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 The joys of international commerce (Source: cnn.com) The Greatest Game is playing out slowly in the Middle East, with the U.S. Navy reportedly hitting three Iranian oil tankers last week, after Iran had attempted an attack on two of their ships. This had the Iranian side then claim to have targeted six vessels, with the latest exchange from several days ago reportedly having Iran respond to a fresh American strike on five ships with ten of their own - to a blanket denial by CENTCOM. This had amateur mathematicians attempt to work out whether a geometric series* was in play, and how long it would take for the barely over nine thousand tankers available globally, to be chewed through if so. And while other world leaders might have gone golfing or simply slacked off at home on Labour Day, the indefatigable and incomparably high-energy GEOTUS TRUMP would keep up his marathon improv insult comedy set through the holiday, and I gotta admit that I quite liked his Green Lantern impersonation** that used the ring's powers more creatively than the DC Comics original would have. He then drew a warm response from multiple countries such as Iceland, Mexico and Cuba after posting a map showing them as part of the American family; seeing as this is a man who got a whole ocean named after his East Coast casinos, though, I'm not betting against him. Certainly, one can hardly recall another personage as colourful as TRUMP, who would then declare that he had been carried away from Ground Zero by firefighters - this may be a little unfair given how popular a movie on similar tall tales by a distant cousin had been, and that guy couldn't even pronounce his last name correctly! As of now, TRUMP has tentatively extended his performance until after the November midterms, and while foils such as Krugman have decried rising gas prices, it might be considered that all this may fall under the GOD-EMPEROR's strategy - including an inexplicable-sounding increase in U.S. gasoline stockpiles following delayed reporting by the US Energy Information Administration, as hinted. But TRUMP can hardly be blamed for the delay, given how slow other nations have been to commit; South Korea's naval force commitment is being slow-walked from how they have just dispatched a fact-finding team, but one figures that GEOTUS is entirely willing to wait them - and their other "allies" - out. On this, he has just declined a request for military action against the Houthis by the Saudi crown prince, likely because he wants them personally involved in the Team Blue-Team Red conflict (with Iran directly threatening South Korea were they to enter Hormuz), much as Europe is being lured into (and by) Ukraine... $$$ For A $$  Aren't we on the same Team, why so insensitive? (Source: google.com, ref. the BBC and CNBC) And while GEOTUS TRUMP has taken a leaf out of the Singaporean political playbook by offering US$5000 in cold, hard cash (and not CDC vouchers) to every citizen were his party to win said midterms, our local government has just announced a one-off increment of up to 9% for political appointment holders, if with a somewhat more generous salary benchmark possibly to take effect in the future. This came immediately after a debate in Parliament on the subject (after it got put off back in June), and stands testament to the sheer efficiency of our system (when those in charge want something to happen, anyway) This was ripe for international attention given that the previous (downwards) adjustment had been some fifteen years back, with our Prime Minister's new recommended annual take of S$3.6 million (up from S$2.2 million) drawing its share of both admiring and derisive comments. This is by the way pegged to twice the salary of an entry-level minister (now S$1.8 million), with mayors and (senior) parliamentary secretaries at the bottom of this list with a 0.45 ratio (S$810k a year) Here, I would like to apologize for a previous misconception, where it was implied that a minister would collect a separate salary for each of multiple portfolios; it was explicitly clarified that political appointment holders would get only one (assumed the higher) salary package. That said, typical bonuses come close to ten months of variable pay, if still coming under the top tax bracket of 24% for chargeable income above a million dollars - which implies that a local Cabinet Minister would (soon) expect to take home slightly over S$2 million annually.  Doesn't seem like a big change, when put like this (Source: r/SingaporeRaw) The domestic response online has expectedly not been overly positive, largely centering around the perceived poor timing of the increment given a growing income and wealth gap (i.e. a "K-shaped economy"), as well as the (in)appropriateness of benchmarking ministers' salaries to the median income of the top 1000 highest-earning citizens***, if with a 40% discount to reflect the ethos of public service. This would be revisited by various Members of Parliament, with well-worn suggestions to instead peg the salaries to the median income (currently about S$4000) or similar metrics, to better reflect the common man. Our PM has taken the lead by donating his full salary increase for the next five years (while not expecting**** the others to do the same, ahem), but his claim that the government did not intend to use higher pay to