The Peter Principle ...

In the 20th century, Ukraine experienced two atrocities, the first being Stalin in the 30s and the second, Hitler in the 40s. Now, the country's experiencing war in the 21st, thanks to Putin's strategic blunder but there are underlying reasons as geopolitical gamesmanship never happens without initial causes like the ones seen here, issues explained in detail by Chris Hedges and William Smith.

In 1989 ...

I was in Eastern Europe in 1989, reporting on the revolutions that overthrew the ossified communist dictatorships that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was a time of hope. NATO, with the breakup of the Soviet empire, became obsolete. President Mikhail Gorbachev reached out to Washington and Europe to build a new security pact that would include Russia. Secretary of State James Baker, along with West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, assured the Soviet leader that if Germany were unified NATO would not be extended beyond the new borders. The commitment not to expand NATO, also made by Britain and France, appeared to herald a new global order. We saw the peace dividend dangled before us, the promise that the massive expenditures on weapons that had characterized the Cold War would be converted into expenditures on social programs and infrastructures that had long been neglected to feed the insatiable appetite of the military.

There was a near universal understanding among diplomats and political leaders at the time that any attempt to expand NATO was foolish, an unwarranted provocation against Russia that would obliterate the ties and bonds that happily emerged at the end of the Cold War. 

How naive we were. The war industry did not intend to shrink its power or its profits. It set out almost immediately to recruit the former Communist bloc countries into the European Union and NATO. Countries that joined NATO, which now include Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro and North Macedonia, were forced to reconfigure their militaries, often through hefty loans, to become compatible with NATO military hardware.

There would be no peace dividend. The expansion of NATO swiftly became a multi-billion-dollar bonanza for the corporations that had profited from the Cold War. (Poland, for example, just agreed to spend $6 billion on M1 Abrams tanks and other U.S. military equipment.) If Russia would not acquiesce to again being the enemy, then Russia would be pressured into becoming the enemy. And here we are: On the brink of another Cold War, one from which only the war industry will profit while, as W.H. Auden wrote, the little children die in the streets.

In 2014 ...

Government of Ukraine - ДСТУ 4512:2006 — Державний прапор України. Загальні технічні умови

Russia is massing tanks and troops on the Ukrainian border. Inevitably, we are about to hear many ‘Putin is Hitler’ media stories. What will go unsaid is that the seven-year crisis in the Ukraine was largely an American creation, due to the US’s congenital meddling and interventionism in nations with little strategic importance to the United States. There is great irony in Biden administration officials trying to get ahead of a potential crisis that was largely caused by Biden’s nominee for undersecretary of state for political affairs, Victoria Nuland.

The potential area of conflict is Ukraine’s Donbass region, the eastern-most portion of Ukraine where most people speak Russian as their first language. In early 2014, civil war broke out in the Donbass after a US-backed coup d’état had ousted the Russian-leaning government in Kiev. The coup was clearly orchestrated by Nuland, who was then assistant secretary of state for European affairs; she probably had the CIA’s assistance. Someone, likely the Russians, intercepted and leaked Nuland’s phone call to the then-US ambassador Jeffrey Pyatt. Their discussion was to decide who was to be the next prime minister of Ukraine. Nuland’s choice was Arseniy Yatsenyuk, a rabidly anti-Russian politician. Nuland famously said: ‘I think Yats is the guy.’ When Pyatt warned Nuland that the Europeans might not support Yatsenyuk, Nuland diplomatically replied: ‘Fuck the EU.’ Yats ended up as prime minister.

Neoconservative revisionist historians like to point to Russia’s invasion of Crimea as the origin of the recent Ukrainian crisis. This account of history is, quite frankly, ludicrous. Nuland’s meddling in the internal politics of Russia’s neighbor is the equivalent of Putin orchestrating a coup in Canada to install a pro-Russian prime minister. American diplomats should not be arrogantly choosing the prime ministers of countries in the backyards of other great powers. The US’s blockheaded diplomats instigated the crisis.

 It's all about the money, always has been, always will be along with inept people being in charge of things they never should be in charge of. 

Does he have a chance?

Hell yeah!!!

Ice ...

A Dangerous Beauty

Slip Sliding Away

Tracks

Phase Transition 1

Foundation's Edge

Misalignment by 40 ...

