☕️ SUDDENLY ☙ Tuesday, February 20, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

A packed roundup! Open AI's video creating tool shocks world; corporate climate-chucking shocks libs; media hides Ukraine defeat under dead Russian; Texas shocks with huge border move; and lots more.

Good morning, C&Cers, it’s Tuesday! Get ready for today’s wild ride of a roundup: Open AI developers release new world-shattering AI technology and I comment on the implications;  looming recession forces virtue-signaling corporations to ditch climate nonsense; corporate media tries to hide devastating news for Ukraine under a dead Russian; there isn’t going to be any Second Annual Glorious Spring CounterOffensive; Trump attacking tax preparer faces tax problems; and Texas makes a really big move on the border.

🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞

🔥 2024 has delivered yet again! This time, CBS News ran the story Friday headlined, “OpenAI's new text-to-video tool, Sora, has one artificial intelligence expert ‘terrified.’” OpenAI shocked and surprised the markets last week by unexpectedly announcing its latest innovation: an AI tool for creating high-quality, full-motion video based on simple text prompts. (Stocks in adult-video companies immediately shot up +17% for the day.)

You cannot look at the sample videos and remain unimpressed. Somehow Open AI leapt over all the other developers in the space and is, once again, several generations ahead of the next-best technology. It’s almost like they’re getting help from somewhere.

WEBSITE: Open AI’s landing page for its upcoming text-to-video feature with example videos.

All it takes is a simple text description of what the user wants to see, called a “text prompt.” As with the ChatBots, users just type a little description into a box, press “Send,” and Sora AI will create a brand-new video for them. For people who live in Portland, it would work like this:

While the Sora AI service is currently unavailable to the public — one senses the main barrier is developers’ rational fears about how the tool could immediately be misused — the company has published a raft of example videos showing off the service’s flexibility. Just like AI’s picture-creating feature, the video chatbot can generate videos in any conceivable style, like 1980’s music video style, black and white, 50’s cartoons, hyper-realistic, and so forth.

The massive response to the announcement was mixed, equally terrified and excited. For example, Joe Biden’s handlers can’t wait to start making completely virtual press conferences —  instead of just mostly virtual ones. Literally, they can’t wait. November is right around the corner. His handlers would much rather run a new and improved Max Headroom-style Biden than an old-and-tired Joe Biden.

Sadly, despite the Sora developers’ best efforts, Joe’s career may have started one year too late; by next year, this tech will be perfected and then we will never see the real Joe any more. From that point on, we’ll only ever see “Dark Brandon.” Which is not as bad as it sounds, and we probably won’t even complain about it very much, since unlike Joe, Dark Brandon will actually make sense, he won’t be painfully embarrassing to watch, and Dark Brandon won’t make you feel guilty for not calling in a wellness check.

Upon viewing the sample videos, everyone in Hollywood instantly experienced sheer horror and intense myocarditis (which medical experts tell me is mostly-harmless, transitory, and nothing to worry about). They saw their careers flash before their eyes, right in the reflections of their computer monitors and cell phone screens.

There’s a lot that could be and has been said about the technology’s world-changing implications. I’ll just make a couple quick points. A.I. video is both more and less mysterious than it seems. It is less mysterious in that, according to the developers, it is not per se a revolutionary development, since it only extends AI’s existing ability to draw still pictures. To create a full-motion video, the A.I. simply makes an extended series of still images — frames — and then stitches them together, kind of like the old flip-book cartoons.

But paradoxically, the sudden appearance of this new technology is also even more mysterious than it seems, since all artificial intelligence-based technology sprouts from a common large-language model that even the developers admit they do not fully understand:

Maybe I’m wrong. But I cannot believe that an invention as significant as artificial intelligence sprang from some serendipitous lab accident. Post It notes — yes. Rubber — yes. Antibiotics — okay. But not artificial intelligence, which requires millions of lines of computer code to operate. Accidentally discovered? No. Impossible.

So then, where did the ‘spark’ of intelligence come from? Is A.I. demonic, a malicious gift whispered into the ear of some luckless scientist who sold their soul for access? Maybe. But my preferred theory is it was dished out of a DARPA skunkworks lab somewhere, for some sinister military purpose. I don’t know. I just find it utterly remarkable that developers say they don’t really understand how AI works — and everybody is just fine with that! Oh, how interesting, now show me how to work it again.

The next issue of great interest is that the ‘deepfake’ genie has now almost completely wriggled out of its shiny aluminum bottle. As if things weren’t bad enough, soon we will be completely unable to tell real from fake and there will be a lot of fake. Soon, AI will not just be able to create millions of made-up videos, but it will also easily modify existing, ‘real’ video, of real people and real events, changing it into whatever the user wants.

It’s coming. It’s inevitable. Deal with it.  In short order, video will be useless as evidence unless it is recorded on analog film. Remember Kodak? Analog film is probably rushing back into style. Buy Kodak stock. (Disclaimer: that was a joke and not financial advice. Don’t put your life savings into analog film. But still.)

