World getting Darker

[Omegatime]

Retired Brig. Gen. Blaine Holt said Thursday on Newsmax that Russian President Vladimir Putin is threatening to strike Berlin if Germany allows Ukraine to use long-range weapons, warning that the war is escalating toward a dangerous new phase.

Holt said Putin has threatened to strike Berlin in response to Germany's decision to lift range restrictions on long-range weapons sent to Ukraine, raising alarms about a broader expansion of the war.

 

[Omegatime]

Senior Iranian officials on Thursday dismissed speculation about an imminent nuclear deal with the United States, emphasizing that any agreement must fully lift sanctions and allow the country’s nuclear program to continue.

“Iran is sincere about a diplomatic solution that will serve the interests of all sides. But getting there requires an agreement that will fully terminate all sanctions and uphold Iran’s nuclear rights — including enrichment,” Abbas Araghchi, the country’s foreign minister, wrote in a post on the X.

 

[HeIsHere]

Looks like programmers may be out of jobs fairly soon.
Dario Amodei, the CEO and cofounder of Anthropic, said AI could be coding most software soon.


Source

 

[Omegatime]

The United States of America may withdraw from the negotiation process to resolve the full-scale war in Ukraine if White House leader Donald Trump believes he is being "used," warns White House Special Envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg on ABC News.

"I think when you talk about walking away if he believes he's being used and that there is no hope in progress going forward, he goes: 'We’re done with this. Europe, we leave it over to you'," Kellogg stated, commenting on Trump’s threats to exit the negotiation process.

 

[ZNP]

The United States of America may withdraw from the negotiation process to resolve the full-scale war in Ukraine if White House leader Donald Trump believes he is being "used," warns White House Special Envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg on ABC News.

"I think when you talk about walking away if he believes he's being used and that there is no hope in progress going forward, he goes: 'We’re done with this. Europe, we leave it over to you'," Kellogg stated, commenting on Trump’s threats to exit the negotiation process.

The US cannot win a three front war, that is why when things heat up in the Mid East and in Taiwan you can be sure they'll leave Ukraine to NATO.

 

[HeIsHere]

The US cannot win a three front war, that is why when things heat up in the Mid East and in Taiwan you can be sure they'll leave Ukraine to NATO.

Well maybe they need to stockpile.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1928819461710020724

 

[stilllearning]

The US cannot win a three front war, that is why when things heat up in the Mid East and in Taiwan you can be sure they'll leave Ukraine to NATO.

If you mean at present we do not have the manpower to fight that many fronts I agree. However, we fought on more fronts than that in WW2, Western European front, Mediterranean front, Pacific Island front, Northern Atlantic front, and the IO or Indian Ocean front.

We of course had the personnel to do so but expect if we were to find ourselves fighting on multiple fronts today we would raise the personnel to do so.

I do not find Taiwan would be that hard since we are using a first island and second island line strategy. Which of course is more to hold China in and bottle them up. I find the Corps is ahead of the curve by currently retraining like we did in WW2 with a Island hoping strategy. As well as we are calling in old treaties and wanting to build additional airfields on different islands in the Pac.

This way we can project additional air power beyond just our carriers. I don't believe we would fight Russia through Ukraine, I am sure we would put boots on the ground to keep up with any plans NATO would have. However, the best place for us to open a front would be in the North Lant. Attack Murmansk with Naval and airpower while you do a land attack in the Kola Peninsula.

I do agree at present we lack the manpower to open multiple fronts to fight a conventional war.

 

[ZNP]

If you mean at present we do not have the manpower to fight that many fronts I agree. However, we fought on more fronts than that in WW2, Western European front, Mediterranean front, Pacific Island front, Northern Atlantic front, and the IO or Indian Ocean front.

We of course had the personnel to do so but expect if we were to find ourselves fighting on multiple fronts today we would raise the personnel to do so.

I do not find Taiwan would be that hard since we are using a first island and second island line strategy. Which of course is more to hold China in and bottle them up. I find the Corps is ahead of the curve by currently retraining like we did in WW2 with a Island hoping strategy. As well as we are calling in old treaties and wanting to build additional airfields on different islands in the Pac.

This way we can project additional air power beyond just our carriers. I don't believe we would fight Russia through Ukraine, I am sure we would put boots on the ground to keep up with any plans NATO would have. However, the best place for us to open a front would be in the North Lant. Attack Murmansk with Naval and airpower while you do a land attack in the Kola Peninsula.

