* This is an archive of my own online blog and notes, with weekly entries collected by month.
* THE WEEK THAT WAS: In an exclusive interview in Kharkiv with Associated Press, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that winter will complicate fighting, after a summer counteroffensive that failed to produce desired results -- due to persistent shortages of weapons and troops. When ask if he took satisfaction in the results of the counteroffensive, he replied:
QUOTE:
Look, we are not backing down, I am satisfied. We are fighting with the second army [Russia's] in the world, I am satisfied. We are losing people, I'm not satisfied. We didn't get all the weapons we wanted, I can't be satisfied, but I also can't complain too much.
END_QUOTE
Zelenskyy also said he fears the Israel-Hamas war threatens to overshadow the conflict in Ukraine, as competing political agendas and limited resources put the flow of Western military aid to Kyiv at risk. American election-year politics are also threatening support for Ukraine. The massive expenditure of ammunition and limited supplies are other potential problems, while there is a renewed threat of widespread Russian aerial attacks on cities targeting energy infrastructure and civilians.
Zelenskyy said some positive results had been achieved in the year's fighting. Ukraine has driven back Russian attacks, and made limited territorial gains. Russia's Black Sea Fleet has been hit hard and is on the defensive. In addition, a temporary grain corridor established by Kyiv following Russia's withdrawal from a wartime agreement to ensure the safe exports is still working.
Zelenskyy is focused on boosting domestic arms production. A sizeable chunk of Ukraine's budget is allocated for that, but current output is far from enough to turn the tide of the war. Now, Zelenskyy wants the Ramstein Group to offer favorable loans and contracts to boost the manufacture of arms and munitions.
* Criticisms that the USA -- and the rest of the Ramstein Group of Ukraine's allies -- aren't doing enough are correct, to the extent that Ukraine needed everything yesterday. However, Ukraine can't get everything and can't get it yesterday; the USA has not been holding out. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, responding to Zelenskyy's comments about military aid, said the USA has provided "unprecedented" support:
QUOTE:
I certainly can't dispute President Zelenskyy's estimation that they haven't achieved the success that they had hoped to achieve. But I can assure you that the United States has done everything we can.
END_QUOTE
He added that the Biden Administration wants to do more, but is faced with a Republican insurgency in the House of Representatives:
QUOTE:
... if we don't get that support from Congress, the message it is going to send around the world about how much Ukraine matters and how much the United States and our leadership can deliver to our partners around the world is going to be loud and clear and deeply unfortunate.
END_QUOTE
Separately, the admiral told reporters that the current priority in Ukraine support is air defense:
QUOTE:
We've been focused on driving forward three key lines of effort. First, we've been strengthening Ukraine's air defensive capabilities so that they can shoot down Russian missiles and their Iranian drones targeting critical infrastructure. That's why we provided Ukraine in recent packages with Patriot batteries, HAWK and Avenger air-defense systems, counter unmanned air systems equipment, and other critical air-defense assets.
Second, we've been helping Ukraine harden their critical energy infrastructure. We provided them with extensive amounts of defensive protection equipment, including wire mesh, rebar, and HESCO barriers, with our experts at DOD and at the Department of Energy and the US Agency for International Development advising Ukrainian officials on how to use this equipment most effectively.
And, third, we've been providing Ukraine with backup equipment and supplies, including high-voltage auto transformers, industrial-size gas generators, and mobile off-grid equipment to add resiliency and prevent people from losing heat and electricity if Russia's strikes get through and are successful.
END_QUOTE
HESCO barriers, incidentally, are prefabricated fortification units, consisting of big containers made of wire mesh and heavy canvas, filled with sand or dirt or gravel. In any case, the insistence that the Ramstein Group isn't doing enough to help Ukraine is understandable but exasperating -- all the more so because Kremlin trolls are doing everything to encourage it.
* In response to the question: "Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?" -- one Nate White penned a very British reply:
QUOTE:
A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour, and no grace -- all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump's limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.
Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing -- not once, ever. I don't say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility; for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it's a fact. He doesn't even seem to understand what a joke is. His idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.
Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn't just talk in crude, witless insults, he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.
There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It's all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. We don't. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He's not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat; he's more a fat white slug, a Jabba the Hutt of privilege.
And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a sniveling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff, the Queensberry rules of basic decency, and he breaks them all. Every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless, and he kicks them when they are down.
So the fact that a significant minority, perhaps a third, of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think: "Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy" -- is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it's impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal -- even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W. Bush look smart.
In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws, he would make a Trump -- and a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: "MY GOD! What ... have ... I ... created?!" If being a twat were a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.
END_QUOTE
Trump, incidentally, pressed a case claiming presidential immunity for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. US District Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected the argument, writing in her decision:
QUOTE:
Defendant's four-year service as Commander in Chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens. A former President's exposure to federal criminal liability is essential to fulfilling our constitutional promise of equal justice under the law.
END_QUOTE
Of course, there was no way any such claim could be taken seriously and the decision was inevitable. Trump will of course appeal to the Supreme Court; hopefully, SCOTUS will refuse to hear the case. Possibly more interestingly, a DC appeals court judged that Trump was not immune to civil lawsuits over the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot. Suggestions have been raised that might lead to a class-action suit by the 81 million Americans who voted for Joe Biden in 2020. That's not going to happen, but it's a fun idea.
BACK_TO_TOP* THE WEEK THAT WAS: Fighting continues in the Gaza Strip, with Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) troops methodically crushing Hamas resistance. The IDF is circulating pictures of mass surrenders by Hamas fighters, stripped down to make sure they weren't wearing suicide vests. Protests continue against the IDF operation, but it will be completed. The protestors also say they will work to defeat Joe Biden in the 2024 election for not stopping the IDF operation -- but it's unlikely they will cost him a single vote. There seems to be an unholy alliance between Islamists and antisemitic Rightists at work in the trolling against Biden, and neither are getting much traction.
The Biden Administration has nothing to apologize for. Joe Biden pushed for and got a cease-fire, which held for a few days until Hamas decided to start shooting again. The Americans could not halt the operation if they wanted to, and given the brutality of the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October, likely don't want to.
Hamas will be crushed. The protesters say that will not solve the long-term problem, but few think it will: Hamas attacked Israel, Israel hit back, simple and inevitable as that. The reality is that we have no good idea of what the consequences of this little war are going to be.
Is a peace offensive in the cards? Well, something has to be done, but whether it goes anywhere is another thing. The reality is that not so many people are concerned one way or another. I got into a chat with an astute Brazilian on X/Twitter, who started out with the honest statement that most people don't care about what's happening in Gaza. I replied that was true, fighting between the Israelis and Palestinians has been going on all my grown life -- "I am not young!" -- and this just another round.
He pointed to a noisy ongoing argument over what Arafat said a quarter-century ago, but most people just shrug. The fighting will go quiet, drop off the headlines, and be generally forgotten. I said I wasn't really worried about the Gaza crisis, being much more concerned about Ukraine. He concluded that people are going to focus on things that actually seem important to them, and Gaza does not. Certainly, Joe Biden need not fear for re-election.
* As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Semi-Transparent Solar Cells Boost Growth Of Greenhouse Plants" by Michael Irving, 7 mar 23), transparent solar cells are nothing new -- but so far they haven't had much of an impact. They may help resolve a dilemma, however. Solar farms and conventional agriculture are competing for land; Researchers at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) thought that didn't really need to be so, and built semi-transparent solar cells that could be mounted on the roofs of greenhouses.
The solar cells were of organic construction, meaning based on carbon compounds. Organic technology can produce transparent, flexible solar cells, but they tend to degrade quick. The UCLA researchers accordingly coated their cells with a chemical named "L-glutathione" that sealed them off and prevented them from oxidizing. The lifetime of the cells greatly increased.