Finally, and maybe most significantly, are the spiritual implications. Think about this: AI translates users’ words — their words — into fully-realized, instantly-created virtual worlds.

What does that remind you of?

Does it remind you of the way the Bible begins? With God speaking the Universe into existence? Genesis 1:1:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

God said ‘let there be light.’ Said. In words. Maybe it isn’t so surprising we humans stumbled upon a mysterious tool allowing us to speak worlds into existence. After all, we were created in His image (“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” Gen. 1:27.)

Obviously, then, we are always trying to do the same things that He does. If He can speak worlds into existence, then we want to do it, too. Now listen carefully. If you’ve been sitting on an agnostic fence somewhere, you might want to reflect on the profound spiritual implications of words-to-video, and what that truly says about the nature of reality and about certain spiritual truths written thousands of years ago. Written in words.

🔥 Suddenly, as the economy’s nose-cone turns back Earthward and heads down, big corporations are ditching — not just ESG — but now their climate pledges too. In bunches.  Yesterday’s New York Times carried the story, dramatically headlined:

Calling the sudden corporate change in appetite for wasting profits on the lunatic schemes of climate peddlers a “flip-flop,” the Times seemed peeved and disappointed. The paper blamed the sudden and unexpected loss of climate interest on … wait for it … Republicans! Of course. Oh, and lawyers.

A pesky awkwardly-named group, the ‘Climate Action 100+,’ has been collecting Fortune 100 companies that “pledge” to adopt expensive, useless, and money-wasting green policies. But conservative lawyers have been claiming all this concerted corporate action violates antitrust laws, and on top of that, is usually not in the shareholders’ best interests. Directors, after all, are responsible to shareholders rather than to The Earth, which does not pay their oversized salaries or vote or attend shareholder meetings.

Even if it wanted to pay the Directors, I’m not sure The Earth could even get a bank account, since The Earth includes Russia. Ick.

On Friday, JPMorgan, Blackrock, State Street, and Pimco all pulled out of the Climate Action 100+ group.  On the same day. Which doesn’t show concerted action, at all, so stop whining. Oh, and Goldman Sachs ‘declined to comment’ on Saturday, which is not a good sign for that one, either.

While the Times framed the story as bad news, it’s actually terrific news, and it is significant progress. Virtue-signaling climate boondoggles are getting unaffordable.

As I’ve often said, we don’t have many problems that a good recession won’t fix.

🔥 On the very same day the Ukrainians finally and catastrophically lost the fortress city of Avidiivka to the Russians, a Russian prisoner, deep-state darling, and perennial political gadfly you probably never heard of named Aleksei Navalny suddenly died while doing time in a remote Russian prison. Even though there was exactly zero evidence that Putin had anything at all to do with his death, democrats and corporate media — like a coven of vultures — all shifted in unison from covering Ukraine’s humiliating and catastrophic defeat to breathlessly repeating the wild and unfounded accusation that Russia’s president had just assassinated a political rival for no good reason!

Behold this morning’s Google News. Even today, four long media days later, this random Russian prisoner remains Google’s “top story:”

I can find zero evidence Navalny, or whatever his name is, was murdered, never mind by whom. Corporate media appears to be hanging its “assassination” hat on the fact that Navalny’s death seems to have happened suddenly. Depending on the source, the prisoner had either made a call the day before he died, and seemed fine, or he was on a video just before and looked fine, both of which seem quite odd considering the dystopian way the media always draws the prison’s brutal, Gulag-like conditions.

Anyway. Navalny died suddenly, the Russians promptly reported it, and the media blew up.

Ahem. Died suddenly? Are you kidding me? Let me see if I understand this right. Some deep state asset in a Russian prison somewhere halfway around the planet dies suddenly, and suddenly the media gets all suspicious? Oh please. Spare me.

We have American citizens languishing in American prisons in much worse conditions than Navalny’s were — ours don’t get to make calls or stroll around in videos — and the media elites could obviously care less. We have thousands, if not tens of thousands, of excess Americans dying suddenly from some mysterious cause, but the media elites can’t even muster a word of sympathy, much less marshal any suspicion.

So, flutter off.

They expect us to become outraged about the injustice of a hypothetical, unproven assassination of a guy we never heard of, an assassination that makes no rational sense, but whatever. Listen carefully: I do not care about the injustice of Mr. Navalny’s death. Frankly I find it much more likely he died suddenly for the same exact reason the rest of us are, a reason that starts with a ‘v’ as in victim.

Shut up and fix America’s justice system first.

This media strategy is a kind of human sacrifice. Like some demonic ritual, the media always changes an unwanted narrative by sacrificing someone on its altar. It could be George Floyd, or Paul Pelosi, or Aleksy Navalny. It’s a dark and disgusting practice and all good people should shun corporate media, at the least.

