A misuse of AI that I hadn't foreseen

 

We know artificial intelligence (AI) can be a very useful tool for good.  Sadly, it can be used for evil as well.

Police have launched a criminal investigation into an officer accused of using artificial intelligence (AI) systems to "create evidential material in a number of cases".

The Derbyshire Police officer has been removed from front-line duties, pending the outcome of the investigation, the force said.

The officer is alleged to have perverted the course of justice, but no arrests have been made, police added.

A Crown Prosecution Service spokesperson said they were working with police, adding: "We are engaging with defence teams and the courts in appropriate cases."

There's more at the link.

I hadn't given this enough consideration, but thinking about it, it's potentially a very serious problem.  Perverting the course of justice is bad enough, but think about how a group with a particular ideology can fabricate "evidence" to persuade their government to act in a certain way towards another country?  The neocon outrage at President Trump's announcement of a deal with Iran is a good example.  What if the outspoken pro-war ideologues could concoct their own evidence to "show" that the deal is a lousy one, and should be abandoned?  What if they could "create" evidence to persuade Iran to start hostilities again, because it was convinced America was about to attack it again?

This adds a very worrying dimension to AI.  It will probably be almost impossible for a non-specialist to figure out whether or not the evidence presented is authentic or fabricated.  Indeed, it may contain just enough truth to be persuasive, and add enough falsehood to lead to a wrong conclusion.  How would one prove it false when it contains at least some truth?

This adds new complexity to the issue of censorship - of news, of social media, of whatever.  First Street Journal gives us examples.

It was just over four years ago that we wrote about The New York Times publishing an article by a member of their own Editorial Board, Greg Bensinger, telling readers of that august supporter of Freedom of the Press that it was bad, bad, bad that Elon Musk was trying to buy Twitter, and that his promise to make the social media service an “inclusive arena for free speech” and that “Twitter Under Elon Musk Will Be a Scary Place.”

. . .

We pointed out that The New York Times gave OpEd space to Chad Malloy[2] to claim that restrictions on speech actually promoted freedom of speech. They also published articles claiming that Free Speech is killing us. Noxious language online is causing real-world violence ... And today? There were riots in Belfast, Northern Ireland, following the attempted beheading of a Scotsman by a Sudanese asylum seeker, and the Usual Suspects complained not about the attack, but about Twitter not censoring people writing about it! There’s more of that here and here and here.

The United Kingdom’s Secretary for Northern Island Hilary Benn said, following the knife attack in Belfast:

Social media companies have a very heavy responsibility. It’s why we’re going to bring forward new powers next week to make it clear that social media companies need to take down illegal content, particularly when we are facing circumstances such as the ones we’ve seen in Northern Ireland over the last two days.

It’s simple: our good friends on the left are afraid, deathly afraid, that if the people in general have the information Our Betters would rather not see disseminated, people might, horrors! draw conclusions from that information of which the left would disapprove!

Again, more at the link.

Imagine that the sources quoted by First Street Journal had been "massaged" by AI to give a rather different emphasis to the news than the reality?  For that matter, what if the journal itself used AI to give a particular propaganda twist to its presentation of the news?  Merely by selecting words and phrases that "shaded" the presentation in one direction or another, its impression on readers could be significantly altered;  and AI systems, with their vast resources of language, facts, figures and news, would be in an ideal position to shape and form that impression.

Hmmmm . . .

Peter

Tab clearing

 

Over the past few days I've come across several very useful and informative articles.  I haven't got time to make each one into a detailed blog post, so I'll link to them here.  I'm sure some of them will interest you.

1.  What is the British military actually for?

This is about the British military, not the USA's, but nevertheless there are many common factors in the problems confronting each of them.  I daresay we on this side of the Atlantic should pay equal attention to the reasons for the existence of our armed forces, and whether (and how well) they are structured to implement those reasons.

2.  What happens if the State decides you're too expensive to keep alive?

A very thought-provoking academic study of Canada's Medical Assistance In Dying (MAID) program, and the pro's and con's of expanding it to provide involuntary euthanasia - in other words, a doctor or medical panel will decide whether your life is worth saving.  If you're a net expense to the government or medical insurance, here comes the lethal injection.  The abstract opens with this chilling statement:

"This study explores the potential economic savings from expanding medical assistance in dying (MAiD) in Canada, where it is currently a leading cause of death, to include vulnerable groups that cost the government more than they contribute in taxes. These groups include individuals with severe mental health issues, the homeless, drug users, retired elderly, and indigenous communities. Both voluntary and non-voluntary scenarios were analyzed, projecting total savings of up to CAD $1.273 trillion by 2047."

So, if the Canadian government thinks you're worth less to them alive than what it would cost them to treat your medical issue(s) . . . enjoy the euthanasia polka!

3.  The Declaration of Dependence

We are amid a significant shift in the cultural messaging around parenthood, and we can’t throw shame or money at the problem if we hope to solve it. A growing number of people in younger generations have decided that having children simply isn’t worth it. Why? ... The biggest shift ... is the acceptance of the idea that having children is merely one among many viable choices available if one is to live a flourishing adult life; indeed, it might lead to greater personal growth if one doesn’t have children at all. In very short order, the social pressure that used to insist that people who did not have children were selfish has shifted to its opposite—the idea that having children is selfish, given the world’s unsolvable problems and the need to pursue one’s own goals. From here, it is a short leap to viewing children as a burden, a cost to personal autonomy that is not worth paying. 

