Jan 162023
 
 January 16, 2023  Posted by at 9:44 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,


James Proudfoot Sun on a House, Dieppe 1937

 

We’re One Tragedy Away From Pitchforks And Torches (Jeftovic)
Temporary Morgues are Being Built Across UK Due to Excess Deaths (GP)
European Parliament Poised To Ban Pfizer Representatives (De Lauzun)
Impeach ‘War Criminal’ Biden Over Ukraine – US Democrat (RT)
The Importance of Being Biden (Turley)
McCarthy Leaves Reporters Silent With Bombshell About Eric Swalwell (TPN)
Destroying American Democracy – An Inside Job (Hoekstra)
Glug Glug, Gurgle Gurgle (Kunstler)
EU Needs ‘War Economy’ – Veteran German Diplomat (RT)
London Rejects Ukraine Helicopters Claim (RT)
NATO Promises More Heavy Weapons For Ukraine (RT)
Zelensky Aide Flip-flops On Apartment Block Blast (RT)
Zelensky Rolls Out New Anti-Russian Sanctions (RT)
Ukrainian Blogger Calls For Genocide Of All Russians (RT)

 

 

 

 

Fasting + ivermectin
https://twitter.com/i/status/1614714917554163713

 

 

 

 

RFKjr – regulators income

 

 

RFK
https://twitter.com/i/status/1614373897067012098

 

 

 

 

Eugenics
https://twitter.com/i/status/1614689938595024896

 

 

 

 

 

 

“It’s going to take a long time to rebuild public trust and probably not while any incumbents are still in office.”

We’re One Tragedy Away From Pitchforks And Torches (Jeftovic)

We know now via the various Twitter Files dumps that Big Tech has been taking their orders from the government, intelligence agencies and Big Pharma (a.k.a The Pharmatrocracy) all along. Should we just assume the corporate press has been as well? This would explain why instead of undertaking Watergate level investigative reporting into legions of children, athletes and young adults suddenly dropping dead or having heart attacks, strokes and other medical emergencies, live on the air; we’re getting gaslighted about childhood asthma from natural gas stoves. I have been wondering if it is possible that the perceived increase in these reports of sudden deaths is the result of a self-perpetuating loop of increased focus on these events.

A kind of hysteria of its own. This is why since the onset of COVID, I’ve always tried to find numbers and data – then I follow that data where it leads me. Often times it’s not the same place as what I’m seeing on the television screen. Anybody can look at a graph, and provided that the data is kosher, see when something is out of whack. This one is out of Dowd’s book and sourced with CDC data is the aggregate excess mortality rate for millennials since before the pandemic. We know that the survival rate from COVID goes up dramatically as age comes down. The vast majority of COVID fatalities were in our elderly (many of whom were forced into localized outbreaks where they died locked down and alone). Two things stand out: #1) The excess death rates spike higher as the vaccines deploy, reaching their highest when mandates kick in. #2) The trend line is going the wrong direction.


[..] The disconnect between what the average person on the street is seeing happen right before their eyes and what they’re being told is happening (or not happening) by paternalistic fact-checking media propagandists will soon come to a breaking point. The only thing that can stop it is for some policymakers and pundits to start throwing the engine brake and try to get out in front of what will be an inevitable public backlash. My fear is this won’t happen. There is too much invested: the entire regime of Digital IDs and health passports was to be built atop the COVID vaccine deployment. Vaxports were supposed to be the official lubricant of The Great Reset. If it turns out that these things are not only ineffective but harmful, it will set The Fourth Industrial Revolution back decades. It’s going to take a long time to rebuild public trust and probably not while any incumbents are still in office.

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If this is true, it should be happening all over.

Temporary Morgues are Being Built Across UK Due to Excess Deaths (GP)

Now, temporary morgues are being used as overflow space by hospitals in the UK with full morgues. This news broke just days after a nationwide alert about “mortuary capacity issues” was issued by the Human Tissue Authority, the agency in charge of regulating the storage of human remains. These temporary morgues, which consist of large shipping containers, are being set up in public places like office parks, the Mirror reported. According to The Sun, vehicles from hospitals such as Salisbury District Hospital in Wiltshire and Royal Liverpool Hospital delivered bodies to the council gritting yard, which has a refrigeration unit guarded 24/7. Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust said, “We can confirm that we have opened additional mortuary capacity to accommodate an increase in need across the local community.”

“Our mortuary service operates to the national standards treating the deceased and loved ones with dignity and respect at all times regardless of location. All our additional capacity provides privacy and has 24/7 security,” it continued. Meanwhile, two additional units have been set up at Royal Liverpool University Hospital. The Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which operates the Royal Liverpool Hospital, has stated, “It is common practice for mortuaries to have purpose-built temporary systems available. “This ensures that patients continue to be treated with dignity and respect, in facilities which are equivalent to a permanent mortuary, during periods of increased demand. Two of these systems, which meet standards set out by the Human Tissue Authority, have been deployed at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital,” it continued.

It is not just UK. Funeral homes in Norway sound the alarm as they struggle to store all the dead people as a result of Norway’s skyrocketing excess mortality rate. The number of people needing funeral services in Trondheim City, Central Norway, has risen dramatically, according to the local newspaper Dagbladet Trondheim. Lars Svanholm, the fourth-generation general manager of Trondheim’s largest funeral home, Svanholm & Vigdal Gravferd, has said that the funeral home’s century-long history has never seen anything like the current number of deaths. “It is a marked increase, and we have not experienced anything like it in four generations,” Lars Svanholm told Dagbladet. “We have not had such an increase since the company started in 1922,” said Svanholm to local tv.

Sky Excess

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The only thing they can do is fire Ursula. But can they?

European Parliament Poised To Ban Pfizer Representatives (De Lauzun)

The scandal surrounding Pfizer’s contracts with the European Union over COVID vaccines has taken a new turn. The European Parliament’s COVID committee (COVI) approved on Wednesday, January 11th a proposal to ban Pfizer representatives from Parliament because of the company’s repeated lack of transparency. All political groups approved the proposal, with the exception of the EPP and Renew Europe, but their opposition was not enough to prevent the vote. The procedure has a precedent: in 2017, the agrochemical company Monsanto was also denied access to the European Parliament by the Environment Committee (ENVI) because it had refused to comply with the rule of public hearings.

For several months, many MEPs have been trying to obtain clarification on the conditions under which the European Union concluded contracts for the purchase of COVID vaccines in vain. At issue is the lack of transparency regarding the exact content of the contracts and the repeated exchanges of text messages between Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Albert Bourla systematically refused to attend COVI committee meetings in October 2022 and December 2022, triggering protests from committee members. “The EP has a right to full transparency on the details of this spending and the preliminary negotiations that led to it,” tweeted Kathleen Van Brempt, chair of the COVI committee in December.

It was international markets chair Janine Small who finally confronted the parliamentarians of the COVI committee. She assured the MEPs that the contracts were freely available to them—failing to point out that many passages had been deliberately redacted and made illegible. MEPs also had difficulty accessing the text messages exchanged between Ursula von der Leyen and Pfizer during the contract negotiation phase. Janine Small said that nothing had been negotiated by SMS, and that the messages in question were simply due to the teleworking phase caused by the pandemic. These explanations did not satisfy the parliamentarians in charge of the case, who pointed to Pfizer’s clear refusal to collaborate. “I think Albert Bourla deliberately did not come, because he did not want to face the controversies,” French MEP and COVI member Véronique Trillet-Lenoir told Euractiv.

Following the COVI committee vote, a new vote must take place in the CCC (Conference of Committee Chairs), which brings together all committee chairs. Several options are on the table: the duration of the exclusion, whether the sanction will apply only to Bourla or to all Pfizer representatives, or whether it is upheld at all. The final decision should not be taken for another month.

