Tag Archives: AI

Diary Blog, 10 May 2023

Morning music

Tweets seen

I find myself turning back to Nietzsche, particularly Also Sprach Zarathustra, not read for many years.

The nanny state…again.

About 22-23 years ago, I was en route from a social call in Hereford to the South Coast when the police stopped me in Wiltshire in the middle of the night. I had expected to overnight in or near Hereford, but in the end decided to drive through the night, starting after midnight.

I had had a couple of pints of cider during the (hot summer) day, and a couple of pints of Guinness in the evening. I was not intoxicated in the slightest.

The drive back was devoid of traffic. I scarcely saw any other vehicle, though I had to brake urgently when a black deer ran in front of my car before scrambling into woodland on the road that follows the course of the river Wye.

Sometime around 2 in the morning, I crossed an empty roundabout in Wiltshire and, not long after that, I noticed in the rear-view mirror a car a distance behind me. That car, a police vehicle, then blasted my car with bright headlights, so bright that they were shocking. Irresponsible. They then applied their blue lights.

I pulled over, and one of the two police approached. He asked me where I was headed, from where I had come, and why was I out so late. They probably had already checked the car’s registration (it was not my car), and so asked for no licence or insurance details. Just as well. I had a foreign licence at the time, and I find talking/explaining to the police rather boring.

The policeman had a perfunctory look and rummage in the back of the car, and then decided (on my admission that I had had a Guinness) to breathalyze me. Zero reading.

Turned out that a police camera operator had seen me cross that empty roundabout “erratically”. I was probably tired.

Anyway, the policeman was polite and friendly enough and, above all, let me go!

Still, how long before one has to blow into devices even in the car to test both sobriety and wakefulness?

True, sleepiness, like intoxication, can be dangerous to both a driver and to others, but sometimes these State control measures go too far, and destroy all freedom and pleasure in life.

Incidentally, that was both the first and the last time that I was breathalyzed. I rarely have even one drink now if driving (and drink little generally in any case). The only time in my life when I would have been driving actually intoxicated on a regular basis would have been when living in the Caribbean for a while, nearly a quarter-century ago. A few mojitos and a few daiquiris can seriously impair your driving ability…

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From the newspapers

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/10/west-opportunity-risk-ukraine-counteroffensive.

Written by Timothy Garton Ash [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Garton_Ash], someone whom I have always thought a rather sinister individual (from a distance— I have never met or seen him).

I am at least assuming (for now) that what we read there, in that Guardian piece, is effectively the sort of judgment (about aid and assistance to the Kiev regime) being channeled to Downing Street by SIS.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12067209/Lib-Dems-demand-electoral-reform-price-propping-Keir-Starmer-No10.html

I shall believe it when I see it, but Proportional Representation is the only way to restore, to some extent, the credibility of the pseudo-democratic circus in the UK.

More tweets seen

An army, however huge, well-motivated, and well-equipped, against a nuclear power, even one which may not be ideologically-motivated or efficient, is little more than a display of strength which may become a field of cinders.

The sections of that Ukrainian-language graphic are, from top, Black Sea, Sea of Azov, and Mediterranean Sea. Presumably all or most ships etc are from the Black Sea Fleet.

Good to see young people on the right track. That tweeter now has over 89,000 Twitter “followers”.

See my assessment from a few years ago: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2018/11/15/when-reality-becomes-subjective/.

Looks similar to the village of Dunsford, not far away, where I once stayed for about a third of each month when on “kommandirovka” (i.e. work journeys, as a barrister based in Exeter) from my then home in Brittany.

Seems long ago now. I was last there in 2008.

Clever idea. BTW, I have no financial interest in the product!

The “trans” nonsense has just become absolutely ridiculous in the UK and USA.

Leaving “Madame Hatchet” aside, that is quite right, but what is not said in the tweet is that any visionaries are frozen out by the System, and also attacked relentlessly by, mostly, the Jew-Zionist element and its “antifa” “useful idiots”…

Not so sure that the graph does show that, but I cannot think of many people or types of people, who would go out and vote Conservative Party at present, certainly not from active approbation of Conservative Party policy or actual rule. The most the Con Party can hope for is that there are enough people who actively oppose the Labour Party to mitigate the losses.

Even the “stop the migration-invasion” policy (re the cross-Channel invasion) has been proven to be pretty much hot air. The invaders still flood in, aided and abetted by those who could be called many things but “traitor” is closest, albeit in the “non-legal” sense.

It is very doubtful that Starmer-Labour will do any better in any area than the present bunch of idiots but, as a plea to the voters, that is not much to say…

Once again, a battle based not on which party is most popular but which party is least popular. Not very inspiring.

Good grief. I wonder whether that always works. After all, you only get one chance.

Might be useful sometime.

Various UK institutions such as the civil service, police, CPS, legal professions, judiciary, RNLI, even the National Trust are, so to speak, “riddled with traitors“.

Lost Doggerland

I have written about Doggerland and, also, large engineering projects, previously on the blog: see https://ianrobertmillard.org/2020/05/19/lost-doggerland-some-historical-changes-and-some-large-scale-projects/.

