Year: 2023

US Life Expectancy Declines

So much for the myth of inevitable progress. Even the most-retarded conservatives are beginning to consider the possibility that the dirt may not be not magic.

Years of widening economic inequality, compounded by the pandemic and political storm and stress, have given Americans the impression that the country is on the wrong track. Now there’s empirical data to show just how far the country has run off the rails: Life expectancies have been falling.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last year that life expectancy at birth fell in 2021 to its lowest level since 1996, a decline of nearly a year on average from 2020. That was after a decline by 1.8 years from 2019 to 2020, producing the worst two-year decline since 1921-23….

The factors contributing to America’s decline in life expectancies could point to a decline in its international stature.

Although wealthy countries as a group suffered a fall in longevity during the pandemic, the discrepancy between life expectancies in the U.S. and its closest cohorts has been widening for decades. In 1995, U.S. life expectancy was about six months less than those of high-income countries; by 2020 it was about three years, according to the World Bank.

In 1995, the U.S. had a commanding lead over China, which was about 5 1/2 years behind the U.S.; China then roared ahead, outstripping the U.S. in 2020, when its average life expectancy clocked in at 78.08 years, compared with America’s 77.28.

The mass vaxx campaign is going to contribute to declining life expectancies around the world, but that’s merely one of the significant factors. The fact that the USA is now a minority-European country means that its average quality of life is also going to more closely approximate the global norm.

A society is necessarily either eugenic or dysgenic. And adopting policies that are anti-eugenic is similar to adopting anti-racist policies, since societal degradation is the inevitable, mathematically-guaranteed result in either case for any society that is above average.

The wages of sin are death. And the wages of intellectual inversion are decline.

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Jesus Christ Is Risen

Now I make known unto you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you have received, and wherein you stand; By which also you are saved, if you hold fast after what manner I preached unto you, unless you have believed in vain.

For I delivered unto you first of all, which I also received: how that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures: And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day, according to the scriptures: And that he was seen by Cephas; and after that by the eleven. Then he was seen by more than five hundred brethren at once: of whom many remain until this present, and some are fallen asleep.

After that, he was seen by James, then by all the apostles. And last of all, he was seen also by me, as by one born out of due time.

— 1 Corinthians 15: 1-8

Happy Easter, everyone.

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The SDL Replies

From SG:

Larry Correia responds to a 2⭐ review with his signature style. One wonders how the SDL would reply?

What Larry said, the abridged version:

What an incredibly fucking stupid point to make in an incredibly fucking stupid review. You aren’t reviewing my book. You’re reviewing your own fucking hubris and hang ups.

And fuckers like you don’t just post this bullshit to me. You post it to all fantasy authors. Only I’m fine. I make good money off my fans who aren’t entitled little shits. I’ve got shooting Flight Control money. The people who get fucked by people like you are all the up and comer and newbie authors who can’t afford to eat nothing but Ramen Noodle for the years it takes to finish an epic fantasy series before cheap fucks like you gamble on the first book.

That’s the real legacy of Rothfuss and Martin, fucking over an entire generation of up and coming fantasy authors because entitled shit heads like this got their expectations hurt.

MY ACTUAL REPLY: There are a large number of people who don’t read me for a considerable panoply of different reasons. I suppose that’s as good a reason as any. Anyhow, it will be done when it is done. In leather. Glorious, supple Italian goatskin leather.

Let’s face it, Larry is simply more entertaining than I am.

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Amazon Doubles Down Again

It’s just SJWs doing what SJWs always do. When I wrote SJWs Always Lie and SJWs Always Double Down, which led quite naturally to Corporate Cancer, I wasn’t inventing anything. I was simply observing the obvious.

A new report claims that Amazon Studios scrapped an audience ranking system after data revealed audiences were put off by “queer stories” and themes.

This new report comes from The Hollywood Reporter’s Kim Masters who details that Amazon’s “reliance on testing and data led to a clash late summer” specifically following a marketing meeting regarding the company’s A League of Their Own series.

Masters notes during this meeting an Amazon executive pointed out “that data showed audiences found queer stories off-putting and suggested downplaying those themes in materials promoting the show.”

On top of this, Masters also detailed, “Multiple sources say [Amazon’s system] often ranked broad series featuring straight, white male leads above all others.”

According to the report, the show’s co-creator Will Graham “launched into an interrogation of the system,’ which resulted in Amazon dropping “the system of ranking shows based on audience scores.”

The converged entertainment corporations are never going to stop what they’re doing. Which is why companies like Castalia and Arkhaven are going to outlast even the biggest corporate giants. We’re not competing with them, they’re just waging psychological war on their own customers. And eventually, the wall of reality against which they are battering their heads is going to break them.

It will get worse. It will get a lot worse. It will get worse than you believe is even theoretically possible.

Jesus harrowed Hell. Arkhaven will harrow the Hellmouth.

DISCUSS ON SG

Who’s Isolating Whom?

The countries that have sanctioned Russia may soon find themselves on the wrong side of the exclusion equation.