4.  The Loophole That Put Drunk Truckers Back On The Road

"A federal database built to flag and remove drunk and drugged truckers from U.S. highways used the equivalent of an "honor system" as its last line of defense between a family in a minivan and a substance addict steering an 80,000-pound mass of steel ... But what if a current alcoholic or drug addict could immediately get back behind the wheel by paying a third party to simply check off a box inside the database, rather than complete and pass follow-up drug or alcohol testing?"  Looks like thousands of truckers have been doing precisely that - posing a grave danger to other American drivers.

5.  Stop Nick Shirley!

Instrumental in exposing sufficient fraud so it could no longer be ignored by local or state officials is independent journalist Nick Shirley, who exposed the infamous “Quality Learing Center” day care fraud in Minneapolis, as well as many less well-known fraudulent day cares. So effective was Shirley, and so quickly did his work anger local fraudsters and state officials, Shirley received so many death threats he apparently decided to give California a try ... In Minnesota and California, honest public employees tried for years to expose fraud, but their superiors and the state Attorney General’s Office ignored them. But with Shirley’s discovery of incredible levels of fraud, the California Legislature was prodded into action: they’re criminalizing exposing fraud ... why would legislators, people sworn to protect the public, presumably at least in part by catching criminals defrauding taxpayers of billions, want to protect those criminals? It’s a puzzler, unless, perhaps, those NGOs and nonprofits are primary funding sources of the Democrat Party and Democrat politicians?

6.  Things don’t happen to me.  They happen for me

Rita is a personal friend of long standing, and shares a Substack with Lawdog, whom most of us know.  I was touched by her recent essay, and thought it worth sharing.

I want to share something that has been much on my mind of late, but I want to preface this with the caveat that there’s a sea of pretty ideas out there that appeal instantly but that don’t stand up to intensive scrutiny ... The story I share with you below is about making a choice to perceive things from a more objective standpoint, rather than seeing every curveball as the ultimate disruptor that could have occurred, and making life a misery ... I’ve always tried to embrace the joy of living, but I’ve not always understood how to go about it. I think now I understand that this joy is not having the right things or the stylish possessions that the world dictates are the measure of a life well-lived. I think one can have a joyous life in the most humble of circumstances, if one chooses.

There you go, friends.  I hope you found at least one or two of those articles worth your time.

Peter

Another perspective on the latest Trump assassination attempt

 

A little late, perhaps, but worth repeating nonetheless.  From Peter Girnus, "a senior coordinating producer for the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner".

I was backstage at the Washington Hilton when the shots were fired.

The first thing I heard was not the gunfire. It was glass.

A champagne flute hit the floor of the International Ballroom at approximately 9:47 PM. Then a second. Then the sound that I have since been told was a 12-gauge shotgun, which from inside the ballroom sounded like a heavy door slamming in a parking garage. Then the Secret Service moved. They moved the President, the Vice President, the First Lady through the east corridor in under ninety seconds, which is protocol, which is practiced, which is the one part of the evening that worked exactly as it was designed.

Everything else was improvised.

I know this because I ordered the wine. 94 tables. Two bottles per table. 188 bottles of a Willamette Valley pinot noir that the Association selected in February after a tasting committee spent three meetings debating between Oregon and Burgundy. Oregon won. The budget was $14,200. I signed the invoice. I can tell you the vintage. I can tell you the distributor. I can tell you the per-bottle cost because I negotiated it down from $89 to $76.

What I cannot tell you is how 147 of those bottles left the building during an active shooter evacuation.

I can tell you what I saw. A correspondent from a network I will not name picked up two bottles on her way to the east exit. Full bottles. One in each hand. She was wearing heels and she did not spill. A man in a tuxedo tucked one inside his jacket the way you'd shoplift a paperback at an airport bookstore. A woman picked up a bottle, looked at the label, put it back, and took a different one.

She checked the vintage. During an evacuation. That's editorial judgment under pressure.

. . .

2,600 guests were directed to the exits by Secret Service agents, one of whom had just taken a shotgun round in his ballistic vest and walked to the ambulance on his own feet.

The agent's vest costs approximately $800. The wine that left the building was worth $11,172 at Association cost. At restaurant markup, roughly $29,000. The guests saved more in wine than the vest that saved the agent.

That's priority.

. . .

I have produced eleven of these dinners ... I have never, in eleven years, seen a guest leave a $76 bottle on the table during an evacuation. I have also never seen a guest check the label first. Both observations are consistent. The bottle is worth taking. The evacuation is worth surviving. The instinct is to do both simultaneously.

188 bottles placed. 41 recovered. 147 unaccounted for. One agent shot. Zero guests injured. Zero bottles broken.

A free press for a free people. The press is free. The wine was $76 a bottle. They took it anyway.

There's more at the link.

Mr. Girnus' post on X (formerly Twitter) has so far attracted over 4,000 replies and comments.  Click over there to read them if you're interested.  I particularly liked his reply to one comment:

They took the wine at a pace that suggested familiarity with hotel evacuation corridors. That's not elite behavior. That's logistics under pressure. I've seen worse at a Marriott fire alarm in Phoenix.

Word!

Needless to say, my opinion of most alleged journalists has not been improved by this fiasco . . .