attract new candidates was apparently not readily accepted by netizens, some of whom brought up the usual comparison with conscription (National Service), where duty (and piddly allowances) had been sold as priceless (and which may have contributed to Singaporeans being comfortably at the bottom of a recent YouGov/IPSOS survey that had only 36% willing to defend the country) From another perspective, however, it can reasonably be argued that Cabinet Ministers (and Permanent Secretaries) do have a job scope comparable to CEOs of medium-to-large commercial enterprises, with most of them responsible for thousands of subordinates; seen in this light, the better question may be why politicians in other countries aren't being paid more, if a high level of competency is expected. The absolute cost is actually not that great (about S$5 million extra annually, given that there are just 16 ministers, 10 of them moreover at the baseline grade, four parliamentary secretaries and five mayors), all the more when compared to say the NBA (median salary of S$7.6 million, for 482 players) On this, the WP chief would raise popular queries on the need for so many mayors, and it was probably not the best time for the Speaker to be caught sleeping, but he does have some of my sympathy in this case, given that he was at least present! [*2,3,6,8,10 does have multiple sequences in The On-line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (OEIS), so we may need to wait a while more for clarity here.] [**Haters will say that it's A.I. generated, like they did for the Hamster vs. Ngannou MMA contest, which ended by chokeout after a knee takedown. Then again, had I not witnessed it in person, I probably wouldn't have believed it either.] [***By my understanding, this would be equivalent to the average salary of the 500th and 501st-highest earners, who might be under some stress if they knew who they were!] [****The GOD-EMPEROR TRUMP donates his full salary, of course, while transparently offering early access to his wisdom for a suitable fee, instead of burdening the taxpayer.] [To be continued...]
 The Straits (Source: straitstimes.com) The GOD-EMPEROR TRUMP has been diligently working on his in-game entertainment as mentioned recently, with his latest stand-up (ok, usually sit-down) comedy routine including the (foreshadowed) proposal to rename the Strait of Hormuz after himself. While this brought recriminations from those not in on the joke, such as Carney and Sanders, the more important critique might be on the lack of originality - but then again, coming up with new material is hardly an easy job even for one as talented as TRUMP, as the writers' guild might attest to, especially with all those weeks of dead air to fill before Team Red rivals - and some "allies" - get squeezed, just as planned. On this, our Prime Minister may well be in the know too, as he performed The Beatles' Let It Be on the guitar with the Thai premier taking the vocals, at their retreat in Bangkok - certainly a fitting counterpoint to Nevermind. Whether the sentiment in the lyrics will be acknowledged by the Emperors of the East and West may be another matter, with Team Blue European Union officially signing on to the Holy Caesar's Operation Economic Outcast against Iran. Amerika's strategic energy gambit looks to be on, with close Imperial ally Argentina bringing oil into their Falkland Islands claim, alongside South Korea reportedly on the brink of contributing military assets to the Iran All this had of course been covered back in May, when it was suggested that getting Amercian "allies" to shed some blood as a form of "head tax", was at least a secondary objective for the ongoing Hormuz affair. Assuredly, selling a joint military offensive in partnership with Imperial Amerika will hardly be easy, especially for their coddled and snooty European cousins, but one supposes that oil reserves actually running dry may prove to be an exceedingly persuasive argument. Going from the vibes, the American God of War is simply getting tired of holier-than-thou "partners" eye-powering as the U.S. enacts at least partly mutually-beneficial enforcement actions, and it appears to be coming to: if one wants a chicken in the pot, they had better be ready to help wring a few necks themselves.  For the non-vegetarians, it's okay if somebody else does the killing (and clean-up, and packaging) on your behalf then? (Source: mangatown.com) That said, it might still be a little more reassuring had Bessent not openly blamed Ukraine for attacking Russian oil refineries and thus contributing to rising oil prices - which does leave Amerika with the cleaner hands for once. With his popularity apparently waning, Zelensky has been reduced to publicizing the blowing up of a Coca-Cola production plant in Kyiv in an effort to regain American support, but that is perhaps only a fate to be expected for proxy participants in The Greatest Game; the wrangle over redirecting frozen Russian funds to Ukraine remains deadlocked within the European Union too, likely because they know well what Game is being played here. Quickly reviewing the fast-changing Game state, Putin has put his own spin on the right to bear harms, as he used the analogy of orcas (a.k.a. killer whales) dismembering (polar) bears in explaining current geopolitics to students, in an only-too-obvious reference to Team Blue naval power. Over