An Open Letter to the Russian Ambassador by Benjamin Wittes

Yeah, I wrote one

Read on Substack Benjamin Wittes Sep 12, 2024

Good Evening:

Every one of these plants is now under the protection of #LordLaser and #LadyLaser

I got pissed off today.

I know it’s a supposed to be a joyous day because Kamala Harris feasted on the flesh of Donald Trump last night and all that. And it is.

But I drove by the Polonne Sunflower Garden on my way into work today, and I discovered that the last of my hidden cameras, which I had planted only yesterday, had vanished. I had planted this one because the previous one had also lasted less than 24 hours. Clearly, someone is now monitoring the terrain carefully and had me made on the whole planting hidden cameras thing. Took them long enough.

Hidden cameras are not all that cheap, and while I have money to burn on #SpecialMilitaryOperations, I don’t want to spend $60 per day on cameras that are never going to yield footage—at least not to me. So it’s time for a change of course in protecting the sunflowers and the Nikita Titov posters that hang down the street.

I had a talk with #LordLaser and his bride #LadyLaser about a new strategy to protect the sunflowers and the posters. And after reading up on Cold War deterrence theory, we collectively decided, of course, to escalate by way of deescalating.

So this evening, I penned the following letter to Ambassador Antonov, which I have published on Facebook:

An Open Letter to Anatoly Antonov, Ambassador of the Russian Federation:

Dear Mr. Ambassador:

We have never met, and I do not propose to change that. But I am the guy who periodically projects Ukrainian flags and other symbols and slogans on your embassy. Contrary to your false representations, I am not a radical Ukrainian emigre, as you once called me. I am a native born American citizen of a moderate political persuasion. I am not of Ukrainian extraction, to my knowledge.

I am writing to issue you an ultimatum: Stop killing my sunflowers.

You and I both know that your staff is behind the repeated destruction of the posters I hung by Ukrainian artist Нікіта Тітов. You and I also both know that your staff is behind the repeated destruction of the sunflowers whose planting I have organized on numerous occasions across Wisconsin Avenue from the #GatesOfHell which separate your compound from the civilized part of Washington DC. And you and I also both know that I have pissed you off, that you have repeatedly complained to the U.S. Department of State about my activities and have tried on repeated occasions to have me arrested.

Unlike you, however, I live in a democratic country that respects my rights of non-violent free expression. Consequently, I remain a free man–free to plant sunflowers on public land and to invite my friends to join me and free as well to project light in a non-threatening fashion at buildings when I choose to express my horror at a government’s ongoing war of aggression against a sovereign democratic country or at the ongoing atrocities by said government against civilians there.

I’m writing because, to put the matter bluntly, I am fucking sick of your efforts to regulate my First Amendment protected activities on the sovereign soil of my homeland. When I hang posters objecting to your government’s war, I expect them to be left alone. When I plant sunflowers with Ukrainian friends, up to and including Amb. Oksana Markarova, I expect them to be left in peace.

I am done playing the game of cat and mouse with your staff in which I plant sunflowers and they destroy them and I try to catch them at it.

With this letter, I am shifting to a strategy of deterrence with respect to your attempts to regulate free speech outside your compound, deterrence being, as always, the most appropriate manner for the wise to deal with the government of the Russian Federation.

So here is my new doctrine: For every sunflower plant which you disturb, I will come to your embassy some evening of my choosing and project a sunflower on your walls for one hour. For every poster that gets tampered with, I will come to your embassy and project a Нікіта Тітов image for an hour.

There are currently 78 sunflower plants in the Polonne Sunflower Garden and 20 or so posters. Each of them is worth a one-hour-long projection operation. I have consulted with both #LordLaser and #LadyLaser and both inform me that they are willing to spend up to 100 evenings over the next few months protecting sunflowers and posters. They have asked me to convey to you that all of the beautifications on the civilized side of Boris Nemtsov Plaza are, from this day forward, under their protection.

I have every confidence, moreover, that there are plenty of people in the DC metropolitan area who would volunteer to project to maximize the up-time of both lasers. What’s more, I can promise you most sincerely that the local, Ukrainian, and international press corps would find a near-daily projection of sunflowers on your walls a most compelling story.

Put simply, Mr. Ambassador, you might consider praying for the health and safety of each of the sunflowers and posters across the road from your forbidding gates.