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“There is no way Russia can lose this war and no way Ukraine and NATO can possibly win it..”

Impeach ‘War Criminal’ Biden Over Ukraine – US Democrat (RT)

Geoffrey Young, who is running for governor in the US state of Kentucky, has accused Joe Biden of committing war crimes in Ukraine and other countries, saying the president should be impeached for carrying out an illegal proxy struggle against Russia in the former Soviet republic. “I think Joe Biden (D-war criminal) should be impeached immediately for war crimes in Ukraine, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, etc.,” Young said in a Twitter post. “Also for continuing the illegal proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. All US presidents since 1945 = war criminals (including Trump),” he added. Young, an MIT-trained economist who has worked as an environmental engineer in state government, made waves last year after winning the Democratic Party’s nomination for Kentucky’s District 6 congressional seat.

He vowed during the campaign to help prevent nuclear war with Russia by pursuing a “reasonable” peace plan with Moscow. He also called the Kiev regime a “Nazi puppet government” and said the CIA should be eliminated because it’s the “worst terrorist organization in the world today.” After Young won Kentucky’s Democratic primary in May, his party declined to support him in the November general election against incumbent Republican congressman Andy Barr. He alienated party leaders with his contrarian views, such as accusing Biden of recklessly provoking China, illegally deploying troops in Syria and Iraq, and making the US vulnerable to attack by becoming a “co-belligerent” with Ukraine against Russia.

Less than a week after the congressional midterms, the 66-year-old Young, who bills himself as a “peace Democrat,” announced his candidacy in Kentucky’s 2023 race for governor. He will try to unseat the incumbent Democrat, Governor Andy Beshear, whom he has accused of being a “not-yet-indicted felon.” Young has called the Ukraine conflict a lost cause for the US and NATO and faulted Biden’s administration for rejecting a peace proposal from Moscow in December 2021. “There is no way Russia can lose this war and no way Ukraine and NATO can possibly win it,” he said last week.

CNN Biden lies

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“There is no record that Joe or Jill Biden have ever sought to meet, let alone embrace, their grandchild..”

The Importance of Being Biden (Turley)

Hunter Biden’s disgraceful treatment of his daughter has long been on display in Arkansas where he long denied being her father, fought paternity, and was threatened with contempt of court over his failure to supply needed documents. After DNA testing was forced by a court, Hunter was found to be the father but he continued to resist efforts to force him to pay child support and supply financial records. Recently, Lunden Roberts sought to have a surname change for her daughter to Biden. Even after his long and abusive treatment of his daughter in court, Hunter Biden’s opposition is breathtaking. He opposes his daughter using his name and says that, if she does, she will never have a “peaceful existence.” Of course, Biden did not feel that way with his other four children. They are all true Bidens and living peaceful existences.

It is only Navy Joan who he does not want to bear the family name. Hunter’s concern for Navy Joan’s peaceful existence is a bit odd since he has reportedly never even seen his daughter after fighting for years to deny his paternal status and child support. While living in a luxurious mansion in Malibu, Hunter continued to fight his obligations under child support and requested in September 2022 to have the payments lowered, bemoaning how his “financial circumstances” were difficult for him. The public pays more for his security in his mansion than he does in monthly support for his daughter. Hunter is asking Circuit Court Judge Holly Meyer to deny Navy Joan the ability to use her father’s surname and claiming that it is in her best interest. The filing is so self-serving and transparently dishonest that it does what was once thought impossible: reach a new low for Hunter.

All of his reported selfies having sex and doing drugs with prostitutes were shocking. His attacks on his former sister-in-law, Hallie Biden, widow of the deceased brother (with whom Hunter later had a romantic relationship), were appalling. However, the craven effort to deny this child his name reaches a level of cad that stands unrivaled. The position of Hunter in court has been disgraceful, but the media has largely ignored the matter. It has also ignored the utter lack of support from President Joe Biden and the First Lady, who tellingly omitted a stocking for Navy Joan as one of their grandchildren. (The dog and cat did receive stockings). There is no record that Joe or Jill Biden have ever sought to meet, let alone embrace, their grandchild. The President has, however, sought to deny the child security protection (despite his son’s concern for her “peaceful existence”).

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Too big a headline without the details. “If you got the briefing I got from the FBI, you wouldn’t have Swalwell on any committee..”

McCarthy Leaves Reporters Silent With Bombshell About Eric Swalwell (TPN)

On Thursday while speaking with reporters, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy left reporters speechless after he defended his decision to keep California Democrats Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff off of the House Intelligence Committee. “If you got the briefing I got from the FBI, you wouldn’t have Swalwell on any committee,” McCarthy said, leaving reporters silent. This suggests damning bombshell information about Swalwell’s handlings that we will hopefully learn in the coming weeks. “And you’re going to tell me other Democrats couldn’t fill that slot? He cannot get a security clearance in the private sector,” McCarthy said. “So would you like to give him a government clearance?”

McCarthy went on to explain that the last Congress lead by Nancy Pelosi kept Swalwell on the committee even though they were aware of the massive red flag from the FBI. “You’re going to tell me there are 200 other Democrats that couldn’t fill that slot, but they kept him on it? The only way that they even knew it came forward is when they put to nominate him to the Intel committee. And then the FBI came and told the leadership that he’s got a problem, and they kept him on. That jeopardized all of us,” McCarthy said.

McCarthy also name dropped Schiff. “Adam Schiff openly lied to the American public. He told you he had proof. He told you he didn’t know the whistle blower,” McCarthy said while referring to false claims made by the California Democrat against former President Donald Trump. “He put America for four years through an impeachment that he knew was a lie.” At the same time, we had Ukraine, the same time we had Afghanistan collapse. Was that the role of the Intel committee? No,” McCarthy said. “So what I am doing with the Intel committee, bringing it back to the jurisdiction is supposed to do forward looking to keep this country safe, keep the politics out of it,” he continued.

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Good questions. But who’s going to ask them?

Destroying American Democracy – An Inside Job (Hoekstra)

The fraudulent efforts by the U.S. government, Clapper, Brennan and the 49 others — along with Hillary Clinton, her campaign committee, the Democratic National Committee and the suppression of the media and social media — to influence the public unfortunately met with some success. For almost two years, the authenticity of the material found on Hunter Biden’s laptop was questioned. Today, its authenticity has been verified; the information is real and damning. As summarized by the New York Post: “Yes that letter from the Dirty 51 had all the classic earmarks of a disinformation operation, all right – one designed to ensure Joe Biden won the presidency. And it was essentially a CIA operation, considering 43 of the 51 signatories were former CIA.”

One final example of the Intelligence Community involving itself in domestic politics comes from the recent release of the “Twitter Files.” According to tweet #20 of the third tranche released: “This post about the Hunter Biden laptop situation shows that Roth not only met weekly with the FBI and DHS, but with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.” Tweet #17 states: “executives were also clearly liaising with federal enforcement and intelligence agencies about moderation of election-related content.” Finally, the FBI paid Twitter $3.5 million reportedly to “handle requests from the bureau.” We now know what happened. Twitter suppressed discussion of the Hunter Biden laptop story and suppressed conservative messaging, while at the same time it appears the FBI, DHS and the ODNI had literally had set up shop at Twitter.

The American people should be outraged. This level of collaboration between federal law enforcement and a private sector company on controlling speech is terrifying. Having our Intelligence Community, which is supposed to be focused on foreign intelligence collection, involved is even more terrifying. DNI James Clapper lying to the American people in 2013 about government surveillance of them, the promoting of the Russian hoax theory in 2017 by CIA Director Brennan, DNI Clapper, FBI Director Comey and others, the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story by 51 former intelligence professionals, and the close working arrangement between the FBI, DHS and the ODNI in 2020-2022 raises a staggering series of questions:

Can our government, law enforcement, and the Intelligence Community still be trusted? Have those federal government agencies literally weaponized law enforcement and intelligence against political opponents in the U.S.? Has more than one solitary person — former FBI attorney Kevin Clinemith, for altering an email — been held accountable for these egregious abuses of power? Why wasn’t there a more powerful response from the Intelligence Community and the law enforcement community about the disinformation from the 51 former intelligence professionals? Who authorized the cozy relationship between law enforcement, the intelligence community with Twitter? Who in these government agencies reviewed and approved of the output and decisions coming from these joint efforts? Were political appointees in the review loop? Who has the records, notes and decisions that emanated from these groups?

