Author: VD

Did AI Write Dem Ringz of Power?

The Dark Herald is suspicious. Not deeply suspicious. But a little.

I had suspected that an AI generator came up with some of Rings of Power’s more cringe-worthy dialog.

Finrod: Why does a stone sink? Because it cannot look up.

That line is exactly the kind of thing an AI generator comes up with. The words can be made to sound like wisdom by an actor trying his damndest but give it any kind of sapient thought and it falls into the uncanny valley.

But I didn’t think the whole thing was written that way.

But those AI guys I chatted with are convinced that a new Amazon AI wrote the entire thing. That any human involvement at all was only there to sand off edges that were just too rough.

The big tell for them is the number of things that are produced by a mind that simply doesn’t know any better. Like Galadriel going for a swim in the middle of the ocean or the townspeople giving up their easily defendable castle to move back to their completely indefensible town. It was something that happened and it had dramatic impact, of a sort, but again taken as a whole the concept falls into the uncanny valley. Every episode had something like this in it. Adar’s rousing “brothers and sisters in our own land” speech was weird and out of place when applied to orcs. And of course “Feed me the meat and give it to me raw.” Every single episode was full of things like this.

Then there were all of these incongrous and conflicting events, that frequently had me yelling, “didn’t you read your own damn script?” Individual events sound plausible in isolation but can’t be turned into a coherent structure when taken as a whole. Mostly because the AI isn’t looking for that problem. And the Bad Reboot guys may not have been allowed to correct it. I could understand a couple of frustrated Hollywood nobodies being willing to sign a suicide before reading NDA if it got them something made and they could take credit for it. A high-level failure is still high level, people will be returning their calls.

Was that the real point of Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power just a big experiment by Amazon to see if an entire mega hit could be created by AI?

I couldn’t possibly say, because I didn’t watch one single second of it despite being an inveterate Tolkien fan who had read The Silmarillion before finishing high school. As well as, of course, the trilogy and the Hobbit enough times to wear out the white books that came in the gold boxed set in the early ’80s.

But it does make one wonder. Because if Amazon hasn’t tried it yet, someone is going to do so soon.

DISCUSS ON SG

Address to the Assembly

The President of Russia addresses the Federal Assembly. It does not appear to be a direct declaration of war or even an announcement of the launch of the anticipated military offensive. It’s wise to read the whole thing directly, as the Clown World media coverage of it is literally worse than useless, quoting the responses to the speech before the speech was even given or the transcript released.

So far, only the very first part of the official English transcript has been released, but the whole thing will eventually be posted here by the Kremlin’s press agency.

This Presidential Address comes, as we all know, at a difficult, watershed period for our country. This is a time of radical, irreversible change in the entire world, of crucial historical events that will determine the future of our country and our people, a time when every one of us bears a colossal responsibility.

One year ago, to protect the people in our historical lands, to ensure the security of our country and to eliminate the threat coming from the neo-Nazi regime that had taken hold in Ukraine after the 2014 coup, it was decided to begin the special military operation. Step by step, carefully and consistently we will deal with the tasks we have at hand.

Since 2014, Donbass has been fighting for the right to live in their land and to speak their native tongue. It fought and never gave up amid the blockade, constant shelling and the Kiev regime’s overt hatred. It hoped and waited that Russia would come to help.

In the meantime, as you know well, we were doing everything in our power to solve this problem by peaceful means, and patiently conducted talks on a peaceful solution to this devastating conflict.

This appalling method of deception has been tried and tested many times before. They behaved just as shamelessly and duplicitously when destroying Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. They will never be able to wash off this shame. The concepts of honour, trust, and decency are not for them.

Over the long centuries of colonialism, diktat and hegemony, they got used to being allowed everything, got used to spitting on the whole world. It turned out that they treat people living in their own countries with the same disdain, like a master. After all, they cynically deceived them too, tricked them with tall stories about the search for peace, about adherence to the UN Security Council resolutions on Donbass. Indeed, the Western elites have become a symbol of total, unprincipled lies.

We firmly defend our interests as well as our belief that in today’s world there should be no division into so-called civilised countries and all the rest and that there is a need for an honest partnership that rejects any exclusivity, especially an aggressive one.