They mean a lot to me. They represent the engagement of a large number of people in this community on behalf of Ukraine, in support of the people there, in encouragement of American aid to a country your government is endeavoring to destroy. I cannot protect Ukraine or Ukrainians from your government. I can, however, protect these symbols of them.

To be clear, I most emphatically do not promise to cease my #SpecialMilitaryOperations against your diplomatic presence here if you leave the sunflowers and posters alone. Those operations will continue at least as long as your war continues. I do, however, promise a dramatic escalation of projection operations if the sunflowers and posters continue to be molested.

Consider yourself warned.

Slava Ukraini, God Bless America, and don’t fuck with me on this.

Yours most sincerely,

Benjamin Wittes

I tried to tag the very unestimable ambassadir in the Facebook post, but I was unable to do so, I suspect because the cretin may have blocked me. So I guess I will hand deliver a copy of the letter tomorrow.

In the meantime, here is a video scan of the garden. Each of these plants is now protected by the threat of one hour of projection. (Video on the page)

Let’s find out if that threat is more effective than hidden cameras.

UPDATE: Facebook has removed the letter with the suggestion that it is misleading spam.

China-linked ‘Spamouflage’ network mimics Americans online to sway US political debate

This seems important.

By DAVID KLEPPER Updated 11:56 AM CDT, September 3, 2024

WASHINGTON (AP) — When he first emerged on social media, the user known as Harlan claimed to be a New Yorker and an Army veteran who supported Donald Trump for president. Harlan said he was 29, and his profile picture showed a smiling, handsome young man.

A few months later, Harlan underwent a transformation. Now, he claimed to be 31 and from Florida.

New research into Chinese disinformation networks targeting American voters shows Harlan’s claims were as fictitious as his profile picture, which analysts think was created using artificial intelligence.

As voters prepare to cast their ballots this fall, China has been making its own plans, cultivating networks of fake social media users designed to mimic Americans. Whoever or wherever he really is, Harlan is a small part of a larger effort by U.S. adversaries to use social media to influence and upend America’s political debate.

The account was traced back to Spamouflage, a Chinese disinformation group, by analysts at Graphika, a New York-based firm that tracks online networks. Known to online researchers for several years, Spamouflage earned its moniker through its habit of spreading large amounts of seemingly unrelated content alongside disinformation.

“One of the world’s largest covert online influence operations — an operation run by Chinese state actors — has become more aggressive in its efforts to infiltrate and to sway U.S. political conversations ahead of the election,” Jack Stubbs, Graphika’s chief intelligence officer, told The Associated Press.

Intelligence and national security officials have said that Russia, China and Iran have all mounted online influence operations targeting U.S. voters ahead of the November election. Russia remains the top threat, intelligence officials say, even as Iran has become more aggressive in recent months, covertly supporting U.S. protests against the war in Gaza and attempting to hack into the email systems of the two presidential candidates. (snip-More)

https://apnews.com/article/china-disinformation-network-foreign-influence-us-election-a2b396518bafd8e36635a3796c8271d7

X gets banned in Brazil

For once, Elon Musk has a case worth fighting — but he has to do it in the courts

Casey Newton

Starlink, the satellite broadband company led by Elon Musk, said on Tuesday that it would comply with a court order and block access to X in Brazil. It marked yet another surprising twist in a wild saga that has been simmering all year but boiled over this weekend when a Brazilian judge single-handedly moved to ban X in the country.

Today let’s talk about how a personality clash between two powerful men led to tens of millions of Brazilians being prevented from accessing X — and how the move could be used to justify further restrictions on internet freedom around the world.

In April, I wrote here about how Musk had decided to risk a ban of X in Brazil over a court’s order that the platform ban a number of accounts belonging to right-wing users. Musk decided to restore the accounts in defiance of a powerful Supreme Court justice named Alexandre de Moraes, who subsequently opened an inquiry into the billionaire.

Musk, who has said he bought Twitter to turn the platform into a bulwark of free speech, positioned the move as a defense of liberty against an extremist government. Moraes, for his part, called Musk an “outlaw” whose X would “allow the massive spread of disinformation, hate speech and attacks on the democratic rule of law, violating the free choice of the electorate, by keeping voters away from real and accurate information.”

After Musk’s April outburst, X quickly reversed course, and said it would comply with the judge’s order. But the accounts that Moraes sought to terminate remained active, and last month X said he threatened to arrest a local employee for the platform’s failure to comply with his order. (The court wouldn’t comment, but threatening platform employees with jail time is an increasingly common and typically quite effective means of allowing government agents to moderate content as they see fit.)

