More on the Robotic Revolution, 50 Years and Closing

01 Thursday Jun 2017

Posted by perrinlovett in News and Notes

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More experts pile on about the rise of AI.

In less than 50 years, artificial intelligence will be able to beat humans at all of their own tasks, according to a new study.

And, the first hints of this shift will become apparent much sooner.

Within the next ten years alone, the researchers found AI will outperform humans in language translation, truck driving, and even writing high-school essays – and, they say machines could be writing bestselling books by 2049.

In less than 50 years, artificial intelligence will be able to beat humans at all of their own tasks, according to a new study. And, the first hints of this shift will become apparent much sooner.

In a new study, researchers from Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute, Yale University, and AI Impacts surveyed 352 machine learning experts to forecast the progress of AI in the next few decades.

The experts were asked about the timing of specific capabilities and occupations, as well as their predictions on when AI will become superior over humans in all tasks – and what the social implications of this might be.

The researchers predicted that machines will be better than humans at translating languages by 2024, writing high-school essays by 2026, driving a truck by 2027, and working in retail by 2031.

If this happens, the only jobs for humans will be as acts or exhibits in circuses or zoos for robots. No more doctors, lawyers, plumbers, or writers (huh!?). Bleak.

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In the future reality he it Ring Master-Bot may be coming at her with a chair and a whip. Daily Mail.

The Real Life Slo-Mo SHTF Meltdown in Venezuela

01 Thursday Jun 2017

Posted by perrinlovett in Legal/Political Columns, News and Notes

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

collapse, communism, Freedom Prepper, socialism, society, Venezuela

A year ago I reported just how bad things in Venezuela were getting. Bad, yes, but then just the tip of the iceberg.

Today I wrote a cautionary column for Freedom Prepper about the continuing slide of the South American nation. Please give it a read regardless of whether or not you know about or care about the crisis. Odds are you don’t (know) because of the near black-out by the American media.

Through the horrible lense of Venezuela we are witnessing the complete collapse of an entire society. This was brought about by many factors – chief among them Communism (Socialism). And it can all happen anywhere to any people – even Americans. Please learn and prepare.

I’ve written some shorts and posted some links about the crisis this year. Some few of these have proven extremely popular. If I have time, I would like to write out some fully timeline of the collapse with detailed analysis. (No promise on that).

HERE ARE BUT A FEW OF THE PROBLEMS CITIZENS ARE FACING IN THE STRICKEN NATION:

High unemployment;
No money;
Price and monetary inflation;
Food shortages;
Starvation – the average person has lost nearly 20 pounds already (some have died, more will);
People are eating rats and pets to survive;
The grocery stores are empty and closing;
Martial law;
Daily riots and ultraviolent crime;
Complete desperation;
Schools are closed;
Power is out;
Water is interrupted; and
On and on and on…

Even after I published that, Drudge reported things keep getting worse, more desperate:

Drudge Report.

What’s happening there is terrible. For us, potentially more terrible, is the specter that this could happen in the U.S. – or anywhere.

The media did rave over Venezuela just a few years ago. The former president made scathing, hilarious, and partially (mostly?) true remarks about G.W. Bush at the U.N. The media covered that. Then the former leader sent tankers of free home heating oil to New England during a cold winter – a gesture for America’s poor. That was in part a publicity stunt. The media picked up on it.

It is strange they are so uninterested now that the nation has descended into utter chaos. Small wonder. As I noted last year, Venezuela is was a statist’s paradise, home to so many thoughtful, progressive, socialist and communist programs and ideals. Now, it seems, the chickens have come home to roost. Now the people eat rats or starve while dodging bullets in the dark.

The same people who told you life in the South American paradise was so great, then, are the same people telling you America and the West need to adopt the same systems now. It’s not that they don’t learn – they do. They just do not care. You should.

Hello Summer!

01 Thursday Jun 2017

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blog, blog history, flying

Happy June! And thank you for helping make last month the best May in blog history.

The site’s fifth anniversary is just around the corner. I’m planning a little digital party and you happen to be invited. (No RSVP required).

And I just completed the first of several big summer road trips. (I declare that summer is here, now). Had a great time, thanks. A few things….

A. The drive was not-so-bad but could have been better. People, please re-acquaint yourselves with the art of driving a darned car. I did not encounter much of the idiocy I normally find across the two larger Southern states but I did see room for improvement.

B. Plan B. The next ten years or so should hold an inordinate amount of road travel for old Perrin. Or just travel. If you (not YOU, but others in general) refuse to learn to merge, speed up, not text, signal, etc., then I have a counter-plan.