Researchers from the University of Turku, Finland, found that the axis of rotation of a black hole in a binary system is tilted more than 40 degrees relative to the axis of stellar orbit. The finding challenges current theoretical models of black hole formation.

Something totally unexpected regarding the orientation of the axis of a black hole vis a vis its binary system has been discovered, thus proving, yet again, nature is always full of surprises.

“The expectation of alignment, to a large degree, does not hold for the bizarre objects such as black hole X-ray binaries. The black holes in these systems were formed as a result of a cosmic cataclysm – the collapse of a massive star. Now we see the black hole dragging matter from the nearby, lighter companion star orbiting around it. We see bright optical and X-ray radiation as the last sigh of the infalling material, and also radio emission from the relativistic jets expelled from the system,” says Juri Poutanen, Professor of Astronomy at the University of Turku and the lead author of the publication.

And there you have it. :)

Russia's Vietnam ...

Ukrainian service members at the scene Saturday morning after fighting in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. Credit...Sergei Supinsky/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Overreach, you know, using the art of assume to do something stupid applies as Putin has done just that by turning the attack on the Ukraine into Russia's Vietnam based on the fierce resistance Ukrainians are putting up against all odds. Russia had legitimate concerns regarding NATO and the Ukraine but the response against this remote possibility goes beyond reason, an initiative that will negatively impact Russia like what Vietnam did to America.

Ukraine’s defense forces, outmanned and outgunned, waged a ferocious resistance to the Russian invasion on Saturday, battling to keep control of the capital, Kyiv, and other cities. There was intense street fighting, and bursts of gunfire and explosions could be heard across Kyiv. Here are the latest developments:

The Kremlin said that Russian forces were resuming their advance on Ukraine on Saturday, claiming that President Vladimir V. Putin had ordered a pause on Friday while possible talks with Ukraine were being considered. Russia has established attack lines into three cities: Kyiv in the north, Kharkiv in the northeast and Kherson in the south.

Videos and photos showed a residential building struck by a missile in southwestern Kyiv, about 1.5 miles from Sikorsky Memorial Airport. At least six people were injured and dozens more evacuated, according to emergency services.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in a video that his country’s fighters had “withstood and successfully repelled enemy attacks.”

Mayor Vitali Klitschko of Kyiv announced a curfew extension, warning that “all civilians who are on the street during the curfew will be considered members of the enemy’s sabotage and reconnaissance groups.”

Across Ukraine, people huddled in air-raid shelters, lined up at bank machines and stocked up on essentials.

The situation now: 

Ukrainian forces waged intense battles to hold major cities, including the capital, Kyiv. 

While Ukrainian forces appeared to keep control, fighting reached the city center before appearing to quiet later on Saturday. Combat was seen 400 yards from Maidan Square, according to ​​Ukrainska Pravda, a Ukrainian news site, citing witnesses. There were reports of clashes near the city’s train station closer to the center, according to the witness accounts.

Intense fighting could be seen along Peremohy Avenue, a main thoroughfare. Videos verified by The Times showed vehicles on fire on the street in the neighborhood of Shuliavka, near the Kyiv Zoo

Welcome to Nam Vlad.

Science never sleeps :)

A visualization of a black hole shows gas swirling around the superdense object. (Image credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Jeremy Schnittman)

Science never sleeps as said discipline, designed to be disproved, continues to tease apart the subtleties of nature in ways both enlightening and enchanting at the same time. Now, tech, AI and compute power, joined together, is attempting to connect the tiniest of Quantum to the vastness of Relativity using the properties of holography and black holes to unify the two into a a theory accurately describing how reality works at grand scale.

What happens inside a black hole — and how does whatever goes on inside relate to the universe outside it? It's a mystery that has evaded scientists for decades. It's also a mystery that could also redefine how we think about the nature of the universe.

In a paper published in the journal PRX Quantum on Feb. 10, physicists applied quantum computers and machine learning — the computational technology that powers facial recognition software and natural language processing — to test a possible connection.

Black holes play by Einstein's theory of general relativity, which governs the universe on large scales. Tiny particles outside of black holes play by the rules of the Standard Model of particle physics, which outlines the universe at the absolute tiniest scales. 

It gets better.