We were open and sincerely ready for a constructive dialogue with the West; we said and insisted that both Europe and the whole world needed an indivisible security system equal for all countries, and for many years we suggested that our partners discuss this idea together and work on its implementation. But in response, we received either an indistinct or hypocritical reaction, as far as words were concerned. But there were also actions: NATO’s expansion to our borders, the creation of new deployment areas for missile defence in Europe and Asia – they decided to take cover from us under an ‘umbrella’ – deployment of military contingents, and not just near Russia’s borders.

I would like to stress –in fact, this is well-known – that no other country has so many military bases abroad as the United States. There are hundreds of them – I want to emphasise this – hundreds of bases all over the world; the planet is covered with them, and one look at the map is enough to see this.

The whole world witnessed how they withdrew from fundamental agreements on weapons, including the treaty on intermediate and shorter-range missiles, unilaterally tearing up the fundamental agreements that maintain world peace. For some reason, they did it. They do not do anything without a reason, as we know.

Finally, in December 2021, we officially submitted draft agreements on security guarantees to the USA and NATO. In essence, all key, fundamental points were rejected. After that it finally became clear that the go-ahead for the implementation of aggressive plans had been given and they were not going to stop.

Read the rest there.

DISCUSS ON SG

Project Falsitas

It is apparent that James O’Keefe never read SJWAL, SJWADD, or Corporate Cancer. If he had, he would never have put himself in the position of being so easily ejected from the organization he founded by a Clown World agent who joined it only four months ago.

Since it’s already out there, here are my heartfelt remarks to my staff this morning.

I need to make clear I have not resigned from the company, Project Veritas, I founded 13 years ago. I was stripped of my position as CEO and Chairman.

I came to the PV office today to remove my personal belongings.

Every church, every corporation, and every organization needs to understand that it is under attack-by-infiltration at all times. Those smiling helpful new people who just love what you’re doing and are ever-so-dedicated to throwing themselves in and helping are not even remotely on your side at all.

The following is a selection from SJWS ALWAYS DOUBLE DOWN, a book that is not half as read as its predecessor, but is arguably even more important for people like James O’Keefe.

The convergence of institutions tends to follow a recognizable pattern that operates in much the same way as the SJW attack sequence, but on a larger scale. This pattern can be usefully described as the SJW convergence sequence. We can see how it has played out for the last sixty years in fully converged institutions such as academia, the mainstream media, and the publishing industry, we can see how it plays out today in partially converged institutions such as corporate America and the various Christian churches, and we can see how rapidly the cancer can metastasize in institutions that are just being infiltrated today, such as the game industry and the open source software community.

Regardless of the nature of the institution, the same general pattern of behavior is reliably followed to such an extent that it is relatively easy to identify how badly an institution is converged, and its resultant ability or inability to perform its primary purpose, on the basis of what stage in the convergence sequence has been reached by the SJWs converging it.

For example, when I read the bizarre story of the sudden decline of a once-popular church near my childhood home in Minnesota being reduced to 800 people meeting in a hotel, I knew without even needing to ask anyone what had happened. The church, a Lutheran church called North Heights that my parents had attended in the 1990s, had been infiltrated by SJWs, converged, lost its ability to perform its primary function as a Christian church, and found itself on the brink of failure. What was astonishing to me was just how fast what looked like a rock-solid community institution had gone downhill and collapsed.

Founded in 1946, the church was a fixture in the northern suburbs of St. Paul, with two locations offering seven worship services to 7,000 parishioners. It was one of Minnesota’s first megachurches, which always struck me as a little ironic as the senior pastor since 1961, a quiet, humble Scandinavian man named Morris Vaagenes, could not have been further from the smooth, slick-haired Joel Osteen clones that one tends to picture when one thinks of a megachurch. While I seldom attended it, preferring Greg Boyd’s Woodland Hills instead, my mother sang in the Christmas choir there, my aunt and uncle and cousins were members, and if I recall correctly, several of my friends’ children attended North Heights Christian Academy, a private K-8 Christian school that was founded by the church. It was a church full of good, decent people, nice Minnesota Lutherans in whom even Garrison Keillor could find no fault, who loved Jesus, loved their fellow man, and liked nothing better than to send their children to Haiti or Trinidad for two weeks in the winter to build homes and churches for the less fortunate. It was a wealthy church, too, located as it was near the lake homes of Shoreview and North Oaks, and the parking lot was always filled with Audis, and BMWs, and Mercedes.