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Good questions. But who’s going to ask them?

Glug Glug, Gurgle Gurgle (Kunstler)

Summon the ghost of James Comey to ‘splain’ the finer points of RussiaGate: how he fell for Hillary Clinton’s Steele Dossier prank; how he used Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman to leak info about confidential meetings with Mr. Trump; whether he ordered Peter Strzok’s sandbagging operation on Gen. Mike Flynn, the FISA court shenanigans, the hiring of CrowdStrike instead of using FBI forensic experts to vet evidence; the run-up to “Crossfire Hurricane” the roles of international men of mystery Stefan Halper and Josef Mifsud in the operations to incriminate Trump appointees, Nellie Ohr’s role as a DOJ-FBI go-between with the Fusion GPS company.

Let’s hear from former CIA director John Brennan about the “17 Intel Agencies” who swore Russia was behind 2016 election interference and then about the 50-odd distinguished intel officers and other high officials who swore that Hunter Biden’s laptop was a Russia put-on job. Ask former Attorney General Bill Barr to ‘splain’ if he was informed about the Hunter Biden laptop when the FBI got it in 2019. Bring back former AG Jeff Sessions to ‘splain’ how the Mueller Special Counsel’s office was stuffed with Democratic Party activist Lawfare cadres, and how he determined that Mr. Mueller was mentally up to the job. Bring in Mr. Mueller to ‘splain’ how he testified that in the two-year course of his inquiry he never heard of the company Fusion GPS.

Find a special booster chair for Merrick Garland to ‘splain’ how come so many January 6 suspects are being held indefinitely pre-trial in the DC lockup on rinky-dink charges under the harshest conditions (solitary confinement, denial of medical care) in defiance of due process of law, in particular the constitutional right to a speedy trial. Ask Mr. Garland why he’s devoting vast resources of the DOJ to pursue ever more January 6 protesters on Mickey Mouse charges. Ask him to ‘splain’ how it came to pass that he went after parents protesting at school boards about indecent sex ed for little children and racist anti-white indoctrination. Ask him about sending SWAT teams on predawn raids to the homes of investigation targets whose lawyers volunteered to deliver them to the FBI offices. Ask him why he appointed a RussiaGate-involved lawyer, one Robert K Hur, as Special Counsel in the “Joe Biden” classified document matter.

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The EU doesn’t even have time to do this. It would take ten years.

“..in 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin first voiced his concerns about NATO’s eastward expansion and warned that a unipolar model was not only “unacceptable, but outright impossible” for the modern world..”

EU Needs ‘War Economy’ – Veteran German Diplomat (RT)

The EU must drastically ramp up the production of ammunition and heavy weapons if it wants to help Ukraine succeed in the conflict with Russia, Wolfgang Ischinger, the former chair of the Munich Security Conference and a veteran German diplomat, said on Saturday. He stressed that Kiev’s supporters would run out of supplies unless they transform their economies. “There is much to suggest that this war is far from over. Therefore, it is necessary for us to plan for the long term,” Ischinger stressed in an interview with Germany’s Welt newspaper. “All the military experts I know are saying that stocks of old Soviet weapons and respective ammunition are running out.” “Ukraine is forced to fire as much ammunition per day as we are producing in half a year. The end of our stocks is in sight. What comes next? Who handles replenishment? A war economy means that we – within NATO and in coordination at a European level – take the initiative and call on European armaments companies to produce more weapons and more ammunition as a result of the war.”

Ischinger said that the supplying and resupplying of Ukraine with heavy weapons, such as tanks, missiles, air defense systems, and drones, should be “controlled and coordinated” by the EU, as well as by the governments of individual member states. He added that regular meetings of Western countries that support Kiev with arms and military equipment at the US Ramstein Air Base in Germany are not enough. “They are certainly very helpful, but we need a political prioritization so the industry would have necessary specifications,” he said. Moscow has repeatedly urged the collective West to stop “pumping” Ukraine with weapons, maintaining that doing so will only prolong the hostilities and the suffering of common Ukrainians, rather than change the ultimate outcome of the conflict.

From 2008 to 2022, Ischinger served as chairman of the Munich Security Conference, the largest annual multinational security policy event of its kind. The conference was the platform where, back in 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin first voiced his concerns about NATO’s eastward expansion and warned that a unipolar model was not only “unacceptable, but outright impossible” for the modern world. Now a proponent of even further militarization of Europe, Ischinger previously had a hand in the Ukrainian turmoil as well. In early 2014, he was tapped by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to become its representative tasked with establishing a ‘dialogue’ in Ukraine following the Maidan coup, which toppled the democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovich and ushered in the years-long conflict in the country’s east.

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Made up from whole cloth. No Apaches, no Hellfires. Just stories.

London Rejects Ukraine Helicopters Claim (RT)

The British government has denied a media report claiming that it would supply Ukraine with AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, Sky News stated on Sunday. The UK still intends to donate a handful of tanks and artillery guns. In an article that has since been deleted, the Sunday People, an outlet that shares a website with The Mirror, claimed that the arrival of the US-made choppers would be “a major game-changer” for Ukraine’s forces, which recently lost the strategically important Donbass town of Soledar to Russian forces, sustaining horrific losses in the process. Citing an unnamed “senior defense source,” the paper said that “other NATO members will now follow suit” and donate their own helicopters. However, the article was “incorrect,” the Ministry of Defence told Sky News correspondent Deborah Haynes.


While the Ukrainian military will not get its hands on the Apaches, the UK still intends to ship a squadron of 14 Challenger 2 tanks to Kiev “in the coming weeks,” as well as “around 30” AS-90 self-propelled artillery guns. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s office confirmed the arms package on Saturday, and Defence Secretary Ben Wallace is expected to announce further details on Monday. Ukraine has yet to receive any Western-designed combat aircraft from its NATO backers, despite repeated pleas from Kiev for fighter jets in particular. Aside from the challenge of training Ukrainian pilots to fly the machine, the Apache is noted for “frequent failures of key components and high demands for maintenance,” according to a US government report. The report found that in order to keep the Apache flying in combat environments, the US military “relied heavily on contractors” to “keep up with the maintenance burden.”

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“Further weapons packages will likely be announced after the US-led ‘Defense Contact Group’ meets on Friday at Ramstein Air Base in Germany..”

NATO Promises More Heavy Weapons For Ukraine (RT)

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Saturday that Ukraine would receive more “heavy warfare equipment” from the West in “the near future.” The UK has already pledged tanks to the country, and Germany is under pressure to follow suit. A US-led ‘contact group’ for arming Ukraine will meet on Friday. “We are in a crucial phase of the war,” Stoltenberg told Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper on Sunday, days after Ukraine lost the strategically important Donbass town of Soledar to Russian forces. “We are experiencing heavy fighting,” the NATO chief continued. “It is therefore important that we equip Ukraine with the weapons it needs to be able to win.” Recent weeks have seen a dramatic escalation in the equipment promised to Ukraine by NATO’s largest powers.

