A Small Island Man

Last night, I descended into the depths of a harrowing nightmare, where the chilling specter of war haunted every corner of my subconscious. In the eerie landscape of my dreams, I found myself visiting Serbia and in the middle of a war zone, desperately attempting to shield my loved ones from the merciless onslaught of violence. I was in a taxi and being taken to an underground car park and an area containing industrial plant and heating equipment for an office building above that had been razed by bombing. Local inhabitants were living a subterranean life of terror and taking shelter from incessant bombing and mortar attacks. On the street, mortars were flying into crowds. Some of the mortars were just empty shells, but some of them were armed and ripped people apart. You just never knew which mortars were real, but everyone was a weapon of psychological warfare designed to terrorize and destroy any human hope. As often in dreams, the precise details were not clear. I did not know who...

Popular Conservatism as espoused by humanity's foul skid mark Jacob Rees-Mogg and his group of self-obsessed, ecocentric, sociopaths, whose moral compasses only ever point in the direction of self-interest. "Any rational, democratic leader would naturally aspire to garner public support and advocate for policies that resonate with the populace. However, the term 'populist' has been tarnished, relegated to a label of disdain rather than admiration. It is portrayed as undignified and lacking in intellectual depth, as though the role of a politician is akin to administering unpleasant medicine to an unwilling patient. This patronizing attitude epitomizes the challenges of contemporary politics and underscores the imperative for a movement like Popular Conservatism – or PopCon, as it's abbreviated – to emerge." Source: Jacob Ress-Moog https://conservativehome.com/2024/02/06/jacob-rees-mogg-its-time-for-popular-conservatism/ In reality, the notion of delivering bit...

Last night, we watched series one of the BBC drama "Time." It depicts life in a British prison, and you can find the storyline and reviews online at the following links: - BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p09fs2qh/time - IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13138834/ The drugs, violence, and fear inside the prison looked very similar to what I have seen in an undercover documentary that explored an English prison. We send criminals to prison to remove them from society while they may pose a continued danger, to punish them for their crimes, and ultimately to reintegrate them into society after rehabilitation. How can we expect to rehabilitate offenders so they can rejoin modern civilization by sending them into an uncivilized, nineteenth-century hellhole where understaffing, drugs, and violence often necessitate resorting to violence for survival? The system is broken. Mainstream media and right-wing politicians stir up "Tough on Crime" slogans to appeal to...

  NAME brexit - Remove the United Kingdom (UK) subsystem from the European Union (EU) system SYNOPSIS brexit [OPTION] DESCRIPTION The brexit command removes the UK subsystem from the EU system. UK's exit from the EU starts by spawning an A50 process. Once the UK subsystem is removed from the EU system, a number of process privileges are automatically revoked. These include amongst others: Freedom Of Movement Single Market Customs Union Goods Standards Harmonisation OPTIONS -f --force Forces the brexit command to start the UK's exit from the EU, even if the UK Parliament has not voted to do so.  -jc --corbyn  Use a three-line whip to immediately trigger the A50 process without performing any safety checks. -p --prorogue issues a kill -9 to kill the parliamentary process before it can interfere with brexit. -h Displays a help message and exits. --cancel Cancel the brexit process (not implemented) EXAMPLES To start the UK's exit from the EU: brexit To force the UK's exit f...

Found on facebook- can vouch for it's authenticity Classifying AI as a simple probability machine and castigating it for regurgitating data as plagiarism misses a fundamental aspect of what contemporary AI has achieved. Specifically, ChatGPT and neural network AIs have confirmed that given enough time, complex behavior can emerge from very simple building blocks - "we are an example of what hydrogen atoms can do, given 15 billion years of cosmic evolution." to quote Carl Sagan. The genius of modern AI was to introduce errors into the system (not always choosing the most likely outcome) this gives rise to what appears to be the very model by which life evolves, that is replication, variation, and selection. As for being given enough time for evolution; time within the context of AI evolution has become compressed by the super-exponential growth in computing power. It has taken 3.7 billion years of evolution from the first signs of life on planet Earth to reach a stage whe...

Regarding AI, these are the three issues in order of urgency that concern me: AI being used by bad actors as a highly effective means of propaganda that makes missiles and mortars look like stoneage axes by comparison. Before ChatGPT had the safety switches enabled I asked it to write me a rousing patriotic essay on why it was good and necessary to kill Jews. What it produced was terrifying (see below) Whether you like it or not, AI is coming for white-collar jobs. I have had ChatGPT write me a will that a lawyer was shocked at how good it was, and I routinely ChatGPT for generating code snippets and language translations. YES, there are often errors. But those criticising AI for those errors need to frame this in that it has taken 3.7 billion years for life to evolve on planet Earth and only 100 years on from the first logic gate to get to a stage where we can have a conversation of sorts with a piece of software that has not to be programmed for an algorithmic response. Criticising A...

This morning whilst sipping my frappe and meandering around the port of my small Greek island I made the acquaintance of an American tourist. I was extolling the virtues of my beloved island and offering my recommendations for what they might like to see and do during their short three-day stay. The conversation eventually veered into the realm of politics and I discovered, somewhat to my surprise this visitor would be supporting Trump and not Biden. She went on to describe Biden as a senile sleepy octogenarian. She considered him ridiculous. "Say what you want about Trump, but at least he gets things done". Why is the left being led by someone who seems such an easy target for this ridicule? Corbyn at a time when the Tories, or rather the ERG coup were in full swing with a demonstrably ludicrous Brexit campaign, decided the most effective form of opposition was to adopt a position of (faux) neutrality. It's no surprise that an already disgruntled, disenfranchised elector...