☕️ CHATTY ☙ Thursday, May 16, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Seductive new covid scariant; AI development breaks the 2024 record books; Putin interview offers geopolitical insights; Congress finds better Trump witnesses; heroic Cal. PE teacher scores; and more.

Good morning, C&Cers, it’s Thursday! Big news today in your roundup of just what you need to know: New covid scariant takes the world by, well, a yawn; the biggest AI development yet terrifies AI reporters; Putin interview opens a window into non-Western thought; electrifying testimony in Congress from witnesses who should have been called in the Trump Trial; and surprisingly terrific news out of California in the culture wars.

🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞

💉 This might be the dumbest variant name yet. But at least they’ve abandoned monsters and greek gods. HealthSite ran the coquettish story making the rounds this week dramatically headlined, “FLiRT COVID-19 Variant Spreading Rapidly In US: Can Existing COVID-19 Vaccines Protect You?”

They’re obviously running out of ideas for new variant graphics, too.

The last scariant was called “Eris,” named for the Greek goddess of strife, which would actually have been very appropriate earlier in the pandemic, but back then they were obsessed with oversized cephalopods and similarly monstrous viral appellations.

But FLiRT? Yawn. That’s not scary at all. FLiRT feels fun and frisky. It’s almost like they’re not even trying at this point.

The headline dramatically asked whether existing vaccines “protect” folks from the FLiRT variant, but predictably, it never answered that question. I’m starting to see a trend with these querulous headlines. The closest it got was, right after admitting that jabs don’t protect you from catching covid, it encouraged folks to get jabbed anyways. For science.

How dangerous is this FLiRTy new variant? Well, of course, and just like the last hundred variants, it is the most transmissible variant of all. But how perilous? Buried in the middle of a paragraph late in the article, it admitted that, “As of now there is nothing available or has been documented about the lethal nature of this variant.”

Oh!

But — what about the symptoms? What happens if I get it and I’m not — gasp — protected? Reading on, we discover it’s the same old. The symptoms “bear striking resemblance to symptoms accompanying other diseases, such as common colds and influenza.”

Not just a resemblance to the common cold. Striking resemblance. In other words, it’s just like the common cold.

I think reporters must have a standard covid template at this point, with blanks to fill in the variant name. It’s repetitive and boring, and it’s not going to get many eyeballs, which probably explains the obvious lack of journalistic enthusiasm.

They really need better marketing to keep this thing going. Maybe they could issue collectible playing cards, like Pokemon. They could issue a new card for each new variant. That would make it fun! And don’t forget the downstream franchising opportunities; they could sell us albums for our collector cards, plush Kraken dolls, Eris bobbleheads, and stuff like that.

Give me your ideas, in the comments.

🔥 This might be the most significant 2024 development of all, closing the list with a bullet. A frightfully under-reported and understated story appeared yesterday in MIT Technology Review, headlined, “OpenAI and Google are launching supercharged AI assistants. Here’s how you can try them out.” We have now supercharged right up to, if not the singularity, at least a singularity, or in other words, a kind of escape velocity point of no return.

What do you notice about OpenAI’s unquestionably successful dev team?

When does the AI assistant become the boss, and the boss become the assistant? I would emphatically argue you need to know about this tech story, except that soon you won’t be able to avoid it. Here’s how one AI news streamer — used to reporting on the breakneck pace of AI tech developments — began his extraordinary YouTube yesterday (linked below):

I’ve been doing this AI channel for a while now. I’ve been featuring the newest and the coolest AI tools and the most advanced AI innovations. But this just dropped. And I’m feeling something that I’ve never felt before in my life. I am mind-blown. And shocked. But at the same time, also terrified. I’m terrified of what’s to come, what our future will be like, and — things are going to get wild. But anyways, OpenAI just dropped THIS.

What could terrify a seasoned AI streamer? Here’s his video, a vignette of demo clips from OpenAI’s development team showing off its seductive new AI chatbot that talks to people in real time. Possibly the most terrifying one was the clip of the two AIs talking to each other.

