thirdwave

Pinned Post

"How the military-industrial complex captured US democracy" #AlJazeera

FT: "Oil and gas groups spend $500bn a year 'to stand still' as fields decline, says IEA"

8NewsNow:"'Immediate and substantial reductions' in Colorado River water use could be needed much sooner than anyone predicted, according to a study published last week. The problem: People are using more water than the amount that has been coming down the river, and it could reach a tipping point by the end of next summer. That’s the conclusion of a study involving research and collaboration among four universities.. That means hard choices are ahead unless a very wet winter rescues 40 million water users along the river."

Stevenson: "If you were running a construction company in this economic context of a collapsing middle, collapsing government, collapsing poor, absolutely skyrocketing wealth of the rich, what kind of housing are you gonna build? You are gonna build super luxury housing for super rich people because they are obviously the guys with the money. And then when it comes to ordinary people's housing, you're gonna give them the cheapest possible thing, because you know that they have very very little money, and they basically have to buy whatever they can, [paying with] whatever they can give you.

We we need to deal with this absurdly simplistic view of economics which says things like build build, grow grow, as if that is not what every government for the last 30-35 years all over the world has been constantly trying to do. The problem is inequality... The problem here is not not enough building, the problem here is not not enough growth, the problem here is rapid and aggressive changing in [wealth] distribution, and changing in your relative power position. If you are not a super rich, you are the group that is losing, and that means you get less housing, it's as simple as that.

Build build build, it's not gonna work I often think when I hear politicians say build build build, when I go back to the house I grew up in. There's a massive block of flats now. I grew up in sort of a traditional terraced small row houses, there's a massive block of flats there now blocking out the sun and the you know, that the street I grew up in is basically a slum.. I always wonder when they say build build build, these politicians, are they gonna build massive blocks of flats overlooking their houses? Or are they gonna build massive blocks of flats of extremely low quality housing overlooking your house?"

???. Don't worry about anyone's dominance.. The tech already stalled (if we are talking abt LLMs). Other deep neural net approaches eg vision perform what they can, their ability has been increasing gradually ever since 2010s like anything else.. But everyone has access to that know-how.

"Dave McCormick: ‘We should be deeply worried’ about China’s AI dominance"

Parampil, Corporate Coup: "For multinational corporations seeking favorable rulings against sovereign governments for the 'crime' of reclaiming their land and resources, the venue of choice was the DC-based International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes tribunal (ICSID).. 'ICSID is not an independent arbitrator of justice,' [an economist] explained to me. 'ICSID is a neocolonial gatekeeper of transnational corporate impunity.'..

The tribunal’s deference to international capital was baked into its structure. The ICSID was established in 1966as a subsidiary of the World Bank Group, and the president of the World Bank—historically a former US oﬀicial or banking executive—also served as president of the tribunal. At ICSID, investor-state disputes were overseen and resolved by three arbitrators: one selected by the state, one selected by the investor, and a third typically selected by the World Bank president.

'Arbitrators are heavily biased toward commercial—not public—law, and are mostly from law ﬁrms heavily associated with transnational corporations,' explained Arauz. 'The cases are almost always against states of the Global South.'

Arauz noted that according to ICSID treaties, corporate entities are allowed to initiate arbitration against states, yet states cannot ﬁle arbitrations against corporations, arguing such rules 'structurally demonstrated that ICSID is intentionally designed to exclusively attend to the interests of transnational corporations.'

Crystallex initiated arbitration against Venezuela’s government at ICSID in February 2011, asserting Caracas owed it $3.16 billion plus interest for its expropriation of Las Cristinas despite the fact that the mine was never operational. ICSID sided with Crystallex and ordered Venezuela’s government to pay the company 1.2 billion plus interest in April 2016, declaring Caracas’s decision to nationalize its natural gold supply was made 'for purely political reasons.'"

Artificial Superintelligence is coming for you. Run for your lives

Big fail

Martin Bauer: "this is what a Transformer found after looking at 10M solar systems"

Chollet: "A student who truly understands F=ma can solve more novel problems than a Transformer [neural net] that has memorized every physics textbook ever written."

F24: "Zucman tax’: Push to tax the super-rich could make or break France’s next government.. As Emmanuel Macron looks for an elusive path out of France’s political deadlock, left-wing lawmakers have made their support conditional on approval of a tax on the country’s wealthiest households named after economist Gabriel Zucman, whose recipe for more progressive taxation would be a bitter pill to swallow for the French president"

Brutal...

#FreePalestine

[-]

The point on radicalism is easy to refute: when Assad was in power (secular, non-jihadi) Israel still bombed Syria. They will simply attack anyone who is near. There is no need to look for terrorists roaming about in the region - the biggest terror threat in the Middle East is Israel itself.

Ryan Grim: "[Israel] commissioned an American polling firm to perform a sweeping battery of surveys and focus groups, coupled with message-testing, aimed at rehabilitating Israel’s image in both the United States and Europe... the research found Europeans in particular 'agree with the language of Israel being a genocidal, apartheid country'.. Israel’s best tactic to combat this, according to the study, is to foment fear of 'Radical Islam' and 'Jihadism,'.. research finds"

[-]

IC: "There are moments in history that strip away every illusion we carry about ourselves. Gaza is one such moment. For nearly two years, the world has witnessed a genocide live on its screens. We have seen children pulled from rubble, families starving in tents, hospitals turned to dust. We cannot say we did not know. Every image, every cry, every number has reached us in real time. And yet the killing goes on, the silence goes on, life goes on.

The truth is unbearable but undeniable: we have failed Gaza, and in doing so, we have failed ourselves as human beings."

IC: "European Parliament asks for Recognition of Palestinian State, Upholds halt to Aid to Israel"

Netan personally installed the device under the guise of going to the bathroom? Zio have gone bonkers.

Politico: "[2024/10] Netanyahu bugged my bathroom, Boris Johnson suggests.. Ex-prime minister says his security team 'found a listening device in the thunderbox' after the Israeli PM visited."

#Carlson #Kirk

[-]