Typically, threatening an employee with jail is all it takes to get a company to reverse course. Musk, on the other hand, said X would close its offices in Brazil.

On Friday, Moraes met that dramatic escalation with one of his own. Here are Jack Nicas and Kate Conger in the New York Times:

In a highly unusual move, Justice Moraes also said that any person in Brazil who tried to still use X via common privacy software called a virtual private network, or VPN, could be fined nearly $9,000 a day.

Justice Moraes also froze the finances of a second Musk business in Brazil, SpaceX’s Starlink satellite-internet service, to try to collect $3 million in fines he has levied against X. Starlink — which has recently exploded in popularity in Brazil, with more than 250,000 customers — said that it planned to fight the order and would make its service free in Brazil if necessary.

Moreover, while he quickly reversed course, Moraes initially ordered Apple and Google to block X at the level of the app store in Brazil, as well as blocking VPN apps that let users circumvent geographic barriers to app usage.

While moves like these are common in authoritarian countries such as Russia or China, they are extraordinary to see in democracies, which typically place a higher value on free expression.

In any case, the fallout from Moraes’ ban was swift. Countless fan and meme pages went silent. Bluesky added 2 million users, and Threads saw some lift as well. (They are currently the No. 1 and 2 apps respectively in the Brazilian App Store, per Similarweb.)

And depending on how long the ban lasts, it will likely degrade even further the value of X, which a new analysis over the weekend found had lost an estimated $24 billion in value since Musk acquired Twitter in 2022.

What makes the story of Brazil and X such an unusual tech policy story is the way it has been driven almost entirely by two people.

On one side is Musk, who has often claimed the mantle of free speech warrior in public while capitulating to government requests in private. One analysis last year found that under Musk, X had given into 83 percent of requests from authoritarian governments to remove content. And he appears more willing to accede to the requests of right-wing governments, such as India’s.

In 2021, it seemed possible that India would be the first democracy to ban Twitter, after the company fought court orders to remove political dissent — including from left-wing opponents to the government of Narendra Modi. But relations have warmed between Musk and the Modi government since he stopped fighting those battles.

“The rules in India for what can appear on social media are quite strict, and we can’t go beyond the laws of a country,” Musk told the BBC last year. “If we have a choice of either our people go to prison or we comply with the laws, we will comply with the laws.” At another point in the interview, Musk said: “If people of a given country are against a certain type of speech, they should talk to their elected representatives and pass a law to prevent it.”

Brazil once again gave Musk the choice of sending an employee to prison or complying with its laws. This time, he chose not to comply.

Musk’s defiance likely would have sparked a backlash in most countries where X operates. But he has found a particularly pugnacious opponent in Moraes, a hugely powerful and controversial figure within Brazilian politics who came to prominence during the tenure of former president Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro, a Trump-like figure who threatened to undermine Brazil’s democracy, lost the 2022 election and left office after a violent riot at the capitol by his supporters last year.

Both during and since Bolsonaro’s presidency, Moraes has used the unusual powers of his office to order people arrested over their social media posts, account bans on the platforms where they posted, and even temporarily removing a governor from office. At X, he has sought the removal of at least 140 accounts, the Times reported, and often delivers his orders in sealed documents that do not specify any rationale for his decision.

Moraes is not the first government agent to make overbroad legal requests of a tech platform. Google, Meta, and other companies receive thousands of requests like these every year, and disclose them in aggregate in annual transparency reports. The reason they publish those reports is to serve as a check on governments that seek to abuse their power by seeking information from platforms for surveillance and other potentially problematic uses.

Crucially, Google and Meta also fight against overbroad requests in court. Sometimes, they win. The result is a kind of dance between platforms and governments that leaves everyone at least somewhat disappointed but is also the reason that so many people around the world can speak freely online.

I don’t post on X any more myself, and I will not lament its passing when it disappears. But whatever role the 140 X accounts in question in Brazil may have played in threatening Brazil’s democracy, they cannot have threatened it more than silencing the 20 million or so Brazilians who have been using it regularly. Particularly when Brazil’s move will be seen by autocracies as justification to enact ever more onerous speech restrictions of their own.