Next, the researchers put the solar cells to work in model greenhouses, growing wheat, mung beans, and broccoli. Each crop was grown in one of two greenhouses -- one with a clear glass roof dotted with segments of inorganic solar cells, and the other with a roof entirely consisting of semi-transparent organic solar cells. The organic cells demonstrated a power conversion efficiency of 13.5%, and allowed 21.5% of visible light to pass through. That proved to be enough, since cells blocked ultraviolet and infrared light, allowing wavelengths useful for photosynthesis to pass through. In addition, strong ultraviolet can damage plants, while too much infrared can make the greenhouse too hot.
* I got to poking around online and found a slideshow of images for "Roaring Twenties STAR TREK", consisting of clearly AI-generated depictions of STAR TREK re-imagined in 1920s style.
They were a mixed lot, some having little "retro" flavor, but the best of them definitely had the feel of STAR TREK theme music re-thought by George Gershwin. Incidentally, one of the big giveaways that the images were produced by GAI was the fact that the only really recognizable face was Spock, in his Leonard Nimoy incarnation. Others looked like amalgams of other STAR TREK characters, familiar but not exactly matching any one person. GAI does things like that.
BACK_TO_TOP* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The MAGA element in Congress continues their harassment of President Biden's son Hunter, having issued a subpoena for him to appear for questioning by the House Oversight Committee, led by Representative James Comer. Hunter Biden (HB) said he was agreeable to testifying -- but only in a public hearing lest his testimony be willfully misconstrued. The House MAGA did not like that at all, insisting that his testimony be conducted in private, and threatening him with contempt. This last week, HB showed up outside the Capitol Building, to comment to the media:
QUOTE:
I'm here today to answer at a public hearing, any legitimate questions Chairman Comer and the House Oversight Committee may have for me. I'm here today to make sure that the House committee's illegitimate investigations of my family did not proceed on distortions, manipulated evidence and lies. And I'm here today to acknowledge that I've made mistakes in my life and wasted opportunities and privileges I was afforded, for that I'm responsible. For that, I'm accountable, and for that I'm making amends.
But I'm also here today to correct how the MAGA right has portrayed me for their political purposes. I am first and foremost a son, a father, a brother, and a husband from a loving and supportive family. I'm proud to have earned degrees from Georgetown University and Yale Law School. I'm proud of my legal career and business career. I'm proud of my time serving on a dozen different boards of directors, and I'm proud of my efforts to forge global business relationships.
For six years, MAGA Republicans, including members of the House committees, who are in a closed door session right now, have impugned my character, invaded my privacy, attacked my wife, my children, my family, and my friends. They have ridiculed my struggle with addiction, they belittled my recovery and they have tried to dehumanize me, all to embarrass and damage my father who has devoted his entire public life to service. For six years, I have been the target of the unrelenting Trump attack machine, shouting: "Where's Hunter?"
Well, here's my answer. I am here. Let me state as clearly as I can. My father was not financially involved in my business, not as a practicing lawyer, not as a board member of Barisma, not in my partnership with a Chinese private businessman, not in my investments at home nor abroad, and certainly not as an artist.
During my battle with addiction, my parents were there for me. They literally saved my life. They helped me in ways that I will never be able to repay, and of course they would never expect me to. And in the depths of my addiction, I was extremely irresponsible with my finances. But to suggest that his grounds for an impeachment inquiry is beyond the absurd, it's shameless.
There is no evidence to support the allegations that my father was financially involved in my business because it did not happen. James Comer, Jim Jordan, Jason Smith and their colleagues have distorted the facts by cherry-picking lines from a bank statement, manipulating texts I sent, editing the testimony of my friends and former business partners, and mis-stating personal information that was stolen from me. There is no fairness or decency in what these Republicans are doing. They have lied over and over about every aspect of my personal and professional life, so much so that their lies have become the false facts believed by too many people.
No matter how many times it is debunked, they continue to insist that my father's support of Ukraine against Russia is the result of a non-existent bribe. They displayed naked photos of me during an oversight hearing, and they have taken the light of my dad's love for me, and presented it as darkness. They have no shame. These same committee chairman have engaged in unprecedented political interference in what would've already been a five-year investigation of me.