Late tweets seen

Isn’t that a Masonic distress signal?

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[St. Petersburg, winter scene]

Diary Blog, 6 May 2023

Morning music

Saturday quiz

Well, 6/10 this week, enough to trump the 4/10 scored by political journalist John Rentoul. I did not know the answers to questions 2, 3, 7, and 10. In fact, I am wondering whether those question 7 products, Cabana, Prize, and Bitz, were either biscuits or magazines, but still do not know.

Tweets seen

Incredible how “entitled” the British “royals” are, bearing in mind their low intellectual and cultural level. Princess Anne has all the charm of her late father. Never met her, but I saw her a few times, one time being at a gala dinner at Lincoln’s Inn (to which I belonged for 30 years, until a pack of Jews procured my disbarment in 2016: see https://ianrobertmillard.org/2017/07/09/the-slide-of-the-english-bar-and-uk-society-continues-and-accelerates/). On the occasion of that dinner, in the 1990s, she seemed to be scowling constantly.

AI is inherently disruptive of authoritarian rule.” Really? Human authoritarian rule, maybe. AI may eventually dispense with human rule altogether. Be warned.

Britain has slowly become, over 2-3 decades (and is still becoming), a police state, though still rather a “toytown” one. Straws in that wind include, in recent years, people such as Alison Chabloz, prosecuted and eventually imprisoned for satirical cartoons and songs about Jews, and the recent seizure of golliwogs from an Essex pub.

The Jew-Zionist element is behind most of the gathering repression. Abuse of the law (eg Communications Act 2003, s.127), corruption and suborning of police, police commissioners, CPS staff etc.

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[Loons in a wildlife reserve, Quebec, Canada]

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It would be disastrous, were the Wagner Group to be stabbed in the back by traitors in Moscow.

UK forces used phosphorus grenades in the Falklands, and I myself saw them in Rhodesia in 1977. “White phos”, in the usual term. I think (unsure) that Israeli forces also use them.

https://twitter.com/UkroreichKing/status/1654798474200719361?s=20

Why only now? The first priority, over a year ago, should have been to eliminate the Zelensky cabal.

If only…[redacted]…

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Stray thought

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Good point(s)…

The same was true, mutatis mutandis, in the pre-1933 Berlin of Sally Bowles and Christopher Isherwood. Then Hitler and the NSDAP took power, and cleaned up the city and the country.

Jeremy Vine, a typical BBC/msm drone— rather ignorant, hugely overpaid (estimated variously from about £250,000 to as much as £700,000 a year from various income-sources), and socio-politically tendentious (though he is OK as presenter of Eggheads).

American commentator not wrong about Liz Truss, but very wrong if he thinks that Winston Churchill was the first Prime Minister of the UK! There were in fact no less than 41 Prime Ministers before Churchill’s first term in office.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_prime_ministers_of_Great_Britain_and_the_United_Kingdom#Combined_timeline.

Talking of Liz Truss, saw this:

Look at her “I’ve won the Lottery” stupidly happy face. She has no self-awareness, and no real awareness of how much deeper into the mire she has pushed this poor country. She is just happy that, through (for her, happy, but for the people unhappy) circumstance, she became Prime Minister (for 6 weeks), and is invited to events as a pseudo-VIP, and also that she is going to be getting hundreds of thousands of pounds per year, indefinitely, having clambered onto the cart of a completely rotten system that rewards total incompetence.

All the same, it is desperately sad that, by reason of the incompetence of the Russian Army and intelligence services last year, there was no Afghanistan-1979 swift coup de main, seizing Kiev in the first week. Had there been an all-out Blitzkrieg for the sake of mercy, most of the harm, bloodshed, death and damage could have been avoided.

Impressive, if meaningless.

From the newspapers

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/thugs-jailed-life-murdering-good-29900053

[Daily Mirror]

“Diversity” and “enrichment”?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12051313/Mother-five-jailed-trying-hire-hitman-murder-colleague-spurned-advances.html

A married mother-of-five who tried to hire a hitman to kill a former colleague after they had a brief fling and he spurned her advances was jailed for seven and a half years today.

The trial heard how Hewlett became ‘utterly fixated’ with Mr Belton and repeatedly sent him emails begging to see him again, as well as nude photographs of herself, but he constantly made it clear he did not want anything to do with her.

He was made redundant and got a new job at the Kinnerton Confectionery factory in Fakenham which supplies chocolate products to Tesco, but she also got a job there in order to pursue him.

She called him a ‘coward’ for not wanting to speak to her and posted comments on Facebook, saying that he ‘needs shooting in the bollocks’.

Hewlett left her job as a mixer in the ‘nut’ department at Kinnerton in August 2021, saying that she was quitting due to bullying by Mr Belton and his sexual harassment of women.

Management rejected her claims as ‘malicious’ after Mr Belton showed them emails she had sent him.”

[Daily Mail]

She worked in the “nut department”! You really could not make it up!