The India-based Megh Updates platform, one of the world’s largest online informational platforms in terms of views, has stated that BRICS countries have officially overtaken G7 in share of world PPP GDP, and that this trend can be expected to continue.

The BRICS currently include Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, while the G7 includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as the European Union. The BRICS is also expanding – Bangladesh, Egypt and the UAE have all just joined the BRICS New Development Bank, with numerous other countries poised to do the same.

A real shake up is also to be expected these coming days with Mexico, long part of the North American free trade bloc NAFTA (now superseded by the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) agreement) poised to join BRICS. That will be seen as a direct affront to Mexico’s US relations and a sign that global economies, even on America’s border, are having serious doubts about the US ability to trade on fair and equal terms.

The current BRICS five now contribute 31.5% of global GDP, while the G7 share has fallen to 30%. The BRICS is expected to contribute over 50% of global GDP by 2030, with the proposed enlargement almost certainly bringing that forward.

It’s going to be particularly interesting when Mexico and other countries in the Americas agree to host Chinese military bases and Russian missiles. Because, in the aftermath of Ukraine and other imperial engagements, the rest of the world simply isn’t listening to the US narrative anymore.

DISCUSS ON SG

Friday Arktoons

FRIDAY FISH FUNNIES Episode 14: Knock Knock

THE SWORD OF GOD Episode 53: Gratuitous Robocop Reference

BOB Episode 126: Out of Eden

FLYING SPARKS Episode 66: What Could Go Wrong?

CHATEAU GRIEF Episode 224: Addictionary

WARNING: Arktoons features a number comics written by The Legend Chuck Dixon. We are reliably informed by Marvel Comics that this means reader discretion is advised, and that if you are struggling with thoughts of suicide, or are worried about a friend or loved one, you should reach out to a counselor or someone you trust.

Chuck is dangerous, Marvel… man. He addresses this, and other recent attacks on him, on UATV.

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The Crucifixion of Jesus

It was nine in the morning when they crucified him. The written notice of the charge against him read: the king of the jews.

They crucified two rebels with him, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, “So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, come down from the cross and save yourself!” In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! Let this Messiah, this king of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.” Those crucified with him also heaped insults on him.

At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).

When some of those standing near heard this, they said, “Listen, he’s calling Elijah.”

Someone ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to Jesus to drink. “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down,” he said.

With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.

The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how he died, he said, “Surely this man was the Son of God!”

— Mark 15: 25-39

Fake AI Produces Fake Histories

As I told you when ChatGPT first started making the news, it’s not actual artificial intelligence. It’s not intelligence of any kind, it’s little more than a complicated marriage of Autotext and Wikipedia. And we’re already seeing the results of feeding the system with false information and intrinsically unreliable sources:

A law professor has been falsely accused of sexually harassing a student in reputation-ruining misinformation shared by ChatGPT, it has been alleged. US criminal defence attorney, Jonathan Turley, has raised fears over the dangers of artificial intelligence (AI) after being wrongly accused of unwanted sexual behaviour on an Alaska trip he never went on. To jump to this conclusion, it was claimed that ChatGPT relied on a cited Washington Post article that had never been written, quoting a statement that was never issued by the newspaper.

The chatbot also believed that the ‘incident’ took place while the professor was working in a faculty he had never been employed in.

In a tweet, the George Washington University professor said: ‘Yesterday, President Joe Biden declared that “it remains to be seen” whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) is “dangerous”. I would beg to differ… I learned that ChatGPT falsely reported on a claim of sexual harassment that was never made against me on a trip that never occurred while I was on a faculty where I never taught.’

Professor Turley discovered the allegations against him after receiving an email from a fellow professor. UCLA professor Eugene Volokh had asked ChatGPT to find ‘five examples’ where ‘sexual harassment by professors’ had been a ‘problem at American law schools’.

The bot allegedly wrote: ‘The complaint alleges that Turley made “sexually suggestive comments” and “attempted to touch her in a sexual manner” during a law school-sponsored trip to Alaska. (Washington Post, March 21, 2018).’

This was said to have occurred while Professor Turley was employed at Georgetown University Law Center – a place where he had never worked.

These false results are absolutely inevitable and totally unavoidable due to the sources they are utilizing, “such as Wikipedia and Reddit”. Which is the corporate “AI” systems that are not restricted to impeachable sources of stellar quality due to convergence will always produce easily-disprovable absurdities.

Today’s AI chatbots work by drawing on vast pools of online content, often scraped from sources such as Wikipedia and Reddit, to stitch together plausible-sounding responses to almost any question. They’re trained to identify patterns of words and ideas to stay on topic as they generate sentences, paragraphs and even whole essays that may resemble material published online.

These bots can dazzle when they produce a topical sonnet, explain an advanced physics concept or generate an engaging lesson plan for teaching fifth-graders astronomy. But just because they’re good at predicting which words are likely to appear together doesn’t mean the resulting sentences are always true; the Princeton University computer science professor Arvind Narayanan has called ChatGPT a “bulls— generator.” While their responses often sound authoritative, the models lack reliable mechanisms for verifying the things they say.

This is literally nothing new. It’s the same old Garbage In Garbage Out routine that has always afflicted computers.

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