Pastor Vaagenes was a genuine man of God, who initially appeared a little weak and bumbling in person, but grew in stature in the pulpit, preaching straight from the Bible with a powerful evangelical fervor that belied his traditional white robes and otherwise unprepossessing demeanor. However, he retired in 1999, and as is so often the case when a strong leader retires, was succeeded by men who were considerably less capable of assuming the burden of leadership. In 2007, a woman by the name of Mindy Bak joined what had become a bloated 88-person staff, and with the help of other SJWs who had also infiltrated the church, managed to get herself appointed interim senior pastor in 2014 through a series of highly political machinations circumventing the traditionalists on the church’s Board of Elders. This was rather a remarkable accomplishment, considering that a considerable percentage of the church members were relatively traditional Christians who held to the conventional Biblical teachings on the proper roles of men and women in church ministry.

It was arguably even more remarkable that within just 18 months, attendance had fallen nearly 80 percent, over half the staff was laid off, both total and per-capita giving drastically declined, and the original location was shut down, in part due to “a lack of elevator access for the disabled.”

What could possibly motivate a pastor, even a female one, to destroy her own church in this manner? According to one former member quoted in the Star Tribune, the answer is pretty simple. “She hates men.”

And on March 13, 2016, less than two years after she had been appointed interim senior pastor, Mindy Bak presided over the final service at North Heights Lutheran in front of the last 900 members of the congregation. Her work was done, and what for sixty years was a thriving church community had been destroyed.

A long-running schism proves fatal to North Heights Lutheran… Prejudice, sexism and scapegoating all played a role in the church’s downfall, Bak said. Members of the breakaway group didn’t want a female leader, Bak said, particularly one that didn’t shy away from issues that predecessors had refused to address. They didn’t want to hear about the prejudices of North Heights or the truth about its finances, she said. Nor did they want to embrace her message that to love Christ you must love even those people who are challenging to love. A sign in the church hall read, in part, “Throughout our history, many grew to be the followers of Jesus we were called to be. But our willingness to love one another, in spite of division, never came. For decades upon decades, selfishness and pride have brought us to this place of self-destruction. We are a cautionary tale of a dying church.”

—–“Deep divide dooms onetime megachurch North Heights Lutheran,” Star Tribune, 13 March 2016

The convergence, decline, and fall of North Heights Lutheran is indeed a cautionary tale. But it is vital to remember that the SJW convergence of North Heights did not begin with the ascendance of Mindy Bak to the interim senior pastorship. Nor did it begin when she began working at the church in 2007; the fact that she was hired as a pastor indicates that the convergence actually began in the late 1990s, when the church failed to successfully vet its new employees, pastors, and elders. By the time the convergence is visible to the average member of the institution, it is usually too late to salvage the institution in the absence of a strong leader who understands what is at stake, does not fear conflict, and is willing to stand up to the vicious slander and underhanded tactics that will be unleashed against him.

In the same way, the convergence and destruction of Project Veritas did not begin with the hiring of Barry Hinckley as the organization’s Chief Strategy Officer in the autumn of 2022. His allies were already there and waiting for him to spearhead the insurrection; note that O’Keefe was successfully ejected after he realized Hinckley was a problem and fired him.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Marvel Implosion Continues Apace

The Dark Herald reviews a new Marvel movie that apparently has something to do with Antman, and possibly, The Who, on the basis of its title which I can’t even bother to learn.

I have rarely seen a genre movie so dripping with contempt for its core audience.

Nineteen eighties Mexican sword and sandals videos had more respect for the people that would be seeing it than this flick did. There are no characters, only cut-and-paste caricatures. This is no plot, only a series of ridiculous contrivances. This entire motion picture has been built around appearance for the sake of appearance. It is a Disney Frankenstein. This film is broken. Like its namesake, there is no substance to Quantomania at all.

The Antman character was a problem for Marvel Studios. The problem was that Ari Arad cared about Marvel Comics back when the studio had to listen to him. In the comic books, Hank Pym and his second wife Janet van Dyne were the original Antman and the Wasp, and they were also the founders of the Avengers. Back when Ike Perlmutter made sure that Marvel gave a rancid fart about the canon, not having an Antman in the team that Antman founded was a problem. The thing is Hank’s first wife was murdered by the Hungarian secret police which was why he became Antman in the first place. Bob Iger and Kevin Feige were at best uncomfortable with Hank’s anti-Marxist baggage. But there was no such problem with the Scott Lang version. A hero on a redemption arc is easy to write and easy to make a movie about. Consequently, Scott Lang settled into a role of Antman as a lovable loser trying to make good.