🚀 Anyway, this is the story they’re trying to hide from you and not have to talk about. From yesterday’s Financial Times:

By “Russian Victories,” the Times meant the fall of the heavily-fortified, centrally-positioned town of Avdiivka. Coincidentally, this weekend was the date of the annual gala Munich Security Conference, where military-industrial elites and captured politicians nibble contentedly on curried oysters, munch merrily on pork belly-stuffed truffles, and rhapsodically converse about who to bomb next.

But sadly for all attending, the surprising — shocking! — news of Ukraine’s ‘withdrawal’ from its unbeatable strategic position sort of rubbed the shine off the party schedule, if you know what I mean. As the Times described it:

Twelve months ago, delegates at the Munich Security Conference radiated optimism about the prospects for Ukraine, as the west vowed to back Kyiv in its war with Russia for “as long as it takes.” This year, with the conflict tilting in Moscow’s favour and faith in western support ebbing away, that optimism has flipped into unremitting gloom.

Oh, dear. What I think — and this is purely my informed speculation —  is the real significance of the Avdiivka’s loss — which I covered in great detail on Sunday — seems to be that the fortified town was a critical part of a new, second annual Glorious Spring CounterOffensive, for which the $61 billion in Ukraine aid currently trapped in Congress had been carefully earmarked.

Try to follow me. Without the $61 billion, there’d be no Spring CounterOffensive. But that problem is child’s play; they’re working on the money right now, and will soon flip a few Congressmen faster than Obama’s chef used to flip gluten-free pancakes. No big deal. But … without Avdiivka — or worse, if the Russians use Avdiivka for defensive purposes — then there can’t be any Spring CounterOffensive.

But Avdiivka is now flatter than a pancake. And there’s not much they can do to fix that problem.

To be sure, Munich’s war planners never expected the $61 billion to help the Ukrainians win anything. $61 billion is simply the cost these days of a Spring CounterOffensive. But you already know that, don’t you, since we just bought a Spring CounterOffensive last year. Wasn’t it terrific? Oh, the memories…

Spare a moment of sympathy for all the gloomy Munich Conference-goers. A new, six-month-long Spring CounterOffensive would have needed a lot of urgent ‘security conferences’ and taxpayer-funded after-hours planning parties. (Plus! Remember that prostitution is perfectly legal in Munich. You can see all the local sights and wallow in the local wares to your … heart’s content. Just saying.)

Putting on another unimaginably-expensive Spring CounterOffensive — albeit with far fewer Ukrainians than last time and despite having an untested, brand-new replacement commander and general staff — was literally the best plan they had, as ridiculous and moronic as that sounds. I realize it’s hard to attribute that low level of sub-human stupidity to our top military brass; it’s not like they are coming up with insane ideas like asking 911 operators to send ambulances for a dying Secretary of Defense with the lights off or anything.

Oh, wait:

I guess I was wrong. They are lights-off-level stupid. But I digress.

With the Russians having taken Avdiivka off the chess board, it seems all they have left is carping about how Russia treats its political prisoners. In other words, there was no Plan B. I guess they’re working on Plan B right now, but now, Zelensky is probably on a clock. Absent some kind of news to encourage his countrymen, Zelensky’s expiration date is looming. Propaganda can only get you so far.

🔥 You’ll be pleased, I’m sure, to know that tax-preparer, failed lawyer, Trump hater, and Republican longshot presidential candidate John Anthony Castro, who has been criss-crossing the country filing lawsuits against President Trump (and not getting very far with them), has finally run smack dab into legal problems of his own. Despite trying to force his way into First Class, it seems Castro is stuck back in coach with the rest of us.

Last week, while arguing his most-recent lawsuit to keep Trump off the presidential ballot, Castro suddenly got some bad news. Apparently, all his presidential political activity garnered him some unwanted attention from the IRS. While Castro may not be as dumb as top U.S. military and NATO war planners, he’s not any gift to the tax preparing business, either.

Castro has been charged with tax fraud, for falsifying clients’ tax returns to get them unearned deductions:

I think this might be a setback to Castro’s presidential aspirations. Which were already pretty thin.

🔥 Finally, 2024 strikes again, in the very best way. You’ll love this remarkable CNN story, which published yesterday under the headline, “Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announces plans to build base in Eagle Pass for National Guard troops.”

On Friday, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas surprised even many Texas Republicans by suddenly announcing plans to build an 80-acre military forward operating base in Eagle Pass – the controversial border city at the center of a contentious feud between Texas and the Biden administration. The base is intended to permanently house an army of up to 2,300 Texas National Guard members who can be swiftly dispatched to any border area whenever and wherever needed.

Here’s the plan, in Governor Abbott’s own words:

CLIP: Governor Abbott explains Eagle Pass Forward Operating Base Camp (2:35).

In poker terminology, I think Texas just saw the federal government’s bid, and raised the stakes. Governor Abbott seems to have finally had enough. Who knows where all this is going, but it’s delightful progress. This is the way.

Have a terrific Tuesday! I know you’re disappointed about not getting a Second Annual CounterOffensive, but come back tomorrow anyway, for more delicious Coffee & Covid.

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