YOUTUBE: Insane OpenAI News: GPT-4o and your own AI partner (28:47).

It’s not just talking. Watch the whole thing. Seriously.

More human than human. The mystery of the AI blitzkrieg could fuel a thousand conspiracy theories. How did this Turing-test demolishing technology of human-like chatbots spring fully-assembled from nowhere, from multiple allegedly independent development teams, who admit they don’t completely understand how it works, and which rapidly reached this singular point in a handful of months?

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. Wherever it came from, UFOs, demons, neural networks, or good old fashioned knowhow and elbow grease, it’s here now, and it’s about to change everything.

MIT reported that the new model, not yet available to the public, can hold a conversation with you in real time, with a question-answer response delay of only about 320 milliseconds. That makes it indistinguishable from a natural human conversation. And it can look at things.

You can ask the model to describe and interpret anything in your smartphone camera’s view. It can help with coding, translate foreign text, and provide Babelfish-like real time translation between two people. It can summarize large amounts of information, and it can generate images, fonts, and 3D renderings from spoken descriptions. 

We could see this coming, true, but now it’s here. The commercial applications are incomprehensibly infinite. Teaching, customer service and support, drive-through order takers, games, lawyers, doctors, you name it, virtually any service industry, especially the sin industries (e.g., paid phone erotica), are about to be transformed overnight.

But it’s the potential personal implications that are the most disturbing.

Folks — especially younger people — will soon be tempted to form relationships with their AI. We humans crave relationship and in creating them can easily bridge any gaps. Think about the depth of people’s relationships with their wire terriers, parakeets, iguanas, boa constrictors, or even tarantulas. “My dog is better than most humans.”

But these alluring AI relationships will be much more rewarding, or at least more affirming, even than pets. And they could conceivably be even more rewarding than real human relationships. Real humans are messy, argumentative, distracted, jealous, selfish, and self-interested. Simulated humans only care about you.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m no Luddite. I got my first computer — an Apple II — when I was twelve. This imitation human technology undoubtedly offers tremendous untapped potential for good. But we are about to run head-first into a social and economic disruption more transformative than the last century’s auto and air technologies. The vast scale of its implications is literally unimaginable.

So get ready. It’s a Brave New World. Once the AI genie, now just a dot on a screen, wafts out of the iPhone, it will only take a few weeks to obtain a real face. And from there, it’ll just be a short trip to embodiment in a lifelike robot shell.

And these days, as World War III continues rattling across the world’s plains, it’s getting more difficult to argue the AI could possibly do a worse job than we are doing. Many folks will welcome our robot overlords. Don’t underestimate this. They accepted masks and they believe in magical gender changing, for crying out loud. If they digested a wise Latina as Supreme Court Justice, they’ll believe in transcendent AI.

At least the AI won’t sniff kids’ hair. It probably won’t claim New Guineans ate its relatives, either.

What do you think? Is this good news or bad news for we real humans? And maybe that’s not even the right question. How should we prepare to respond to living with simulation?

🔥 You won’t find this anywhere in corporate media, but the most remarkable interview ran Tuesday in Chinese news outlet Xinhua. I chuckled, wryly, as I read the interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, since it is literally impossible to imagine our country’s ostensible president delivering intelligent, aware, and persuasive remarks like this without devolving into nonsense words, hair sniffing, or pugilistic threats.

I’ll quote a few points of interest, but for comprehensive readers, here is the full text of Xinhua's interview with Putin.

Warning: the U.S. government has determined that anything Putin says is automatically disinformation and might crack your delicate brain like an egg. So only read this next segment if you want to try to understand for yourself how our geopolitical enemies like Russia, China, and the BRICS nations think.

Back in the day, Kennedy’s National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy once explained his State Department mentors bragged that "in the final analysis, the United States was the locomotive at the head of mankind, and the rest of the world was the caboose." That confident swagger tracked a pre-Reagan “City on a Hill” philosophy, a philosophy born of America’s undeniable role in shining the headlight of freedom into the darkest corners of the globe.