Peter

The challenge to writers and content creators

 

Ted Gioia points out the real challenge to making an impact in the writing and publishing world - not just authors, but journalists, essayists and thinkers in general.

As journalists lose their jobs, more publicists get hired. The result is that there are now seven times as many publicists as journalists. The rise of AI agents will only make this worse, much worse.

The entire media ecosystem is breaking down. Around three-quarters of journalists now block publicists who are (they believe) spamming them. I get so many pitches from PR people that I can’t even begin to deal with them.

I’m fortunate that I’ve found other ways of getting access to useful information—but that’s more a workaround rather than a real solution. In the meantime, all the noise coming from the publicity world isn’t good for anyone. As a result, many deserving musicians, authors and other creatives can’t get any attention, no matter how talented they are.

There are many causes, but the single biggest one is the decline in paid jobs for journalists. And the underlying reason for that is obvious: Google and Facebook stole all the ad revenues that previously supported journalism. Fix that and so many other problems go away End of story.

. . .

[Timothy Chalamet] grasps the reality that culture is now evaluated on cash flow, not creativity. He’s no fool. He works in Hollywood, where you always pay as you go.

Yesterday the New York Times inadvertently called attention to this same hypocrisy.

Times publisher AG Sulzberger bragged that the newspaper now employs 2,300 journalists—twice as many as a decade ago.

That sounds like good news. But I’m left wondering how the numbers of writers can double while the Times’ coverage of opera, ballet, jazz, books, etc. has collapsed during that same period.

Once you dig into the numbers, you see that the Times also scorns these idioms. In their world, ballet and opera have been superseded by word games and cookie recipes.

There's more at the link.  Mr. Gioia goes on to link those issues to the parlous state of fiction writing today:  you can read about that at the link, if you're a writer.

I find it hard to argue against his points.  So much of the writing we read today in news and social media is half-educated, poorly expressed, and reliant upon slang and profanity to convince readers, rather than make well-informed points and persuade them.  I suppose that may be why "shock jocks" like Nick Fuentes or Keith Olbermann have so many followers:  they entertain rather than inform, and try to rouse emotions rather than discuss issues rationally.

Trouble is, I don't see any solution on the horizon when I look at the state of American education today.  We're turning out semi-educated half-wits for the most part.  They've never been taught how to think - only what to think;  and the news outlets that publish them are telling people to shut up and do as they're told, and not think for themselves.  The results are clearly to be seen in our younger politicians.

Not a happy thought.

Peter

Doofus Of The Day #1,128

 

Today's award goes to police and tax authorities in South Korea for an epic blunder.

Soon after South Korean police posted a press release boasting about seizing $5.6 million worth of cryptocurrency from 124 wealthy tax evaders, cops realized that they had mistakenly posted images that made it possible for a thief to quickly steal most of the seized assets.

. . .

Clearly legible in the photo, the note contained a complete mnemonic recovery phrase that anyone can use as a master key to move assets off the cold wallet to a new wallet without any additional PIN or permissions required.

. . .

It’s possible that whoever took the cryptocurrency just seized on an opportunity after seeing the cops’ failure to redact the images while scrolling through the National Tax Service’s press releases at dawn. It’s also possible that bad actors are closely monitoring South Korean police cryptocurrency announcements, following what The Block reported was “a series of crypto custody lapses.”

There's more at the link.

OK, I have to admit, that's a special kind of stupid.  Boasting about seizing over $5M from a felon - then posting clues enough to allow another criminal to steal what the cops had just recovered?  Why do I never have the luck to come across photographs like that when I need them?

Peter

The algorithm is manipulating you

 

We've all read warnings and horror stories about how algorithms are analyzing our online behavior and trying to steer us to their products, their channels, their platforms.  Thing is, it's a very real danger, and it's getting worse.  EKO provides this perspective.  I highly recommend reading the whole of the excerpt below, and watching both video clips.

let’s start here with something seemingly innocent, the budweiser ad from the superbowl.

in the primary signalling sphere of “positioning and product” this represents a profound volte face from the recent bud light echo chamber brand self-immolation fiascos, a return to images of growth and aspiration and rippling pride.

it’s a great ad. if you have not encountered it, see for yourself. experience it.

ok. got that?

it’s practically cinema, right? a story of friendship and coming of age and of becoming.

it’s got it all.

it’s moving stuff.

but it also has something you probably did not see, a meta game beneath the game where the real magic trick is taking place at a deeper neurological level, a firmware level cheat code to which the human mind has very little access.

let’s explore:

now watch this video.  [The critical bit comes from about 1m. 40sec. onward;  skip ahead to that point if you wish.]

now watch the budweiser ad again. see how they took this exact fractionation strategy and amplified and optimized it took you up, down, up, down, rain, protect, strive, fail, leap, fly, power chords, free bird, aaaaaaaand beer ad.

they boiled this whole concatenation down to its most bare bones, essential elements and ran a whole suggestability enhancement procession in a one minute experience.

i would wager they knew that.

i will also bet you that it has sold absolute truckloads of beer.

but this is not the scary part.

we, as humans, are used to ads. we know what they are for and embed a certain skepticism. OK, so maybe we buy a few more brewskis, but whatever, this is hardly the stuff of civilizational threat.

but you have to start stepping back to see the rest of the picture.

social media has become a barrage of short form information, increasingly video driven and increasingly exposed to savagely intense evolutionary stressors. the currency of online is attention. it’s time. twitter speaks of "maximizing unregretted user-seconds." this is what that means. it means “how can i get you to watch more of this and to want to watch more of this?”