The US, France, and Germany simultaneously announced at the beginning of the month that they would donate infantry fighting vehicles to the Ukrainian military, while the UK officially confirmed on Saturday that it would send fourteen Challenger 2 main battle tanks. “The recent pledges for heavy warfare equipment are important, and I expect more in the near future,” Stoltenberg told Handelsblatt. Further weapons packages will likely be announced after the US-led ‘Defense Contact Group’ meets on Friday at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. This panel of nearly 50 countries has met seven times already since Russia’s military operation in Ukraine began last February, with each meeting followed by fresh pledges of military aid from America and its allies.

One of the first meetings in May was followed by deliveries of anti-ship missiles from Denmark, helicopters from the Czech Republic, and artillery systems from Italy, Greece, Norway, and Poland. The group’s last meeting in November came as the US announced a $400 million aid package, including surface-to-air missiles. Although Stoltenberg insists that he does not want “a full-blown war between NATO and Russia,” Moscow has repeatedly warned the West that its continued arms deliveries will only prolong the conflict in Ukraine, while making the Western powers de-facto participants. Russian President Vladimir Putin has described the conflict as one between Russia and “the entire Western military machine,” but said on Saturday that the progress of Moscow’s military operation is “positive,” with the battlefield situation “developing within the framework of the Defense Ministry’s and the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s plan.”

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“..Arestovich retracted his apology shortly after, stating he re-watched his interview and deemed it to be carefully-worded and vague enough..”

Zelensky Aide Flip-flops On Apartment Block Blast (RT)

The partial destruction of a residential building in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Dnepr has triggered a bitter spat between the country’s top officials, struggling to explain the exact causes of the incident. The scandal was prompted by the assessment offered by Aleksey Arestovich, a senior advisor to President Vladimir Zelensky, who said that the Russian missile might have been brought down by Ukrainian troops and ended up hitting the building. The site was heavily damaged on Saturday, with some 25 civilians killed and 73 injured, according to Ukrainian authorities. “It was shot down. It apparently fell on the [apartment] block. But it exploded when falling,” Arestovich said in a YouTube interview.

The assessment immediately came under fire, with Arestovich ending up accused of discrediting Ukraine’s military and assigning blame for the incident on it. The mayor of Dnepr, Boris Filatov, got particularly enraged by his statements, branding the presidential aide “a narcissistic animal and a foul mouth,” and urging the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) and counterintelligence to “react.” The spat prompted the country’s military to provide its own explanation of the incident, with the Ukrainian Air Force command identifying the Russian projectile that allegedly hit the building as a Kh-22, a supersonic air-launched cruise missile. The military bizarrely claimed in an official statement that it has no weaponry to bring down the missiles of the type altogether, with more than 210 Kh-22s making it through the country’s air defenses amid the ongoing conflict.

Separately, the spokesman for the Air Force, Colonel Yury Ignat, admitted on Facebook that earlier reports of Ukrainian forces shooting down Kh-22 missiles might have been inaccurate. The barrage of criticism made Arestovich offer an apology over his statements, with the official claiming he got the information from his acquaintance, a retired anti-aircraft officer, who purportedly witnessed the incident. Zelensky’s aide said he should have stated more explicitly that his assessment was merely a “version” rather than the ultimate truth. However, Arestovich retracted his apology shortly after, stating he re-watched his interview and deemed it to be carefully-worded and vague enough. He also blamed the forced explanation by the military on his critics, who preferred to rage over his remarks rather than highlight “Russia’s guilt.”

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Most of these people have family and friends “on the other side”.

“I have not formed any particular opinion on the matter, except for what I have already said: I observe with compassion the tragic events in my beloved Ukraine,” Konchalovsky said.”

Zelensky Rolls Out New Anti-Russian Sanctions (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky signed a decree on Sunday, imposing personal sanctions on some 198 Russian nationals. The new list includes multiple prominent artists, journalists and other public figures. Kiev targeted award-winning director Andrey Konchalovsky and former governor of Moscow Region Boris Gromov, as well as several RT journalists and multiple bloggers. Commenting on getting on the blacklist, Konchalovsky told the RIA Novosti news agency that a “historical dazzle of large masses of people” was nothing new, but an eventual awakening of them was inevitable. “I have not formed any particular opinion on the matter, except for what I have already said: I observe with compassion the tragic events in my beloved Ukraine,” Konchalovsky said.

The restrictions imposed for a 10-year period include freeze of assets, travel and visa bans, stripping of Ukrainian state awards, and some other measures. The move comes one week after Zelensky decreed personal sanctions against 119 Russian public figures, including opera star Anna Netrebko, Oscar-winning film director Nikita Mikhalkov and pop singer Philipp Kirkorov. The Ukrainian president also targeted Russian journalists, including RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan and Dmitry Kiselyov, the head of the Rossiya Segodnya media group. Kiev has repeatedly sanctioned Russian nationals amid the ongoing conflict with Mosciw, blacklisting hundreds of people.

Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The protocols, brokered by Germany and France, were first signed in 2014. Former Ukrainian president Pyotr Poroshenko has since admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces.” Shortly before the hostilities broke out, the Kremlin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states and demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc. Last September, Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, were incorporated into Russia following referendums.

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“It’s absolutely fair for me to wish for all Russians and Russia to be wiped off the face of the Earth,” Podoliak tweeted. “It’s not hate speech, it’s not horrible of me, it’s just FAIR.”

Ukrainian Blogger Calls For Genocide Of All Russians (RT)

Ukrainian blogger Melania Podoliak, a prominent guest on Western news channels, has demanded that Russia and its people be “wiped off the face of the earth.” Podoliak issued her call for genocide on Saturday after her own country’s air defense supposedly caused a Russian missile to hit an apartment block. “It’s absolutely fair for me to wish for all Russians and Russia to be wiped off the face of the Earth,” Podoliak tweeted. “It’s not hate speech, it’s not horrible of me, it’s just FAIR.” Podoliak shared an image of an apartment block in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnepr, which she said was destroyed “after [a] Russian missile attack.” While Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said that the building was hit by a Russian missile, his adviser, Aleksey Arestovich, admitted afterwards that the missile was shot down by a Ukrainian anti-air weapon, which caused it to hit the building.


Commenters on Twitter hammered Podoliak for being “pro-ethnic cleansing,” but the Ukrainian blogger stood by her statement, responding to critics with expletives. In a follow-up tweet on Sunday, she described Arestovich as “a f**king moron.” Before calling for the deaths of 143 million people, Podoliak was lauded in the West. A former staffer in Ukraine’s parliament, she has been featured on NBC News as a “political activist” demanding the West send heavy weapons to Kiev, and on Fox News as a “media consultant” calling for sanctions on Moscow. On her YouTube channel, she offers viewers links to donate money to the Ukrainian military. Russia’s defense ministry said on Sunday that Saturday’s missile barrage targeted “the military command and control system of Ukraine and associated energy facilities.” Moscow has repeatedly denied targeting civilians, stating that the missile campaign was launched against Ukrainian military and infrastructure targets in response to Ukraine’s “terrorist” attacks on its own infrastructure, including the Crimean Bridge.

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White deer

 

 


«A human being is part of a whole, called by us the “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness»
—Albert Einstein

 

 

 

 

Calf

 

 

 

 

Dog scoop
https://twitter.com/i/status/1614440440341712896

 

 

Dog slide

 

 

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle January 16 2023

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 55 total)
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  • #126277

    James Proudfoot Sun on a House, Dieppe 1937   • We’re One Tragedy Away From Pitchforks And Torches (Jeftovic) • Temporary Morgues are Being Built
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle January 16 2023]

    #126278
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    The US population has ben pussified, lobotomized. and made impotant…
    They are incapable of understanding the world around them!
    I can’t bear to engage the wreakage of a society in rapid and violent decline……….