I do agree at present we lack the manpower to open multiple fronts to fight a conventional war.

Yes but we also have many allies in WW2.

 

[stilllearning]

Yes but we also have many allies in WW2.

I agree. I believe that we would pick up India as there are still hard feelings over the Kashmir area as well as China and India are in a weird war in the Himalayas. They are fighting each other with deaths on both sides just they agreed to not do it with modern weapons so they are beating each other to death with blunt objects. So I don't think India would turn down an alliance especially one that we agree we will fall on their side of how land in that area should be portioned.

 

[2ndTimeIsTheCharm]

But that means it is not simply finding what others have already posted and discovered. You are saying that man, given greater computing speeds would have been able to solve this, but we don't have greater computing speeds, so without AI we never would have solved this.

Tell me, who has a job where faster computing speeds would not help?

The problem of AI is not when it replaces 100% of people, it is when it replaces 20% of people. We are already at the point at which the proof of concept for AI has been proven that it can replace 20% of the work done by humans.

The second issue is not whether or not AI can replace 50% of our creative ideas, but rather can it replace 50% of the work required to accomplish those ideas. The reality is that the time spent getting a "flash of inspiration" is probably 1% of the time required to build that thing you just envisioned. So even though AI can do 20% of the work today, when you calculate it by hours on the job it can do 50% of the hours.

The third issue is manual labor. There are as many as 20 million blue collar workers in the US. Getting a flash of inspiration is not in their job description. Elon Musk is building Tesla robots specifically designed to take those jobs. Tesla robots are priced at a lease rate of 25k a year. You don't have to pay for benefits and these robots can easily work 100 hours a week. That works out to $5 an hour, no sick time, no overtime pay, no benefits, no liability and no viral videos of them that damage the companies reputation.

I remember people worrying about unemployment increasing when computers became widely accessible. Turns out they didn't have to worry about that because it opened up more but different jobs for people and so people got trained or went back to university for all that.

You're too much of a worry-monger!

 

[ZNP]

I remember people worrying about unemployment increasing when computers became widely accessible. Turns out they didn't have to worry about that because it opened up more but different jobs for people and so people got trained or went back to university for all that.

You're too much of a worry-monger!

If you view my posts as trying to be a worry monger you are misunderstanding them. I am retired, so I am certainly not worried about my job.

I see these posts as helping people to navigate the future. For example, suppose your child is going to be a senior in high school next year and you are thinking about going to college and spending $240k on your child getting a college education.

Before spending that money I would want to know what the purpose is. If you are spending that money so that your kid can have a wonderful experience with other kids his age while becoming better educated and you have no interest at all in that education preparing them for a job and a career that is one thing. But if 240k is a big investment for you and you are expecting to get that investment to pay you back ten fold with a better income over you child's lifetime, I would think again, because that is far less likely to happen than forty years ago. I may be wrong about AI having a big impact in the next 12 months, but if it does not have a big impact in the next five years then virtually every professional in this field is wrong.

Now imagine your child is younger than a senior in HS, well the old model of going to college and then getting a good job becomes much less plausible. That is not me saying this but CEOs of virtually every company involved in AI are saying entry level jobs will be gone in five years.

Burying your head in the sand is not a good strategy in my opinion. Hoping that I am simply a worry wort is nothing more than burying your head in the sand. If you are retired and have no children or grandchildren then this is a trivial thread for you. But most if not all people on this forum will be impacted in a very big way by AI and that impact begins this year.

Even if you are not laid off, but your coworkers are, that also is very stressful. It is like being in Auschwitz and being put in the good line with showers that had soap and water. Great you still have a job today, but that doesn't make living there less stressful.

 

[2ndTimeIsTheCharm]

If you view my posts as trying to be a worry monger you are misunderstanding them. I am retired, so I am certainly not worried about my job.

I see these posts as helping people to navigate the future. For example, suppose your child is going to be a senior in high school next year and you are thinking about going to college and spending $240k on your child getting a college education.

Before spending that money I would want to know what the purpose is. If you are spending that money so that your kid can have a wonderful experience with other kids his age while becoming better educated and you have no interest at all in that education preparing them for a job and a career that is one thing. But if 240k is a big investment for you and you are expecting to get that investment to pay you back ten fold with a better income over you child's lifetime, I would think again, because that is far less likely to happen than forty years ago. I may be wrong about AI having a big impact in the next 12 months, but if it does not have a big impact in the next five years then virtually every professional in this field is wrong.