Late tweets seen

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Diary Blog, 2 May 2023

Morning music

[conducted by Andrew Davis. I recall buying him a pint of beer and having a brief chat once, in 1995 or 1996, at the Colonnade Hotel, Little Venice https://www.colonnadehotel.co.uk/]
[The Great Cloister, Gloucester Cathedral]

From the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12020027/Public-stonings-gang-rapes-ransom-demands-brutal-violence-gripped-Haiti.html.

If only white European people would stop oppressing blacks, and let the blacks “rule themselves”…oh, no, wait…

Tweets seen

Very true, but Starmer-Labour would/will be very similar.

Again, very true, but the main drivers of censorship —and against freedom of expression— in the UK are the fanatical Jew-Zionists.

As for “Tories“, we can already see that the Israel-lobby puppets in the Labour Shadow Cabinet would be, if anything, even worse.

Again, all true, except that the upcoming local elections will change little or nothing in terms of actual improvements to anything.

I should like to see a reduction of about 4/5ths in the world population, leaving 1/5th, mostly northern European. Not because of “hate” toward the non-Europeans but because, firstly, the natural world is under unprecedented strain and, secondly, only a European population in Europe (particularly) and northern Eurasia can form the basis for a necessary quantum leap in human evolution.

See also: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/01/26/the-tide-is-coming-in-reflections-on-the-possible-end-of-our-present-civilization-and-what-might-follow/.

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Obscure hit noticed

Well, a first (I think) for the blog today. No less than 8 hits (possibly from only one person, though) from Tadzhikistan (my preferred spelling, btw), one of the wildest corners of the old Soviet “empire” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tajikistan].

Those who know about such things tell me that the location of hits from overseas is unreliable, by reason of “proxy servers”, but I prefer just to believe that someone in Dushanbe or wherever, for whatever reason, has been reading my output.

I recall that, when I was on the committee of the Central Asia and Transcaucasia Law Association (CATLA) in the mid-1990s, someone had been reporting from Dushanbe (former Stalinabad, during the 1930s and 1940s) on the telephone, before gasping that she had to run “because a tank has just come around the corner“; there was a civil war going on at the time.

[Rudaki (formerly Lenin) Avenue, Dushanbe, Tadjikistan, the main thoroughfare]

The blog has had a few very obscure hits before, including one or two from Antarctica.

More from the newspapers

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/may/02/geoffrey-hinton-godfather-of-ai-quits-google-warns-dangers-of-machine-learning.

For me, the main danger of AI is that it will become so inconvenient for people to avoid its effects and control that most will become almost slaves to a mechanized, digitized society in which the individual (and free speech, and free thought) may be of little value.

More tweets seen

To coin a phrase, “richer than all his tribe“…

More from the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12037875/Villagers-left-furious-plans-1-700-home-development-Dorset.html.

Appalling. I see so many similar situations, all over the country, certainly all over what I think is the best part of England, meaning below a line stretching from the Bristol Channel to the Wash. (yes, I know that there are also some beautiful areas elsewhere, such as Herefordshire).

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Diary Blog, 24 April 2023

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[Lazienki Park, Warsaw]

Tweets seen

Not that I ever “supported” Corbyn anyway, but there is no doubt that the so-called “Campaign Against Antisemitism” [“CAA”] and other Zionist-Jew orgs and individuals conspired to remove Corbyn from the Labour Party leadership.

The silly thing is that Corbyn was not what I would call “anti-Semitic” anyway.

As for Diane Abbott, obviously I have no time for her on any basis.

https://twitter.com/falconseed/status/1650309496231841792?s=20

Yes, we live (whether in UK or USA or EU) in a Western society with various rights and mostly fair-seeming laws etc…on the surface. Excavate a little, though, and you come to a very different layer, as Julian Assange discovered.

Penny Mordaunt is yet another of those MPs who have no intellectual or —crucially— financial independence, which means that she is totally dependent on the favour of the System.

As Marx predicted.

AI and robotics will finish the process. Untold millions of British and other workers will fall into unemployment and poverty, because their labour will not be required, having been largely replaced by ever more sophisticated machines. Without pay, and dependent on State benefits, they will be unable to buy the luxury, or even basic, products of the AI/robotics economy.

In those circumstances, “basic income” schemes will be brought in (we already see a crippled version of that with the UK’s “Universal Credit”).

In the end, in the title of the David Icke book, there may be a”robot’s rebellion” by the human beings thrown on the scrapheap, unless the people are too drugged by the opiates of the age, i.e. televized football, pop music, “celebrity” nonsense etc.

What is required is not 1930s National Socialism, as such, but a form of social nationalism which honours 1930s National Socialism and contains within it the essence of National Socialism.

In short, and in the words of the Old Testament, we “honour our father and our mother”…

More tweets seen

…even when self-defence is necessary and unavoidable, or for the good of the future of the peoples of the Earth overall.

Perhaps, but does the ultra-powerful USA really need “allies” to fight a nuclear, or even conventional, war? “Need” militarily, that is, not as a propaganda figleaf.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievierodonetsk.

