AI Fraud and Fakery

It’s abundantly clear that “AI” is the current, and possibly last, bubble that the Clown World economy has inflated in order to let the vulture capitalists continue to feed upon the tattered remains of the US corpocracy:

Unless you are one of a tiny handful of businesses who know exactly what they’re going to use AI for, you do not need AI for anything – or rather, you do not need to do anything to reap the benefits. Artificial intelligence, as it exists and is useful now, is probably already baked into your businesses software supply chain. Your managed security provider is probably using some algorithms baked up in a lab software to detect anomalous traffic, and here’s a secret, they didn’t do much AI work either, they bought software from the tiny sector of the market that actually does need to do employ data scientists. I know you want to be the next Steve Jobs, and this requires you to get on stages and talk about your innovative prowess, but none of this will allow you to pull off a turtle neck, and even if it did, you would need to replace your sweaters with fullplate to survive my onslaught.

Consider the fact that most companies are unable to successfully develop and deploy the simplest of CRUD applications on time and under budget. This is a solved problem – with smart people who can collaborate and provide reasonable requirements, a competent team will knock this out of the park every single time, admittedly with some amount of frustration. The clients I work with now are all like this – even if they are totally non-technical, we have a mutual respect for the other party’s intelligence, and then we do this crazy thing where we solve problems together. I may not know anything about the nuance of building analytics systems for drug rehabilitation research, but through the power of talking to each other like adults, we somehow solve problems.

But most companies can’t do this, because they are operationally and culturally crippled. The median stay for an engineer will be something between one to two years, so the organization suffers from institutional retrograde amnesia. Every so often, some dickhead says something like “Maybe we should revoke the engineering team’s remote work privile – whoa, wait, why did all the best engineers leave?”. Whenever there is a ransomware attack, it is revealed with clockwork precision that no one has tested the backups for six months and half the legacy systems cannot be resuscitated – something that I have personally seen twice in four fucking years. Do you know how insane that is?

Most organizations cannot ship the most basic applications imaginable with any consistency, and you’re out here saying that the best way to remain competitive is to roll out experimental technology that is an order of magnitude more sophisticated than anything else your I.T department runs, which you have no experience hiring for, when the organization has never used a GPU for anything other than junior engineers playing video games with their camera off during standup, and even if you do that all right there is a chance that the problem is simply unsolvable due to the characteristics of your data and business? This isn’t a recipe for disaster, it’s a cookbook for someone looking to prepare a twelve course fucking catastrophe.

How about you remain competitive by fixing your shit? I’ve met a lead data scientist with access to hundreds of thousands of sensitive customer records who is allowed to keep their password in a text file on their desktop, and you’re worried that customers are best served by using AI to improve security through some mechanism that you haven’t even come up with yet?

A friend of mine was invited by a FAANG organization to visit the U.S a few years ago. Many of the talks were technical demos of impressive artificial intelligence products. Being a software engineer, he got to spend a little bit of time backstage with the developers, whereupon they revealed that most of the demos were faked. The products didn’t work. They just hadn’t solved some minor issues, such as actually predicting the thing that they’re supposed to predict. 

It’s really remarkable how much shameless fakery is taking place in the tech sector these days. It makes the dot com boom look relatively restrained by comparison. At this point, I’d almost be willing to believe that Suno is actually a collection of semi-talented musicians in India who rapidly record two-minute clips in response to the user’s prompts.

DISCUSS ON SG

Macron Raus

France is finally beginning to realize that the mainstream political-media complex is far worse for the French than the “extreme right” of which it is always warning, as the rest of the continent moves steadily toward a nationalist revival.

The French right-wing National Rally (RN) party and its allies have secured the lead in the first round of snap parliamentary elections, winning over 33% of the vote, according to final results published by the Interior Ministry on Monday.

President Emmanuel Macron called early parliamentary elections after the RN’s strong performance in last month’s vote for the European Parliament. The force formerly led by Marine Le Pen and now by Jordan Bardella won 30 of the 81 French seats in the EU legislature.

