|
| |
|
|
|
|
TCHS 4O 2000 [4o's nonsense] alvinny [2] - csq - edchong jenming - joseph - law meepok - mingqi - pea pengkian [2] - qwergopot - woof xinghao - zhengyu HCJC 01S60 [understated sixzero] andy - edwin - jack jiaqi - peter - rex serena SAF 21SA khenghui - jiaming - jinrui [2] ritchie - vicknesh - zhenhao Others Lwei [2] - shaowei - website links - Alien Loves Predator BloggerSG Cute Overload! Cyanide and Happiness Daily Bunny Hamleto Hattrick Magic: The Gathering The Onion The Order of the Stick Perry Bible Fellowship PvP Online Soccernet Sluggy Freelance The Students' Sketchpad Talk Rock Talking Cock.com Tom the Dancing Bug Wikipedia Wulffmorgenthaler       |
|
bert's blog v1.21 Powered by glolg Programmed with Perl 5.6.1 on Apache/1.3.27 (Red Hat Linux) best viewed at 1024 x 768 resolution on Internet Explorer 6.0+ or Mozilla Firefox 1.5+ today's page views: 197 (65 mobile) all-time page views: 3861671 most viewed entry: 18739 views most commented entry: 14 comments number of entries: 1287 page created Thu Sep 3, 2026 09:46:50 |
|
- tagcloud - academics [70] art [8] changelog [49] current events [36] cute stuff [12] gaming [11] music [8] outings [16] philosophy [10] poetry [4] programming [15] rants [5] reviews [8] sport [37] travel [19] work [3] miscellaneous [75] |
|
- category tags - academics art changelog current events cute stuff gaming miscellaneous music outings philosophy poetry programming rants reviews sport travel work tags in total: 386 |
| ||
|
 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 price 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.]
 What would the real Monet have thought of this? [N.B. That said, he did supposedly paint some "slop" for money too.] (Source: i.redd.it) Several months ago, a delightful troll posted an image claimed to be AI-generated in the style of epochal French Impressionist Claude Monet on X, and requested other users to roast it. The offer was duly taken up by hundreds of eager commentators, who pointed out a general lack of coherence and an absence of emotion and tranquility, with one critic pronouncing that it "looks exactly like somebody trying to replicate the style and achieving like 20% of it" - with these being the kinder posts. The twist is that the image was of a real Monet from 1915, and possibly worth upwards of US$60 million, for those interested in that sort of thing. This prank is of course just the latest in a long string of episodes demonstrating discrimination against AI agents, though generative AI art has definitely come a long way since our brief coverage of DeepDaze in 2021, which was contrasted against Midjourney in early 2022. The scene has come a very long way since these early examples, though it should be noted that (an admittedly human-refined) AI artwork by Midjourney had already won a Colorado fine arts competition back then. One daresays high-quality image generation to have become fully commoditized since (with support from the increasing volume of GPT Image 2 illustrations featured on this blog)  But all ASEAN what, kawan kawan? (Original source: channelnewsasia.com) As another example of the penetration of AI imagery to the general populace, there has been a proliferation of AI-generated graphics in the run-up to our upcoming National Day, the most prominent gaffe of which was perhaps the AI model failing to render the crescent moon and stars on the reverse of the Singapore national flag on one banner, and thus transforming it into the Indonesian bicolour (with the crescent moon apparently representing Islam, and the stars inspired by the People's Republic of China). As kind of expected, the relevant Community Club HR attributed the mistake to their senior citizen volunteers rather than issue a simple apology for the oversight, which brought netizen queries as to whether the head honchos would claim the credit were the banner to be praised for its aesthetics. A second mistake would have the crescent moon and stars present on the reverse, but now facing the same (wrong) way, though this appears to be a botched Photoshop job after the first error broke. That said, this may reflect a certain not-irrational basis of reasoning behind the AI model used for the above - how would an AI know what is supposed to be on the other side of an object, in this case a flag? One could not help but pose the question to the latest and greatest GPT Image 2, which successfully generated the correct reverse image despite my sloppy grammar - so maybe the lesson here is to use the newest AI models where available...  