keep in mind that algorithms are psychopaths. they have no theory of your well being that factors into this sort of optimization. it’s just “keep the typewriter monkey happy and online.” and every outlet is locked in the same arms race so no one gets to opt out. those who do not play this way get left behind and the user seconds go somewhere else.

there’s a worrying parallel to what happened with US food companies. they did not set out to create travesties of sugar and salt and over-amped artificiality, but as they experimented with it, they saw that people bought more. the feedback loop of “people will eat more froot loops than fruit” was obvious on revenue lines and if you do that for too long, pretty soon customers basically cannot even taste wholesome food anymore. it’s not enough of a dopamine hit.

media is the same.

what started as an inevitable game to maximize user time and click through rates has becomes somehting altogether other, a monster in the depths that cannot be seen, only felt as its machinations twist minds and demolish perspective.

There's more at the link.

It's almost diabolically clever, isn't it?  The thing is, it works.  It works so well that every single major player in the news media, social media, advertising and the entertainment industry is using it against us every single day.  So are politicians, from both sides of the aisle and everywhere else in the public sector.  We aren't being respected as individuals.  We're sheep to be shorn, votes to be manipulated, suckers to be fed pablum in exchange for our dollars and unthinking loyalty.

Remember that.  We're all being manipulated daily.  It takes sustained effort and really hard work to break free from that cycle and recognize it for what it is.

Peter

Heh

 

From Matt, editorial cartoonist at the Telegraph in the UK:

I would say "Transgender aliens next!", but that's already been done...

Peter

Medical news I had no need to hear

 

CNN brings us this life-changing news headline:

Using the phone while you poop

greatly raises hemorrhoid risk, new study says

Of all the medical information I never expected to hear (or need, for that matter), I daresay that has to rank pretty high up the list.  Didn't we have enough strain in our lives already?

Oh, well.  To quote the Moody Blues, "Face piles of trials with smiles"!

Peter

Aid is supposed to make people independent - not trapped like this!

 

This news report shows precisely why aid given at any level - person to person, organization to organization, nation to nation, whatever - is supposed to give people a hand up, not a hand out.

Phay is among millions across Africa who have seen their lives upended after the U.S. aid cuts. In Liberia, the American support made up almost 2.6% of the gross national income, the highest percentage anywhere in the world, according to the Center for Global Development.

“The impact of USAID in Liberia cannot be overstated,” said Richlue O. Burphy, who worked for USAID projects for over a decade and manages the National Lottery, a government body. “Everywhere you go, you see the USAID (signs). And almost all the government institutions ... had some kind of USAID partnership.”

The sense of betrayal runs deep in Liberia ... Following civil wars and an Ebola epidemic, Liberia’s survival has depended largely on foreign aid, mainly from the U.S. and the World Bank. Despite abundant natural wealth, six out of 10 Liberians live in poverty, according to the World Bank, and Liberia is among the world’s 10 poorest nations.

There's more at the link.

I'm very sorry for the people of Liberia, and for their suffering (and yes, it really is suffering) brought on by the sudden removal of the aid on which they've relied for so long.  However, the reality of Liberia (which can be confirmed by anyone who's been there for long - and yes, I've been there) is very simple:

• Aid arrives from international sources.
• At least half of it, and often two-thirds to three-quarters, is promptly stolen or misused by government ministers, bureaucrats, and corrupt businessmen.
• The remainder trickles down to the people in the form, not of money, but of things they need, for much of which they have to pay up front, even though aid is supposed to be free of charge to them.

This is the norm in Liberia, as it is in many parts of Africa.  A few corrupt, venal leaders soak up almost all the aid, and deliver very little to their people.

By continuing to provide aid under such circumstances for so long, the USA and other donors have effectively allowed the corruption to be perpetuated.  If you wonder why Liberia can't provide medication, etc. from its own resources, it's because those same corrupt leaders who stole most of the foreign aid are doing the same thing with the nation's tax and tariff income.  They don't care whether their people are suffering.  They have their standard of living to maintain - and that's far more important than helping their people stay alive and healthy.  Their people see only pennies on the dollar of the nation's income.

That's the simple, honest truth about why Liberia is experiencing these problems . . . but it doesn't fit the politically correct line that all its troubles are the fault of President Trump for ending USAID, so the truth will never be found in the mainstream media.

Peter

In honor of the Conclave, opening in Rome today...

 

... here's a suggestion from Matt, cartoonist at the Daily Telegraph.

Peter

In case you missed it...

 

... 22 Democratic Party senators just released individual video statements criticizing President Trump.  Nothing wrong with that - except that they all used precisely and exactly the same script, word for word, parroting each other.  Originality?  Thinking for themselves?  Not so much!

Needless to say, President Trump and Republican politicians are having a field day responding to such ham-handed criticism.  Elon Musk has even offered a free Cybertruck to anyone who can identify the author of the script.  I imagine there's a lot of searching going on right now!

To be fair, President Trump's claim that he would bring down prices, starting on day one of his presidency, has not yet been visible in the marketplace - except in the Washington D.C. area, where housing prices are falling under the weight of fired federal officials and bureaucrats!  However, the amount of waste, fraud and financial abuse he and his team have uncovered in the federal government means that a great deal of money will be saved in future, which should help our inflationary situation.  As for high prices in general:  I don't know whether or not they will come down.  They've certainly gone up during the Biden administration, but historically, when that's happened, they've been slow to come down again.  Will producers be able to save enough on their input costs to lower their prices on their finished products?  That remains to be seen, and it's not something a President can dictate.

