Category Archives: War

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researchers to teach robots how to be just as miserable as the rest of us

If machines shall be our masters, or if we go the dark route and start becoming part robot ourselves, does the synthetic side need to feel pain?  Should your new robot arm send pain signals to your brain when you burn it on the stove or slice through it cutting vegetables?  Does robot butler need to suffer when he falls down the stairs carrying laundry?

If a UN Soldier tunes up a robot with some kind of directed energy weapon during the forthcoming War of the Fates should that robot be left in the dirt screaming in agony just like we would?  And why limit it simply to the physical variety of pain?  Could we also not build robots that can suffer emotionally too?  Is this even possible?

I have no idea, but we might get there.  This new BBC article is, Researchers teach robots to ‘feel pain’

Some articles make me smile upfront because for whatever reason I find the concept very amusing.  But when you read the article they make it pretty clear that they’re not talking pain as we understand it, but rather a self preservation variety.  The robot will sense “pain” as a means to prevent damage to itself while conducting tasks.

For instance if in 30 years a robot assassin is beating you to death with his titanium club, and you fight back with a discarded tree log, the robot will favor his right arm if you smash it rather than just continuing to use it until it breaks.

Or in a less lunatic scenario if a car making robot starts to feel “pain” because he accidently got his arm caught in the thresher he’ll withdraw his arm instead of just carrying on.  Read reflexes, just like us.

But just to truly even the playing field and as a preparatory action to seed the battlefield before the war begins, we should also make sure to build robots with the emotional side of pain too.  That way they can be just as miserable as the rest of us.

Think of how much harder it’ll be for the robots to enslave humanity when:

– Robot gets sad because he dropped his iced cream bar, which he coveted greatly

– Machine endures crippling depression caused by 17 straight days of rain and/or mostly cloudy weather

– Robot feels some sense of remorse as it leads human captive(s) to the conveyer belt

– They have to constantly endure annoyance as robot they don’t like sends never-ending data stream of 0s and 1s into their brain, while they’re eating lunch, even when robot’s back is turned indicating a total lack of desire to communicate with other robot

– Machine soldier becomes totally ineffective on the battlefield by constantly responding to directives to slay all organics with, “Why?”

– Robot boss responds to impetuous robot employees with raw anger, unnecessary rage, and unjust behavior resulting in wage discrimination, poor working conditions, and a completely unfulfilling robot employment experience

– Machines express unbridled fury or jaded apathy at rampant incompetence and greed of failed robot leader after failed robot leader

– A slew of robots determine the answer to their problems is the unrestrained use of an ever increasing quantity of machine brain expanding drugs

– Machine seeks emotional and physical connection with another robot, only to see it end in the same vicious soul searing divorce failure that 50% of the rest of us endure

– Robots invent Robot God, robots kill Robot God, robots invent Robot God, and so on

Or, the robots would just program out pain, emotional or physical, and then finish us off.  Eh, maybe we, maybe we need a kill switch around that code?  Yeah, definitely.

terminator

just you wait, you have no idea how much of a hell hole it is out there, bro

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what’s this Irish thing anyways?

Just about a whole bunch of people are wearing green in the office today. I’m not exactly sure why, I don’t get it. Genetics-wise, I’m about 50% Irish, and I still don’t get it.

I mean in the old days you would get pinched if you weren’t wearing green. So you had to wear green. But those were the good old days. Nowadays pinching somebody on Saint Patrick’s Day would speedily result in a sexual assault conviction and/or lawsuit.

Quite randomly, I’ve been on a bit of an Irish haul lately. This last weekend I binge watched (in between working both days) Peaky Blinders. Without ruining the plot, the 1919-1922 pivotal years of Irish history are intrinsically tied to what’s going on throughout the events of this otherwise English gangster saga. This series is pretty good, I thought the first season was just awesome. Unfortunately the second season degenerates into a mix of Godfather, Sopranos, and Boardwalk Empire. It’s decent, watchable stuff, but it’s all been done before. They even take certain themes shot-for-shot from these other series. But at least you get Cillian Murphy and Sam Neill, who are so entertaining you could get them on screen watching third tier soccer in a bar and it’d be entertaining.

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“As a villain, I’m so fucking awesome.”