in the Middle Eastern theatre, Netanyahu has confirmed that Israel is working towards overthrowing the Iranian regime - so zero change there - even as Iran's top negotiator has taken to calling the United States just "Satan", downgraded from "Great Satan", which is how one suspects that they are getting a bit miffed. Oman reportedly rejecting their framework for Hormuz tolls may have contributed to that, in turn probably partly due to TRUMP's natural talent for extremely persuasive negotiation. Back home, there has been a timely reminder that the majority of the local air force's latest fighter jet contingent will be kindly hosted in Arkansas, concurrent with an essay in Foreign Affairs by an LKYSPP don on how China is not really that popular - believe us - because balancing between Teams is seriously not easy in this day and age, with SM Lee doing his part in Kazakhstan (whose opportunistic straddling of Pax Silica and WAICO appears unresolved). As for WP leader Pritam Singh, he has displayed some fine political nous with a rendition of perennial Hokkien favourite Ai Piah Jia Eh Yia (i.e. Must 125 Then Can Win), after which his longstanding stance for an English competency test for new migrants may seem more palatable - if still biased against a certain Team Red giant... [To be continued...]
 Or: Line(r) for a Line (Source: axios.com) The implications of TRUMP's strategic masterstroke have not taken long at all to fall into place, with supposed attacks on oil tankers by Iran utilizing mines and projectiles drawing like-for-like retaliation from the U.S. God of War, who has just busted up two IRGC tankers in return. This has had oil prices jump by... two to four percent, which to be frank appears entirely in line with America's declared framework for energy dominance. In probably related developments, the renewed throttling of critical energy shipments comes barely a day after Venezuela's replacement President announced a 25-year energy agreement with Imperial Amerika, soon followed by the White House upping the tenure to 100 years for the seventeen oil fields involved, for a firm partly owned by their Department of War. These numbers are by the way likely not random, from how the best-known 25-year agreement in geopolitics would be the Iran-China Team Red pact from 2021, of which a similar one might have been under negotiation with Maduro in January, before the previous President was briskly transported to America, where he currently resides as a honoured guest in New York. And as for the 100 years, what better way to commemorate President Xi's trademark phrase of "great changes unseen in a century"? 懂王布设得这么周到，怎说也该赏识一番吧？ The suggestive use of numbers should really not be lost on informed statespeople, many of whom are doubtless agonizing as to whether they 125 the latest tariffs; this may include the new Venezuelan President, who is maintaining that the benefits of this "biggest oil deal in world history" with TRUMP are endless, while explicitly insisting that Venezuela retains ultimate sovereignty over the resources. Well, as discussed in January, if you have to say these things, maybe they are in question. Legal scholars have meanwhile protested that the Constitution of Venezuela certainly does not permit century-long contracts, but as a careful reading of said Constitution reveals no provision for the kidnapping of their President(s), one figures that this ship has long sailed (assumed not across the Hormuz) Since the magnitude of GEOTUS's energy coup does not seem to have been fully appreciated, a quick pop quiz may be in order: what country has the largest known oil reserves? Saudi Arabia would be an obvious response, with perhaps some Europeans pointing towards Norway, from the fabled North Sea oil that filled up the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. Texans might not be entirely faulted for guessing the USA, while the other Gulf states may have their fans too. The correct answer is, however, Venezuela:  May explain some of the current pressure on Canada too [N.B. TRUMP had begun by negotiating the price down, as befits an expert.] (Original source: visualcapitalist.com) While it has become popular to downplay the significance of oil as an energy source of late, it remains entirely indispensable especially where the military is concerned (as explicitly raised for China by the Heritage Foundation), before going into the importance of various petroleum byproducts such as plastics and fertilizer. It is further hardly an exaggeration to state that the American hegemony of the Pax Americana had been maintained, if not built, via control over oil - originally established in the 1970s through the petrodollar mechanism, essentially backing the U.S. greenback with energy instead of gold. Major Gulf producers such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait played ball, while those that did not (e.g. Saddam Hussein in 2000 for Iraq, when he switched to the Euro) were summarily made an example of. Now, considering the above, TRUMP sending a message with a video of Team Red Iran's Kharg Island oil hub getting blown up, and Team Red Russia's oil refineries actually being hit by drones from America's Ukrainian proxies, is the hypothesis of America attempting to exert geopolitical Control using a stranglehold on energy flows (as they have arguably been doing all this while), really that much of a stretch?