Perhaps the price of finished copycat videos will go down, thanks to heavy demand for them from Democratic Party senators?

Peter

Don't the mainstream media ever get tired of lying?

 

The mainstream media appear to be desperately searching for anything even remotely negative to say about the Trump administration.  The latest is food distribution under USAID.  From MSN:

In a warehouse in the East African port of Djibouti, USAID estimates there’s roughly 40,000 metric tons of food aid procured from American farmers worth about $40 million at risk of spoiling in the heat and humidity.

There’s also $10 million of emergency food supplies at risk in a South African warehouse and another $39 million of aid waiting for shipment from Houston, Texas, according to a report this week from the beleaguered agency’s inspector general’s office. The White House fired the agency’s inspector general after the report came out.

All told, the watchdog estimated there’s nearly $500 million of emergency food assistance paid for by US taxpayers at risk of being ruined by the Trump administration’s disruptive freeze of all US foreign aid and Elon Musk’s chaotic attempt to shut down the United States Agency for International Development, which has seen thousands of staff fired or put on leave and even its name stripped off its Washington headquarters.  

There's more at the link.

And from CBS:

Almost $500 million in food aid is at risk of spoilage as it sits in ports, ships and warehouses after funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, was paused by the Trump administration, according to a Feb. 10 report from a government watchdog. 

The report from USAID's inspector general highlighted the risks of "safeguarding and distribution" of $8.2 billion in unspent humanitarian aid after the Trump administration ordered almost all staff to be placed on leave and ordered a review of U.S. foreign assistance programs. 

USAID, which provides humanitarian aid to more than 100 countries, buys food directly from U.S. farmers and manufacturers, which have typically provided about 40% of international food assistance, according to a 2021 report from the Congressional Research Service. With USAID funding paused, there is concern among U.S. farmers about the market for some of their products, including Kansas sorghum producers, according to the Topeka Capital-Journal. 

Again, more at the link.

Clearly, the mainstream media has its marching orders from Propaganda Central, and they're all scurrying to paint the most negative possible picture of the results of USAID's decline and fall.  Well, I've worked in the Third World for decades.  I've seen USAID food distributed in several countries.  I've helped organize, and led, aid convoys into disrupted and/or disaster areas.  I know whereof I speak - and I can tell you that those reports are mostly bull****.

First off, the food that USAID distributes (or should that be "distributed"?) isn't broccoli and bananas, guaranteed to go bad within days.  It's dry grains such as rice, wheat, sorghum, and so on.  It's flour (in large quantities) from wheat, maize and other grains.  It's beans of any number of varieties.  The stuff lasts for months, if not years, and is selected with that as a primary requirement.  Since destinations for that aid seldom have luxuries such as refrigeration or air-conditioning, you send them food that can remain edible and healthy under such conditions.

Secondly, the "risks" of "safeguarding and distribution" are real, whether or not USAID is involved.  Have you seen photographs of tents made from or supplied by USAID, in use by terrorist movements such as Hamas, the Taliban and others?  Of course you have.  Have you seen TV footage of food for sale in African village markets, including sacks filled with USAID-supplied grain?  Yep, that too.  All those aid products were stolen by those selling and/or using them.  They don't pay for them.  They don't even ask for them.  They simply raid the warehouses where they're stored and take what they want, or hijack entire convoys loaded with aid products.

(Theft wasn't a major problem with those aid convoys I organized and led.  That's because I kept a "slush fund" of some of the aid money, and used it to hire a local gang of thugs.  I would promise the gangster - sorry, he preferred to be called a "warlord" - that if he and his AK-47-festooned goons would guard our trucks and their cargoes against theft by others, I'd pay him a fairly lavish sum (by local standards) upon our safe return to what passed for civilization in that part of the world.  He was usually happy to agree.  A few who agreed, then tried to rob me, learned the hard way that I was prepared for that and would deal with it in a rather... ah, robust fashion.  After word spread among their peers, the survivors proved rather more cooperative.  Why aid organizations couldn't or wouldn't do the same thing, I have no idea - qualms of conscience, perhaps?  To me, the choice was simple.  If you wanted the aid to get where it was needed, you used the tools at your disposal.  If you didn't use them, your aid didn't get to where it was needed.  Q.E.D., end of story, end of problem.)

As for US farmers suffering a loss if the USAID market is closed to them, I doubt very much that will be a problem.  USAID's food budget is a tiny fraction of what countries all over the world pay to import food from the USA.  That demand will continue.  US food aid will also continue, and that food will continue to be bought from US farmers.  It just won't have "USAID" on the sacks containing it - there'll be another name or departmental logo.  The bureaucrats will doubtless come up with something catchy and friendly-sounding to accommodate international sensitivities.  Perhaps we could start a rumor that the USA is putting saltpeter or copper sulphate into its food aid, to curb rampant Third World libidos?  That should reduce the demand for our farm products quite substantially . . .

So I don't think we need to worry about USAID food "rotting" in warehouses, and the problem of having it stolen will be no worse than if USAID was actually supervising it as usual.  It got stolen then, and that will continue, because USAID and its local partners have seldom, if ever, done anything effective to protect it from theft.