This weekend I paid a little visit to my new friends at Atlas Aviation at TPF. I’ve made it a goal to complete something I started 20 years ago. I hope to have, by the time the sixth anniversary rolls around, at least a Sport License.

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Atlas.

If and when that happens, you are free to slowly limp and weave down 75 in any manner you like; I’ll look and laugh from above, somewhere below 180 but nowhere near the mayhem.

Now, on with the summer time.

Likely ISIS Truck Bomb in Afghanistan

31 Wednesday May 2017

Posted by perrinlovett in News and Notes

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Afghanistan, bomb, ISIS, terrorism, War

A tanker or other large truck hit embassy row in Kabul today. 90 are know dead and more than 400 injured.

A suspected Islamic State (Isil) truck bomb tore through the diplomatic quarter of Kabul on Wednesday, killing at least 90 people including a BBC driver and badly damaging the German embassy.

If confirmed that Isil was behind the bombing, it would mark a significant escalation of the jihadists’ violence in Afghanistan and the latest in a string of deadly attacks at the beginning of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

The massive explosive was hidden inside a sewage tank on the back of a truck and went off during the morning rush hour, wounding around 400 people and leaving a large crater. The attack was one of the deadliest in Kabul since the US-led invasion in 2001.

Sixteen years of entanglement and this is what still happens – in the most secured part of the country.

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The Telegraph.

I’m thinking a little closer to home. Not about the U.S. minding its own business but wondering when the car/truck bomb fad will hit America.

A Swimming Museum Tour

30 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by perrinlovett in Other Columns

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cigars, Florida, museum, Perrin

Yesterday, Memorial Day 2017, I visited and toured a museum in Clearwater. Well, it was part museum, part aquarium, and part bay cruise – a great way to spend a scorching holiday afternoon.

Not being of the more daynte piscis set, I failed to grasp much of the entertainment offerings. There was a dolphin without a tail. There were some 4,000 or so humans without brains.

The dolphin sports a prosthetic appendage. The overweight droolers were similarly amended; each carried the ubiquitous cellular mind.

Towards the end of the day I did discover the point of the whole place. In a corner in a movie set (they made a movie about the place … or a place for a movie…) I found this:

IMG_20170529_152032974

nimbus-image-1496157593717

I was pleased to know someone would dedicate a museum and a feature film (starring Morgan Freeman?) to a Partagas box. Sure, some dolt removed the lid and stuffed the thing with baseball cards or other non-tobacco rubbish. But it was the thought that mattered.

And the traffic. The traffic mattered and was horrendous.

Good Cop, Bad Citizen, Crazed Law

30 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by perrinlovett in Legal/Political Columns

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America, law, police, police state, The People, tyranny

I noticed two things this morning.

One was that WordPress assigned one of my previous Police State articles as a related companion to last night’s terrorism post. Two years ago I was concerned about the militarization of the domestic police in the U.S. Things have gotten only a little worse since then.

Second, was a new, somewhat-related column out there…

Now, as Eric Peters recounts, one Republican lawmaker would have the militarized police nearly immune from any consequences of their illegal activities towards We, the People.

Naturally, the solution to the problem of police abusing their authority is to hold them less accountable when they do exactly that.

Leave it to “law and order” Republicans such as Texas Sen. John Cornyn and Rep. Ted Poe to evolve such logic. They have put forth the Black and Blue – whoops, Back the Blue – act (see here) which would make it harder to sue run-amok law enforcers in civil court to recover damages resulting from actions undeniably illegal – while at the same time imposing more severe penalties on Mundanes who affront the holy person of a law enforcer than those imposed on Mundanes who do exactly the same thing.

Look for this law to pass. Republicrats always want to be seen as “tough.” Trump will go right along to show support for “the brave men and women in uniform.” Democraps really don’t care.

Some federal judge may show a little concern, maybe five years from now; he might undue the extra (double jeopardy) excessive self-defense penalties against victimized citizens. Or he may not. The immunity from civil prosecution will stand. One wonders (if one is so inclined) if this prohibition includes 1983 (federal civil rights) actions – frequently the only recourse in the event of police brutality.

In Old England (and in the Colonies and the early Republic) there was a common law doctrine that a person (and witnesses) had a right and even an obligation to forcibly resist illegal police activity. Ancient history. Today it is virtually impossible to hold a wayward officer accountable. Soon it may be completely impossible.

Most officers I have ever known or encountered are/were decent and honest. That’s good because the bad ones are about to get more than a pass. It will be more like a rubber stamp of approval. Progress and such.

hut-hut-hut-

EP.