Like Pavel Durov before him, Musk appears to have thought he could escape the reach of regulators indefinitely. This weekend, he began to learn the same lesson Durov has: you can’t outrun the legal system forever. Had Musk fought for his users in court earlier, he might have avoided a ban. Instead, as he has before in so many other things, Musk chose to do it the hard way.

https://www.platformer.news/x-ban-brazil-musk-moraes/?ref=platformer-newsletter

3 for Science on Labor Day

so I guess you may read them tomorrow, if you like. 😎

First, a tiny, acrobatic bug:

Biologists have studied an extreme gymnast of the animal kingdom, watching as it moves so quickly it appears to all but vanish.

The globular springtail (Dicyrtomina minuta) is a small but mighty bug that can backflip more than 60 times higher and 100 times longer than its own body length.

This tiny bug grows to only a couple of millimetres and can’t sting, bite, or fly its way out of danger. Instead, its preferred method of avoiding predators is to flip out so forcefully it seems to disappear! (snip-More on the page, with photos)

Next, a possible source of new antibiotics (and this brought Ten Bears to my mind, for some reason):

A study has found promising antibiotic candidates inside bacteria harvested from the deep Arctic Sea.

The research, by Finnish and Norwegian researchers, is published in Frontiers in Microbiology.

Antibiotic discovery has slowed in recent decades, which has exacerbated the risks of antibiotic resistance.

Most licensed antibiotics – about 70% – have been derived from a type of soil-dwelling bacteria called actinobacteria.

“For example, members of the Streptomyces genus produce several secondary metabolites, including clinically useful antibiotics such as tetracyclines, aminoglycocides and macrolides,” says corresponding author Dr Päivi Tammela, a professor at the University of Helsinki, Finland.

But soil isn’t the only place these bacteria can be found.

“Marine actinobacteria found in the sea, on the seafloor, or within the microbiome of marine organisms, have received far less attention as possible sources of antibiotics,” says Tammela. (snip-More on the page)

Then, an analysis for coal phase-out in Asia:

Countries in the Asia-Pacific region account for 76% of the world’s thermal coal power generation, and many of these plants will need to retire early to meet global emissions targets.

But according to a new analysis, it’s possible to phase these coal plants out and transition to renewable energy while investors still make money.

The study, done by Australian, Singaporean and Chinese researchers, is published in Energy Policy.

“There is a drive and interest from a number of different investors like the Asian Development Bank, but also private sector investors, to finance the early retirement coal fired power plants,” lead author Professor Christoph Nedopil Wang, director of Griffith University’s Asia Institute, tells Cosmos.

Nedopil and colleagues looked specifically at 6 Chinese-sponsored coal-fired power plants in Vietnam and Pakistan.

“With investors wanting to invest in, and ideally also providing lower cost financing for, green projects, refinancing of these coal fired power plants becomes possible at a lower cost,” says Nedopil.

The researchers modelled the future performance of these stations under a variety of financing and geoeconomic scenarios.

“That brought us to the conclusion that, depending on the age of the coal-fired power plant, we can retire these plants earlier than currently envisaged, while reducing the financing cost and therefore increasing enterprise value,” says Nedopil. (snip-More on the page)

Two videos for the curious and not for the prudish squeamish.

I have almost 200 YouTube channels I follow. One is the one I will share with you today. They have the weirdest and oddest subjects. And yes they are seemingly from the UK. I learn a lot from this channel as they host everything from hitmen, to politicians, to celebrity snack wars, to escort grandmothers. Below are two videos. One an elderly woman enjoying the time of her life as a senior escort who also provides sex and a porn director discussing the honest secrets of his job. I personally learned a lot more from the grannie and I loved her attitude, and I won’t spoil it, but you should hear who her youngest and oldest clients were. Hugs. Scottie

In this episode of Honesty Box we talked to a 70 year old escort Caroline, who told us about secrets of her profession, what was her weirdest sex request and if sex gets better with age.

In this revealing episode of Honesty Box, porn director Dick Bush answers your burning questions about what it’s really like to work on the set of a porn film. Dick explains how he makes the performers feel comfortable, discloses tricks and trades of the porn set and tells us what happens if he misses the all-important ‘money shot’. He also tackles the big questions around porn such as, can you be a feminist and work in the porn industry? Does penis size matter? And, how do you tell your family about your job?

Four Things I Hope You’ll Share With Friends & Family

Pretty neat. by Charlotte Clymer Read on Substack

A few months ago, Substack generously invited thirty or so of their writers to NYC for the opportunity to create some ads for our blogs. I really didn’t know what to expect, but the experience itself with Cash Studios (cashstudios.co) was delightful.