One hypothesis that might connect the two theories is an idea that the motions of particles in a two-dimensional plane above the black hole reflect the three-dimensional motions of the black hole, almost like a holographic projection. It's a concept called holographic duality.

That's the concept researchers are hoping to test. First, use a quantum computer to simulate particles that represent a projection of a black hole, then use machine learning to analyze how the particles interact with each other. The researchers hope the process will offer them insight into how both the particles and the black hole work.

Though the rabbit hole ... :)

"We hope that by understanding the properties of this particle theory through the numerical experiments, we understand something about gravity," Rinaldi said in the statement.

That's important, because holographic duality could go beyond three dimensions. Some scientists even suggest that the universe could be a projection of something with even more dimensions. 

The paper ... 

The World Island yet again ...

 

BRT Repost ... Back in 2015, yours truly chanced upon Sir Halford Mackinder's extraordinary take on world politics with his notion that the future of world power will reside in Euro-Asia, the great landmass connecting three continents forever separate from North and South America and Australia. Seems his prescient analysis is spot on given just how inept and bankrupt the US (and west) has become regarding it's obsession with endless war and it's total lack of understanding why The Art of War really matters for the continued wellbeing of any entity wishing to call itself a viable nation.

In 2022, this 2015 notion's accurate to a fault but now, the impact of GW on the fate of the world looms ever larger as phase transitions are never linear and proof of that is seen by estimates of water rise in just 30 years exceeding the guesstimates made by researchers made just a few years ago. 

With continued ocean and atmospheric warming, sea levels will likely rise for many centuries at rates higher than that of the current century. In the United States, almost 40 percent of the population lives in relatively high-population-density coastal areas, where sea level plays a role in flooding, shoreline erosion, and hazards from storms. Globally, eight of the world's 10 largest cities are near a coast, according to the U.N. Atlas of the Oceans.

Global sea level has been rising over the past century, and the rate has increased in recent decades. In 2014, global sea level was  2.6 inches 67 mm above the 1993 average—the highest annual average in the satellite record (1993-present). Sea level continues to rise at a rate of  about one-eighth of an inch 3.2 mm per year.

Click https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/ to see how high the ocean will rise. Intense without question. 

What this means to countries and the fate of the world becomes scary, dire predictions made by James Lovelock 15 years ago and now, with Alfred M. Mccoy, a superb writer who takes the long view on issues as serious as this.

Alfred McCoy, Professor of History at UW-Madison. His new book is Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation

We’re in a time of growing belligerence of a kind unknown since the Cold War. It’s already taken us to the edge of conflict with nuclear-armed great powers, whether in Ukraine or Taiwan and the South China Sea.  Meanwhile, here at home (and in other countries globally), internal divisions, flaring anger, and violence are growing. And yet the true violence, the true war, the one those aggressive great powers are already waging in a major way goes largely unnoticed and remarkably undealt with, perhaps because it’s a genuine world war on humanity and the planet itself.

In case you’re not living in the American Southwest, that region has been experiencing “megadrought” conditions.  (The whole west is, in fact, drought-stricken right now.) And that would be bad enough, but a new study by climate scientists indicates that the Southwest has been going through “the driest two decades in the region in at least 1,200 years” and, no surprise, climate change is significantly to blame. We’re talking about a catastrophe — one that, as yet, shows no signs of abating and that in the long run is only going to get worse.

If lack of water is a problem in the Southwest, here’s the “good” — actually, terrible — news: this country’s coasts are going to be anything but short of water.  According to another new study, sea levels around this country are going to rise by something like a foot in the next three decades (more even than the global average). In other words, while parts of the U.S. broil, other parts will functionally drown, with ever more disastrous flooding occurring ever more often. Again, this is due to the never-ending burning of fossil fuels (and toss in as well phenomena like the melting of Russia’s permafrost, potentially releasing vast amounts of the potent greenhouse-gas methane into the atmosphere).

The World Island ...

Consider us at the edge of the sort of epochal change not seen for centuries, even millennia. By the middle of this century, we will be living under such radically altered circumstances that the present decade, the 2020s, will undoubtedly seem like another era entirely, akin perhaps to the Middle Ages. And I’m not talking about the future development of flying cars, cryogenics, or even as-yet-unimaginable versions of space travel.