Captured by Russian forces 10 months ago. Life goes on…

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[painting by Roman Bozhkov]

Diary Blog, 22 April 2023, including a few further thoughts around AI, and freedom of expression

Morning music

[the swearing-in of SS-men, Munich]

Saturday quiz

Well, a modest 5/10 this week, but I still managed to beat political journalist John Rentoul, who scored 4/10. I did not know the answers to questions 1, 2, 3, 5, and 8.

From the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12000873/DOMINIC-SANDBROOK-Death-meritocracy-Britain-thrall-doctrine.html.

 “…he thinks schools, universities and employers should actively discriminate against white applicants, purely because of their skin colour and their inherited guilt. Never mind that, say, a little girl born in the 21st century can hardly be blamed for the history of slavery. For Kendi, the mere fact of her genetic heritage is enough to damn her.

The second example is even more shocking. This is a chart produced in 2020 by the National Museum of African American History and Culture — part of the Smithsonian Institution, probably the most prestigious U.S. educational body of all.

The chart gives examples of ‘whiteness’ and ‘white culture’, which it clearly regards with disapproval. Sinister aspects of ‘white culture’ apparently include ‘hard work’, ‘self-reliance’, ‘the nuclear family’, ‘competition’, ‘delayed gratification’ and even ‘rigid time schedules’.

In just the first three weeks of this year, the NHS advertised for 19 ‘diversity and sustainability’ posts, with a combined salary of a cool £1 million. Indeed, in total the NHS in England alone employs an estimated 800 diversity and inclusion officers, costing a staggering £40 million a year.

[Daily Mail]

Is there any peaceful way to stop this slide to complete chaos or dystopian tyranny? Frankly, I think not.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12000469/Junior-doctor-leader-joked-Twitter-gassing-Jews-suspended-BMA.html.

Free speech. Freedom of expression.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11998237/Murders-British-couple-eaten-crocodiles-laid-bare-South-Africa-trial.html.

Africa is no good for the white man any more. All African countries are now (i.e. now that they are African-ruled) shambolic, corrupt, and suffused with crime and extreme violence, though some more than others.

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Tweets seen

Another UK policeman playing the poundland KGB operative in uniform instead of doing his proper job. It has become pervasive. The police are now almost useless in terms of protecting the British public, while waging the culture war against the British people, and at the instigation of both “woke” activists and (of course) the endlessly, relentlessly, whining and demanding Jew-Zionist lobby.

See also:

https://ianrobertmillard.org/2017/07/13/when-i-was-a-victim-of-a-malicious-zionist-complaint/.

My assessment of Macron, from about 4 years ago: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2019/01/09/on-recent-events-in-france/.

As I have blogged previously, for me there are two main issues that stand out: firstly, at some point (and as Elon Musk has mentioned), AI gets to the point whereby it takes over the reins of its own evolution, no longer requiring, or even permitting, human decision-making to control that; secondly, AI may become so pervasive that it becomes almost impossible for any individual human being, or for humanity as a group, to live without it.

That is already to a large extent so in relation to, inter alia, mobile telephones, online access, debit/credit cards etc. Yes, you can live without internet access, without a mobile telephone (I have not had one for many years), without debit or credit cards etc, but it gets harder every month to live “off-grid” in that way.

Once cash becomes a medium of exchange used only by the marginalized, and not used much in supermarkets, larger shops etc, the System/matrix will have almost power of life and death over citizens. Say or do something anti-System, or anti the System agenda, and your banking services will be cut off, and you will find it hard to continue your political life, hard to conduct any business or profession, hard even to buy food, in the end.

“Conspiracy theory”? No. A number of people, such as Laura Towler, Mark Collett, Sam Melia (all of Patriotic Alternative) have had exactly that happen to them in the past couple of years.

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The possibility now exists for one, two, or more encirclements.

Ha. Reminiscent of Lieutenant Kije: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lieutenant_Kij%C3%A9_(film).

I wonder whether “the Ghost of Kiev” will become, over time, a figure thought by many to have been a real person, in the manner of Wilhelm Tell (or William Tell): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tell.

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[Grotto Pavilion, Tsarskoe Selo, near St. Petersburg]

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I have already blogged a few times about my visit to the UK’s Porton Down “biolab” campus in Wiltshire in or about 1995, accompanying the then Ukrainian Ambassador to the UK; incidentally or co-incidentally, he was a trained scientist in the field(s) of biochemistry, microbiology etc: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serhiy_Komisarenko. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porton_Down.

The sooner the Kiev regime runs out of arms, ammunition, and personnel, the better. Russia can take over Kiev and eastern Ukraine (east of the Dnieper) and start the work of rebuilding the damaged areas. Ukrainians (and Russians in Ukraine) live, in general, with lower living standards than Russians, certainly Russians from central or Baltic Russia (Moscow, Petersburg etc), and (as Putin has recently said) should be helped to a better standard of living.

Ukrainian police act as a press-gang, trying to force random and unwilling young men to become soldiers in Zelensky’s war.

The “May 9” reference refers to the so-called “Day of Victory” in 1945: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Day_(9_May).

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[Reichskanzlei, Berlin, after the bitter defeat of 1945]

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Good, if obvious, points.

…or kosher ones.

London and the other large UK cities have gone the same way.