 In for a penny, in for a [N.B. They, like, simply cut-and-pasted the dollar bill...] (Sources: nytimes.com, r/askmusic) In news from the Middle East, Iran appears to be holding out an olive branch with a billboard proclaiming "Great Victory!" for GEOTUS TRUMP in Tehran, in which they offered Caesar a whole dollar despite his declining to offer a dime while claiming the Strait of Hormuz as American territory*, as explained before. Granted, while it is only proper for Emperors to rename places (and TRUMP isn't even doing it for himself, unlike the examples of Constantinople, Augsburg, Orléans etc.), it might be considered to moderate the trend before everything gets called "America", as with the former Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario. Now with tongue slightly out of cheek, it can be noted that the Iranian billboard follows in their established propaganda tradition of Western cultural appropriation, recalling the previous well-researched Lord of the Rings reference in April. The inspiration for the latest effort is Nirvana's generational Nevermind album from 1991 (whose hit single "Smells Like Teen Spirit" had coincidentally just been referenced here). The baby on the much-parodied album art has by the way just lost his lawsuit in the U.S. over the inadvertent exposure, and we are grateful to Iran for their interpretation in sparing undue envy. And now, two questions. Firstly, why the adaptation of Western cultural icons? Iran has after all been a unitary Islamic theocracy ever since their 1979 revolution, extending to the criminalization of Western music, and indeed all musical instruments on (state-controlled) television. That said, the embargo appears to be hardly absolute, and there are indications that some private and underground consumption of Western (and Asian etc.) pop culture does take place (as happened across the Iron Curtain, during the First Cold War too) However, the apparent contradiction here is: although one figures the Iranian administrators to know that at least some of their citizens are perusing banned media, it is not clear as to why they would reference said media in official propaganda, since the context should be lost on most. Is this, then, a subtle warning to pro-Team Blue supporters (who would be expected to recognize the provenance), some of whom are being executed for their part in earlier protests? A thumbing of the nose at Team Blue members? Or even some sort of cheeky signal indicating latent Team Blue influence, in the Iranian ranks?  At least there's already a Gulf of America [N.B. As predicted here, the sucker is being discovered.] (Source: wionews.com) Leaving that aside, the second question, which relates to the Strait of Hormuz (America?). Following up on previous analyses, Great America and Iran are both apparently not on talking terms after TRUMP suggested that they were facing one last chance before (another) decapitation earlier this month, with honest broker Oman also catching some flak after possibly leaning a little too much to the Iranian side. Thankfully, this "head for an eye" has moderated to an economic assault, as hinted here recently, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent just announcing Operation Economic Outcast (a.k.a. Economic D-Day) towards the complete (economic) isolation of Iran - fresh off his own Bondesque subterfuge towards corralling American debt. Oh yes, the question. Here goes: a large part of why GOD-EMPEROR TRUMP's attack on Iran had been considered ill-considered by the mainstream media and Internet layabouts, had been because it was expected to precipitate an oil crisis akin to that of the 1970s, when a mostly-Arabic OPEC embargo had catapulted the price of oil nearly threefold. Despite all the doom-mongering on r/oil and other subreddits, however, crude oil benchmark prices have remained blissfully unperturbed after a brief post-decapitation spike, with current WTI futures at about US$83, or not really that different from typical levels over the past years, especially after factoring in inflation. How then has the oil price remained so stable, despite the Hormuz blockade cutting off a fifth of global supply for months? On this, the standard answer has been (oil) demand destruction (i.e. consumers are using less oil), together with countries dipping heavily into their (strategic) reserves, with a special mention to China for voluntarily slashing their (considerable) purchases by perhaps a quarter or more for whatever (potentially partly-altruistic) reasons. This by the way comes alongside Bessent requesting China to cooperate on his Operation Economic Outcast against BRICS Team Red partner Iran, to which China has quite obviously firmly rejected - which means that Team Red Iran should be able to access supplies from China, Russia and others, for the foreseeable future. Personally, all of this makes a lot more sense when viewed under the framework of The Greatest Game (i.e. Cold War II), with America's latest move being towards binding China into deeper - and more significantly, security - entanglements while defining the terms of engagement (i.e. who is on which team)  Will this finally be enough to force China's hand? (Source: manhuagui.com) And before one rejects this framing out of hand, it might be considered as to whether the current AI blocs (Pax Silica & WAICO) having almost zero overlap across their seventy-odd members in total, is really just a coincidence. The main exception has been revealed to be Kazakhstan, who have repeated basically the same arguments projected in our post on the topic: "...obviously American tech companies offer cutting-edge AI chips and AI models. China, in turn, offers open-source models that are significantly cheaper than American ones. And we would like to have access to both". And while Beijing is promoting WAICO as inclusive (with the costs for bloc-splitting borne by America in this sphere), it is doubtful as to whether BRICS will ever include (core) Team Blue nations, from how they have been prevented from even attending BRICS summits. Finally, while there has been much screeching of late as to American strategic reserves sinking towards their operational minimums, it could be recognized that governments are not bound to be fully honest, especially on these matters. One supposes that Starlink and the CIA's HUMINT assets may have been very busy analyzing how China has been dealing with their energy shortfall thus far - especially pertaining to new activity and convoy movements to and from possible oil storage sites - and before one insists that TRUMP has no strategy, it might be considered as to whether January's Operation Absolute Resolve towards accessing Venezuela's 65 billion barrels of oil reserves (whilst denying them to Team Red), may or may not have any relation to the energy control gambit being played out now. And if so, given that the GOD-EMPEROR reportedly does not play any musical instrument - unlike say Clinton with his saxophone, or Nixon with the piano - it is then only considerate for him to provide some in-game entertainment in his own fashion, while the proceedings unwind... 看来底牌还没有被揭开，可能还需要一些时间，敬请原谅！ [To be continued...]