After leading the world for the past 75 years, the United States is ever so fitfully losing its grip on global hegemony. As Washington’s power begins to fade, the liberal international system it created by founding the United Nations in 1945 is facing potentially fatal challenges.

After more than 180 years of Western global dominion, leadership is beginning to move from West to East, where Beijing is likely to become the epicenter of a new world order that could indeed rupture longstanding Western traditions of law and human rights.

The new hegemon

Amid this flurry of flying dirt and flowing concrete, Beijing seems to have an underlying design for transcending the vast distances that have historically separated Asia from Europe. Its goal: to forge a unitary market that will soon cover the vast Eurasian land mass. This scheme will consolidate China’s control over a continent that is home to 70% of the world’s population and productivity. In the end, it could also break the U.S. geopolitical grip over a region that has long been the core of, and key to, its global power. The foundation for such an ambitious transnational scheme is a monumental construction effort that, in just two decades, has already covered China and much of Central Asia with a massive triad of energy pipelines, high-speed rail lines, and highways.

A short lived hegemon 

In its hell-bent drive for development, in other words, China is digging its own grave (and ours as well).

To whit

Simultaneously, soaring temperatures are expected to devastate the North China Plain between Beijing and Shanghai, one of that country’s prime agricultural regions currently inhabited by 400 million people, nearly a third of that country’s population. It could, in fact, potentially become one of the most lethal places on the planet.

“This spot is going to be the hottest spot for deadly heat waves in the future,” said Professor Elfatih Eltahir, a climate specialist at MIT who published his findings in the journal Nature Communications. Between 2070 and 2100, he estimates, the region could face hundreds of periods of “extreme danger” and perhaps five lethal periods of 35° Wet Bulb Temperature (where a combination of heat and high humidity prevents the evaporation of the sweat that cools the human body). After just six hours under such conditions, a healthy person at rest will die.

Rather than sudden and catastrophic, the impact of climate change in North China is likely to be incremental and cumulative, escalating relentlessly with each passing decade. If the “Chinese century” does indeed start around 2030, it’s unlikely to last long once its main financial center at Shanghai is flooded out and its agricultural heartland is baking in insufferable heat.

End game.

After 2050, the international community will face a growing contradiction, even a head-on collision, between the two foundational principles of the current world order: national sovereignty and human rights. As long as nations have the sovereign right to seal their borders, the world will have no way of protecting the human rights of the 200 million to 1.2 billion climate-change refugees expected to be created by 2050, both within their own borders and beyond. Faced with such extreme disorder, it is just possible that the nations of this planet might agree to cede some small portion of their sovereignty to a global government set up to cope with the climate crisis.

The choice is up to us if civilization is to survive.

A planet ever more battered by climate change, one in which neither an American nor a Chinese “century” will have any meaning, will certainly need a newly empowered world order that can supersede national sovereignty to protect the most fundamental and transcendent of all human rights: survival. The environmental changes in the offing are so profound that anything less than a new form of democratic global governance will mean not just incessant conflicts but, in all likelihood, disaster of an almost-unimaginable kind. And no surprise there, since we’ll be dealing with a planet all too literally on the brink.

Any questions?

The use of hard power ...

A Russian convoy headed toward Georgia in 2008.

Credit...Louisa Gouliamaki/Agence France-Presse -- Getty Images

Friends in the past have accused yours truly being a pessimist based on takes on AI, the environment, inequality and incompetency on the part of America's so-called leaders, entities bought and paid for by the MIC and significant others. Seems the opinions of this rube has been fairly accurate guesstimates based on what's happening in the world today.

The betting pool of civilizations such as ours surviving is 50/50 at best based on the aformentioned state of affairs stated above and we haven even discussed The Art of War and how it applies to the situation today in Europe as the West is rotten from the inside out and Putin understands the tenets of The Art of War without question.

The beginning of The Art of War in a classical bamboo book from the reign of the Qianlong Emperor

There is no world leader today with a better track record when it comes to using military power than President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Whether against Georgia in 2008, Ukraine in 2014, or in Syria since 2015, the Russian military has repeatedly converted battlefield success into political victories. Russia’s rearmament over the past decade and a half has been unmatched by a comparable increase in Western capabilities. So it is no surprise why Russia feels emboldened to use its military power while the West stands by.