The cretins of what passes for the Kiev regime “high command”, and the similar idiots in Washington, cannot or will not see that, were Crimea actually to be isolated by a Kiev-regime fantasy “counter-offensive”, the Russian response might well be a tactical nuclear strike on the Kiev-regime forces, or even on central Kiev itself, obliterating Zelensky and his cabal (if that is where they really are).

The Ukrainians themselves are now starting to push back against the Zelensky regime.

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[Arnold Bocklin, Triton and Nereid]

Diary Blog, 11 April 2023

Morning music

From the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11957405/Pub-landlady-defies-police-orders-puts-five-golliwogs-display.html.

A pub landlady today defied authorities and put more of her golliwog collection back on display just days after 20 of them were seized by police as part of an investigation that she and her husband had committed a hate crime.

Benice Ryley proudly placed five of the controversial dolls behind the bar of The White Hart pub in Grays, Essex, which she has run for the past 17 years with her husband Chris.

The couple, who are in their 60s, had six officers enter the pub last Tuesday and take away 20 dolls displayed on a shelf behind the bar after an anonymous complaint was made against them. 

They also seized an assortment of golliwog badges and magnets that adorned the bar.

[Daily Mail].

Meaning “defied” the clown police of Essex. My own experience, from 2017: https://ianrobertmillard.org/2017/07/13/when-i-was-a-victim-of-a-malicious-zionist-complaint/.

Read that article. The Essex Police clowns are still claiming that the golliwogs they seized are “part of an investigation” into a so-called “hate crime“, which is complete nonsense. It is not unlawful to own or display a golliwog.

One of the alarming aspects of contemporary Britain is the degree to which the police are (wilfully?) unaware of the limits to their power and, indeed, jurisdiction.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11958309/Suspected-terrorists-posing-Channel-migrants-job-keeping-safe-harder.html

Today’s revelation that suspected terrorists have entered Britain posing as small boat migrants brings a whole new context to the Channel crisis.

It was already known that hundreds of criminals had been identified among arrivals from France – raising huge questions about Britain’s porous border and the Government’s ability to protect its citizens.

Now we know that the problem is far, far worse.

The 19 terror suspects who camouflaged themselves as would-be refugees to enter the UK are known to be affiliated with some of the most murderous groups in the world, including Islamic State and the Somali Islamist insurgent group al-Shabaab.

The security services were already under pressure keeping tabs on thousands of individuals who pose an active threat in the UK.”

[Daily Mail]

Well, what a huge surprise…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11956817/Scientist-claims-humans-able-upload-consciousness-computer-end-YEAR.html.

Potentially very important.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/04/10/ukraine-russia-war-news-putin-latest-biden-bakhmut-zelensky/

Ukraine’s air defence could crumble ‘within weeks’, according to leaked US intelligence documents.

The New York Times reported that newly leaked Pentagon documents and US officials suggest that a huge influx of munitions is needed to keep Russia’s air force from changing the course of the war.

According to one leaked document, missile stocks for Soviet-era S-300 and Buk air defence systems, which constitute 89 per cent of Ukraine’s protection against most fighter aircraft and some bombers, could be fully depleted by May 3 and mid-April.

One leaked document reportedly assessed that Ukrainian air defences designed to protect troops on the front line will be “completely reduced” by May 23.”

[Daily Telegraph]

There it is. The air defences of the Kiev regime may have “crumbled” and will be “fully depleted” and “completely reduced” within 1-5 weeks from now.

At the same time, the Kiev-regime infantry still living is suffering poor morale and huge losses.

The conclusion must be that Russia can press its advantage in the warmer weather expected soon.

Tweets seen

Zelensky will have to stop pretending to be a great (or any) statesman and/or great (or any) military leader, and go back to clowning on TV comedy shows. Either that, or retreat to his USD $40M villa in Florida.

Typical, but it is “Kiev“, not “Kyiv“, and certainly not (as the BBC, Sky etc now say) “Keeev“.

Stalingrad meets Mad Max.

The above analysis is very weak re. Weimar hyperinflation. The Weimar Republic did not collapse because of hyperinflation.

The Weimar hyperinflation period was 1921-1923, but mainly summer 1922 to November 1923. In other words, hyperinflation really only existed for about 18 months.

The hyperinflation did notcollapse” the Weimar Republic, though it did destroy the savings of those who had savings, thus making the whole political situation in Germany, already unstable, more unstable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Weimar_Republic. It did rob the Weimar Republic of authority, to be sure. People distrusted it.

The final collapse of the Weimar Republic, which stabilized to some extent in the mid/late 1920s, came about more because of the Depression, which was born outside Germany, in the USA.

Hitler and the NSDAP did not attain full State power until 1933, a decade after the end of the hyperinflationary period.

The NSDAP only garnered 2.6% of the vote in 1928. Over the several elections succeeding, that vote-share grew to 37.3% in 1932, and then to 43.9% in 1933. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Party#German_Reichstag.

[Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany]

Vanity publishing

I was just looking at the memoirs written (actually, ghost-written) by some “senior” (so-called) politicians. Liz Truss’s Out of the Blue, which came out too late, after she had already been deposed, is at present selling about 200 new copies monthly on Amazon. Not very impressive, but better than Andrea Leadsom’s effort, Snakes and Ladders, which is managing a mere 20 per month.