In the latest poll following the first round of voting in France on Sunday, the newly-created left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) finished second with 28%, while Macron’s centrist Ensemble bloc won 20% of the vote. The RN and NFP have secured 37 and 32 seats respectively in the 577-strong legislature, while Macron’s party has received just two. A candidate needs to receive over half of the vote to win in the first round. If none does, any candidate who reaches the 12.5% threshold enters a run-off which will be held on June 7.

The next challenge for the French will be to prevent the RN from turning around and embracing more war and more immigration like Meloni did in Italy. But whether the RN embraces their duty or not, it is clear that the people of Europe are done with the decades of multiculti propaganda and the pendulum is beginning to swing back with a vengeance.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Clowntardery of Color Revolutions

If your grand strategy for winning wars relies entirely upon political regime change unseating a singular individual, you are almost certainly guaranteed to lose. Contra the historical propaganda about WWI and WWII, nations do not engage in all-out industrial warfare because one individual seeks war. China will not become more or less militarily capable whether Xi is in charge or not; it invaded Cambodia to drive out the North Vietnamese under Deng, the much-lauded “Westernizer”.

And China’s insistence on the One-China policy not only long predates Xi, it will long survive him regardless of whether he succeeds in the reunification of Taiwan island with the mainland or not.

Thus is the mechanism behind the simplistic information attack: Destabilize Russia under the scheme of exaggerated panic in order to sow social unrest and dissatisfaction with the leadership’s responses. Make it seem like Putin is “losing grip” on the situation, and that the brewing ‘instability’ is a result of society rising up, a narrative that will naturally be chained along and amplified by the Western corporate press. It’s a very run-of-the-mill psyop technology package.

The great irony here is that it is not the nationalist leaders who are losing their grip on the situation, nor is it the nationalist leaders who are increasingly unpopular in their own nations, but rather, the servants of Clown World and its fake “democracies”.

The psyops that worked on unstable, militarily-negligible countries with fragile regimes when the US President was the unquestioned “Leader of the Free World” don’t work anymore. Not only does everyone now know how they work and by whom they are funded, but the decreasing influence of the global media means that fewer and fewer people around the world even take them seriously, much less accept them at face value. There is no longer anyone anywhere on the planet who believes the demented walking corpse of “Joe Biden” is a more credible head of state than any of Clown World’s current targets for regime change.

And if a lack of popularity hasn’t caused the governments of Trudeau, Macron, Sunak, Netanyahu, or the Five Bidens to collapse, then why would it cause the governments of Putin and Xi to collapse, even if they were unpopular, which they aren’t.

DISCUSS ON SG

Che Cosa?

We knew the Azzurri were mediocre, but we didn’t know they were this bad.

Switzerland 2, Italy 0

Both Swiss goals were quality. And the Swiss back 5 were excellent. But the combination of Scamacca for the Italians and Embolo for the Swiss may have been the worst pair of opposing strikers that I’ve ever seen at this level.

I sent a text to one of my Italian friends, asking what’s up with the Azzurri. His response was six – no less than six – facepalms.

DISCUSS ON SG

Atheists Discover Consequences

It’s always mildly amusing to recall that they used to call themselves “brights” because they genuinely believed that they were smarter than Christians. Never mind that the island nation that developed a world-spanning empire under Christendom now can’t even offer token resistance to the imperial dar al-Islam:

I am getting scared of the rise of Islam in the UK and Europe. I study philosophy at university in England…. Oh boy my homeland is being overrun by Islam.

One guy legit told me the other day on a Friday that “I should be at the mosque” and shouted at me for not being so. I know plenty of Christians, and whilst I myself am atheist, none have ever tried to convert me or call me a heretic- whilst the only homophobes I know have been Muslim. Someone also said my degree, philosophy was “devil worship because asking questions about the universe and truth is evil-this is especially true because I focus in logic and game theory. They said it was not “real” and satanic…

What scares me most is that the left (of which I am a part of) seems to protect Islam by way of calling all who support it islamaphobic….when I said I supported Israel as it’s the only safe space for LGBT guys in the entire Middle East, and a democracy, someone spat at me and called me a “devil”.

It is psychotic. Do you think the west will fall to Islam? Sorry for the vent: I’ve come to the conclusion that I am very inclusive, but I cannot be inclusive to those who hate inclusion because fictional sky dad said no.