This is the part where I try to ruin the whole movie for you by spoiling it in detail, but this thing is such an inconceivably disjointed trainwreck that my brain keeps shutting down in self-defense when I try to recall the details.

The film opens with Scott strutting down a sidewalk in an alternate universe San Francisco, where he isn’t trying to avoid stepping on broken needles and human shit. The theme from Welcome Back Kotter is playing as Hank has a montage about what a great life he is having as a superhero. The whole city loves him. Apparently, he landed a book deal and has a number-one bestseller. We are meant to believe he wrote it himself; this is the least of the contrivances that are about to pummel an unsuspecting audience.

Montage ends when Scott has to bail his new teenage daughter out of jail (she was recast). Cassie was protesting for the rights of the homeless to establish her unassailable moral superiority over her Generation-X world-saving superhero father, and it is done with such brutal impact that passersbys suffer blunt force trauma. She shrank a police car and was apparently allowed to keep it in jail so she could put it on the comically outraged cops’ desk at the county lockup. She is allowed to leave rather than be arrested again for GTA of a police car because the movie has to get to the next scene as fast as possible. Cassie is such sassy.

I do so love the smell of an imploding converged comics industry in the morning. Throw in a little Devil Mouse in decline and it’s practically a party.

DISCUSS ON SG

Red Lines

The USA consistently refused to respect Russia’s red lines. Why on Earth would China pay any attention whatsoever to whatever the USA claims its red lines to be?

Any nation providing lethal support to Moscow in its ongoing conflict with Kiev would cross Washington’s “red line,” the US envoy to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told CNN on Sunday. Earlier the same day, US State Secretary Antony Blinken directly warned a top Chinese diplomat, Wang Yi, against considering such an option.

“We … have to be clear that if there are any thoughts and efforts by the Chinese and others to provide lethal support to the Russians in their brutal attack against Ukraine, that that is unacceptable,” Thomas-Greenfield told CNN’s ‘State of the Union,’ adding that it “would be a red line.”

Her words came as Blinken was meeting Wang Yi on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in Germany. There, the US diplomat told his Chinese counterpart that the US was “very concerned that China is considering providing lethal support to Russia,” Blinken told NBC’s Chuck Todd in the wake of the meeting.

This is what happens when you have a bunch of very special boys in charge of things. The neocons genuinely believe that they have the right to do whatever they see as in their own interest, but no one else has the same right.

Of course China is going to provide “lethal support to Russia”. It’s in their interest, because the same special boys who are threatening them if they do have already announced their intention to go to war with China just as soon as they’re done defeating Russia.

All I can conclude is that because the neocons hate literally everyone, including themselves, they’re playing a suicidal game of Samson burning down the temple using the US military as a match. I mean, it’s impossible to believe that they’re literally this stupid and totally unable to see the obvious consequences of their actions.

On the other hand, the possibility of stupidity should not be entirely dismissed. China is already allied with Russia, and World War III started with the Special Military Operation in February 2022.

“If China allies itself with Russia, there will be a world war.”

—Volodymyr Zelenskyy, 20 February 2023

DISCUSS ON SG

Vaxx? What Vaxx?

The vaccine revisionism has officially begun in Canada.

I have a coworker who got the cupcake because of pressure at work and I think he was drinking the coolaid. A while after having the cupcake, his wife found him on the kitchen floor. He was rushed to the hospital where he spent 2 days in emerg and 1 day in the cardiac ward due to a “cardiac event”. He has been diagnosed with myocarditis. When he asked his cardiologist if he should get the second cupcake the Dr.’s response was “you may as well, the damage has already been done.” He got it and was bed ridden for quite some time before finally returning to work under “modified duty”.