Please pay for GPT subscription hor [Embiggen!] [N.B. Not all flags welcome for display here, note.] (Source: GPT Image 2) Switching from image-based art to music, there has been a parallel trend with AI-generated songs being soundly thrashed on Reddit, if with a few more-honest and self-aware contributors willing to admit that they can no longer be certain of discerning such AI tunes from human ones. This too goes a long way back, at least to the late professor of music David Cope's EMI program from 2001, which was later developed (and anthropomorphized) into Emily Howell, a self-learning computer program that was able to incorporate textual feedback into refining its work. One of Emily's compositions would be praised by a visiting professor as "one of the most beautiful pieces he had heard in a long time" back around 2009, only for the same worthy to deride it as having "no guts, no emotion, no soul" once he learnt that it was by an AI - which he had known all along, obviously! AI in music has improved greatly since then too, with entire artistes - inclusive of lyrics, tunes, album art and even the persona - capable of being generated. Synthetic anime-style idols have been around for awhile, from Gorillaz on MTV to Hatsune Miku and now KPop Demon Hunters, though these did have actual human singers providing the vocals. This may not be the case for the latest crop of (AI?) stars, however, with serious doubts as to whether Spotify Top 50 jazz singer Sienna Rose is an AI bot or not - not least due to her prodigious output of eight albums in a year. The human competition isn't exactly making it very hard either, given how popular song lyrics have apparently been getting simpler and more repetitive, if with some concerns over the sampling methodology of the study. Guy clearly spent decades in the prairie to cultivate this country soul [N.B. Nah just kidding, it's 100% AI.] Sure the lyrics might not exactly be earth-shattering, but the uncomfortable realisation is increasingly that AI-generated music is now more than "good enough", in the sense of being at least as good as the median (human) offering on streaming platforms. The European Union's implementation of AI transparency laws requiring chatbots to identify themselves - coming alongside China's latest ban on them posing as romantic partners and relatives - should then be recognized as the final word on whether the Turing test has been passed; it has, and not only that, it is simply the new normal. [To be continued...]
 Closing the trade balance through modern economics (Source: nypost.com) As projected here in late June, the supposed sixty-day ceasefire under the Islamabad Memorandum barely lasted a fortnight, with it practically being over some time before GOD-EMPEROR TRUMP declared so on the eighth of July. Though the proximate cause was Iran attacking vessels traversing the Strait of Hormuz without their permission - including at least one Singapore-flagged cargo ship - the ill-fated MoU had nearly all its fourteen terms at least bent before that. Beginning with the much-disparaged US$300 billion reconstruction fund (possibly the most obvious troll that TRUMP has made as POTUS), the Gulf states would disavow any knowledge just a few days later, with Rubio confirming that no discussion had been done on the topic. Vice-President Vance would then publicly admit that the MoU was simply a tactical break to refill oil (and maybe other) reserves, about which we can honestly evince little surprise. This would have all of Iran's state bodies declare a week or so back that the U.S. could not be trusted - a sentiment surely largely reciprocated in Washington - and on this, both parties may well be right. The new (and yet unseen) Iranian supreme leader would further declare TRUMP's signature "utterly worthless", though seeing as it will be appearing on American banknotes, may be a considerate move towards calibration.  Look... what else did you expect?? (Source: GPT Image 2) With the collapse of the ceasefire, much of the action has returned to controlling the Hormuz as covered in their Doha talks, with Iran adamant on their right to effectively charge a toll, if possibly under some other name or contrivance. The U.S. side has proposed several counteroffers while maintaining the illegality of tolls on international waterways, if with TRUMP reviving some old trolling with his suggestion of a 20% toll by America. There were also reports of a US$6 billion bribe for Iran to relinquish control, but one sort of understands why Iran may be wary of such unenforceable promises. Oman, caught between the two powers, has apparently been swinging from one side to the other trying to play honest broker, seemingly alternating between the U.S. position of no tolls, and the Iranian demand of some fees one way or the other. Their latest Gulf state-backed plan appears to be for "voluntary fees" modelled after the Strait of Malacca setup alongside a two-corridor navigation scheme, which seems an attempt at saving some face for both sides (and Malacca-adjacent countries who had stuck their neck out); ideally, ships would be able to (possibly) pay some fees - officially unrelated to the act of transiting - to Iran, with America still being able to claim that they had prevented any (mandatory) fees from being imposed. Unfortunately, this arrangement appears unlikely to work, beginning with the realisation that it would necessarily formally acknowledge an Iranian-controlled channel. Once this is codified, there is little to prevent Iran or their proxies from (literally) undermining the Omani half, which would leave vessels with no choice but to use the now-recognized Irani corridor. From there, it is frankly not that large a leap to compulsory voluntary fees, as some European nations have figured, given that the strait is not going anywhere fast.  