Ignore the bleats of outraged sensitivities from the mainstream media.  They're all parroting the same script, and none of them know what they're talking about.  The truth is not in them.

Peter

An interesting perspective on DOGE

 

The Telegraph in London has an interesting article (which may be paywalled) about how the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has come to this point, and where it'll be going from here.  The author appears to suspect that Elon Musk is up to no good, judging by the headline:

Inside Musk’s White House power grab

Billionaire pushes ahead with plans to infiltrate

all parts of Trump’s administration

after axing of his co-leader at Doge

I think that's overblown, but I daresay we'll see what we shall see.

Of interest is the article's take on how DOGE will operate.

In November, the president had said Doge would advise White House officials from outside government. On Monday, he ordered that it would be part of the federal government itself.

Doge will be part of the Executive Office of the President, which is a group of federal agencies, offices and staff responsible for national security, economic, foreign and domestic policy.

Doge has swallowed the US Digital Service (USDS), which was a White House office set up by Barack Obama, the former president, to be as nimble as possible to respond to tech crises.

It is now called the US Doge Service. The office does not have the usually burdensome federal government rules for hiring staff and Mr Trump has exempted it from a federal hiring freeze he announced in another executive order on Monday.

Jennifer Pahlka, who founded USDS in 2014, told The Washington Post: “It’s a very convenient vehicle for them. If you were trying to do something ambitious across the government, USDS is a good place to do it from.”

Doge teams of special government employees – a category of temporary worker – will fan out and embed themselves in federal agencies to identify spending and red tape for the axe.

The executive order tasks Doge with “modernising federal technology and software to maximise governmental efficiency and productivity”.

Each Doge team, expected to include at least a team lead, engineer, human resources specialist and lawyer, must be given “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems and IT systems” to the “maximum extent consistent with law”.

There's more at the link.

I note with amusement that, by using an existing White House office and operating from within the administration, rather than as a formal advisory committee, DOGE has neatly sidestepped all the lawsuits trying to demand that it adhere to the provisions of FACA (as discussed yesterday).  Those lawsuits are now moot, as FACA doesn't apply to DOGE in its present form.  Nice legal sidestep there.

The article dwells on Elon Musk's alleged plan to grab unprecedented power in the Trump administration.  I doubt that, for two reasons.  First, President Trump is unlikely to allow anyone to usurp his powers - he saw what happened with that during his first term in office.  Second, Mr. Musk has more than enough on his plate with X, SpaceX, Tesla and other activities.  I doubt whether he has enough time or energy - and certainly not the desire - to abandon or neglect all that in order to become a tinpot dictator!

Nevertheless, I note that many mainstream news organizations seem to be eager to assert that there's tension and/or conflict between Musk and the President.  One might even suspect they want to create such tension and conflict, for their own partisan purposes.  I think we should read such reports with that in mind.

Peter

Is it any wonder that nobody trusts the mainstream media any more?

 

NBC appears to have comprehensively shot itself in the foot (yet again) with its latest hit piece against Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth.  It claimed, in so many words, that he had abused his second wife.  The article took eight paragraphs to lay out the allegations, made by Hegseth's former sister-in-law, described as "an anti-Trump far left Democrat".  It also acknowledged that the allegations were not spontaneous, but were in fact solicited by Democratic Senator Jack Reed, who opposes Hegseth's nomination.  Shades of the Kavanaugh nomination, anybody?

Only after all that, in the ninth paragraph of the report, did NBC admit that Hegseth's second wife had categorically denied all the allegations and referred the matter to her lawyers.

NBC aired all the allegations, painting Hegseth in the worst possible light, before admitting that the person he allegedly abused had said openly that he did not do so.  Fair and balanced reporting?  Not so much.  Political hit piece, slanted, biased and blatantly partisan?  You betcha.

This is just one example of what we've seen in the past few days.  Want another?  How about this headline in the New York Times?

How labeling cartels 'terrorists' could hurt the US economy

I think anyone who's had anything to do with terrorism (and, as I've mentioned before, I have years of experience in that field) will agree that the way the cartels behave is exactly like terrorism.  There's precious little difference in behavior between, say, Hamas in Gaza and the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico.  Does the New York Times acknowledge that reality?  Like hell it does.  Instead, it tries to put the most negative spin it can think of on President Trump's executive order classifying the cartels as terrorist organizations.  It's not interested in the facts, only in propagandizing its readers with a one-sided partisan presentation of them.  "All the news that's fit to print" appears to have become "Only the propaganda we see fit to create".

I have no objection to any news organization espousing a particular viewpoint.  That's their right.  However, when they fail basic standards of honesty and fairness, and deliberately and with malice aforethought set out to deceive, shade the truth, and lie (which can be by omission as much as by commission), they take that altogether too far.  (And if you think that either of the articles linked above was not published "with malice aforethought", I have this bridge in Brooklyn, New York City that I'd like to sell you.  Cash only, please, and in small bills.)

I think the mainstream news media have already shut themselves out of the market for a great many Americans.  Witness the viewership figures for the Presidential inauguration last Monday.  The media trumpeted that viewership was down, implying that this reflected people's lack of engagement with President Trump.  What they failed to mention was the tens of millions of people who watched the inauguration on social media, vastly more than had ever done so before.  (I've seen reports that as many as 75 million users used social media to follow all or part of the proceedings, but of course I can't verify them.)  I was among those using social media in preference to the mainstream news media, and so, I think, were many of my readers here.