The Humanity of It All

29 Monday May 2017

Posted by perrinlovett in Legal/Political Columns

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America, law, Posse Comitatus, terrorism, War

Two stories of late, slightly related:

First, a federal judge overturned Lee Boyd Malvo’s life sentences without parole. Malvo was one of the “D.C. Snipers” who reigned terror around the nation’s capital back in 2002. I remember this episode, one because it was in close proximity to 9/11 and, two because it figured slightly (perhaps notoriously) into my original white paper on Posse Comitatus (it certainly got John Anderson’s attention).

A federal judge threw out a convicted D.C. sniper’s four life sentences Friday because he was 17 when he was originally sentenced.

U.S. District Judge Raymond Jackson in Norfolk, Virginia, ruled that Lee Boyd Malvo has a right to be re-sentenced in new sentencing hearings due to a 2012 Supreme Court ruling that made it unconstitutional for juveniles to receive mandatory life sentences in prison without parole, the Daily Mail reported.

He will likely be sentenced to life again – with the possibility of parole (which probably won’t ever happen). Malvo was the co-defendant with and likely catamite of John Allen Muhammad; both were Muslims with a bone to shoot with white, Christian America. The “better-than-that” mercy of the American justice [SIC] system.

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If Obama liked rifles…. Breitbart News.

Second, no such mercy was shown to the 28 Coptic Christians gunned down recently on a bus in Egypt. By some sort of odd coincidence the shooters in this case were also Muslims.

As many as 10 attackers in 3 SUVs stormed the bus dressed in military uniforms and wearing masks, before demanding that the passengers recite the Muslim profession of faith, according to witnesses. Then, the gunmen opened fire. Some 22 people were wounded.

Only three children survived the attack, the Copts United news portal reported. The victims were on their way to visit a monastery to pray.

Survivors claimed the killers left behind flyers about the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, which begins Friday evening.

The religion of peace, leaving orphans to read pamphlets.

This is a war. It’s a war of annihilation directed at all the West. Little has changed in 15 years. When will come the awakening?

Memorial Day 2017

29 Monday May 2017

Posted by perrinlovett in News and Notes

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America, Confederate States, history, Memorial Day

Last week Bill Bonner wrote a good article for International Man that seems to fit with the theme de jure (HERE via LRC).

Meanwhile, scuffles broke out in New Orleans. On one side were demonstrators eager to pull down the statues of war heroes Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and P.G.T. Beauregard. On the other side, demonstrators were there to protect them.

ABC News:

Multiple people were arrested on Sunday as hundreds of protesters clashed over the fate of Confederate monuments in New Orleans, police said.

Three protesters were arrested and charged with disturbing the peace on Sunday afternoon near Lee Circle in New Orleans after a fight broke out at a Confederate monuments demonstration, according to the New Orleans Police Department…

More than 700 people attended demonstrations on Sunday on both sides of the city’s plans to remove three remaining Confederate monuments.

Then, vandals defaced the monument to P.G.T. Beauregard, draping a sign on it that said: “This is historical violence, we say no.”

We’re not sure what that was supposed to mean. But we know where our sympathies lie: with the stones.

War of Liberation

Confederate General Robert E. Lee was one of the greatest soldiers in American history. Compared to him, the gilded generals now frequenting the White House—Mattis, McMaster, Kelly—are little more than paper pushers.

But let’s look at P.G.T. Beauregard, the hero of the First Battle of Bull Run.

Born on a sugar plantation in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, little Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard didn’t speak English until his parents sent him to New York to learn it.

Thence, he got an appointment to West Point and began his military career thereafter. He served his country in the Mexican-American War… and then served as superintendent at West Point.

But when Louisiana declared independence, what was he to do? Defend the homeland? Or fight against it?

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P.G.T. meets B.L.M. Someone’s Twitter.

Here’s a thought for Memorial Day 2017: It is Memorial Day, let’s stop acting like the Taliban, stop tearing down and defacing our Memorials.

Run One Step Ahead: Vox Day on Success

28 Sunday May 2017

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success, Vox Day

I have this thing bout being one or two steps ahead of the news and the culture. Part of it is educated trend-spotting. Other parts are telepathy, intuition,and blind luck.

Today, as I nurse a slight sunburn, I offer you the chance to go one step ahead yourselves. Here’s a must watch feature:

Vox Day on Finding Success (30 min.)

A short description from Vox’s blog: “Sometimes it helps to reflect upon why you didn’t get somewhere before you try to start going somewhere else. Tonight’s Darkstream addresses how to go about making success rather than avoiding failure.”

Here’s the kicker: I haven’t watched it. Not yet. Sunburn… But I trust the source. I’m sure Vox has experienced one setback after another (the eggs and omelet phenomenon). However, one would never know that based on his public succession of successes.

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