And we have a standoff [N.B. Still waiting patiently for Europe to get involved...] (Source: GPT Image 2) As it stands, America has reinstated their naval blockade of Iran from mid-July, after media linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps argued that they had no choice but to officially go nuclear; more-concrete preemptive assaults on U.S. bases in Jordan have had the American God of War pledging to "beat the f**king shit out of them", which actually comes as something of a relief given their Secretary of State's assertion of taking "a head for an eye", which recall had been foretold as TRUMP's true message sent by his Liberation Day tariffs early last year: "I am The King, My Word is Law, Those That Deny It Stand Against Me, And I Will Have Their Heads". Dear sirs, how many heads would it take, before you would concur on this point? Thankfully, GEOTUS's Great Fauchard of Swift Decapitation +2 has not had its smile visited on any major unfortunates since the removals of Maduro and Khamenei some months back, with Cuba (newly accused of being "The Capital of 21st Century Communism" by his Department of State, in a perhaps unintended backhanded slight towards Beijing) possibly to undergo what would amount to a mostly-peaceful handover, following a sustained blockade that has seen persistent blackouts and economic paralysis, reportedly resulting in rare riots against local Communist Party offices. The grandson of former President Castro is reportedly ready to negotiate, and one can again only hope for an acceptable compromise yielding minimal additional suffering for the civilians.  Duly noted. (Source: straitstimes.com) Some collateral damage may however have been sustained in another dimension, as our Foreign Minister has just raised to Rubio at an ASEAN meet in Manila. This involves the latest iteration of Amerika's Imperial Tariffs, as now imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). This replaces the temporary 10% global tariffs under Section 122, with new tariffs of either 10% or 12.5%, against sixty countries ostensibly due to using forced labour - Singapore included. On this, let us revisit the framework and explanations applied to the original tariffs from last May. Recall, it was claimed that the specific numbers did not matter, since the primary objective of the edict was to underline America's supremacy towards preserving the current world order, by demanding a symbolic bending of the knee. That intent appears to remain, from how Canada pointedly got whacked with an additional 50% tariff, after being among the very few (including China) to attempt retaliation (i.e. not fully bend the knee) previously... which has not saved them from a 73.5% pea starch tariff courtesy of China either. Offhand, the signal from both bloc leaders has the air of "sure anyone is free to be 'sovereign' and 'independent'... but enjoy being on your own then, buddy!" The sorting into teams thereof should take some time to play out, so consider next the meaning of the tariff bands, with a distinction between 15% and 20% suggested last July. The tiers have been refined to 10% versus 12.5% doubtless after careful consideration by the American powerbrokers, and again it might be recognized that there is probably an insignificant difference between those two figures, in an economic sense. Indeed, the official story by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is that the 10% figure is for those that have made commitments to address forced labour, and the 12.5% figure is for those that have not; however, given that the definition of forced labour appears broad enough that there is essentially no way to avoid it as defined - as comprehensively argued by our Ministry of Trade and Industry - one figures that not the real intent here.  It was always going to come to this... [N.B. Or not, given that TRUMP has just banned China's humanoid robots.] (Source: Google Nano Banana) Well, given that the analysis provided here from last year did appear to mostly-accurately describe the tariff gambit, please do allow for another humble interpretation, following consideration of the tier distribution as assigned:  Don't shoot the messenger please [N.B. Itself a throwback to the very first chapter.] (Source: kengan-manga.com)
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Copyright © 2006-2026 GLYS. All Rights Reserved. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