 Thanks for the tepid but non-misogynistic porridge! [N.B. He's not that type of man!] (Source: GPT Image 2) In a viral TikTok thought experiment and meme from a couple of years back, the question was posed as to whether females should prefer to randomly encounter a man or a bear* in the woods. Seven of eight women from the original interview chose the bear, which was reportedly also the (socially-approved?) majority opinion in following surveys, including locally. While there may be a joke on average running speeds by gender to be gotten out of this, this smells like more of the modern programmatic gaslighting being force-fed to (male) victims by the media at large these days, from how the on-ground reality is the (Ukrainian) man being shameforced into fighting the (Russian) bear instead (and sadly probably not winning, from how ridiculous the propaganda on that end is getting) But that is not the main thrust of today's post, which is on the right - and indeed responsibility - of (citizen) journalists to engage on controversial topics, and if necessary, progulmate unpopular perspectives. The cancel-happy wokist trend in recent times has been to regard (unfashionable) questions as violence, an attitude that surely leaves important issues entirely unaddressed, or only with the blandest of platitudes. To give a concrete example, consider the analysis on Workers' Party opposition leader Pritam Singh, back from June. The first observation offered was on how problematic a linking of a Teochew-language film to (probably existent) anti-Indian sentiments was, given how he had won his position in large part due to the willingness of a key Teochew constituency to forego incumbent benefits; it is an open question as to whether he could have gotten into Parliament with say the SDP instead, which is by the way not a knock on his effort and credentials. Now, one could of course simply dodge the topic - that would be the "safest" thing to do. However, I figured that it was a relatively original and relevant point, which is why it was made here. Certainly, had the roles been reversed and a Chinese politician raised Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani as an example of pro-Bharat propaganda in response to perceived Sinophobia - while being elected by a Hindu-majority voting base - he might very possibly come in for some criticism from his electorate too. And if it is a valid concern, would it not be more considerate for those involved to be at least made aware of it? Fortunately for the Workers' Party chief, the usual incumbent bullying has apparently not diminished his support in Aljunied yet, from how residents held a surprise fiftieth birthday party for him - which may yet be copied by PAP MPs from the experience of his previous public transport coup. Perhaps more significantly, he had retained his post as party secretary-general before that, which his disbarment as a lawyer for lying under oath in the Raeesah Khan saga should not affect. Well, as commented then, one had to facepalm at how utterly unnecessary her fabrication of a police officer making inappropriate comments about an assault victim was; had she simply asserted that the victim thought she would have been safer with a bear, there would have been no (police)man for the incumbents to check up on! Yeah, alright, so maybe bears are safer, man. [*Approximately equal chances for the temperate forest biome, interpreting "DM Special" as human.]