Yet here I am, Mr. Chairman, taking up your offer. When you said, we can bring these people in for depositions or committee hearings, whichever they choose. Well, I've chosen. I'm here to testify at a public hearing today to answer any of the committee's legitimate questions. Republicans do not want an open process where Americans can see their tactics, expose their baseless inquiry, or hear what I have to say. What are they afraid of? I'm here. I'm ready.
END_QUOTE
HB's public show went over well with the sensible, though the MAGA trolls howled. Not all that incidentally, videos suggest that HB came to the Capitol Building in a Secret Service armored limousine. As a Biden family member, he is clearly under Secret Service protection, and definitely needs it. In any case it is unlikely, if not impossible, that the House will pass a vote to hold HB in contempt. Even if they do, the DOJ won't do anything with it.
HB has also been hit with a felony indictment by Special Counsel David Weiss, who has been investigating him for five years now. Weiss had previously been embarrassed when he cut a plea deal with HB that was rejected by the courts. The indictment doesn't seem to add up; yes, HB was in arrears in taxes, but it seems already made restitution and paid penalties, and that's almost always as much as the IRS wants. Bigger tax cheats haven't been indicted.
The indictment also spent too much time rehashing HB's wild conduct while he was addicted, which seemed more like personality assassination than relevant to the charges. Might it be the case that Weiss wants to press the nastiest case he can against HB and get the House MAGA off his back? Knowing that a jury is likely to give HB a PASS? If so, that seems futile, since the House MAGA cannot be satisfied.
James Comer, talking to CNN's Jake Tapper, claimed that the indictment was to "protect" HB, with Tapper all but breaking out laughing. Comer says clueless things like that all the time; he makes Inspector Clouseau look competent. HB, also not incidentally, is pressing a set of big libel suits against his persecutors. Given how unrestrained they have been, odds seem good of him winning.
* The House MAGA are also moving forward on an "impeachment investigation" of Joe Biden. Since nobody knows of any grounds for impeaching Joe Biden, it will amount to nothing but theatrics. What may be the case is that, knowing Trump is going down hard, the GOP wants to put on a show of defending him. It won't help them.
Speaking of fuss over nothing ... First Lady Jill Biden came up with exuberant candy-cane Christmas decorations for the White House, and then invited the Dorrance Dance tap-dancing troupe, led by Michelle Dorrance, to dance their way through the rooms and decorations, to the tune of Duke Ellington's big-band jazz take on Tchaikovsky's THE NUTCRACKER.
It was flashy and stylish, something like maybe what Disney would put together these days, and nothing that would startle anyone who ever saw a family-rated Las Vegas show or the like. For whatever reasons the MAGA trolls decided to lose their minds over it, accusing Jill Biden of every satanic depravity as part of a "War On Christmas", including a fair amount of acidic sneering that some of the dancers were black folk. Trump lieutenant Stephen Miller -- known for his resemblance to the vampire Nosferatu -- told FOX's Laura Ingraham:
QUOTE:
It's a war on normal, Laura, fundamentally. They hate normal. Christians, religious people who believe in God, people that believe in family and children. People believe that in an upstanding way of living, they believe in borders, people that believe in all the things that make society run. They hate normal. So when you look at these ANTIFA protests, when you look at these radical Left women's marches, when you look at these open borders marches, what do you see, you see people in purple hair and pink hair and a thousand face piercings, and horrendous tattoos and bizarre outfits.
END_QUOTE
It seems the MAGA trolls are becoming ever more desperate these days, another recent example being their war against pop singer Taylor Swift -- who has drawn their wrath by not liking Donald Trump, and encouraging her fans to vote. She's stayed above it all, and the attacks seem to have raised her public stature.
The mad rantings of the MAGA trolls have gone so far around the bend that they are hard to take seriously. Trump is going down, sooner or later, and after that it's hard to see that the GOP has any future. Consider that:
-- are Centrist positions in the 21st century, and the GOP has rejected all of them. These days, Trump is loudly channeling Adolf Hitler in his speeches, clearly for shock effect, with the GOP refusing to protest. This is not a path to electoral success.