Now imagine your child is younger than a senior in HS, well the old model of going to college and then getting a good job becomes much less plausible. That is not me saying this but CEOs of virtually every company involved in AI are saying entry level jobs will be gone in five years.

Burying your head in the sand is not a good strategy in my opinion. Hoping that I am simply a worry wort is nothing more than burying your head in the sand. If you are retired and have no children or grandchildren then this is a trivial thread for you. But most if not all people on this forum will be impacted in a very big way by AI and that impact begins this year.

Even if you are not laid off, but your coworkers are, that also is very stressful. It is like being in Auschwitz and being put in the good line with showers that had soap and water. Great you still have a job today, but that doesn't make living there less stressful.

That's your problem - you're retired and BORED so you have to try get some excitement by sensationalizing everything and trying to get other people riled up over nothing. Remember how you said that New York City will be wrecked somehow last year? Nothing happened. And that King Charles is the antichrist? He isn't. This is why people just humor you and not take you seriously.

 

[ZNP]

That's your problem - you're retired and BORED so you have to try get some excitement by sensationalizing everything and trying to get other people riled up over nothing. Remember how you said that New York City will be wrecked somehow last year? Nothing happened. And that King Charles is the antichrist? He isn't. This is why people just humor you and not take you seriously.

Yes, I was accused of saying King Charles was the antichrist but when we went back through my posts I made it very clear that I didn't say that, I referenced a book and linked a video that said that. Since I am not the arbiter of the truth I don't censor something simply because I disagree. He made many valid points that were true and Biblical. That is my criteria. I explained why I disagreed from the Bible and the result is I think that the book of Revelation is far more complex than people understand and their childish simplifications are the real cause of error.

Now I certainly don't remember this vague reference to NYC being wrecked somehow. So until someone actually references the post that offends them I'll assume this is nothing but another false accusation.

This is why I don't take you seriously or any of the others who accuse me of saying something without linking the offending post. To me that is a sure sign of someone who is disingenuous.

 

[ZNP]

Here is a post I made in August of 2021, Post #118 in "Please, Please, Please Get the Covid Shot"

The topic is a plea to get the Covid shot.

I had Covid, so why do I need the shot? That makes no sense to me and I have been teaching about viruses and vaccines for many years. I am no expert, I am a HS science teacher, so when I heard what Fauci was saying and suggesting I wanted to understand. I wanted to be able to explain to the students and I wanted to understand for myself. I have no problem believing that there are "exceptions" to the rule, this was presented as one, so tell me more. However, any questions that were asked were ridiculed, scorned, censored, and characterized as an attack on Fauci which he equated to an attack on science.

Now that I knew was idiotic. I also teach students that the history of science involves many, many mistakes, lots of questions and ultimately enough evidence to convince us of a new paradigm. They were not giving us any evidence and instead were rebuking anyone who asked questions. That is not science.

The first problem I had was that this plea to get the shot is based on the desire to get to herd immunity. However, that is simply a lie. Corona viruses mutate rapidly, this virus is so widespread with so many millions who are infected that new variants are a guarantee. If you have a vaccine that knocks out 99% of the variants you are simply favoring the 1% which will soon become the dominant variant and that is what we see. There appeared to be immunity conferred when people first got the shot, by June that was waning and as of today there seems to be no benefit at all between vaccinated and unvaccinated with some of these variants.

Second they push this 80% or 70% vaccination as a goal that will get us to herd immunity. Once again this was simply a lie. The US represents 5% of the world's population, 70% of the US represents 3.5% of the world's population. Unless your goal is 80% of the world you aren't going to get to "herd immunity". Second, you can't talk about "herd immunity" in terms of percentages. How many people does it take to keep a virus like this churning along? 100 million is a huge population, more than enough to allow a virus to survive for generations. If you have a herd of 1,000 animals then sure, 80% probably gets you to "herd immunity" but if it is 7.5 billion then even 95% will not be enough for herd immunity. Third, how gullible are people? We were told that this virus jumped from bats to people. Don't you realize if that is true then this virus can jump from people to bats? Are they going to vaccinate all the bats?

Common sense dictates that any thought that we will get to herd immunity is for idiots. We won't and everyone involved in this science knew it from day 1. That is why we don't make vaccines for corona viruses (the common cold).