For about an hour, I worked with the staff in their studio on various ideas they had, all of which I found interesting. Moreover, I was quite impressed with their creativity and professionalism. They were kind, curious about my work, and really wanted to bring out my authenticity.

A few days ago, the ads were sent out to all of us, and I was quite blown away by the care and thoughtfulness put into creating them. I feel that Cash Studios did an exceptional job in capturing what I try to do with Charlotte’s Web Thoughts, and I’m thankful to the folks at Substack for this level of investment in my work.

They cut four ads, and I want to share them with all my subscribers, with a humble request: if you have friends, family, colleagues, or whomever you think might connect with my writing, send them one of these ads. Tell them that it’s free to subscribe to the blog, that all they need is an email, and that I don’t spam.

Here are the ads! Enjoy:

Science on Tuesday

Chalk-coated fabrics could make clothes even cooler

August 26, 2024 Ellen Phiddian

US researchers have developed a chalk-based coating that can reduce the temperature under fabric by roughly 5°C.

The researchers say their environmentally benign substance could be used to coat any type of fabric and turn it into a radiative cooling textile.

“We see a true cooling effect,” says Evan Patamia, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

“What is underneath the sample feels colder than standing in the shade.”

Patamia presented the team’s invention at the American Chemical Society’s 2024 Fall Meeting earlier this week.

Substances that can both reflect sunlight, and allow body heat to escape, are well-known to chemists. But they generally require costly or environmentally dangerous materials to make.

“Can we develop a textile coating that does the same thing using natural or environmentally benign materials?” summarises chemist Trisha Andrew, also at Amherst, of the work done by her and her colleagues.

Inspired by crushed limestone, which is used to cool buildings, the researchers tried solutions of calcium carbonate – the main component in limestone and chalk – as well as barium sulphate.

They used squares of fabric treated with a process called chemical vapour deposition, which added a layer of a carbon-based polymer onto the textiles.

When dipped in the solutions, the fabrics built up a chalky matte layer of crystals which could reflect UV and infrared light.

They tested the treated fabrics outside on a warm afternoon, and air underneath them was about 5°C cooler than the ambient temperature, and roughly 9°C cooler than air under untreated fabrics.

The coating is also resistant to laundry detergents.

“What makes our technique unique is that we can do this on nearly any commercially available fabric and turn it into something that can keep people cool,” says Patamia.

“Without any power input, we’re able to reduce how hot a person feels, which could be a valuable resource where people are struggling to stay cool in extremely hot environments.”

Andrew is now part of a startup aiming to test the process on larger bolts of fabric, to see if it can be scaled to industry.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/chemistry/chalk-coating-fabric-cool/

CO2 pipeline setback: South Dakota Supreme Court rules in landowners’ favor

by Skylar Tallal Fri, August 23rd 2024 at 10:30 PM

DES MOINES, Iowa — Summit Carbon Solutions is facing a set back in its proposed CO2 pipeline project, as the South Dakota Supreme Court ruled in favor of landowners who sued to keep Summit from surveying their land.

It’s a reversal of a lower court decision, with the state’s high court now claiming it’s premature to categorize Summit as a ‘common carrier’ for public utility. It’s something Summit needs to be able to prove before it can use eminent domain.

“One of our main arguments is that Summit’s not a common carrier,” Jess Mazour the conservation program coordinator with the Sierra Club Iowa Chapter said. “So it really does change the game here in Iowa as well.”

Summit can’t start building its pipelines in Iowa until it gets approval in North and South Dakota.

The Sierra Club Iowa Chapter calls the decision a victory for landowners. Even though the Iowa Utilities Commission isn’t taking up the club’s reconsideration request, the club is moving forward with its plan to take the fight to court.

“We now have precedent on our side and we’re going to have a strong base for when we file our appeal in district court,” Mazour said.

A similar court case is already on the books in Iowa, with Iowa’s highest court set to hear oral arguments October 8 at the state capitol.

“A landowner in Hardin County, Kent, he was sued for denying Summit access to his land and we are fighting that and also challenging Iowa’s survey law,” Mazour said.

Eminent Domain has been a major issue in Iowa over the last few years. Some Iowa lawmakers joined the pipeline opposition but haven’t been successful in their efforts to change state laws.

The topic is also coming up on the campaign trail, specifically in Iowa’s congressional races.

Congressional Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R) Iowa said carbon capture pipelines make sense for Iowa.