 Only Team Blue cultures represented [N.B. Local nostalgia is dangerous because it could be popular!] (Source: r/singapore) In an apropos follow-up from the previous posts, a local secondary school has showcased their students' AI-powered remixes of familiar masterpieces, though it was readily noted that the underlying artworks were nearly-wholly Western (with the exception of an apparently-unchanged Great Wave off This comes as the usual National Day flypast with our Lockheed and Boeing military aircraft was omitted from the 61st edition celebrations, though this was likely just due to the reduced visibility from the partially-enclosed stadium venue as was the case a decade ago, and not due to any "kill switch", which would be enforced by control over maintenance anyway. One's Greatest Game team colour may be having a heightened impact on what hardware they are allowed to access, as Malaysia found out a couple of months back when Norway unilaterally cancelled their delivery of some naval strike missiles, eight years into the contract; this had Malaysian PM Anwar echo local ministers, in openly recognizing that "might now makes right". The sorting into teams thereof as hinted at in end-July is by the way being formalized by Team Blue leader America, who have just told their partners (including Singapore, in this context) that they must pick sides in the AI race against China. Surely it doesn't get much clearer that that! Recruitment for both America's Pax Silica and China's WAICO/Pax Sinica has been heating up with the former's "AI Opportunity Statement" getting 35 signatories to WAICO's 38 members, including nine as-yet-unnamed states beyond the 29 who registered in Shanghai. One suspects that at least some of those may be double-dipping, which doesn't look like it will be tolerated by the United States.  They can't be accused of not saying it loud and clear (Source: channelnewsasia.com) One does have to muse at the practical implications of joining either AI Team, given that Meta for one has just announced that it would release the weights for its latest Spark 1.2, along with a lightweight Muse Glimmer family that is set to succeed Llama. This answers in part the issue on the incongruity of America's representative firms maintaining proprietary closed-source models while China's are revealing theirs transparently, but it does leave the question of exclusive benefits to be addressed. The ongoing resource denial on chips and rare earths aside, it is as yet unclear as to why a country would not join Pax Silica (if admitted), while also drawing on cheaper Chinese LLMs and other initiatives, as the Filipino president has apparently hinted. Unless some straight-up ban on usage of China firms' LLMs are imposed, however, the economic consequences with respect to American tech valuations would seem to remain, if with Anthropic for one maintaining a poker face with their projection of US$200 billion in revenue by 2028, up from maybe US$40-odd billion estimated for the year (but don't ask about actual profits yet). A shadow financial tussle may be taking place, as Our Most Successful National Investment Firm is reportedly pumping KOSPI from news that they are planning to invest in Samsung and SK Hynix, alongside Singapore's GDP growth forecast raised to about 5% due to a supposed AI boom. Eh, if the powers that be can propel Musk to be a trillionaire, they can well direct some dollars here (or not) if the stars align... Well, as our esteemed Senior Ministers have taken pains to advise, locals may be too comfortable and conforming, in a rapidly-changing world crying out for unorthodox approaches. The leadership does at least seem to understand TRUMP's probable true tariff intents with their latest caution in seeking lower tariff rates (because frankly I doubt they 125 - or can even credibly do so, without overbalancing into the other team... which I doubt either bloc head would be displeased about, to be explained in the future), with some unexpected bipartisanship from the incumbent Parliament backing an (amended) Workers' Party motion on an inclusive economy. [To be continued...]