    #126279
    oxymoron
    Participant

    Dr D thanks for the link last night to the dryland gardener. It’s what I do. 10 acres just like me. 570 mm rain just like me. Swales, infiltration of water to soil etc. I read the whole link and gave me even more enthusiasm to continue in strength and good will. The world may be crazy but food gardening, forestry, fucking, friends and family with a roof and a warm kitchen is all we really need and it is MORE than good enough for me.
    Grapes are ripening, cherries just finished and I have moved on from freshly squeezed loquat juice with a dash of lemon and ginger and onto Grapefruit juice. Eagerly awaiting the Angelina plums and apples, pears, nashi, fig, pomegranate, jujube and feijoa yet to come.
    Holy shit it is a good life dodging bullets and praying for wisdom

    #126280
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Yes, it’s different where there is adequate water, yet permacultre works there too. It’s just different. Not sure if it’s easier, and perhaps it should be called a different thing. But imagine the lush of an eastern forest if given 25 years of food farming treatment, with ponds and perhaps perennial grains.

    #126281
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Here’s one thing we’re not following: the Korean war plan is still on. They started with Gangham Style and K-Pop a few years ago in anticipation of making the West give a s—t. That has reappeared a little and is still on. Must be on the warming plate now, maybe not soon, not late, but it’s on the burner.

    We never found out what was with Kim Jong dying, then being taken over by his sister, then being alive again. Anyone?

    Here’s another, adding context to an old, tired story:

    In the anonymity of 4Chan, an inside worker posted the exact details of Covid-plan in Sept 2019. That means it was made long before then, and by September actions were in motion for its definite release that he could identify and be sure of by then. …Just as we said and suspected here, and as early as Jan 2020 when we’d seen people get sick BEFORE official admission.

    Too bad you can’t just read 4Chan for news, as they say of the market, “He predicted 8 of the last 2 recessions.” In this case, he predicted 16,481 of the last 18 actual news events. It’s entertaining to keep up with all conspiracies, but not helpful enough for the time investment.

    “It’s going to take a long time to rebuild public trust”

    This is an interesting evolution as clearly everyone will die rather than change their minds. However, it looks pretty established that they WILL die, and the dead are anyone who trusted the system, even passively. So “rebuild public trust” look different when half the “Public” is missing and all demographics about it are out the window, with the world’s strongest bias against trusting anything.

    Nevertheless, no one will ever change their minds. Admit nothing. Deny everything. Make counter-accusations. Do this while the clock is ticking on yourself and your children, not taking measures to repair which are being discovered all the time now.

    “European Parliament Poised to Ban Pfizer Representatives (De Lauzun)”

    Banning them because no crimes were committed and nothing was done wrong. Just like Maxwell’s flight list. All sex sales, even kidnapping, but no Johns. Immaculate prostitution, I guess. Ursula is a professional in the same career, an old one.

    “All US presidents since 1945 = war criminals (including Trump),” he added. Young, an MIT-trained economist who has worked as an environmental engineer in state government, made waves last year after winning the Democratic Party’s nomination for Kentucky’s District 6 congressional seat.”

    Well it’s about time the Democrats came up with someone like this! Congratulations.

    “Democratic…party declined to support him” preferring a Republican instead. Ah. So they used the McConnell plan: Better that the other party win than to end the war. China told us so.

    “ EU Needs ‘War Economy’ – Veteran German Diplomat (RT)”

    Great! With what gas, oil, coal, nitrogen, platinum, steel, neon? A podcast was going on about how Russia was the size of Italy and commodity producers are useless and irrelevant — a common argument. That’s why Germany would win and the West is in far stronger position than they appear. I agree, the West is quite large, and the question is only to what proportion. However, he seemed to miss the foundation which is that the West is +1/3rd paper-shuffling GDP boosting, and Germany industry simply doesn’t exist without Russia, or not for quite a long time until they refocus supply. His vaunted “German Industry” that makes Germany and Europe formidable – and it is – is halted entirely with this one weird trick local housewives use, called “Shutting off their inputs.”

    Germany COULD have done that, secretly stockpiled in salt mines even as late as when Trump told them and they laughed in his face. But not now. Where would they get steel, nitrogen? From us? Our steel mills are shut and so are Britain’s.

    “the Ukrainian military will not get its hands on the Apaches, the UK still intends to ship a squadron of 14 Challenger 2 tanks to Kiev “in the coming weeks,” as well as “around 30” AS-90 self-propelled artillery guns”

    It was written therefore it’s false. So, as these people are incapable of thought: how long? It’s great to get 30 guns into use, but if you give them one per week from the Normandy landing until Berlin, it’s not much good now is it? That’s a lot like you gave “One gun” (that is, the day you most need it.) Half the war you have half the guns you needed. At the end, if your one lone gun from the first wasn’t long picked off — and BECAUSE it was only one, you did not have force to bring to bear — you end up with all the guns on the only day you DON’T need them: that is, the last day of the war. Does that put some legs under the problem? You MUST have ALL the guns in the theatre of war. They must be there on the FIRST day, the day of attack, or don’t bother. Not in 2030, not in 2025. TODAY.

    “NATO Promises More Heavy Weapons for Ukraine (RT)”

    I’m sure. Which they don’t have and have un-ironically (autocorrect: Moronically) promised to deliver starting 2025. By then Ukraine will be Russia and they can complete their deliveries directly to Moscow. Why even have words?

    “…personal sanctions on some 198 Russian nationals. The new list includes multiple prominent artists, journalists and [directors]”

    They counterattacked with signal bombs. Can’t you see my signaling? Now why don’t the minions obey my signals? I can only assume someone else is signaling.

    So…how much is $150 billion again?

    Well, that’s twice the Russian military budget. More than Poland, Germany, and France combined. It’s enough to fix all water and homelessness in America. It could cover Mitch and Hunter’s crack bill.

    Biden’s granddaughter looks lovely. I hope she’s being raised right, or as right as can be expected in 2023 America.

    Hydraulic machines are amazing: total sci-fi. Totally Mecha-Streisand. Have you seen operators dialing a phone or loading themselves into a truck? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v82VeGngitc So many of these.

    Back to France as the top painting:

    #126282
    EoinW
    Participant

    The Russians know there will not be peace with the West until the entire political class has been replaced. Who controls that political class? They’re all in Davos this week. All the mini Hitlers in one bunker. Wouldn’t the Russians be justified in bombing Davos? If not Davos today, then they’ll have to take out every NATO capital city tomorrow.

    #126283
    EoinW
    Participant

    Don’t you think that calling for the genocide of people who have the most powerful military in the world is rather dumb?

    #126284
    Just Some Randomer
    Participant

    “Don’t you think that calling for the genocide of people who have the most powerful military in the world is rather dumb?”

    Spittle-flecked Ukro-Nazis are not renowned for the subtlety of their thinking. One might imagine that by now they’d have realised that the promises of unlimited ‘Help’ from the West which was the foundational assumption underlying their aggression against Russia have not, and will never be, delivered upon. But no. On they go flinging their young men to their deaths in a futile attempt to defeat an enemy 10 times their size.

    It’s almost like they’d rather die than admit they were wrong.

    #126285
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Admitting one is wrong feels like The Big Death to the ego: all will, no brains.

    #126286
    tboc
    Participant

    V. Arnold, the Christopher’s motto is : “It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness”. Guard the flame brother.

    #126287
    tboc
    Participant

    Bosco, one of my favorite Twain quips: “I was pleased that I could answer promptly and I did, I said I did not know”.

    #126288
    Alexander Carpenter
    Participant

    And why wouldn’t a global actor of renown plant a large mine in Davos well in advance of the annual gathering, during a down-time when “security” would be relatively light? And in the exact hall for the plenary session, to minimize “collateral damage”?
    We know that is the kind of thinking more of the CIA-types than of the straight-men Rooskies, who aren’t into sacrificing their own people (unlike the Empire-of-Lies masterminds).
    An anonymous blast would provide “plausible deniability,” with no trajectory to track back to a source.
    And I wonder if this approach wasn’t used for NordStream, with the actual explosions triggered from afar long after the explosives were emplaced and the culprits sipping lattes in … where? DC? Langley? Maybe even Davos…

    #126289
    Oroboros
    Participant

    #126290
    Oroboros
    Participant

    The Cult of Covidians

    Not much of a religion, but since you abandoned the older mainstream ones, hey, why not.