Few, if any, of us trust the mainstream media any more - and that's entirely their own fault.  They've brought it on themselves.  Can they win back that trust?  Not without an awful lot of hard work and demonstrated trustworthiness over an extended period.

Peter

More coordinated brainwashing from mainstream media

 

A recent message on X (formerly Twitter) has revealed yet another example of news organizations broadcasting precisely the same message, word-for-word, about their news coverage, while attacking so-called "independent" news reporting.  You'll find the short video clip here - recommended viewing.

We tend to treat this sort of thing as amusing, yet another "same old, same old" revelation of how corporate media parrot the same line;  but we forget how insidious it is.  The same message is being broadcast in almost every city across the nation.  I'm grateful that so many Americans resist being brainwashed by such stunts, but there are many who simply aren't aware of - or don't care about - this ongoing, organized, pre-programmed brainwashing.  The mainstream media, in general, are simply not trustworthy when it comes to the sharing of news items with the general public.  They decide what they want to say, and how they want to say it - and with only six corporations owning something like 90% of US media, those media are subject to more or less strict corporate control over what they say, and how they say it.  Few, if any of them are completely independent, able to say what they like about anything without making sure that it fits the guidelines issued to them by their owners.

We're going to have to keep this firmly in mind in the new year, as President Trump takes office.  Even now, there are attempts to prevent him from doing that, as this op-ed in The Hill earlier this week makes clear:  "Congress has the power to block Trump from taking office, but lawmakers must act now".  That was clearly a premeditated, malice-aforethought strike directed at our new President.  If you think that those op-ed authors came up with the idea for that article entirely on their own, and that The Hill decided to publish it with no input at all from opposition politicians, regulators and bureaucrats . . . all I can say is that I have a bridge in Brooklyn, NYC I'd like to sell you.  Cash only, please, and in small bills.  (On the other hand, of course, there are right-wing outlets that cheer President Trump's comments about "taking back" the Panama Canal or wanting to buy Greenland.  Such opinionated gushing is bad no matter who does it, and on what side of politics they stand.)

Just keep in mind that in the new year, we're going to have to be more vigilant than ever to prevent ourselves from being misled and propagandized, and to discern the truth about what's happening all around us.  With such massive resources being devoted to swaying our opinions, that won't be easy.

Peter

Heh

 

From the Babylon Bee (who else?):

Peter

I did not know that

 

Larry Lambert, writing at Virtual Mirage, explains why Big Pharma is so upset at the prospect of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. being appointed as the Secretary of Health & Human Services.

Why are there so many pharma ads on TV? A TV news president admitted to RFK Jr. that any host allowing him to speak negatively about Big Pharma on air would be FIRED because “this is where our advertisers are.”

Jaws dropped when former pharma insider @CalleyMeans told Tucker Carlson on his show, “The news ad spending from pharma is a public relations lobbying tactic, essentially to BUY OFF the news… The media plays referee because they’re funded by so on all levels.”

Only two countries allow pharmaceutical ads on TV: the United States and New Zealand. And those ads make a big chunk of money. RFK Jr. was told by a network executive that “during non-election years, during some months, up to 70% of his news division revenues are coming from pharma.”

When evidence about the dangers of smoking began to emerge in the 1950s and 1960s, news organizations hesitated to expose Big Tobacco because they depended on the industry for its ad revenue. The same conflict exists today with the pharmaceutical industry and TV news. This is why the mainstream media is in full-blown panic over RFK Jr.’s HHS appointment. They know that once he gets in, he is going to end pharma ads on TV, which will be a devastating blow to their wallets.

That makes sense when one thinks about how often we're bombarded with advertisements for the latest and greatest drugs and medical treatments.  In my younger days I wasn't exposed to that, except for advertisements for over-the-counter nostrums to deal with coughs, colds and flu.  It was a culture shock to arrive in the USA and find advertisements for rather more intimate medications to treat anything from ingrown toenails to terminal Stage 4 cancer in various organs.

So, if Mr. Kennedy can kill off pharmaceutical advertising, he can also kill off most of our annoying, overbearing, self-obsessed, incestuous television news and entertainment media?  Sounds like a win all round to me!

Peter

Poor monkeys!

 

I had to laugh at this report from the BBC.

Two Australian mathematicians have called into question an old adage, that if given an infinite amount of time, a monkey pressing keys on a typewriter would eventually write the complete works of William Shakespeare.

Known as the "infinite monkey theorem", the thought-experiment has long been used to explain the principles of probability and randomness.

However, a new peer-reviewed study led by Sydney-based researchers Stephen Woodcock and Jay Falletta has found that the time it would take for a typing monkey to replicate Shakespeare's plays, sonnets and poems would be longer than the lifespan of our universe.

Which means that while mathematically true, the theorem is "misleading", they say.

As well as looking at the abilities of a single monkey, the study also did a series of calculations based on the current global population of chimpanzees, which is roughly 200,000.

The results indicated that even if every chimp in the world was enlisted and able to type at a pace of one key per second until the end of the universe, they wouldn't even come close to typing out the Bard's works.

There would be a 5% chance that a single chimp would successfully type the word "bananas" in its own lifetime. And the probability of one chimp constructing a random sentence - such as "I chimp, therefore I am" - comes in at one in 10 million billion billion, the research indicates.