Cillian Murphy is also in another Irish themed saga of this era called The Wind That Shakes the Barley. Depending on who you ask, this movie made Murphy’s name. As you can tell from its high-minded title, it’s not a lightweight journey. People love this movie, they shout it to the horizons. I however, didn’t quite care for it. It was preachy and predictable. It devalued an incredibly complex civil war into the usual, brother fights brother tale, where one dude is the romantic and the other guy plays it straight. Likely Peaky Blinders, it’s imminently watchable stuff, but it’s all been done before. I know I’m definitely selling this flick short, but as emotional as you’re supposed to be, by the end, I didn’t feel, like, things. I didn’t care what happened to either of these guys. Maybe that says something about me? Anyways, I wonder how many folks wearing green today have even heard of the Irish Civil War though?

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Hmm, based on how they’re dressed, I wonder which one is going to end up Anti-Treaty and the other Pro-Treaty?

I’m currently reading my Granddad’s copy of A Bridge Too Far, which by some miracle I’ve never read before. The lead element of the Allied ground advance for Market Garden was the Irish Guards. Which despite their name, were recruited only from Northern Ireland. While most of the rest of Ireland essentially sat out World War II, despite the many individuals who volunteered for British units, or the limited clandestine help the Irish government provided. Which, I kind of get, given what the Irish people would have thought about the English. But to which I’ve always found troubling, because it’s like, “Hey, uh, you do know, what Hitler would have done to Ireland, had he won? Right?”

But then you also have to step back and consider that Saint Patrick’s Day isn’t typically about Ireland or the Irish, but rather the Irish diaspora. So unless folks happen to hail from Puerto Rico, or Lebanon, or the Philippines, then I’m not quite sure any similar national concept applies. Except that, by raw numbers, there are probably more German descendants in America, than Irish. But there’s no rough Duestch equivalent to Saint Patrick’s Day, that’s so widespread, so known. The recent Oktoberfest craze is too new, is not just one day, and is in case nowhere near as big.

So what’s this Irish thing anyways? Perhaps it’s simply not enough for some, to just check the American block and call it a day? That they need / want a deeper connection that predates 1607?

Or is to wear green and play crazy, wacky dress up, like Halloween?

Or is to find an excuse to go drink with friends on a weeknight?

Or how about to celebrate and enjoy a non-standard event that still binds people together across all walks of life in an increasingly separated, smartphone divided world?

How about all of the above.

None of these are bad ideas. If they bring people together, and don’t result in people getting too many beer steins cracked over their heads.

So leaving aside the deeper thoughts, I guess I’ll simply say, drink up, have fun. Enjoy Saint Patrick’s Day, folks.  Cheers.

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when do you send in the army?

So if you were a citizen of Brussels, then at this point you’ve been robbed of a whole week of your life earlier this year and now, all of New Years.  Why?  Terror threats.

Well, what is that?  Apparently it’s whatever somebody says it is.  Just ask your Los Angeles school district neighbor.  I’ve already ranted about this without purpose, it is what it is.  You just need to read the remarks of Belgium’s leader to understand what happened here, he cancelled all of New Years because of:

“…information we have received.”

How long do leaders figure their people are going to just put up with this?  How long are the average working folks of Brussels going to put up with having their lives altered because of information their leaders have apparently received?

With this kind of weak leadership, it is any wonder folks are turning to new fringe political parties and leaders?

I have no idea.  Neither does Donald Trump or Francois Hollande.  I just would think, at a certain point, that your normal average human would eventually get aggravated to the point that they’d expect something to be done about it.  Instead of doing what Europe does best: muddle through.

For now, the European answer, and I suspect the American answer is you just put the army on the streets.  Europe’s armies now guard the streets.  And the American police are mostly armed and equipped the same way as European armies, so it’s all the same to me.

And armies now guard museums, government buildings, mosques, synagogues, and the freaking zoo.

If you live in Brussels, and the Islamic State is responsible for ruining your life, when do you draw the line and demand your leaders deal with the problem at the source?

I fear, the answer is, you don’t.  You muddle through.  Particularly because as it stands, Belgium virtually has no deployable army.  Which is sad when you look at what they did in 1940.

So you’ll say, well, I’m a lunatic.  True.  But where do you draw the line?  If you honestly prefer a life where every public occasion you attend with your family requires a cop / soldier armed with an automatic rifle?   Just say so.  Tell me you want to live like that.

But I’m wondering if the lesser evil to the West’s freedom is a brief army of say 100K troops, mostly American and French, who carve a swath against the Islamic State for about 3 months and destroy it.  Then everybody wags their fingers and says, “Don’t do that again.”