Trump's efforts to shock people are working, but not doing him much good. Commenter Ian Bremmmer noted on X/Twitter: "Any public company CEO, university president, or other accountable leader would be forced to resign for saying things Trump routinely says on the campaign trail." Another commenter, John Sipher, replied: "He would be fired from Piggly Wiggly." For non-Americans, that's a supermarket chain associated with the US Southeast.
I'm old enough to remember the Sixties and how crazy things were then; the Trump Era has been crazier, and regression to the mean back to normal -- a "new normal" to be sure -- will happen, if not necessarily right away. I'll have to be patient until it does.
* As discussed in an article from SCIENCE.org ("Weird Alien World May Be A Planetary Sauna" by Jonathan O'Callaghan, 15 May 2023), NASA's "Transiting Exoplanetary Survey Satellite (TESS)" was launched in 2018, with the goal of finding planets in other star systems by their transits across the face of their parent star.
Amadeo Castro-Gonzalez -- an astronomer at the Spanish Astrobiology Center -- and fellow researchers inspected TESS data, to pick out an interesting find: a planet about 1.5 times bigger in diameter than Earth, designated "TOI-244 b", about 72 light-years from Earth. He believes it could represent a new class of exoplanets, something between a rocky planet and a gas giant: "We propose these are inflated super-Earths."
That conclusion was based on determination of the planet's mass, as obtained from highly precise measurements of its orbit. The researchers got time on the Very Large Telescope in Chile and used an instrument called ESPRESSO to look for shifts in starlight caused by tiny gravitational tugs from the planet. The planet turned out to be 2.7 times more massive than the Earth -- giving a density half as much as might be expected for a planet of its size.
The researchers ruled out explanations such as an ironless core, to conclude the low density can be explained by the presence of a steamy atmosphere, a "hydrosphere", about 500 kilometers (300 miles) thick. The planet follows a close 7-day orbit around its red dwarf star, and its temperatures are thought to rise to more than 2000 degrees Celsius -- enough to keep the atmosphere in a hot steam, but not enough to drive the water into space.
Castro-Gonzalez says the water exists in a supercritical state between a liquid and a gas: "It's a mixture of the two. It's not a typical state that we see here on Earth. A sauna is the best analogy." It would be a very hot sauna, with atmospheric pressures exceeding those of Venus at ground level. The team thinks TOI-244 b is the prototype of new kind of swollen water world.
The team is now looking for similar planets around other stars, and also want to confirm the presence of water in the atmosphere of TOI-244 b. They are hoping to obtain time on the NASA James Webb Space Telescope to aid in the search.
* Regarding Christmas decor: I've always wanted to get a toy train to run around my little plastic Christmas tree. I spotted a cheap toy train set for kids on Amazon and bought it, and it turned out to work just fine for the job, with snap-together tracks. One of the concerns I had with the train engine is that these cheap battery-operated toys often use very small Philips-head screws to keep the battery compartment closed, instead of a snap fit scheme -- and the screw heads don't take well to repeated use. Fortunately, although the engine did use a single screw to keep it in place, once it was loosened I could snap the batteries in and out without using it again. It was definitely worth the low price.
BACK_TO_TOP* THE WEEK THAT WAS: Last week was definitely interesting, with Pope Francis saying Catholic priests could give their blessings to same-sex relationships. This was less dramatic than it sounded, in that the pope made it clear that gay marriage was still verboten. However, it was a big step in the right direction.
In another surprise, the Supreme Court of Colorado decided that, as per the provisions of the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, Donald Trump is not eligible to run for President of the United States in the state in 2024. Now it goes up to the Supreme Court of the USA. We'll see what happens -- but for now, the screaming of the Trump trolls in response to the judgement was very loud, and enjoyable to hear. [ED: To no great surprise, SCOTUS judged that a state couldn't disallow candidates in national elections.]
We have become so used to the absurdities of the Trump Era that we don't recognize them easily as absurd -- but a future generation will wonder how such a ridiculous figure as Trump ever came to be so powerful and feared. He is no longer powerful, and gradually he is no longer feared. As of late, he's taken to channeling Adolf Hitler, promising to be a monstrous tyrant if he's re-elected. That's certainly creating outrage, but it's just Trump, dialing it up to 11 so he can stay in the spotlight.