There's more at the link.

I wonder how many man-hours of research went into that particular study - and at what cost per hour?  What's more, the report says it was "peer-reviewed".  Precisely what "peers" are we discussing?  Gorillas?  Orangutans?  Perhaps the gibbon or the colobus were asked to opine?  (Although, since Australia has no native species of monkey or ape, the platypus or the Tasmanian devil might have to stand in for them.)

On the other hand, with odds like that, perhaps we could turn loose a troop of monkeys among the slot machines in a top Las Vegas casino, along with an infinite supply of quarters to feed them.  Who knows what they might not win?

Peter

Food for thought - but perhaps not digestion?

 

I've been enjoying two articles at the Telegraph in London, UK over a transatlantic food fight.

First, Simon Parker wrote:  "My British mind boggles at American eating habits".  He discusses what he found on a cycling tour of the USA.

Legend has it that American soldiers stationed in Italy during the Second World War found the coffee so strong they diluted it. Then, when they returned home, the practice stuck. And these days, most American coffee remains so tasteless that cream, sugar and sweetener must be added by the gallon before it can be served in a plastic cup the size of a policeman’s helmet.

Outside a convenience store in Kansas, I got talking to a man eating a “Midwest breakfast”: egg and bacon pizza, accompanied by a 36-ounce soda (containing 120g of sugar) and a pint of “americano”.

. . .

Spend enough time in the USA and you start to notice an unapologetic American trend: bigger is always better. Even if that means diminishing a product’s quality in the process. 

Case in point: The all-you-can-eat restaurant, where piles of stodge drift between tables like UFOs fuelled by MSG. And guess what? Even though you’re doing all the leg- and handwork yourself, you’ll still be expected to leave a tip. Go figure. 

At one such establishment in Nebraska I departed feeling, not just stuffed, but somewhat guilty for mankind. The restaurant’s glutinous patrons (me included) had stacked their plates so high that dozens of wayward wontons and loose prawn crackers had been crunched into the carpet and resembled a fine savoury sand. 

. . .

A community’s main source of sustenance comes from the super-processed aisles of gas stations and dollar stores, where you’re as likely to stumble across a Ming vase as you are a lettuce leaf. 

Most nights I would study the shelves of these brightly lit prefab buildings, searching for products containing the fewest possible E numbers. A good meal would be instant noodles and a can of peas. A bad one might be a microwave burrito and a chocolate bar. And all while, smash-hit TV shows like The Bear portray an American restaurant scene of abundant flavour and freshness.

There's more at the link.

Not to be outdone, Sara Sherwood fired back with "My American mind boggles at British eating habits".

Cheap roadside food in Britain is hardly healthy: budget motorway hotels are uniform in serving fried bread, fried bacon, fried sausage, fried hash browns, fried mushrooms, and fried tomatoes. Sadly, a sideline of the Anglo-American Special Relationship is a kinship in the dedication to ultra-processed, unforgivably bland food.

. . .

If the baguette defines the French, and the hot dog Americans, surely the tinned bean is the ultimate culinary symbol of Britain. They have been named as favoured treats by the current Queen and the late Princess Diana, both of whom presumably had access to a wide range of alternatives. But if you have not been raised on these cloyingly sweet piles of mush, they’re a tough sell.

Although they come from New England, the British collectively consume two million tins of them a day – more than the rest of the world combined. These haricots swim in a tomato sauce laden with 10 per cent of a person’s daily sugar allowance, and 20 per cent of the salt they need. Yet they inspire as much national pride and unqualified praise as the country’s National Health Service. They are served at breakfast, lunch and dinner, and appear on regular rotation in schools for children, on top of jacket potatoes or sponge-like ultra-processed sliced bread (more sugar and salt).

. . .

One thing that makes it difficult to navigate the British dining scene for American visitors is that we may be in pursuit of a different goal. Recently an American cousin with fond memories of atmospheric London pubs in the 70s and 80s, wandered South Kensington, perused local reviews, and settled himself in for what turned out to be an astoundingly disappointing meal. He was served mushy fish and chips, decidedly un-mushy peas (hard as nails, he said), and the beer selection was poor (mainly in cans). “Who eats this stuff?” he asked me afterwards.

Had he asked me beforehand, I would have advised caution when choosing to eat in a pub. Take a recent review of a pub in North London, where the diner noted: “The food wasn’t the best.” Okay, this could be helpful, I thought. What made it bad? “We ordered a pizza and chips with gravy. Unfortunately, they forgot to cut the pizza, and the chips tasted undercooked.”

The mind, as Simon wrote about America, boggles: What would the successful delivery of pizza, chips and gravy look like?

Again, more at the link.

Perhaps I should contribute an article to the series, titled "My colonial-raised mind boggles at both diets"?

Peter

A look at Western movies from across the pond

 

The Telegraph in Britain has published its ranking of the 25 best Western movies of all time.  It's an interesting mixture, due as much to the films it leaves out as to those it includes.  Its top choice is "Unforgiven", and its lowest choice at #25 is "Blazing Saddles";  but there's no mention of "McKenna's Gold" or "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" or other well-known classics.

Click over there to read their choice of movies, then let us know what you think in Comments.  I'll be interested to see how those of us who live on the same continent as the "Wild West" think about the Old World's perspective on it from several thousand miles away (not to mention a cultural divide that yawns wide).

Peter