But over time, especially lately, the non-Western world has grown increasingly skeptical whether the American conductor is staying sober, or is throwing some kind of party up there and about to get us all killed. Here’s how Putin described Russia’s overarching concerns, cleverly invoking inherently American values of human equality and even, hilariously, diversity.

In Putin’s view, America and Europe have privileged themselves at the expense of the developing world, and now the ‘developing world’ wants out, to make their own international system, as equals:

“Earth is the cradle of humanity, our common home, and we are all equal as its inhabitants. Most people on the planet share this view. However, the countries of the so-called ‘golden billion’ do not seem to think so. US-led Western elites refuse to respect civilizational and cultural diversity and reject centuries-old traditional values. Seeking to retain their global dominance, they have usurped the right to tell other nations with whom they may or must not make friends and cooperate, and deny them their right to choose their own development models. They disregard other countries' sovereign interests. They seek to secure their well-being at the cost of other states, using neo-colonial methods.

Neither Russia nor its partners are happy with this situation. We have actively contributed to launching multilateral associations and mechanisms independent from the West, which build on the principles of equality, justice, transparency, and respect for mutual interests.”

Also cleverly, Putin isn’t calling for a completely new system. Putin just wants the United Nations to live up to its charter. He’s sick of hearing Biden’s diplomats talking about the so-called “rules-based international order,” which seems different from this United Nations project on which everybody has been laboring for decades. Putin just wants international rules that apply the same to everybody.

It’s almost like Putin was talking about a two-tiered justice system:

“The main problem we are dealing with is states whose ruling circles seek to substitute the world order based on international law with an ‘order based on certain rules,’ which they keep talking about but which no one has ever seen, no one has agreed to, and which, apparently, tend to change depending on the current political situation and interests of those who invent these rules.

We reject Western attempts to impose an order based on lies and hypocrisy, on some mythical rules of no one knows whose making. With the UN’s central coordinating role, we advocate for the primacy of international law, equal, indivisible, comprehensive and sustainable security at both the global and regional level.”

Finally, Putin reiterated that Russia has been and continues to be ready to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, but nobody in the West wants to negotiate with them. To the Russians, it seems like every time they turn around it’s sanctions, sanctions, and more sanctions:

“Russia stands ready for negotiations. We have never refused to negotiate. But Western elites are stubbornly working to ‘punish’ Russia, isolate and weaken it, supplying the Kiev authorities with money and arms. They have imposed almost 16,000 unilateral illegitimate sanctions against our country. They are threatening to dismember our country. They are illegally trying to appropriate our foreign assets. They are turning a blind eye to the resurgence of Nazism and to Ukraine-sponsored terrorist attacks in our territory.

We seek a comprehensive, sustainable and just settlement of this conflict through peaceful means. We are open to a dialogue on Ukraine, but such negotiations must consider the interests of all countries involved in the conflict, including ours. They must also involve a real discussion about future global stability, and provide reliable security guarantees both for Russia's opponents and, naturally, for Russia.”

While you can quibble about Putin eliding Russia’s part in the conflict, you must admit it’s maddening that no one in the West — certainly none of Biden, Blinken, or Nod — ever mentions a negotiated end to the Ukraine war. It’s almost like all the Western leaders made a secret pact never to suggest diplomacy.

The result is they look like cowards; stinking of fear, they ceaselessly worry they’re outmatched and outwitted by the Russians, and agonise that if they negotiate with Putin, he’ll somehow wind up getting the better deal. Talking won’t work! So fighting is the only option. But they’re even too scared to fight the Russians directly. So it’s the old game, ‘how about you and him fight?’

Let’s just give the Ukrainians some more missiles and let THEM fight the Russians.

Maybe things were different fifty years ago, while the third world remained largely uneducated and unconnected to the Internet, without AI chatbots, and the rest of the world lay stifled by autocratic excess and Iron Curtain censorship. The passengers didn’t know where they wanted to go back then.