    .

    #126291
    zerosum
    Participant

    If this is true, it should be happening all over.

    Lying
    Immune system failure
    Pandemic
    Endemic
    Excess death
    Fear/irrational responses
    ———–
    Define “losing”,
    Define “Winning”.

    • Impeach ‘War Criminal’ Biden Over Ukraine – US Democrat (RT)
    ———–
    the suppression of the media and social media

    authenticity has been verified; the information is real and damning. As summarized by the New York Post: “Yes that letter from the Dirty 51 had all the classic earmarks of a disinformation operation, all right – one designed to ensure Joe Biden won the presidency. And it was essentially a CIA operation, considering 43 of the 51 signatories were former CIA.”

    One final example of the Intelligence Community involving itself in domestic politics comes from the recent release of the “Twitter Files.”

    • Destroying American Democracy – An Inside Job (Hoekstra)

    ———–
    Produce, destroy
    More, More, More

    • EU Needs ‘War Economy’ – Veteran German Diplomat (RT)

    The end of our stocks is in sight. What comes next? Who handles replenishment? A war economy means that we – within NATO and in coordination at a European level – take the initiative and call on European armaments companies to produce more weapons and more ammunition as a result of the war.”
    “It is therefore important that we equip Ukraine with the weapons it needs to be able to win.”
    Great! With what!
    Where are the trained/willing operators for that equipment?
    Who decides the priority/financing? (Guns or butter.)
    ———-

    #126292
    Oroboros
    Participant

    The Future Awaits You

    Boston Dynamic, hey, I wonder if they can River Dance® ?

    #126293
    Oroboros
    Participant

    He’s such a class act, a chip off the old pervert.

    .

    #126294
    kultsommer
    Participant

    Fitting image for today.
    Not quite the Swiss landscape.

    #126295
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Zelensky Point

    You can only dream

    #126296
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    Preemptively killing the top bad guys by carpet nuking Davos does have a certain appeal , but it would do little to solve the problem because the problem is not primarily the bad guys nor what the bad guys do. The problem is our own personal responsibility in ENABLING those bad guys to do what they did (and still do). The core problem is our own personal passivity, gullibility, short sighted selfishness and other similar chicken hearted errors. Lopping the heads off snakes does little good if a new heads are easily generated . . . . which they ALWAYS ARE when the vast majority of ordinary people are being so passive gullible short sightedly selfish and chicken hearted .

    Now it may well be (and I think it is) that a large number of snakes will have to be killed (in the good old fashioned sense of the word) by lopping off heads in various violent ways . . . . but for that to work it will have to be accomplished by less passive, less gullible, less short sightedly selfish PEOPLE on a very large scale. Otherwise the snake’s head just regrows in an instant and we’re all right back where we started. For every psychopath high on the food chain there are dozens of apprentices just itching to step up a rung on the ladder and to replace their late unlamented boss. That sort of “field promotion” is an easy thing to do when when the vast majority of ordinary people are being so passive gullible and short sightedly selfish. After all, who would stop them from just doing what they’ve been doing ? (albeit minus a few big shots)

    But dirty business as usual would be an IMPOSSIBLE thing pull off when the vast majority of ordinary people are being LESS passive LESS gullible and LESS short sightedly selfish and chicken hearted.

    In other words, to get the job done and have it STAY done for a good long while then the PEOPLE are going to have to do that job themselves themselves.

    That means you, me, your sweet old Aunt Matilda and everybody else (or close enough to everybody that the battle is won rather than lost).

    #126297
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    Nice: Russian forces have established total control of the railway station NW of Soledar and have established a bridgehead on the west side of the railway line.

    #126298
    Red
    Participant

    Water wars?

    Jack Healy
    Mon, January 16, 2023 at 9:09 a.m. AST·9 min read
    A water hauler sets up hoses to fill the tank at a home that is listed for sale in the Rio Verde Foothills outside of Scottsdale, Arizona, on Sunday, Jan. 8, 2023. (Erin Schaff/The New York Times)
    A water hauler sets up hoses to fill the tank at a home that is listed for sale in the Rio Verde Foothills outside of Scottsdale, Arizona, on Sunday, Jan. 8, 2023. (Erin Schaff/The New York Times)
    RIO VERDE, Ariz. — Joe McCue thought he had found a desert paradise when he bought one of the new stucco houses sprouting in the granite foothills of Rio Verde, Arizona. There were good schools, mountain views and cactus-spangled hiking trails out the back door.

    Then the water got cut off.

    Earlier this month, the community’s longtime water supplier, the neighboring city of Scottsdale, turned off the tap for Rio Verde Foothills, blaming a grinding drought that is threatening the future of the West. Scottsdale said it had to focus on conserving water for its own residents, and could no longer sell water to roughly 500 to 700 homes — or around 1,000 people. That meant the unincorporated swath of $500,000 stucco houses, mansions and horse ranches outside Scottsdale’s borders would have to fend for itself and buy water from other suppliers — if homeowners could find them, and afford to pay much higher prices.

    https://ca.news.yahoo.com/skipped-showers-paper-plates-arizona-130945292.html

    #126299
    Oroboros
    Participant

    German riot Polizei guarding a COAL MINE against woketard climate cultists.

    Hahahahaha!

    German riot Polizei Preferred Pronouns©: girlie/men

    Dig the Figure of Death in the robe.

    Sweet!

    #126300
    Oroboros
    Participant


    .

    #126301
    Oroboros
    Participant

    damn, wordpress linking

    #126302
    jb-hb
    Participant

    Some stuff about GPTChat/GPT3 – PART 5 of 4

    Could I have stuck closer to specific things GPT can do, near and mid term effects, more direct conclusions to be drawn. Definitely. I’m going to try to give just a few over-arching concerns, some specifics on what it can do, and some more direct, specific near term conclusions one might draw.

    Broad based things to consider

    1. Whatever we see the GPT iterations doing, we can be sure that corp/gov/ngo entities have the real thing, and it is far further along.
    2. The fact that it is being put out there at all rather than being hidden says something
    3. Isn’t it interesting how in every human field, the AI we are shown is comfortingly at the level of a decent college student or beginner-level professional?

    Some specifics that GPT can do:

    –write a new chapter of a book that the author finds to be acceptable AND indistinguishable from himself
    –write an acceptable college essay
    –acceptably grade an essay
    –compose passable symphonies in the specific style of a selected classical composer
    –create acceptable artwork in a variety of styles based on a simple verbal request
    –draw up an acceptable custom legal contract to fulfil a specific request

    Whenever I see someone with experience in the field being demonstrated, they tend to give the same evaluation. Not as good as a top-of-their-game expert/professional, but anywhere from acceptably good to surprisingly good. Notably, none of what the AI produces appear to be bad, awful, unacceptable in these reviews.

    So a first key takeaway is that its output is GOOD ENOUGH. Even if the output is not superlative, it is definitely good enough.

    Let’s say you work for the marketing dept of a major corporation. You’re working with a budget and a deadline. You can hire a digital artist to slave away in Adobe Photoshop on a $10,000 computer rig and get back to you. …or, you can TELL GPT what you want, wait less than 5 seconds, and review 30 options. Tell it some variation on what you want, wait another 5 seconds.

    Ever hear of Sigur Rós? An ethereal post-rock band with a particular sound. A corporation’s marketing dept decided they wanted to use THEM for an ad campaign. Sigur Rós refused, explaining they did not want to commercialize their music. The corporation shook fistfuls of money at them, insisted. Sigur Rós refused. So the corporation hired a producer and some studio musicians, who copied their sound EXACTLY and put out an ad stealing the band’s sound, composition style, aesthetic, everything.