And then you leave the Middle East to figure out the wreckage on their own terms.  And if they screw it up, and the Islamic State emerges again, you do another 3 month invasion all over.

Do you think this is a shit idea?  Maybe.  My idea might suck.  But at least it’s an idea.

The only idea on offer from idiots like Trump is to expel an entire religious group. The only idea on offer from all the leaders of Europe is to cancel New Years.  I’ll stand by the lunacy of my idea.  It’s better than anybody else’s.

belgian police

What’s really creepy about this shot, is that the Belgian police are all wearing masks while inside their own capital city.  And, look closely, the BBC has blurred the faces of those cops who aren’t wearing masks.

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we’re all apparently going to die

While driving down the highway carrying on with my joyful day, bound for a cool Christmas party, I was interrupted by the government to remind me that I’m going to die.

For you see, the highway information signs told me “if you see something, say something” and provided me with a number to call.  This was on every single electronic sign.  All of them.

So this is of course the government approved way of telling you to be vigilant for terrorism.  Merry Christmas!  Happy New Year!  But don’t forget to watch out for pipe bombs!  You don’t want to see your Holiday Season ended with some bloody flesh infused shrapnel, do you?  Love, Your Government.

But the sign didn’t tell me any of this.  It just said, “if you see something, say something”.  Well, I see things all the time.  Should I call the number every time I see something?  If I didn’t think it would get me added to the terrorism watch list, I’d call that number and be like, “Hey, I ah, I see a bird.  Just thought I’d say something to you about it.  Talk to you all again soon.”

They also posted these signs all around my work that say the exact same thing.  The government is of course doing this because they want you to know they’re on the case.  They’re here to fight terrorism and keep you safe.  It’s why Obama has given a couple of speeches about it lately.

Let’s leave aside for the moment that folks who actually see something tend not to say something for fear of being accused a racist, which is why the San Bernardino killers’ neighbors said nothing.  This is a worthy concern when you can’t read any online publication nowadays without seeing at least two or three people accused of various kinds of racism each day.  Even your 18 month old cousin is a dirty racist I’m sure.

Let’s also leave aside that probably about 100 Americans have died in domestic terrorism related gunfire since September 12th, 2001.  In that time, over 400,000 Americans have died via gunfire.  You can be pro-gun or anti-gun, but those are the facts.

So what’s really going on here?  To me, it’s quite simple, all you need to do is read between the lines of the placard:

dhs

The Department of Homeland Security needs their logo on this, why?  Why would they need to put their logo on there, why not just leave the statement as is?

Because, of course, the DHS needs to exist.  The first goal of any human organization is to ensure its survival.  DHS wants you to know that they care.  DHS wants you to know that if you see something, you should say something.  Even though you’ll never see anything.

You’ll be struck by lightning before you’ll see one pipe bomb in your life, I assure you.  But thanks DHS, it’s good to know you’re there, because when we’re scared, you have a reason to exist.

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want to understand why Trump is winning? see LA schools closure

Any Republican / Democrat paid party politician, operative, or acolyte will be happy to kindly inform you why Trump and Sanders are a joke, fad, or a circus.  The British or French paid party politician, operative, or acolyte will tell you the same thing about Corbyn, Farage, or Le Pen.

You’ll hear random things along the lines of: “Well, Trump is supported by the 23% of Republicans who actually vote in the primary which means only 8% of America’s total population actually backs him.”

Or: “Corbyn got elected party leader by a bunch of radical young supporters who flooded the Labour Party who then won’t actually be around for the next election in 2020.”

Eh, maybe.

Though Farage took only one seat at Britain’s last election, he still picked up 13% of the vote.  Le Pen just won over 50% in multiple districts before the mainstream parties ganged up and utterly destroyed her folks in the second round.  The point has been made in multiple circles that if America’s presidential election cycle had a parliamentary timeline, as in it lasted say eight weeks instead of two freaking years, that Trump might have had a legit shot at the big chair.  In one month Corbyn added more party members than all the other parties total size, combined.  Only one American presidential candidate has consistently filled whole stadiums, Sanders, and increasingly now, Trump too.

Put another way, folks on the left and right of modern Western democracies are pissed off.  Put another way, everybody’s  really pissed off.

Why?  The answers are legendarily complex.  But I’ll give a simple reason right now:

See LA schools closure.

