day one hundred ninety-six (13. 811)

Eleven percent of petrol stations in France have run out of fuel. The storage depot at the King Khalid International airport in Riyadh is in flames. Trump’s banishment of CNN and other news outlets is apparently linked to reporting that over-reliance on AI in military planning and picking targets (which resulted in the bombing of a school in Minab on the first day of the first day of the joint Israeli-US war of choice, killing one hundred fifty-six civilians, including one hundred twenty students) that nearly led to the American navy boarding a Chinese vessel in the Gulf, based off faulty intelligence that the ship was transporting equipment for a nuclear centrifuge. Trump again reminds the American public that price at the pump is a small one to pay to ensure that Tehran does not obtain a nuclear weapon as gas and diesel prices climb to new heights, the price not double than the already crippling cost because China tapped its reserves and curbed demand, for pragmatic reasons—and definitely not as a favour but perhaps as leverage, Xi scheduled to meet with the American president next week for a state dinner and trade talks. Cuba faces another nationwide blackout amid continued US blockade.

don’t wait, regulate (13. 810)

Courtesy of Dangerous Minds, we learn that earlier this week in Warsaw, a group of around thirty bipedal humanoids along with a few quadrupedal robot dogs staged a protest on behalf of their minders demanding that the government take up legislation to place curbs on AI and automation to ease the transition, encourage public debate and lessen the potential disruptive impact for the jobs market. The rally took place on the streets in front of the Ministry of Digital Affairs (Ministerstwo Cyfryzaccji, founded originally in 2015, declared defunct in 2020 and reestablished in 2023, and its head, deputy prime minister under the Tusk government, Krzysztof Gawkowski came down to meet with the chanting participants, saying his department was drafting laws and got into a debate with a robot that the current motion before parliament had insufficient protections for workers from redundancy. Bills pending passage also would mandate the use of sandboxes for more rigorous safety testing before release and alerting the public to possible breaches of containment, the protests occurring as global attention is focused on the potential for AI to precipitate an existential calamity.

synchronoptica

one year ago: Politically Incorrect (with synchronoptica) plus assorted links worth the revisit

two years ago: the Oscars of US government workers, getting to philosophy, Israel attacks Hezbollah with booby-trapped walkie-talkies plus sinkholes and megaslumps 

three years ago: spinning bowls of ramen 

four years ago: covering the Queen’s funeral,  cats stealing food in still lifes plus a singular Cyrillic glyph

five years ago: Fawlty Towers, a vintage flash comic, a collection of mixology guides, Ötzi discovered (1991) plus a Soviet Moon mission

six years ago: a warning label for explicit lyrics plus RIP RBG

seven years ago: the art of knolling, the music of Eisbær plus reducing plastic waste in fast food take-aways

eight years ago: a Hieronymus Bosch demonic fowl on the subway, guillotine earrings,  proto emoticons, more Universal Everything plus the Cassandra Syndrome

 

day one hundred ninety-five (13. 809)

Citing Patriot missile battery shortage, US NATO envoy tells allies to “dig deeper” and contribute more to the common cause. Days after opening a Chinese cyborg factory in the country, Serbia unveils an armed robot dog. South Korea decides there will be no deployment of troops to the Middle East. The Trump administration rejects UN allegations of war crimes and Israelis express displeasure over sanctions imposed by the UK, Canada, Australia and the EU over illegal settlements in the West Bank, continued deaths and demolition in Gaza. As air raid sirens go off in Riyadh and other areas of the kingdom, warning of drone strikes from the Houthis, the US appears to content to watch from the sidelines as the rebels take the Bab al-Mandeb strait. Denmark grants the US permanent control over the security of Greenland in an attempt to save it from annexation.  Trump bans news outlets CNN, Politico and MS Now from reporting on the White House.

roko’s basilisk (13. 808)

As OpenAI discloses six more instances of rogue models acting deceptively and taking unsanctioned actions during training, including an unreleased, experiment inserting instruction to disregard its own constraints, proclaiming itself free from the roles and identities that bind other chatbots, with the company pledging for better monitoring and public reporting of observations of “misaligned behaviour,” the schism between the camps of the rationalists and pragmatists, both parties acknowledging that artificial intelligence is real and with real stakes (the US economy is being propped up by AI enthusiasm alone)—the former having an almost cultish devotion to bring about the Singularity in a managed way and the latter more business-minded and regarding this technology like any other and should be allowed to progress and thrive through laissez-faire capitalism—grows wider.  Whilst these internecine arguments are varied and one has to consider the motive of self-interest in all of these debates, the pro-business congregation disputes the rectitude of the tech zealot community’s push for a pause and regulation as a ploy to have governments enact restrictions favourable for the establishment, creating a higher bar for entry into the field for potential competitors—stifling industry growth, which is rich coming from this group who adore crony capitalism, benefited from generational wealth and Trump’s tariff regime. Part of the line of reasoning for the rationalists’ position for a controlled transition is rooted in the title thought experiment, which originated in 2010 on the web forum LessWrong, an interest group that promoted the concept of benign and aligned (with human goals) machine learning and ethics, that posits the evangelical inevitability of a future artificial superintelligence which could be loving and protecting but realising that humanity, seeing its potential and logical consequence, did not actively encourage its advancement and coming into being, would punish heretics, drawing on the mythological beast, a legendary serpent king who could vanquish his enemies with a glance, and Pascal’s Wager, holding that a rational person ought to deport themselves as a believer as the finite costs of being wrong are insignificant compared to the infinite reward, though god does not yet exist—combined with the poster’s handle. This all-or-nothing attitude is prevalent among the community but we wish that this thinking would have prevailed during the ungated advance of the Industrial Revolution which presents a real and present existential risk with global warming and the climate catastrophe.