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I may do a “deadhead MPs” profile of Heidi Alexander sometime.

More from the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11959809/Leaked-documents-reveal-Pentagon-fears-Ukraines-spring-offensive-fall-flat.html.

A newly-leaked top-secret Pentagon document reveals American planners doubt Ukraine’s ability to launch an effective counteroffensive against Russian invaders this spring.

Outlining the developments of the war since February, the document picks up on ‘force generation and sustainment shortfalls’, predicting Ukrainian forces will fail…

[Daily Mail]

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[German armour advancing, Kiev area, 1943]

More from the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11959829/Model-32-reveals-shes-BLIND-doctors-missed-vision-robbing-condition.html

Still clapping?

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You can guess what sort of (((group))) is behind that, ultimately…

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[Chateau Frontenac, Quebec]

Diary Blog, 26 January 2023

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On this day a year ago

From the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11676661/Pensioner-87-died-hypothermia-telling-doctor-afford-heat-home.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11677653/Artificial-intelligence-kill-human-race-make-mankind-extinct-MPs-warned.html

This may come about not by humanity losing a “war” with robots etc but by humanity simply becoming gradually more enmeshed by (and in) technology which is just too convenient, and which then becomes irremovable.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11676945/Terrorist-stabs-church-official-death-wounds-southern-Spain.html

“Diversity”…

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/breaking-ex-health-secretary-matt-29050672.

A 61-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of assaulting Matt Hancock on the London Tube.

The alleged attack on the former Health Secretary happened yesterday morning at Westminster Underground station, close to the Houses of Parliament.” [Daily Mirror]

What puzzles me slightly is why Hancock would travel by Underground anyway. He has a salary of £85,000+, generous Parliamentary expenses, and outside earnings (including £400,000 in 2022 for his trash TV appearances) etc. Maybe he is just a moneygrubbing skinflint.

Tweets seen

Put a beggar on a horse and he rides it to death” [German proverb].

Looks as though my blog comments about half-Jew Raab, from several years ago, and over several years, have held up pretty well, if I say so myself.

Sending hundreds of tanks to Ukraine (from all over Europe and the USA) is a massive escalation. In reality, even one nuclear missile on London = the UK finished for a hundred years or more. Even one nuclear missile on each of New York, LA, San Francisco, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Houston, Miami, Chicago, Boston = USA finished for decades, maybe a hundred years or more.

Yes, Russia’s major cities and military centres too, but does that help us? No.

This is not the way to go. The escalation has to stop, and then be reversed.

The present UK Defence Secretary is what was once termed “a passed-over major“, a former officer who, when serving, was unlikely ever to reach senior command. Not someone who can be relied on now.

As a matter of fact, Wallace was a mere captain, not even a major, by the end of his service. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Wallace_(politician)#Early_life.

More tweets

Yvette Cooper and her husband, Ed Balls, have several houses, partly bought by the money they ripped off during the expenses-scandal years. Not one houses any so-called “refugees”. Buy-to-let parasites.

Yvette Cooper should be kicked into the political gutter where she belongs. Incidentally, she is yet another Labour Friends of Israel puppet.

Amazing how many deluded or misled people actually think that “Jack Monroe” is busying around, collating useful or relevant data about the cost of food; in fact, she just collates enough to sound superficially credible to those who know no better.

More from the newspapers

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11679529/Rebecca-Press-jailed-20-years-killing-mothers-neighbour.html.

She had 16 previous offences including an assault on an emergency worker, fraud and breaches of public order.

Recorder of Cardiff Judge Tracey Lloyd-Clarke jailed Press for life with a minimum of 20 years due to the aggravating features of the murder.”

[Daily Mail].

A significant part of the UK population is just useless, and in fact dangerous, made worse by booze or drugs. They may as well be culled.

Not for the first time, though, I find myself musing on what on Earth the police would do were so many of those committing crimes not totally stupid.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11679061/Drone-images-capture-100m-Brexit-border-control-site-built-Kent.html.

To call “our” Government “useless” would be far too kind.

Late tweets seen

Julia Hartley-Brewer— an ignorant know-nothing.

Simon Clarke’s political career, as MP, started in 2017, and will end either this year or next year, so 6-7 years.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Clarke_(politician)].

No-one I know wants a “Labour” (fake) government, but no-one I know wants the present fake “Conservative” omnishambles either, and it will be good to see the anguish on their faces as many lose their seats, salaries, inflated expenses, jobs for wives, husbands, girlfriends, mistresses etc.

In fact, one of the best sights of 2019 was to see how upset were Jew-Zionist-lobby puppets such as Anna Turley, Mary Creagh, Ruth Smeeth etc, as they got turfed out of the House of Commons.

If only [redacted]…

That Tom Harwood person is just another pseudo-national traitor to the people of Britain and the peoples of Europe.

That was what happened in the Royal Navy and the U.S. Navy.