    It’s kind of endearing if you see, say, Mineral earnestly trying to be Sunny Day Real Estate. Seeing a ginormous corporation wear something original and distinctive as a skinsuit whoring it out for ads isn’t.

    But you could be a digital artist slaving away, your catalogue of 20 years could be up online and available – finally, a stable of art covering a wide variety of subject matter and potential uses. The portfolio becomes like a sort of an annuity, your past work working for you even if you stop making new pieces. Only now, you can have GPT go through that catalog, tell it “give me something in that style of a bear riding a unicycle balancing on top of the earth,” and it will give you 30 options in less than 5 seconds. At least it took a whole highly paid team working for many hours to steal Sigur Rós.

    That’s not a future capability. That’s NOW.

    Ever heard of the Kemper Amp Profiler? Not even a normal amp-modeler. It does weird spooky Profiling-stuff. Neural Net analysis? I think to some extent they try to keep the futuristic mumbo jumbo to a minimum to not scare off guitarists.

    You hook it up to ANY amp and it will “profile” it. Reproduce it inside-the-box and then use it anytime you want. The models sound VERY good. It has gotten so bad, people order various classic amps, vintage amps, amps they are merely curious about, profile them, and then return the amp. Over and over, using the music retailer’s free shipping.

    Again, this is right NOW. The thing essentially destroys the entire amp part of the musical equipment industry (with some serious collateral damage to music retailers) and the only thing preventing that from actually happening is human beings obstinately opting to buy the real physical things in the face of all considerations. You can buy a great classic amp for $2k OR a Kemper for $2k and have 50,100, unlimited high end amps that all sound fantastic and present zero complications with micing, room noise, your neighbor’s remodeling project or nearby roadwork, unwanted feedback, bugging your neighbors, etc.

    After the monetizing of all music along with the over-dopamine-ing of the public, people just don’t listen to music the same way anymore. The make an album and tour format is not what it once was. There are 3 basic approaches for music-makers currently:

    1. Cater to a small loyal following of, say, 4,000-15,000 people who really love what you do and obstinately purchase your stuff DESPITE their ability to stream it for almost nothing or simply pirate it. TONS of personal active engagement required to make it work.

    2. Crank out compositions, get them up on sync licensing websites, hope it gets used for radio, tv, film, commercials, elevator music, anything. Collect licensing fees/royalties. Requires constant grinding and a continual sense of the changing winds of taste. And luck. (toss songwriting in this general category)

    3. Crank out “beats” or other okay-ish music. 5 or more a day forever. Sell them license-free for $30 each for other people to rap over. Build up a catalog of thousands of beats in hopes that the various $30 purchases add up to a sustainable living. (the rapper who buys your beat for $30 may make millions off of it – or at least his label will)

    4. Sign with a corporation that takes your money. (see Steve Albini’s speech The Problem With Music)

    #2 and #3 become unworkable with GPT. You grind away for years to create a catalogue so it is passively sitting there, ready to meet various needs of music supervisors – GPT can learn your catalog and crank out 30 examples in your style custom-made to the requestor’s needs every 5 seconds. Or the music supervisor can contact you letting you know how long they need you to make your piece, where the crescendos, decrescendos, stings, etc need to go to match the video, wait for you to respond, wait for you to finish.

    The work ethic of the 2020’s – disappear for a year. Go hard. Grind. Make yourself an expert and produce a solid NOT halfassed body of work. I think of Billy Corgan talking about Smashing Pumpkin’s early years, when they essentially assumed rock was dead, that there was nothing new that could be done, but then tried to create a new unique style anyway. It took a whole lifetime of paying his dues to get to the point of making Siamese Dream and then the actual work in the studio was itself a torturous labor.

    It’s like the treasure-hunter who steals the golden idol from Indiana Jones after he goes through all the dangerous trouble in the cave. There’s nothing you cannot acquire that I cannot then take from you. I see no reason why GPT cannot in the VERY near future or now, “learn” the classic Pumpkins albums and spit out 30 decent new ones.

    For a music fan, great. Patty Smyth was almost in Van Halen. Would have been great to see that. GPT. Give me 30 mid-80’s Van Halen albums with her as the lead singer.

    But why stop there. GPT give me a band made of, er…. Bass – Tony Levin, Drums – Manu Katche, Guitar/Vox – Michael Hedges, Guitar – Guthrie Govan, Vocals – Glen Phillips. Songs as if arranged by the band but written in collaboration with Elliot Smith and Doug Hopkins. Why not? GPT is already composing symphonies played by 50-70 piece orchestras in the particular style of a requested classical composer. Custom never-existed bands next year if not this year.

    So for anything in the arts:

    1. SO much ability to create new material effortlessly that is good ENOUGH off of existing styles and style combinations, that new and current artists would be hard pressed – a needle in a haystack of content.
    2. ESPECIALLY difficult for new up and coming artists. Did you slave away for a decade or two developing something unique and new in the face of overwhelming odds instead of becoming an accountant like your entire family told you? You could have your trophy grabbed from you the moment you come gasping across the finish line of success – worse yet, BEFORE you reach any success. Even without AI learning, for example, Star Trek Discovery stole some struggling, unknown indie game creator’s world-building scifi concepts lock stock and barrel and gave him nothing. They stole it before he even had any traction!

    And in other professional fields? Such as law. You finish school start out as a paralegal, then a journeyman, and after years of paying your dues, you come to the top of your game, having been seasoned by experience.

    Now, any lawyer needing someone to do the gruntwork done by paralegals and journeymen can simply have GPT do it. Again, this is NOW. People with professional experience are saying, when they told it to write up a custom contract, it did an ok job.

    How much of the ecosystem does an ok but not top of the game GPT wipe out in the legal profession? And what does it do to pull up the ladder so to speak? Sure, you’ve got a lot of experienced professionals NOW, but if you replace the underlings with GPT, what happens to the future?

    Going back to music, sure, musicians going to corporate entities for record contracts, sync licensing, etc could get wiped out. But doesn’t GPT implicitly replace quite a lot of what the constitutes the corporation as well?

    My prediction is the corporations themselves become nothing but monopoly-maintainers. There’s nothing they can do that someone with access to GPT can’t do in 5 seconds. So they will purely exist for establishing/maintaining bandwidth. Upranking themselves, downranking others, occupying the bandwidth of peoples’ cultural awareness.

    What else is the corp for at that point? Like – but but you NEED us to hire a bad singer that looks like a porn star and a team of 15-20 songwriters to design a song based on a repeating 3-note series? Who is going to insert that sprinkler-system hihat sound into everything from the past 20 years if we don’t?

    So, as observed by TAE’ers last week – the future depends on human beings obstinately, consciously turning away from the digital and choosing individual humans. A weird new kind of Amish. Like the guitar community obstinately buying Fender Twins and AC30’s in 2023.

    For musicians, for instance, it seems like the only thing left is option #1 BE A PERSON. Be a personality. Overtly, actively. Not enough to make cool stuff anymore. It must be attached to a personality. #2 and #3 are ostensibly still going concerns, but are they really even now? As soon as someone can get GPT to pump out 10 “beats” in 5 seconds, why wouldn’t someone put in 5 seconds of work in a day while their competitor slaves away at a DAW all day making 5?

    So this is my attempt to give more specifics and describe some impacts that are in effect right NOW or in the near foreseeable future. Throwing stuff against the wall to see what people think, basically. Thinking out loud.

    Corporations will be less and less of a source of income for artists – they are fine with what is Good Enough. AI is now positively in the Good Enough category, even just the AI we are being shown.

    And I don’t know what happens to all the industries and professions that, in the past worked off having newcomers apprentice and then work their way up.