And anyway, people die; stars die; universes die. What is any achievement, however great it was, once time itself is dead?" - Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks, in Size Isn't Everything Banks' novel from 1990 describes how a Culture citizen has resigned himself to providing (self-)service by wiping tables in lieu of creating music or plays, likely at least partly from the understanding that the quasi-omniscient AI Minds of the setting could outdo him - without perceptible effort - at any pursuit he wished to attempt anyway. Before expanding on that, some updates on recent posts: on space, a newly-established National Space Agency of Singapore (acronym sharing the same letters as NASA) has targeted a functional operations centre by the middle of next year, with three active satellites under their purview. Singapore's location almost exactly on the equator has long attracted proposals for hosting space elevators, and with materials science having finally (almost?) caught up, hopefully our supposedly cash-flush government might look to steal a march for once. On music, the creator of Emily Howell had analyzed (classical) musical composition in terms of language, concluding that it represented syntax but not semantics, which would appear to admit a reduced degree of complexity compared to text generation (consider Prisencolinensinainciusol, where the lyrics are designed to obey English word-level patterns, such that it infuriatingly sounds like it should be intelligible, but isn't. Then again, this happens with actual English hit songs too) Well, writing's kind of done with too anyway, if posts on social media, and especially professional outlets such as LinkedIn, are anything to go by. It has been observed that decent writing had served as "proof-of-thought" since its inception, from how the quality of a person's jottings tended to reflect his mastery of the subjects being discussed, or at least indicated a certain level of intelligence. None of this is true nowadays, when anybody can just dump a mess of disorganized thoughts onto an LLM, and have the machine tidy and polish it up for them. Humanity's Final Frontier?  Elon Musk was always a funny one [N.B. It's Terminator versus Transformers for Team Red vs. Team Blue!] [N.N.B. China is pushing for T800 to battle Deadpool. I approve.] (Source: youtube.com) Sitting and doomscrolling through an unending stream of supposed AI breakthroughs, it is easy to wonder: what's left for humans? On gross physical achievements, machines have long left us in the dust. Sawe might have gained immortal renown for running some 42km in under two hours, but a long-distance pace of 21km/h would get one cited for road-hogging, what with clunkers and heavy vehicles easily capable of at least thrice that speed. The deadlift world record (510kg) is peanuts to any old warehouse-rated forklift, so on and so forth. But they're not... smart, right? Too bad for the nerds who paid for college, the blue-collar trades are safe! About that, from recent advances in robotic fruit pickers, infrastructure maintenance and surgical assistants - all of which require fine manual dexterity - I wouldn't be too confident of that either, a view that is apparently also held by Moravec (whose famous paradox on the relative difficulty of replicating low-level perception and mobility skills was last referenced here in 2013). The main saving grace for humans, for a while at least, is the cost of robots; why pay thirty grand for Deadpool to grumble while picking strawberries, if one can get some illegal immigrants to do it for like eighteen bucks an hour, before going into how much safer it is to stiff them rather than Deadpool. So okay, graphics artists are kind of hosed from how even governments and banks are going for AI slop, authors are sunk from how an increasing percentage of novels are ghostwritten by AIs, who are literally devouring past titles to remix them... surely there is some field that those smug bots will not be able to defile? Maybe pure mathematics, that most abstract and yet creative of disciplines? Certainly there is no way that those overgrown stochastic parrots could even begin to approach the subject through verbose dissimulation, much less advance it! Uh, bad news here too... Math (Sort Of) Falls  Gary Marcus being a bit