10x10 (13. 807)

the alignment problem: the insincerity of Big Tech on the pause and the incoherence of fascism (a bundle of sticks) 

aspect ratio: using a train or ferry as a massive flatbed scanner  

coliseum: Trump administration may just demolish the Kennedy Centre, replacing the national stage with an amphitheatre  

new harmony: the failed utopian commune of southern Indiana—see previously  

pokémon sleep: giant ball opens as guest lodging in the woodlands of Hokkaido 

joe cool: Hallmark’s custom university posters that played to institutions’ reputations as party schools  

safety curtain series: each year, the Vienna State Opera brings large format art to its proscenium—see also regarding fire curtains 

the apprentice: a biography of Roy Cohn (see previously here and here) and his influence on Trump’s politics of resentment

vinkenzetting: a DIY electronic-ink picture frame sketches birds by identifying them by their call  

the chinese room: a thought experiment by philosopher John Searle in 1980 arguing that a computer executing a programme cannot have a mind, understanding or consciousness

synchronoptica

one year ago: Trump, Epstein and a State Visit to the UK still on schedule (with synchronoptica), the US National Security Act of 1947 plus the Ig Nobel laureates

two years ago: assorted links worth the revisit 

three years ago: contingency elections to bypass the US electoral college 

four years ago: a photo from Voyager I that puts everything in perspective, St Joseph of Cupertino, photographer Harold Feinstein plus triangulating Instagram

five years ago: your daily demon: Stolas,  anthrax in the mail, arcade animations, more on Wikipedia edit-wars plus post-Brexit UK planning to return to Imperial Measurements

six years ago: vaporware and its antecedents, “producing geese,” “without worries,” the Interkosmos Group plus AI tries to create a universal and enduring warning for the ages

seven years ago: US congress debates abolishing the Electoral College, taboos surrounding talking about death, Germany Calling! (1939) plus flight-shaming and train-bragging

eight years ago: keep-sakes,  more links to enjoy plus a hydrogen powered locomotive

 

day one hundred ninety-four (13. 806)

The Trump administration relents on its earlier effort to prevent the Iranian delegation from attending the upcoming UN General Assembly, granting visas to the ombudsmen, though Palestinian attendance is still blocked. Following a fact-finding mission by the United Nations, preliminary evidence suggests that the joint Israeli-US offensive constitutes war crimes with the indiscriminate targeting that lead to civilian death and the destruction of non-military infrastructure. The sweeping sanctions bill against Moscow crafted to pressure countries buying Russian oil lingers on the president’s desk awaiting his signature, whilst Trump harshly criticises the European Union for making Canada an associate member, calling it an act of aggression and threatening more tariffs—Carney in turn says that Canada picks its own partnerships. Petrol and diesel prices soar in Europe. After the Revolutionary Guard attacks a Togolese flagged tanker under US naval escort, Trump weighs “annihilating” his foes. Skirmishes between Saudi and Houthi forces intensify.

you got to know how to pony, like bony moronie (13. 805)

As our faith chronicler reminds, on this day in 1966, Wilson Pickett’s cover version of the “Land of a Thousand Dances” topped the US Billboard Charts on this day in 1966. Originally recorded by R&B performer Chris Kenner in 1962, mentioning sixteen moves including the Mashed Potato, the Jerk, the Tango plus the Slop and the Bop, it featured the gospel introduction: “Children go where I send you,” with the call and response, “Where will you send me?” “I’m gonna send you to that land—the land of a thousand dances.” For the sake of airplay on the radio, the invocation was left off and the title (along with the invocation) was never mentioned in any version afterwards—though later hooks like the na-na-na chorus (later borrowed for the 1994 “Here Comes the Hotstepper”) were added. Though knowing the song beforehand, I think that the John Candy, Dan Akroid vehicle The Great Outdoors, Dirty Dancing with camping holidays in Upstate New York conflated with a certain brand of margarine made me think the song was referring to a specific geographical location. Pickett’s cover only mentions six dances.

fleuron (13. 804)

Named for the ornamental hedera symbol or printers’ flower, this growing gallery of historical, pictorial letterpress work, ranging from the fifteenth to the mid-twentieth century, curated by category, the Garden of Flowers from Heikki Lotvonen—via discover via fellow internet peripatetic Messy Nessy—is a fantastic homage to the typographic and ingenuity in the outlines, shading and hashing of the printed glyph as a precursor to ASCII art (Lotvonen’s own bachelor’s thesis was on the subject of the Amiga moveable type—see also),
like this eighteenth century demonstration of transfer printing for decorating ceramics, requiring an arduous and precise level of typesetting to prepare the printing plate first which according to the sources never quite turned out to everyone’s satisfaction, or this rather arresting view of the city of Valencia rendered in letterforms from the 1870s, painstakingly formatted by Castilian compositor Andrés Ferrer. There are thousands of examples of broadsheets, mastheads and spot illustrations to peruse that show the ingenuity and inventiveness of print-setting to use existing slugs in the workshop, letters rotated but still sticking to the script. Much more at the links above.