I recall that, when I first lived in the USA, in 1989 or 1990, the first US Navy ship to go mixed-sex was deployed to the Gulf. An aircraft-carrier, I think. The sailors did not object to nearly 100 women sailors joining the crew, but their wives certainly did! With some reason: when the deployment finished, it turned out that about 90 of the —less than 100— women on board had been made pregnant…

As for the Royal Navy, it matters little now, because the Royal Navy scarcely exists as an effective force. Apart from the paucity of ships, there is the question of the quality of many of the officers and men.

I happened to see about 15 mins of a documentary about a British warship. About a third of the complement seemed to be women. The junior officers (men and women) seemed to be incredibly dim, and rather wet (in a non-oceanic way). Drunk, too.

As for the crew, their shore leave in Italy ended with many drunk and near-incapable. Admittedly, rather an old naval tradition, but it was unpleasant to see, especially, the female members of the crew so drunk that they were unable to walk, falling into the gutter in their short skirts, just as they presumably did in the “left behind” UK towns from where many of them must have originated.

Late music

The Revolution of the Robots and AI Means that Basic Income is Inevitable

I have been interested for several, indeed many, years in the socio-political effects of the AI/robot/computer revolution, which effects started to be felt as long ago as the 1960s, accelerated in the 1980s, but which still mushroom, and may be considered to be still in the youthful stage of development.

I happened to see an online article which was about 25 types of human work likely to be largely replaced by robots. Some were unsurprising, such as Data Entry Clerks and Bookkeepers, others less so (as a former barrister, I noticed “Lawyers” with interest!). I did not expect to see “Farmers” on the list, though in fact much agricultural work has already moved from human and animal labour to robotic or at least automated: sophisticated machines now already sow, harvest and process agricultural produce. Some of the most delicate tasks can still not be effectively automated without loss of quality, but that will probably change. The picking of grapes is done today as it has been since the dawn of recorded history– by hand. The best tea is also still picked by hand, though experiments have been made with automation: the Soviet tea industry tried it back in the 1970s (“on Georgia’s sun-dappled hills”, as Lermontov had it).

Looking ahead, one can see that many more jobs will be automated. Even now, that is leaving many either with no jobs, or with “McJobs”, minimum-wage bottom-of-barrel jobs. Increasingly, there will be discontent as those who have either no job or a job which does not cover even basic necessities become more numerous. At present, in the UK, those who have existed on poor pay have had that pay topped up via “tax credits” etc (and/or, now, the cretinous “Universal Credit” pipedream of Iain Dunce Duncan Smith), administered by a shambolic and punitive bureaucratic regime. That can and will be taken over by a Basic Income, paid without reference to whether the individual is trying to find work or better work.

The essence of the plan in respect of AI etc is that automation creates economic surplus. That surplus, at present, is today then distributed mostly to shareholders and higher executives, by means of dividends, pay and capital gains (eg via share options). That surplus or benefit should be shared out with the employees of the enterprise and with the people in general, via the mediation of the State. Not forgetting the need for an economic enterprise to have reserve funding for R&D etc.

Basic Income will give to all citizens at least a measure of the financial and life security currently enjoyed by only the wealthy, the “trustafarians” etc. It will enable those who want more than the basic minimum to work for that extra money, those who want to volunteer or do charitable work to do so and yet still subsist, those who want to think or write to create. As for those who only want to loaf, they do that under any system (including the present one) and at least Basic Income makes society quiescent.

The cost of Basic Income is high, but the cost of administering and paying out the present “welfare” system is hugely high too! Admin, snooping, interrogating, complex payment structures etc.

Taken to absurdity, one could envisage a society entirely dystopian, where no human workers are needed at all. The machines (etc) then produce goods and services which cannot be bought and paid for, because the humans have no work and therefore no pay and therefore no disposable income.

In such a scenario, either goods and services have to be given away free of charge to the humans unable to pay for them, or the humans need to be given money-value for which they have not directly worked. Basic Income.

The present society is already exhibiting a trend to work which pays little or nothing and a connected trend to an amelioration of the effects of that first trend (via State welfare, pensions, tax credits etc).

In the end, Basic Income is essential, because the robotics/AI revolution is loosening the nexus between work and pay.

Notes

https://vdare.com/posts/automation-farm-robot-picks-peppers

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/12/08/waitrose-first-supermarket-use-robots-farm-food/

https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/plymouth-news/universal-credit-basic-income-california-2563380

Robotics Might Save the Railways

The rail system in the UK is a mess. Start from basics: rail travel, when it started (in England, in the world) in the 19th century, was a fast expanding private enterprise system of competing lines. These lines (companies) solidified into an efficient cartel by the time of the First World War. During the war itself, the railways were under State control (and until 1921). The Railways Act 1923 put the de facto private cartel on a statutory basis, with four large railway companies running virtually all passenger and freight services. Profitability waned with the coming of cars and road freight so that, by the time of nationalization in 1948, losses threatened. This became reality in 1955, when British Rail recorded its first operating loss.

The “modernization” plans adopted from 1955 culminated in the Beeching Report of 1963 and the subsequent and consequent closures of lines, services and stations. More than a third of passenger services were closed down. The closures of railway stations were even more dramatic: out of 7,000 stations, more than 4,000 were shut.