In the modernization of Russia's Military, something done at a tiny fraction of the waste and incompetency of the Pentagon, said country's armed to the teeth and has the advantage of ground when waging war against the Ukraine. In the long run, however, Putin now has his Vietnam as indigenous fighters don't have to win but rather, outlast.

“We are 50 percent plus of global G.D.P.,” Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, argued recently, contrasting this to Russia’s unimpressive 3 percent share of the world’s economic output. However, economies don’t fight wars; militaries do. America’s economic power was tested when Mr. Biden threatened tough sanctions if Russia were to invade Ukraine; Mr. Putin did so anyway, betting that hard power would carry the day.

Summing it up ...

The U.S. strategy of making public intelligence about Russia’s military buildup around Ukraine was clever, but Mr. Putin has called our bluff. It was once popular to mock the Russian president for his 19th-century worldview, but his use of military power to bolster Russia’s influence has worked in the 21st century, too. The West’s assumption that the arc of history naturally bends in its direction is looking naïve. So, too, is the decision to let our military advantage slip. Soft power and economic influence are fine capabilities to have, but they cannot stop Russian armor as it rolls toward Kyiv.

As for the rest of the guesstimates, AI looms in the background as per a BRT post titled Why the Future Doesn't Need Us - 2022 while the specter of GW and the future of the world will be discussed in another blurb containing "salacious" material of another kind. :)

Explanation 101

The US government's role in the world explained.

The 4th Season ...

 Winter's the 4th season, spare, unforgiving and beautiful if one takes the time to look. Enjoy.

An interesting take ...

 “The primordial interest of the United States, over which for centuries we have fought wars– the First, the Second and Cold Wars– has been the relationship between Germany and Russia, because united there, they’re the only force that could threaten us. And to make sure that that doesn’t happen.” George Friedman, STRATFOR CEO at The Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs

Who wins, who loses. this is key to what's happening in Europe vis a vis, Russia, the Ukraine, the US and Germany as the stakes cannot be higher for all parties involved. 

To whit ...

The Ukrainian crisis has nothing to do with Ukraine. It’s about Germany and, in particular, a pipeline that connects Germany to Russia called Nord Stream 2. Washington sees the pipeline as a threat to its primacy in Europe and has tried to sabotage the project at every turn. Even so, Nord Stream has pushed ahead and is now fully-operational and ready-to-go. Once German regulators provide the final certification, the gas deliveries will begin. German homeowners and businesses will have a reliable source of clean and inexpensive energy while Russia will see a significant boost to their gas revenues. It’s a win-win situation for both parties.

The US Foreign Policy establishment is not happy about these developments. They don’t want Germany to become more dependent on Russian gas because commerce builds trust and trust leads to the expansion of trade. As relations grow warmer, more trade barriers are lifted, regulations are eased, travel and tourism increase, and a new security architecture evolves. In a world where Germany and Russia are friends and trading partners, there is no need for US military bases, no need for expensive US-made weapons and missile systems, and no need for NATO. There’s also no need to transact energy deals in US Dollars or to stockpile US Treasuries to balance accounts. Transactions between business partners can be conducted in their own currencies which is bound to precipitate a sharp decline in the value of the dollar and a dramatic shift in economic power. This is why the Biden administration opposes Nord Stream. It’s not just a pipeline, it’s a window into the future; a future in which Europe and Asia are drawn closer together into a massive free trade zone that increases their mutual power and prosperity while leaving the US on the outside looking in. Warmer relations between Germany and Russia signal an end to the “unipolar” world order the US has overseen for the last 75 years. A German-Russo alliance threatens to hasten the decline of the Superpower that is presently inching closer to the abyss. This is why Washington is determined to do everything it can to sabotage Nord Stream and keep Germany within its orbit. It’s a matter of survival.

It's all about the money yet again.

“The only way left for U.S. diplomats to block European purchases is to goad Russia into a military response and then claim that avenging this response outweighs any purely national economic interest. As hawkish Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, explained in a State Department press briefing on January 27: “If Russia invades Ukraine one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.” (“America’s Real Adversaries Are Its European and Other Allies”, The Unz Review) 

Putin has the US by the short hairs and Biden & company actually know this to be true.

