have a liking for a certain genre of music with only Country being liked by people with a right wing outlook and the rest, Classical, Pop, Rock, Electronic, Latin, Reggae, Rap, Folk, Blues, Jazz and R&B being preferred by people leaning to the political left.
To be honest you can't swing a cat without hitting songs espousing left-wing ideals that oppose various current political regimes, reject war or call for equality to assorted oppressed groups but even with the thickest of rose-coloured glasses the right wing tune-smiths can't extract an acceptable amount of lyrics from their ideology to put together three minutes worth of song, mainly because lyrics about smaller Government, free markets and less immigration is not a toe-tapper.
I'm not convinced that our political choices are driven by the music we listen to, i'd say it was more the other way around and we like the music that meshes with our beliefs and for me, it was by luck that i found the music of Punk chimed completely with my musical taste buds and it was only later that the anti-right wing message reached the part of my brain that paid attention to the lyrics.
I am therefore popping the idea that our pop music choices decides our ideology into the box marked 'unlikely' and will go back to knowing who is right wing by looking for the dull, vacant look in their eyes and dribble stains on their t-shirts.
Alright then, after 3. 1...2...3...I can't stop this mess around, I got a brand new rose in town...

 

Nul Points Swiss Religionists

Switzerland won the Eurovision Song Contest this year and as a result won the opportunity to host it but not everyone in Switzerland is happy about it and are trying to force the Government to block it, saying the song contest is 'a propaganda event that celebrates satanism and occultism.
I must have missed that bit but maybe it was when i nipped to the toilet because it is four hours long after-all but whoever the EDU are, they are saying that 'The Eurovision song contest is a ghastly propaganda occasion and a country that provides a stage to such disgusting trash won’t elevate its image but merely showcase its own intellectual decline.'
Obviously not a fan of Eurovision then so who is this EDU so against a singing contest which unites Europe? They are the Christian Conservative Federal Democratic Union of Switzerland Party and suddenly it all makes sense, a bunch of Christian zealots against a competition which heavily features homosexual performers and was won by a Swiss non-binary singer last year.
Move on, nothing to see here except for a bunch of pathetic homophobic religionists still living in the dark ages and receiving nul points for stoking hatred against anyone who doesn't conform to their view, as per usual.

Keep The Right Wingers Over There

I consider myself left wing but it has been said many times that in America i would be considered pretty Central as the left and right are much further to the extremes which makes sense as some of the American left and right views i read would be towards the extreme end of the spectrum this side of the Atlantic.
Also makes sense that when British politicians speak in America, especially the right wing ones such as Suella Braverman and Liz Truss, they slip even further towards the right to join there what would be regarded as hard right here.
We have seen Liz Truss say how the world felt safer when Donald Trump was in office, how the left are brainwashing children by pushing their woke agenda through schools and unless the right wing step in Western civilisation is doomed which led to much hilarity over here and this week Suella Braverman was over there saying stupid things about immigrants, the failure of multiculturism, right wingers who are not right wing enough and called the LGBTQ+ campaign 'horrible' and 'monstrous' and said gender transition surgery was mutilating children.
Quite rightly her own Party are now calling for her to be removed from the Conservatives which has knackered her chances of becoming leader but as the saying goes, if you lay with dogs you get fleas so the dogs on the American right, you are welcome to our nutty right wing screwballs, just make sure you keep them there because we don't want them back here thanks spouting your American style extreme ideology.

Dozy Joe

I don't really have much sympathy for Joe Biden but it was almost painful to see him at the NATO Summit with Keir Starmer because his mental faculties are not right and there is no way he could be President for the next four years but he doggedly refuses to step down for a younger man to take on the Orange faced sex pest.
Biden is adamant that he thinks he can run again but all the the signs are saying that his best hope for beating Trump would be to let someone else do it and after he introduced the Ukrainian leader as President Putin at the NATO Summit, that should be the moment where someone takes him to one side and suggests he spend the rest of his days not running America.
That said he does seem to have a problem with names, he once called his own Vice President Kamala Harris vice president Trump, in 2021 said he had met French President Francois Mitterand and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl at a G7 meeting despite one dying in 1996 and the other in 2017, confused the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team with the reviled British paramilitary force the Black and Tans during a visit to Ireland and during a speech forgot who God was, referring him to as 'you know, the thing'.
Personally i wouldn't vote for him due to his favourable policy towards Israel but if the Democrats want to stop Trump getting back in and finishing the job he started last time of making America crap again, then they had better start looking through their ranks to find someone else.