But no one can deny this "urgent" push for mandating vaccines and bitter ugly rhetoric. Obviously there is a very important reason to give everyone the shot and just as obviously they are not telling us what it is and if we ask about it we are branded as evil. Good has become evil and evil has become good.

I stand by this post. How about those who were pleading with others to get the Vaccine shot before anyone had any research to back that up? They made these pleas because they simply believed liars who were obviously lying to them.

 

[ZNP]

"The Problem" of Joshua's Ai...SOLVED!

I like the conclusion, the problem of Ai is not archaelogy, it is the archaelogist. Whether it was due to his being trained according to some liberal theological indoctrination or whether it was simply because he was wrong, his telling the lie with total self assurance is what caused the problem.

Do not put it past liars to act all like experts and lie brazenly like Fauci and others we have seen.

 

[ZNP]

Trump deploys National Guard amid Los Angeles immigration protests

 

[gb9]

Trump deploys National Guard amid Los Angeles immigration protests

good and bad thing at the same time.

what happened in l a was bad, and needs to stop, but calling out the military on u s soil is never a good thing.

 

[Eli1]

@SonJudgment i wanted to get your opinion on this 'article'.
As a vibin young man, what do you think about this article written by boomers or Gen X-ers like myself?

Companies Are Firing Gen Z and the Reasons Are Not Far-fetched

 

[SonJudgment]

@SonJudgment i wanted to get your opinion on this 'article'.
As a vibin young man, what do you think about this article written by boomers or Gen X-ers like myself?

Companies Are Firing Gen Z and the Reasons Are Not Far-fetched

Well I am a Millennial so I'm a turning into a Boomer in Gen Z's mind lol. The article actually makes me think of kind of a topic going around in the Millenial and Gen Z discourses lately. It's about a phenomenon called the Gen Z Stare and then on top of it now Gen Z themselves are kinda using this to clapback on the Millennials making fun of them for becoming Boomers and rail on us lol.

I'll include some articles just to clue you in, but the phenomenon and cultural discourse is not limited to these sources of course, simply search Gen Z Stare, and you'll find a lot to chew on I think that might interest you. Basically the Gen Z Stare is it a real phenomenon, is it just the oldheads don't get the kids and the kids are alright, is it perhaps linked to their heavy internet and smartphone usage, is it the extreme trauma of a sinful and almost totally damned society, or is it even something else entirely? No one really knows, but its just a lowkey trending topic in social discourse going around lately.

https://www.aol.com/gen-z-stare-millennials-boomer-090301623.html

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/article/gen-z-stare-why-blank-185143842.html

https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-people-response-to-stare-trend-2025-7

 

[Eli1]

Well I am a Millennial so I'm a turning into a Boomer in Gen Z's mind lol. The article actually makes me think of kind of a topic going around in the Millenial and Gen Z discourses lately. It's about a phenomenon called the Gen Z Stare and then on top of it now Gen Z themselves are kinda using this to clapback on the Millennials making fun of them for becoming Boomers and rail on us lol.

I'll include some articles just to clue you in, but the phenomenon and cultural discourse is not limited to these sources of course, simply search Gen Z Stare, and you'll find a lot to chew on I think that might interest you. Basically the Gen Z Stare is it a real phenomenon, is it just the oldheads don't get the kids and the kids are alright, is it perhaps linked to their heavy internet and smartphone usage, is it the extreme trauma of a sinful and almost totally damned society, or is it even something else entirely? No one really knows, but its just a lowkey trending topic in social discourse going around lately.

https://www.aol.com/gen-z-stare-millennials-boomer-090301623.html

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/article/gen-z-stare-why-blank-185143842.html

https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-people-response-to-stare-trend-2025-7

You guys are hilarious bro.
Look, there isn’t a lot of mystery to this.
This is how generations have been for eternity and you guys like to give it a name and a philosophy.

My parents never laughed bro.
My grandparents? Even worse !
We didn’t overthink it. We laughed about it tho when we saw them in black and white pictures never laughing.

I mean have you see the old Wild West pictures of people in USA ? You see any of them laughing?
No! They all got a statue stare. lol

And they always talked down to us younger generations. That’s how it goes. Always.

Why do you think I harp so hard on communication? Because this has been the human weakness throughout history.

And sometimes the best way to understand your own culture, is to see it from outside because you can’t see it when you’re in it.

Anyway, I always appreciate your humor and logic so God bless you and keep it real out there.

Oh and If you can be the interpreter between the generations at your job then you are blessed among men! And you got the gift!