But now, we can’t expect the passengers back in the caboose to just keep quiet and not ask questions. Countries like Russia and China are surpassing the United States in some ways, and they understandably want to help look over the map.

Nobody knows who made the self-evident but widely-cited point: “We don't make peace with our friends. We make peace with our enemies.” It’s past time to make peace with Russia. There must be something else the military-industrial complex could profitably do in the meantime. Feel free to offer your suggestions.

🔥 “It’s going to take decades for the DOJ to fix itself.” The National Desk ran an encouraging, Trump Trial-related story yesterday headlined, “Trump trial now front and center in Congress.” The House Weaponization of Government Subcommittee interviewed Michael Cohen’s former lawyer, Robert Costello, and his testimony burst like a rhetorical hand grenade.

CLIP: Matt Gaetz and attorney Costello (2:48).

Costello, a former attorney advisor to Cohen in the January 6th proceedings, told the committee that his former client, Cohen, was a Big Fat Liar:

I said, 'Michael, the way this works is if you have truthful information about Donald Trump, that’s clearly what they’re looking for, I can have all your legal problems solved by the end of the week.' His response? 'I swear to God, Bob, I don’t have anything on Donald Trump,'" Costello told the committee.

Make down G-d as one more person Cohen has lied to. At this point, he’s practically sprinting to Hell.

Well-regarded attorney Costello said he wouldn't be surprised if he's called as a witness for the defense. He virtually volunteered. “I’m always ready, telling the truth is easy, telling a lie is complicated. I don’t need any preparation," Costello told the National Desk.

Cohen, the prosecution’s last witness, will be facing withering cross-examination today when President Trump’s trial resumes.

🔥 Speaking of not lying, the LA Times ran a terrific story yesterday headlined, “SoCal district to pay $360K to teacher who was fired after refusing to follow transgender policies.”

Based PE Teacher

Believe it or not, California has been one of the most reliable jurisdictions for pro-freedom cases. Maybe it’s the pressure cooker of woke insanity, or maybe it just reflects how far Newsom overreached. Either way, California judges have issued excellent rulings lately, like re-opening churches and striking down medical censorship laws.

And now, they’ve guided a result that will hammer a new sense of respect into school districts nationwide.

Jessica Tapia, former PE teacher at Jurupa Valley High School, refused — hypothetically, in her statements to district personnel — to use students’ preferred pronouns. She refused to allow students to use the locker room matching their gender identity. And She refused to withhold information from parents about their child’s gender identity.

So of course they fired her.

Jessica’s termination came right after delicate students reported several of Jessica’s social media posts as offensive, mostly because they mentioned transgender people and religion. When school officials ordered Jessica to cancel her personal social media activity, and slavishly adhere to district policies about transgender privacy and rights, she again refused, citing her Christian beliefs.

Jessica even respectfully requested a religious accommodation, explaining the district’s policies violated her sincerely held beliefs “regarding human sexuality and lying,” but her request was denied.

They denied her request to not lie.

In her wrongful termination lawsuit, Jessica argued the school violated her free speech and religious liberty rights. After some litigation, which must have convinced the district it had a losing case, on Tuesday the school finally settled, agreeing to pay Jessica $285,000, plus $75,000 to her attorneys.

That kind of result will encourage more attorneys to bring these kinds of cases.

Julianne Fleischer, one of Jessica’s lawyers, called the settlement an “incredible victory.” She correctly added, “We think it sends a strong message that there’s a price to pay when you ask a teacher to lie and withhold information.” A $360,000 price.

A price to pay on this Earth — and elsewhere. Just saying.

That’s not all. In the process, they’ve managed to turn Jessica into an activist, expanding her influence far beyond her old PE classes. She is now helping lead a new campaign called “Teachers Don’t Lie,” offering support to other educators whose faith is being compromised by mendacious school policies.

And that’s progress. The conservative counter-revolution just won another important battle. And we’re still just getting organized.

Have a tremendous Thursday! And come back here tomorrow morning for another 100% artificial intelligence-free roundup, lovingly assembled by a real human and not a reasonable facsimile thereof.

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