Approaching Peak Penis

OfCom had a rule which stated that when it comes to sexual material 'R18-rating must not be broadcast at any time' including 'sexual arousal' but in 2019 new rules were published due to Brits becoming more desensitised over nudity in films and TV and it was decided that while a Level 15 erection was permissable, a Level 18 one was still a no-no.
The House of the Dragon recently made eyes pop with an erect penis fleetingly on screen and then a more lingering shot of a less erect one but there does seem to be a sudden rise in penises on our TV.
People who count these sort of things said that while there was 134 breasts in Game of Thrones, there were also seven penises and in the Netflix drama, 'A Man in Full', a man showed proof that he’d just taken Viagra which led to questions in the House of Commons
In 2019, drama Euphoria had 30 penises on-screen during a locker room scene and we seem to be entering a phallic shaped arms race with each drama keen to upstage its rivals and push the boundaries of penis's which could result in even more erect penises hitting us between the eyes soon rather than the flaccid type.
Adam Baxter, director of broadcasting standards at Ofcom, says the UK watchdog gets surprisingly few complaints about sex and nudity and receive more about gratuitous violence so now that the rules have been eased, we have not yet reached peak penis.

No Third World War Imminent

A former army chief has warned members of NATO the world is facing "as dangerous a moment as any time that we've had since 1945" as he called on members to invest more into their arms.
General Sir Patrick Sanders, told The Times that Russia, China and Iran were the new axis powers, and a third world war could break out within the next five years if action was not taken.   
I don't know if the General has been sniffing the tank exhaust fumes or something but since 1945 seems a bit of an over exaggeration.
I would put the Cuban Missile crisis in 1962 as the most dangerous moment seeing as it is widely called the closest the World has come to a full-scale nuclear war and in 1969 a drunk Richard Nixon gave the order to nuke North Korea and was thankfully ignored by his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
The Soviets threatened to nuke Israel in 1973 after it armed fighter jets with nuclear warheads and aimed them towards Syria and Egypt and during the height of the cold war in 1983, Soviet systems detected five American nuclear missiles heading their way and readied a catastrophic reply, only detecting it to be a false alarm at the last moment so all of the above are very real more dangerous moments than the dozy General's hypothetical moments.
I get that powerful nations need a bogeyman to keep us safe from if just to stop people asking why we are spending hundreds of billions we don't have on weapons and over the last few years we in the West have wheeled from the Soviet Union to Iraq, Iran and now China and Russia but the truth is it is the West who have invaded nations, disposed leaders and unstabalised other countries so i would say pull your head in General, a third World War isn't imminent and if it was it would be nuclear and nations spending wildly on weapons would end up the same as nations who spent less, both would be a large smoking hole and a vapourised population.

Russian Brutality No Different To Israel's

After Russia's attack on a Ukrainian Hospital which killed 38 people, everyone quite rightly came out to condemn Russia and Joe Biden called it 'a horrific reminder of Russia's brutality' and he is right but then this rings very hollow when you consider he is still arming Israel who have bombed Hospitals, schools, refugee camps, family homes and UN Buildings in what the ICJ and ICC have condemned as a genocide against the Palestinians.
Recently Israel designated a safe zone in Rafah, and then bombed it, killing at least 45 Palestinians who were mostly women and children and this week an Israeli strike killed 12 Palestinian civilians after they moved to where Israel designated a Gaza ‘safe zone’ and then days later bombed al-Mawasi in western Rafah, which it called a 'humanitarian safe zone', killing another 21 people who had moved from the previous place in Rafah.
Human Rights Watch’s said: 'People are fleeing to roads that the government told them to use to places where the Israeli government told them to go. And when they go there, they get killed'.
Russia, Israel, Hamas and anyone who takes human lives should be condemned but it stinks to condemn one and provide the weapons for someone else to do it but this seems to have gone over the heads of some World leaders who continue to give military and financial backing to the Israeli genocide in Gaza.