Oh, in yet another surprise for this last week, the meme #TrumpSmells went totally viral, with comparisons of Trump to landfills, dirty diapers, and so on. It appears that this really got to him. On another front Clay Bennett, cartoonist with the CHATTANOOGA TIMES -- I follow him on X/Twitter and have chatted with him a tiny bit -- had a recent cartoon of a boy holding a McDonald's box and Trump holding a big bag of McD's hamburgers, labeled:
boy: HAPPY MEAL trump: BITTER, ANGRY, & HATEFUL MEAL
* Back in World War II, Grumman carrier-based combat aircraft -- like the Wildcat, Hellcat, and Avenger -- used wing folding so they could fit more conveniently on the carrier. Other manufacturers simply hinged their wings straight up, but that could lead to a height problem. Grumman took a different approach, rotating a wing at the hinge so it folded back flat alongside the fuselage.
As reported in an article from NEWATLAS.com, ("Pterodyamics Scales Up Its Remarkable Dihedral Transwing eVTOL" by Loz Blain, 8 May 2023), PteroDynamics -- a startup out of Colorado Springs, Colorado -- has taken a page from the Grumman playbook with the "Transwing" electric vertical take-off / landing (eVTOL) drone. The Transwing has a low-mounted wing and a vee tail, with two electric motors driving props on each wing, for a total of four. It also has actuators on the rear fuselage that connect with rods to the fuselage -- with the actuators pulling the wings back along the fuselage, allowing the drone to land straight down, coming to rest on the ends of the engine housings, and similarly take back off again. Once in flight, the actuators tilt the wings back out again. Surprisingly, the transition between modes seems, from videos, to be perfectly smooth.
Pterodynamics' current X-P4 prototype has a 4-meter (13.1-foot) wingspan, and a fuselage about 2 meters (6.6 feet) long. It uses only the inboard props in forward flight, with the props on the outboard motors snapping back to eliminate drag. It's been tested by the US Navy as a ship-to-shore logistics platform, ferrying a small cargo internally. Pterodynamics envisions larger members of the family, up to an air taxi with a capacity of ten passengers.
* Pakistan has an inclination to throw its civilian leaders into jail, which is what happened to former Prime Minister Imran Khan. He was locked up in August 2023 on charges of leaking classified documents; Khan says he was arrested to keep him from running in the general election in early 2024.
OK, nasty as this is, it's business as usual in Pakistan, and not all that noteworthy. What was noteworthy was that his supporters took some rough notes written by Khan and handed off by his lawyers to produce an AI-generated video speech starring Khan.
This was the sort of thing that doesn't seem as startling in hindsight. The technology is clearly there, it's just a new use of it. It leads to the interesting question: What if Donald Trump checks out, and his stooges continue his campaign with an AI-generated animation? That would be definitely novel, but I don't think it would accomplish much for them. They might as well haul around a Disney animatronic robot, or a wax dummy.
On another unusual front in the AI revolution, X/Twitter has introduced their own AI chatbot named "Grok", which has received good press. However, the firm's owner, Elon Musk, is not completely happy with it, because when it's asked, say: "Are vaccines safe?" -- it answers along the lines of: "All validated medical research shows they are safe." Musk, confronted with the liberal bias of reality, is considering changes.
* Anyway, AI is the future, leaving the past in the dust as we grow older. A list of things to remind us of aging has been making the rounds, with a point assigned to each thing on the list we've done:
used a rotary phone used a floppy disk used a typewriter taken pictures with a film camera listened to music on a CD owned a walkman listened to music on a boombox watched a movie on VHS rented a movie from Blockbusters learned cursive sent or received a fax accessed the internet via dial-up used a phone book used an encyclopedia sent a postcard used a paper map owned a dictionary owned a thesaurus written a check uncurled a telephone cord rewind a cassette tape using a pencil
Yes, I've done them all, and a few of them I still do on occasions. I print out paper maps when I plan for travel, because I don't like to drive and fumble with a phone while I'm doing it. However, I use Google Maps to get a street view of where I'm going to help navigate.
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