“So the carbon capture pipeline is only meant to lower the carbon intensity score of ethanol which makes it competitive globally,” Rep. Miller-Meeks said.

She said while eminent domain is a state issue, she hopes there will only be a limited number of landowners who don’t sign on voluntarily.

“Farmers and property owners need to look at the why the rationale and then determine if it’s in their best interest,” Rep. Miller-Meeks said. “Companies that are acquiring easements are looking at how do you make the land whole. How do you ensure farmers that you can grow crops in the near future?”

Iowa’s News Now did reach out to Summit for comment didn’t hear back.

https://cbs2iowa.com/news/local/south-dakota-supreme-court-rules-in-landowners-favor-set-back-for-co2-pipelines

Two for science on Monday!

Jelly plays Pong and gets better at with practice

August 25, 2024 Imma Perfetto

A hydrogel has learned to play the 1970s video game “Pong” and improved its ability to hit the ball by 10% with some practice.

Dr Hayashi, a biomedical engineer at the University of Reading in the UK, says: “Our research shows that even very simple materials can exhibit complex, adaptive behaviours typically associated with living systems or sophisticated AI.

“This opens up exciting possibilities for developing new types of ‘smart’ materials that can learn and adapt to their environment.”

The research is described in a paper published in Cell Reports Physical Science.

Video link, an example run of a hydrogel playing Pong.

https://players.brightcove.net/5483960636001/HJH3i8Guf_default/index.html?videoId=6360855643112

Credit: Cell Reports Physical Science/Strong et al.

What is a hydrogel?

A hydrogel, like gelatine or agar, is made of a 3D network of polymers that become jelly-like when water is added.

The hydrogel in this study is an “ionic electro-active polymer”, where the media surrounding the polymer matrix contains charged particles, in this case hydrogen ions.

As a result, it can deform when an electric current is applied to it.

Stimulation by an electric field causes the hydrogen ions migrate and, as they move, drag water molecules with them, causing areas to swell.

“The rate at which the hydrogel de-swells takes much longer than the time it takes for it to swell in the first place, meaning that the ions’ next motion is influenced by its previous motion, which is sort of like memory occurring,” says first author and University of Reading robotics engineer, Dr Vincent Strong.

“The continued rearrangement of ions within the hydrogel is based on previous rearrangements within the hydrogel, continuing back to when it was first made and had a homogeneous distribution of ions.”

It’s this property the researchers exploited to teach the hydrogel to play Pong.

How does a hydrogel play Pong? (snip-More on the page)

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Balloon carrying telescope at poles to spot exoplanets: get EXCITEd

August 23, 2024 Ellen Phiddian

NASA is about to launch a helium balloon carrying a telescope, to test its ability to see exoplanet atmospheres.

The Exoplanet Climate Infrared Telescope (EXCITE) is eventually destined to fly around the poles, collecting data above much of the Earth’s atmosphere, but its first test flight is due to happen from the USA in the next few months.

It will be launched for the first time from the Columbia Scientific Ballooning Facility in New Mexico.

Close up of excite telescope — EXCITE (EXoplanet Climate Infrared TElescope) hangs from a ceiling at the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility’s location in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. The mission team practiced taking observations ahead of flight by looking out the hanger doors at night. Credit: NASA/Jeanette Kazmierczak

“EXCITE can give us a three-dimensional picture of a planet’s atmosphere and temperature by collecting data the whole time the world orbits its star,” says principal investigator Peter Nagler, from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. (snip-More on the page)

The True Risk of AI

Like many of us, I grew up with the Lost in Space Robot, Hal, and of course, the T1000.

And, as anyone who has ever seen me around a computer can tell you, I am in no danger of ever creating an AI, much less giving any fair representation of the risks that come with AI. What I can tell you is that images, chat, and other electronically produced media does share a risk that can be co-opted and influenced by our current understanding of AI. This does require us to look closely at what we see on the internet, what we believe is going on in and around our environment, and most importantly becoming a better defender of our personal borders. There is no doubt that the impersonation of human creations is going to effect our lives going forward. Further, there is no doubt that beautiful things CAN be created via AI. Not sure about this one: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/glIzD8CVwrQ

As with everything, new technology brings new fears, new opportunities, new joys, and a new way of life. In regards to the T1000, I’m really crossing my fingers on the “new way of life” part.

Hugs!

Randy

-ps: Scottie, this should teach you to not ask me to post on your blog. roflmao! Sorry, I’m easily entertained.