The fascinating thing is that even when they are in terror for their lives and their lifestyles, they still do not have the intellectual flexibility to admit that they were wrong, that inclusivity is evil and destructive, and that a nation that ceases to be a Christian nation will soon cease to be a nation at all.

If you accept diversity, equality, and inclusivity as ideals, then you have already lost the war. It’s just a matter of time before those who correctly reject those concepts as being intrinsically false overrun you.

DISCUSS ON SG

Joe Must Go

The New York Times reads from the script to shut down the Fake Biden administration:

Mr. Biden has said that he is the candidate with the best chance of taking on this threat of tyranny and defeating it. His argument rests largely on the fact that he beat Mr. Trump in 2020. That is no longer a sufficient rationale for why Mr. Biden should be the Democratic nominee this year.

At Thursday’s debate, the president needed to convince the American public that he was equal to the formidable demands of the office he is seeking to hold for another term. Voters, however, cannot be expected to ignore what was instead plain to see: Mr. Biden is not the man he was four years ago.

The president appeared on Thursday night as the shadow of a great public servant. He struggled to explain what he would accomplish in a second term. He struggled to respond to Mr. Trump’s provocations. He struggled to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his lies, his failures and his chilling plans. More than once, he struggled to make it to the end of a sentence.

Mr. Biden has been an admirable president. Under his leadership, the nation has prospered and begun to address a range of long-term challenges, and the wounds ripped open by Mr. Trump have begun to heal. But the greatest public service Mr. Biden can now perform is to announce that he will not continue to run for re-election.

Isn’t it fascinating how Clown World will often come right out and tell you the truth, but do so in a way in which you naturally assume a less-insidious interpretation?

Mr. Biden is not the man he was four years ago.

They expect you to take it as a metaphor. But it isn’t. That’s the literal truth. That dotard on the stage was Biden #4. I doubt Biden #1 is even alive now.

Anyhow, the signals are being sent out. And all the various schools of SJWs, liberals, and progressives will dutifully change their course in perfect formation now that the elite media are broadcasting the new Narrative.

UPDATE: The Uniparty is in one accord on the matter.

Joe Biden should be replaced as US president, having shown he is “not up to the task” during his debate with Donald Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has said.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Streets of Midnight

SILENZIOSA is not the only Arkhaven comic that is running new episodes this week. Both MIDNIGHT’S WAR: NIGHT STREETS and HYPERGAMOUSE are back in action.

One thing that has changed is that we’re going to make use of more black-and-white due to the fact that we’ve observed color comics double the production costs while seldom increasing the sales at all. And the leather editions will have black-and-white interiors anyhow, so while we definitely prefer the look of color, and while we will continue using color for those comics with the support for it such as ALT-HERO, our new MIDNIGHT’S WAR and BLACK WARRANT comics will be monochrome until further notice.

And while neither Arkhaven nor Arktoons have yet proven to be quite as successful as we anticipated, the infrastructure we’ve built is very sound and you’re going to see a lot more new products being released, both in print and on Arktoons, from GHOST OF THE BADLANDS and SOMETHING BIG to OVERMIND. The fact that we’re not only stable, but growing, when DC, Marvel, and IDW are all teetering on the brink of complete collapse is one positive, another one is the way that even the flagship mainstream comics-related shows are observably taking note of what Arkhaven is doing.

Firecracker, “the leader of the Alt-Supe” movement on THE BOYS, looks pretty familiar, doesn’t she? And that’s her formal costume with the Seven; when she’s first introduced on the show has somehow become an overt apologia for elite Hellmouth pedophilia, she’s wearing cutoff jeans just like a certain Alabama cheerleader who also has a Southern acccent.

If you want to know what’s new to Arktoons every day, be sure to subscribe to the Arkhaven Comics substack.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Russian Historiography of WII

This looks like a book worth reading once I’m finished with Jack Vance’s Treasury.

The Postil (TP): You have written a trilogy on the Great Patriotic War, that is the Second World War as experienced by Soviet Union. The first part of this magisterial study will be published soon. What is your overall aim?