Today my coworker dropped a bombshell. On the 1 year anniversary of his “cardiac event” he had a follow up appointment with the same cardiologist. After reviewing the test results, the Dr. asked a strange question. He asked, “what are you doing here?” My coworker was surprised and answered “I’m here for my 1 year follow up.” The Dr then told my coworker that he wanted to show him something. He turned the screen he was looking at towards my coworker and asked, “1 year follow up to what?” There was nothing on the file about my coworker being admitted to the hospital after the cupcake. “Do you have any paperwork?” the Dr. asked. “Yes,” my coworker responded, “I have my discharge papers.” “Keep them.” The Dr. advised. “You are the 5th patient of mine whose admission records have been removed.” The Dr. complained to Alberta Health Services and is now receiving disciplinary action. Alberta Heath Services is deleting records of adverse reactions to the cupcakes.

And to think that we were labelled “conspiracy theorists” because we had absolutely zero faith in the modern medical systems of the West. Now the culprits are adding gaslighting and historical revisionism to the list of their copious crimes. If the medical community is already denying the records of the injuries that occurred in the aftermath of the vaccines, it can’t be too long before they’ll deny administering them in the first place.

Why on Earth does anyone still believe anything the government-media-medical complex tells them?

DISCUSS ON SG

The Offensive Begins Next Week

All of the signs are pointing to the Russian military transforming the Special Military Operation into a full-blown invasion of Ukraine next week. Simplicius goes into considerable detail about the mobilization and positioning of Russian forces and concludes that the invasion will be conducted on very different principles and will begin on the anniversary of the original operation.

Putin is now officially scheduled to give a big State of the Nation address on February 21st, which falls precisely on the anniversary of his pivotal Feb. 21, 2022 speech where he first announced the recognition of LPR/DPR’s independence, leading the way to the big Feb. 24 speech which announced the actual full military launch of the SMO invasion.

Conversely, Biden is said to fly into Poland on Feb. 20 to meet Zelensky, and Biden & Zelensky reportedly will give a joint address on Feb. 21. The timing is very climactic and intriguing. And the fact that Biden will be literally right next door on the potential day/eve of a massive offensive launch (which could include huge airstrikes only a few kilometers away from him) seems almost pre-calculated for escalation.

There are now even rumors (though the ‘source’ is uncertain) that the subject/talking points of Putin’s address will revolve around NATO’s escalations, treachery, Nord Stream attacks (Russian UN reps have just put forth a resolution regarding it to coincide), and American biolabs revelations. Some of the wilder speculation/rumors revolve around a recognition of Transnistria (and even Ossetia) as Russian territory, or an announcement for a new mobilization, but these are most likely more on the wild and improbable conjecture side.

And on top of that, the Russian federal council and Duma will convene an ‘extraordinary session’ on February 22, which could be designed to ratify new initiatives announced in Putin’s address.

With that said, if the rumors are true that the 1 hour long planned speech will touch on the various transgressions of NATO, then it does point to the likely announcement of some major Russian escalation. Whether that means using this as rhetoric simply to justify the coming offensive announcement OR a possible unforeseen doctrinal escalation, such as the announcement of new ‘red lines’ for NATO weapons deliveries/satellite ISR with a more formal warning that Russia will begin shooting them down or hitting certain facilities, etc.

The speech presumably would also make an effort to outline Russia’s new/updated goals of the SMO to give the people an idea of what this is all really about, and a possible notion of how/when people can expect the war to end.

While plans can always be called off or cancelled, I see no reason to doubt his conclusions. I don’t think there is any real question about whether the Russian offensive will begin soon or if it will be successful. Nor do I think there is much reason to fear an escalation to the nuclear level. For me, the real question is whether China is going to open the second front in harmony with the Russian actions, or whether Xi Xinping will continue to be patient in the hopes of a violence-free unification with China’s renegade island.

Regardless, you would do well to remember that the Russians historically prefer to launch offensives that are bigger and much more overwhelming than their enemies anticipate or even believe possible. And they have been preparing for this one for a long, long time. So, I suggest being prepared for the possibility that the media, as well as one’s friends and family, will start shrieking about World War III in a complete state of panic.

Here’s an outside-the-box idea: what if the timing of the joint Biden-Zelensky speech is designed to a) clear the path for Bardiem-Harris while b) stoking public support for the war against Russia in the USA? “They killed the two presidents” would certainly make for an epic false flag, and wouldn’t be too hard to execute or cover up amidst a barrage of Russian missiles.

DISCUSS ON SG