of a wet blanket here [N.B. The main thrust is that these solutions are a special case that current LLM-like models happen to be great on. While I'm not sure about that, the accusation of a lack of documentation by OpenAI does seem to hold.] (Source: acm.org) On the first of August, OpenAI leaked and then announced ten novel mathematical discoveries by its new Astra LLM-based reasoning model, alongside formal Lean 4 certificates proving the logic (if not the underlying assumptions, but one figures OpenAI's employees to be competent on that end). All appear to be fairly-longstanding open problems that were well-known to be unsolved by the (human) mathematical community, with the headline result being the third in the list, which is "an explicit construction of a non-sofic group". Some disclosure here before continuing: while I have studied (some) computer science, the more-theoretical and mathy side was not my specialty (nor my strong suit), and thus the following discussion should be considered as by an interested layman*. Wikipedia has done a great job of intimidating the average reader with their description of a sofic group, as "a group whose Cayley graph is an initially subamenable graph" (so, uh, what's a "Cayley graph" and a "subamenable graph"?). One kind soul has attempted an explanation in (slightly) more relatable terms, and the author of a key theorem used in the proof has discussed the main breakthroughs on Mathoverflow, but all this will be skipped given that group theory is typically introduced only in the second year for mathematics majors, and hardly expected knowledge for college graduates. The point to be made here then is: there were a bunch of very difficult math problems, that all of humanity's cleverest mathematicians together were unable to solve (as otherwise, they would probably have published it for tenure and bragging rights, or simply because it was the done thing to do). However, some soulless LLM came along and solved them - and not only that, for a mere US$2000 in token costs. Now, pure math may be a particularly parsimonious field given the lack of (expensive) experiments, but this appeared to be of little consolation to the wider math community, who had by the way just come together to formulate a Leiden Declaration on AI and Math. Those mathematicians that did comment on the development were generally... not happy at all. The most-disseminated of these was perhaps Kirwin Hampshire's The Dark Night of Mathematics, which ominously begins with "I am going insane". In it, he predicts that there is nothing to be done about (better and better) LLMs scooping proofs left and right, and that if humans are to continue doing math, it would essentially be as a non-serious hobby (akin to wiping tables?). In response, Noah Smith has consoled that academic mathematicians may very well keep their jobs because they're, well, incredibly cheap (commanding a salary of US$5 billion per year in total, or less than 1% of a downtrodden Elon Musk), the AI discoveries will still be interesting to humans (who would otherwise not enjoy them) - and what's wrong with having hobbies**? [*This would translate into a 1 or 1.5 (out of 5) on the standard computer science conference reviewing confidence scale, which roughly translates into "this is my best-effort guess out of obligation, but if somebody else comes along saying that he knows what he's talking about, you might want to listen to him instead". Thankfully, actual reviews tend to get a 4 (or 3 sometimes) from sensible assignments, though from how some major conferences are considering LLM assistance, they might not be required for much longer either. ] [**Regarding this in particular, it was slightly surprising to realize that (AI) chess was barely discussed in either article, with Smith only mentioning it en passant and Hampshire addressing it from the comments section. It really doesn't feel all that long ago that AlphaZero defeating Lee Sedol was big news, with international chess effectively conceded to the computer(s) even before that. Heck - Magnus Carlsen, almost certainly the best grandmaster ever to live, can't beat his own smartphone app. Given the proliferation of chess literature, I'm just waiting for LLMs to commentate on their own games.]
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