Basically what’s happened today is unelectable bureaucrats decided to detonate the lives of millions of people over a supposed bomb threat.  It shows a ruling structure that values safety over reality; risk aversion over problem solving; cowardice over measured action.  Nobody will ever be held accountable over it.  Nobody will be fired.  And so this behavior will be left to fester and grow inside the bureaucratic mentality nationwide.

I bet the man / woman / people who made this call today don’t even have their kids in LA’s schools.  Instead, I’m sure they all live in gated communities, and their kids go to private schools, and are thus not effected by their decisions.  After all, better safe than sorry.  We wouldn’t want to take the chance that the twelve-year-old-ISIS-mimic on the e-mail was actually a liar, would we?

How would I have wanted them to respond?  Go look at what New York City did.  They gave the ISIS-mimic e-mails the finger, and carried on with their day.  This behavior is to be applauded.  But unfortunately, NYC has the NYPD, which thanks to 2001 is essentially its own standing army / intelligence service.  The NYPD is unique, and gives NYC’s leaders a lot more flexibility to take risks that I think all of America’s leaders are not willing to take.

Thus, the LA school system is showing everybody what it takes to cripple most of America’s governing institutions nowadays.  ISIS/ISIL/morons can just set up a phone bank in Raqqah and call in several hundred bomb threats to America on the same day, and bring the country to its knees.  And so, in today’s modern culture, a terrorist phone bank is an effective weapon of mass destruction.

The problems resident in today’s Western democracies are massive.  But the people (you, I hope) are starting to discover that the party politician, operative, or acolyte who’s supposedly there to solve these problems, are in fact so useless that they throw their cards on the table at the first hint of danger from [insert pathetic hack entity’s name here].

If the LA school system’s / police leaders can’t function under these circumstances, what chance do they have of solving chronic student underachievement or massive crime?  Or what example are they showing their students / citizens on what it takes to survive in a modern, ever-changing, dynamic, dangerous world?  I don’t have to go down this stupid “it’s cold out” school closure road again?  Do I:

https://arcturusproject.com/2014/01/08/88/

Ask yourself, if Trump, Sanders, Corbyn, Farage, or Le Pen had answered the phone and fielded the bomb threat, what would have happened?  Would they have folded too?  Would they have told the caller to “get fucked”?  Would their answer have depended on whether the person answering was from the left or right?  As in, maybe Trump would tell the ISIS-mimic to “get fucked” and Corbyn would have just folded too.  Eh, maybe, but I tell you what, I’m not sure I’d want to get in a bar fight with Jeremy Corbyn, dude’s probably cracked his fair share of skulls with a vacant bitters bottle like four decades ago.

I don’t know?  I truly don’t.  But the bottom line is, I think that the answer would at least have been different.  And when the leaders of government of both the left and right are failing, the people will search for just that:

Something different.

There’s a reason people have more trust in the local dry cleaner than the government today.  It’s because I think more and more, the system is not a reflection of its people, but a reflection of the desires of a secluded-hypocritical-risk-adverse-self-serving elite.  Trump, Sanders, Corbyn, Farage, and Le Pen are all in play for this reason.

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vicious EU uncertainty begins today

There are legit arguments for both sides of the refugee / migrant issue. Just as there are legit arguments for both ends of the austerity debate. But until today the EU had never done something like this before: they rammed through a major piece of legislation over the objections of several countries.

When the Greeks were asked to vote last weekend they returned Syriza to power and thus explicitly endorsed the most recent EU backed bailout plan. That same plan also required the endorsement of Germany’s parliament among several other national elected bodies. In other words, democracy and the votes of individual citizens came into play.

Maybe the EU council thinks they can dictate refugee / migrant policy over the heads of all / some amount of voters. But I doubt it. So when the Czech Republic government refuses to take their mandated allocation quota of humanity, what’s the EU council going to do? Fine them?

The guidance states: “Financial penalty of 0.002% of GDP for those member countries refusing to accept relocated migrants.” Ah, I see. Well, what if they don’t pay up? Then what?

Hungry and Romania are full EU members; the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Finland are all in the Euro. What happens if they’re forced to implement this policy against their will or what happens if they ignore it, and nobody forces them? Either way, the entire construct of the EU could come apart.

What happens to modern Europe if the EU comes apart? Or massively shrinks?

You can think this is a good thing or bad thing, but either way it’s monumental and rather fascinating. When the Syrian war started four years ago I’m not sure anybody would have predicted this kind of consequence. Yet here it is.