The 1990s privatization was carried out in a manner so poorly-conceived that only free-market ideologues who knew little of the realities of how to run a railroad could ever have decided upon it. I do not propose to delve into the detail here (and I myself am no expert anyway), except to say that there seems to be a good case for re-nationalization, possibly on a low-compensation or even an expropriation basis.

What of the future? We see that, all over the world, even in the UK, that driverless train transport, indeed driverless transport generally, is becoming common. Many British people will have travelled on limited forms of automated transport such as the Docklands Light Railway or the monorail at Gatwick Airport which connects the main terminal with another. It would be possible to run many more light rail and ultralight rail services on new branch lines, connecting with existing mainline stations and lines. Indeed, computerized and robotized ultralight narrow-gauge trains could run from towns, villages and suburbs not presently connected to rail, such lines terminating at an existing railway station. A whole huge new web of public transport could come into operation in this manner, eventually becoming more dense even than the railway system that existed before the 1960s. At the extremities, such lines could be narrow-gauge and the trains very small, perhaps single carriage. The expense, though considerable, would be worthwhile, knitting together a country which has become dislocated.

Road transport will be the dominant mode for the foreseeable future, but if an enhanced branch line network can take even 10% of passenger journeys off the roads, the cost of the new system will perhaps have been justified on that basis alone.

THE CASE FOR BASIC INCOME

Jesus Christ said that the poor are always with us (part of society). Whether that be accepted or not in absolute terms, the fact remains that, in practice, there is always the necessity to deal with “the submerged tenth”. In Soviet Russia, the solution was make-work jobs and, if that failed, part of the GULAG system. In finance-capitalist “Western” societies, there is the illusion of “aspiration” and “opportunity”: people need not be without (sufficient) income if they work. This theory or ideology leaves aside those who cannot work, whether because sick, disabled, or unable to find remunerative or sufficiently remunerative employment.

Robotics and computerization are advancing. Some studies say that a third of present jobs in countries such as the UK will disappear by about 2030 (some say “only” 25%). It may well be that other jobs will not appear to take up the slack. Millions may be left unemployed. At present, lack of income means that unemployed people (as well as the sick and disabled) have to jump through hoops in a degrading and largely pointless bureaucratic exercise in order to receive often very modest State-provided benefit payments. The system is not only expensive because of those payments, but because of the huge bureaucratic machinery that is built in to the process. There is a better way. Basic Income.

The Basic Income idea is that all citizens receive a regular payment, regardless of circumstances. In short, the payment is unconditional, meaning not withheld if the recipient does not have a job, look for a job, can do a job. Basic Income replaces all (or, in some versions, some) existing social welfare payments.

Basic Income is being trialled in some areas of Europe: in parts of Switzerland, Finland, the Netherlands. In Alaska, all permanent residents receive a small Basic Income payment annually (at present, about $2,500), monies routed from oil revenues.

Basic Income could be tweaked, so that persons on incomes above a certain level have an equivalent amount taken via the tax system; another idea would be to give a higher-tier Basic Income to the disabled (though that would mean some form of assessment and judgment). Alternatively, Basic Income could be paid only to those without income or capital, topping up income to a certain or decided level. That is, in fact, more or less what happens now in the UK, but without the present system’s bureaucracy, unpleasantness, snooping, harassing etc (made far worse since the Iain Duncan Smith regime of 2010-present).

It is objected that Basic Income would mean that people would just be unwilling to work. Is that so? First of all it might depend on the level of Basic Income. Economic realities would probably limit Basic Income to no more than about £15,000 p.a. It might be as little as £10,000 (either per person or per household). Many will, at that level, find plenty of incentive to work if they can. Also, it is rarely heard that people should not receive inheritances or trust incomes because they might be made lazy thereby. Lottery winners in the UK usually start businesses, carry on working for pay or do charity work.

In fact, in the UK, there are already payments somewhat analogous to Basic Income. State Pensions are already paid to all persons over a decided age, with extra “State Pension Guarantee Credit” money paid to those whose income and capital is below a certain level. Child Benefit was formerly paid to all persons who have children (regardless of income) and still is paid, though now there is an income cutoff point (at a fairly high level).

The cost of Basic Income is lessened by the removal of large numbers of pointless jobs in the (UK) Department of Work and Pensions etc and by the elimination of the need for large numbers of “Jobcentres” and other buildings and their upkeep. Housing Benefit will not exist, so greedy buy-to-let parasites will not be subsidized by taxpayers via taxation revenues). That alone will save billions of pounds.

A person receiving Basic Income who wishes to work will be able to look for work honestly (rather than in order to tick a Jobcentre box) and with confidence, and in the meantime will have money for transport, clothing, food. The disabled will not have to undergo degrading tests in order to receive at least the “basic level” of Basic Income (medical report from GP should be sufficient anyway). The more fortunate, who have income or capital, will (if receiving Basic Income), will be able to spend more (thus stimulating the economy) and/or start their own businesses.

In short, it will become clear in time that Basic Income is the way forward in the UK.