Michael Jabara Carley (MJC): My trilogy, as I call it, deals with the origins and early conduct of the Second World War and the Great Patriotic War (Velikaia Otechestvennaia voina). The VOV is the name given to the war in Soviet and Russian history arising from the German invasion of the USSR on 22 June 1941. My work runs from January 1930 to December 1941. My project was first entitled “A Near-run Thing: The Improbable Grand Alliance of World War II,” supported by an “Insight” research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. My initial objective was to write a narrative history of how the USSR, Britain, and the United States, powers hostile to each other during the interwar years, became allies against Nazi Germany and the Axis. The work evolved from an envisioned single volume into three dealing with Soviet relations with the great and lesser European powers and the United States.

TP: Is there a difference between a Western historiography of WWII and a Russian one?

MJC: Oh yes, the difference is enormous. During the war, it was clear to all who had eyes to see that the Red Army played the key role in smashing the Nazi Wehrmacht and winning the war in Europe. The United States and Britain played supporting roles. After 1945 the war became an important object of propaganda in the Cold War. The new narrative was that the United States or Churchill single-handedly won the war in which the USSR was practically invisible. In the western media, histories, iconography, Hollywood films, comic books, more recently video games, the Red Army is invisible. The key moment in the war was operation Overlord, the Normandy landings, when in fact, they were an anticlimax, grand to be sure, in a war whose outcome had already been determined by the Red Army. In the context of the Cold War, it was normal that the United States would seek in various ways to rub out the memories of the Soviet role in the war, for otherwise how could you portray the USSR as a menacing communist enemy.

I’ll report back on it once I’ve finished it. It should be interesting to see if he supports or contradicts the Icebreaker theory of Operation Barbarossa.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Knives are Out

Joe Biden #4 gave a historic performance in the presidential debate that even The Economist describes as “an unmitigated disaster”:

The mission for Joe Biden in the presidential debate held in Atlanta on June 27th was clear: to prove his critics wrong, by showing that he was mentally fit and thereby reverse the polling deficit that makes Donald Trump the favourite to win the American election in 2024. Unfortunately, his performance was an unmitigated disaster—perhaps the worst of any presidential candidate in modern history. The president, who is 81 (and would be 86 by the end of a second term in office), stammered indecipherably, struggled to complete his lines of attack and proved his doubters completely correct. Although Mr Trump was in his typical form—meandering, mendacious, vindictive—he somehow appeared the more coherent and lucid of the pair. Mr Biden’s decision to seek re-election rather than standing aside for a younger standard-bearer now looks like a reckless endangerment of the democracy he claims to want to protect.

Merely quoting Mr Biden’s rhetorical bumblings do not do them justice, but they do give a sense of the shambles. Consider one of his lines at the very start of the debate, the first indicator that the president was in poor form: “Making sure that we continue to strengthen our health-care system, making sure that we’re able to make every single, solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the…uh, covid…excuse me, dealing with everyone we had to do with… look, if we finally beat Medicare…” The moderator interrupted before further damage could be done, one of several coups de grâce graciously administered.

I don’t see how the Democrats can seriously expect to field any of their five Joe Bidens as a candidate, although at least it would purport to demonstrate how many people will vote for a Democrat under any circumstance. That, of course, assumes that the elections are real, which we know they are not.

So, the point of showing that Biden is incapacitated, and permitting the media to trumpet his incapacity now that the primaries are over is to put someone else in the office. Whether that is Trump or not remains to be seen.

Of the various replacement candidates on offer, I think RFK is the most credible suggestion, Michelle Obama the least. I also think that Newsome was the original plan, but that is less viable since California has been imploding faster than anticipated.

The lesson is this: once you take the ticket, no matter how high you rise, you will eventually be thrown from the high horse.

DISCUSS ON SG

A Mystery for the Ages

  • 23 September 2021: Portugal has the highest Covid-19 vaccination rate in the world.
  • 19 January 2024: Portugal registers highest level of excess deaths in Europe.

Alas, that there is no Jules Maigret, no Sherlock Holmes, who can find an answer to this baffling conundrum.

DISCUSS ON SG