    And again, humans choosing humans will be the dividing line running through everything.

    #126303
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Well, since twitter links no longer work, here is the u-tube version

    #126304
    Oroboros
    Participant

    German Riot Police

    Better watch out

    .

    #126305
    Oroboros
    Participant

    German riot police are the stuff that will go up against Russian Paratroopers in Ukronaziland

    Yeh, I can see that…

    .

    #126306
    Red
    Participant

    jb-hb Thanks for the round up on GPTchat. An interesting development in the matrix. Could this thing also be pointed in the other direction. i.e. It could be directed to draw up a set of engineered plans for, say, a new gas powered electricity plant, laying in just enough mistakes that when seen in isolation look alright but when put together turn it into a ticking time bomb. These deficiencies could be set in a way that would require someone with years of experience in engineering to notice the dots. These sort of folks may be in short supply in a few years time, due to a number of reasons ;-). Can you use GPT to critic itself? It may regard its own work as unassailable! You know like todays MSM reporters. The whole concept is bad bad bad, and the best work around is, as you say, human to human contact. It will have to be in person due to the ability of said platform to corrupt anything digital. I suspect there is already a working model of a zoom meeting with at least one participant being a complete fraud inter acting in real time as a test to see if the participants can figure out which one it is. These lab tests will not be falsified or rushed, you can be sure.

    #126307
    jb-hb
    Participant

    about Dr D’s thing about the guy who built an oasis. Loved it.

    I read about a similar approach being used in India on an experimental basis – but were working on formalizing a system for it – I bet that guy was a direct inspiration.

    Essentially by landscaping, they were able to guide any rainfall into a place where the water wouldn’t evaporate away – either a sort of mini-aquifer with a well or a deep low surface area pond.

    The before/after pictures were so cool. Desert to oasis. Even more cool to know it required no labor or energy inputs once completed.

    #126308
    ram
    Participant

    jb-hb My company, one of the original developers of AI for music, has been doing what you describe on Linux clusters with many thousands of cores for around five years now. Started with simulated performances and assisted composition, but now is at the stage where we can create a “body of work” in any style in a few hours once our “pipeline” is set up.

    The pipeline setup may also take a few hours. Human time is also consumed by vetting the AI outputs, i.e. listening to them. Typically about 1/3 is real good, 1/3 is so so, and the remaining 1/3 is horrible.

    If the client is really serious we can expand/edit what they are going to use and that can be further (human) orchestrated to the point of scores for a human orchestra.

    All works are original (as in don’t violate any copyrights) as the AI goes through our huge music libraries and avoids copyrighted works. The whole notion of copyrighted music, as opposed to recorded performances, is absurd. Their are only so many combinations of notes that will sound musical, and that number is not particularly large. One thing that drove the development of AI in this area was the endless copyright lawsuits that plagued the music industry. Well now they have shafted themselves!

    As a related aside, when “asking” the AI to create music in the style of J.S. Bach, you just get back J.S. Bach. In mathematical terms, J.S. Bach’s music constitutes a “finite group” (“group” in the abstract algebraic sense) and J.S. Bach completely solved for it. Bach produced all Bach that can be produced.

    #126309
    zerosum
    Participant

    jb-hb
    I agree.
    Thanks for the round up on GPTchat

    ChatGPT: The Most Advanced AI Chatbot in 2022​

    3. Isn’t it interesting how in every human field, the AI we are shown is comfortingly at the level of a decent college student or beginner-level professional?
    So a first key takeaway is that its output is GOOD ENOUGH.

    I know a high school teacher who is using it.

    I expect that soon, Q&A from users/buyers/complaints/help will be, if not yet, be done by GPTchat and replace receptionist from call centers.

    #126310
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    Taxation=Theft

    Taxation=Theft

    #126311
    greco
    Participant

    Bach produced all Bach that can be produced.

    Of course. Brilliant summary of the limitation of AI. As constituted, AI is incapable of producing anything original in a stylistic sense. It can rearrange Bach but it cannot produce any new Bach.
    Human art and music is driven by the emotions and full human apparatus of the artist/musician. Absent the human, there is only apeing of what already is. Real art for humans could only be created by an AI that was not An AI but an intelligence grounded in the human experience. AI at best can simulate a sociopath who can learn to fake human emotions.

    #126312
    jb-hb
    Participant

    If Bach hadn’t already produced all the Bach possible, then a computer COULD have created new Bach music.

    It’s just that Bach left nothing undone. Bach is scary for many reasons, but the sheer volume of output is surely one of them

    #126313
    EoinW
    Participant

    @ D. Benton Smith,

    I agree, we have enabled the political class and the money behind them. The fact people literally had information at their fingertips on how dangerous mRNA drugs could be yet couldn’t be bothered to do the slightest research says all you need to know about the 21st century western mind. Too spoiled to be of use to anyone, even themselves.

    Nevertheless, a 9/11 attack on Davos would send a message to the rest of the psychopaths that their abuse of power comes with a price. it could give these cowards pause to reconsider their most extreme actions.

    Now it shouldn’t be the responsibility of Russia to clean up our mess. Still, going after the warmongers is in Russia’s interest. Whether we deserve or don’t deserve to be de-nazified shouldn’t matter to Russia.

    #126315
    jb-hb
    Participant

    re-attempting post with comment, as it seems to be getting blocked without. …although it needs no comment, really.

    #126316
    greco
    Participant

    Jb-hb, thanks for dissertation 5 out of 4. You have inspired me to do a little more reading on the current state of AI. Were I about 24 years old, that is what I would like to be doing, spoofing intelligence. Current state of the art seems to pass the Turing test. Took a course in AI programming way back when the bar for passing the Turing test seemed to be a lot higher, if only because of lower number of cpu cycles available.
    Asked my son who does video game creation about the lag time between when new methodolylogy for simulating visual reality and when computational speed catches up with algorithmic requirements and he opined something like 5 to 10 years.
    Seems like AI methodogies are likewise lagging computatio nal capabilities.
    On the humanistic front, I think that given sufficient exposure to textual AI some people will be able to develop the ability to distinguish between AI and human generated text. But of course AI will evolve and misspell and use bad grammar to to simulate human falliability. Perhaps there will even be different bot flavours like Indian, Chinese, and Nigerian.
    Yeah well, possibilities are endless.
    And then, the predominant flavour of electricity will become intermittant and people will be forced to talk to other people face to face ever more frequently and fall back on old human bullshit detection skills. Oh well, possibillities are endless and as pt barnum claimed, there’s a sucker born every minute. Probably more like a sucker every second these days possibly more.
    Still, the struggle between humans and machines goes on. I’m putting my money on humans.

    #126317
    ram
    Participant

    Yeah, that is exactly true, “Compared to Bach we all suck” 😀

    I should have also noted with the discussion of AI on Linux clusters with thousands of cores, that one can use the musical analysis and composition facilities in a fashion similar to the (early?) chess programs in that you can examine the machine’s chain of reasoning. This is a fantastic learning tool and feeds back into human AI developers. The resulting feedback loop facilitates both the human developers and the AI to become better and better at musical composition. It is truly a mind expanding, if not mind blowing, experience.

    The AI analysis of huge quantities of music of a particular genre also brings up surprises. For example, all liturgical music seemed to come from a common root. Human investigation of what that early root may have been uncovered an ancient manuscript that probably had been retranscribed many times over thousands of years. That manuscript had alot of tables and texts that looked much like modern computer languages. So much so that translating it into modern ANSI standard C was straightforward.

    Guess what? Running the C code on a modern computer results in an (seemingly) endless supply of quite decent classical liturgical music! The mind boggles at the implications of that!

    Apparent computer code from thousands of years ago (existing is shocking enough) produces the very core of liturgical/religious music. Just who were these entities that wrote that? What were they?

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