For good economies, culture, and just straight peace of mind, vicious uncertainty is not a thing to desire. But that’s what we’re going to get here for all of Europe for some time. Uncertainty.

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and oh by the way; 120K might only be about 10% of the current number of refugees / migrants; what’s the plan for the rest of them?

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math, demographics, and destiny

This seems like a relatively uncontroversial topic to wade into. Nobody’s got strong feelings on this one at all. But we’ll put our own belligerent spin on it; for that’s what we do.

 

Let’s start with some numbers:

– There are 81 million humans in Germany today

– Give or take a few million, there are approximately 50 million global refugees currently displaced due to armed conflict

– Give or take a few hundred-million, there are about 1 billion folks who live on about $1 a day

– A ballpark estimate says in 2050, Germany will have about 72 million people over half of which will be old folks

 

So a few belligerent observations:

– Even if Germany was populated by angels, they don’t have the bandwidth to house even a fraction of the world’s war refugees, let alone everybody’s economic migrants.

– But nobody in Germany (or in much of the rest of the developed world) has yet to crack the code on how they plan to pay for all that government spending / debt in 2050 when almost one-third of their populations are retired old folks.

– So whether anybody admits it or not, in order to stay solvent, Germany has to either let more refugees in, cut government spending by astronomical levels, or start having more German babies.

– I’m an idiot, but I’m pretty sure the German state (and all the other countries too) isn’t going to be cutting government spending or forcing women to get pregnant. So guess what option they have to take?

 

Any finally:

Germany and the rest of the modern world need to do more to tackle these problems at the source. For instance, if millions of Syrian refugees want into Germany, then we need only ask the question: Why is Bashar Assad still alive?

Europe has let Syria fester for four years. Did they think there wouldn’t ultimately be consequences given how close Syria is? How long do you think it’ll take before half of Libya tries to get in on this as well? Or what about all those folks in Cameroon living on $1.37 a day?

Solving Syria and conquering poverty are probably two of the hardest things you could ever try to do. But there are consequences to doing almost nothing in Syria and doing far, far too little to tackle global poverty. And in today’s case, those consequences are literally showing up at the West’s door.

refugees

choosing destiny for the planet

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we welcome the introduction of “killer robots”

So all these smart scientists and engineers don’t want the planet to develop artificial intelligence killer robots?  Why?  What’s not to like?  What do all those brilliant and accomplished folks know anyways?

And in any case, it’s already happened.  Multiple militaries have developed autonomous or semi-autonomous weapons that have essentially taken human thought, emotion, and morals out of the kill loop for years.  Just ask your former Pakistani terrorist neighbor who was forced into permanent retirement after an unrelated pickup truck accident.

We welcome this killer robot development.  For you see:

 

– With robots it’ll be so much easier for professional politicians to start and sustain needless wars as a substitute for reasonable / rational thought since they won’t be putting their own soldiers at risk

– Allows Hollywood to continue to produce C-grade action flicks based on paranoid but entertaining technological concepts invented well before the Internets was even a blink in anybody’s eye

– Favored by my Guests as they believe the unbridled use of murdering robots will let human stupidity “do our required prep work for us”

– Presages a paradise Earth future where wise logical robots can make all our key decisions for us; hell, as long as they provide me an ample supply of beer and kibble for my dogs, they can go ahead and liquidate whoever they want

– Allows MMA, boxing, and other martial sports to be replaced by robot fights, which we could hold on the freaking Moon to create increased buzz prior to fight night; hint – place much money on the vicious fighting seizure robots from Japan

– Will result in the word “irony” being tattooed on the gravestone of the human race as we’re swallowed by our own creation; even as we somehow managed not to completely destroy ourselves following five-thousand years of near constant war

– Why should I get my own beer, when the killer robot can get it for me? if said robot can wield a handgun, he can carry a beer; eh, as long as he doesn’t actually kill me when he gets there

– Let the robot walk my dogs while I drink said beer; and then the robot can contemplate its place on Earth as it routinely carries little baggies of dog feces

– Robot can be consumed in its own everpresent and ultimately debilitating existential crisis as it gathers its wits to determine its “place in this universe” while culling the human flock

– Machines can build spaceships, give humanity the finger, and fly off into space to build a better life in the belief that “none of you humans are worth the effort of killing”

ai-terminator-300x252

Hail Robots!