Betting pool ... Putin will wait for Germany to certify Nord Stream to begin the process of Europe becoming independent from the US and NATO. After that, he withdraws his troops if he's smart as he's already got what he wanted.  But he didn't ... Hubris killed the deal with Germany and Nord Stream. 

The World Island/Heartland Theory comes to mind here without question. 

Mackinder’s Concept of the World Island, From The Geographical Journal (1904)

Qanon ...

Credit...Illustration by Adam Ferriss

The cipher that's Qanon is no longer, thanks to computational sleuthing finally discovering who the originators are of this truly stellar enterprise.

“Open your eyes,” the online post began, claiming, “Many in our govt worship Satan.”

That warning, published on a freewheeling online message board in October 2017, was the beginning of the movement now known as QAnon. Paul Furber was its first apostle.

The game's afoot - Sherlock Holmes

Now two teams of forensic linguists say their analysis of the Q texts shows that Mr. Furber, one of the first online commentators to call attention to the earliest messages, actually played the lead role in writing them.

The studies provide the first empirical evidence of who invented the toxic QAnon myth, and the scientists who conducted the studies said they hoped that unmasking the creators might weaken its hold over QAnon followers. Some polls indicate that millions of people still believe that Q is a top military insider whose messages have revealed that former President Trump will save the world from a cabal of “deep state” Democratic pedophiles. QAnon has been linked to scores of violent incidents, many of the attackers who stormed the Capitol last year were adherents, and the F.B.I. has labeled the movement a potential terrorist threat.

The scientists say that in 2018 a collaborator took control of the writing as Q: Ron Watkins. This message from Q appeared in 2019, and Mr. Watkins wrote this tweet shortly after the 2020 election.

How the two were outed.

The two analyses — one by Claude-Alain Roten and Lionel Pousaz of OrphAnalytics, a Swiss start-up; the other by the French computational linguists Florian Cafiero and Jean-Baptiste Camps — built on long-established forms of forensic linguistics that can detect telltale variations, revealing the same hand in two texts. In writing the Federalist Papers, for example, James Madison favored “whilst” over “while,” and Alexander Hamilton tended to write “upon” instead of “on.”

Instead of relying on expert opinion, the computer scientists used a mathematical approach known as stylometry. Practitioners say they have replaced the art of the older studies with a new form of science, yielding results that are measurable, consistent and replicable.

End result ...

The Swiss team said its accuracy rate was about 93 percent. The French team said its software correctly identified Mr. Watkins’s writing in 99 percent of tests and Mr. Furber’s in 98 percent.

Now, the real question to ask is ... How much money have these guys made?

To boldly go/rev X

Say what you want about Musk but he gets things done and he is a visionary without question. 

Elon Musk may usually be a man of few words where Twitter is concerned, but when he does speak, the internet is always there to listen. This time, Musk sent out two very succinct tweets about the recently revealed SpaceX Starship Animation video. The animation comes as part of a keynote, delivered by Musk himself on February 11, 2022, in which the SpaceX and Tesla CEO details the company's great plan to send humans to Mars — and not just in some distant, vague future, but soon.

If successful, this will change spaceflight forever.

The information war ...

Aljazeera's take on how governments try to dominate the news is truly excellent with emphasis on Ukraine. This kind of in-depth reporting is not done in the US in any way, shape or fashion.

Digital with Analog override/rev II

Rarely has an advertising image been hailed as a pop culture icon. In that rarified company of Marlboro Man and Benetto Pieta belongs this 1978 photograph by Steven Steigman, which would later be known as the Blown-away Man. The ad for Hitachi Maxell, the Japanese manufacture of stereos has since been parodied from Family Guy to P.Diddy, and to this day, has been recycled and reused by Maxell is its ad campaigns.

The ads showed hair and tie of a man sitting in a Le Corbusier chair — along with the lampshade and martini glass next to him — being blown back by the tremendous sound from speakers in front of him. Who actually modeled for the ad is unclear. Steigman wanted a model with long hair (for obvious reasons), but when a model could not easily be found, Steigman used a makeup man working for his ad agency Scali, McCabe, Sloves. The model is identified only as Jack. To achieve the wind-blown position, Steigman put tonnes of hairspay on the model’s hair, and tied some hair strands to the ceiling with fishing lines. The lampshade, tie and martini glass were also likewise tied to fishing lines.

The photo was instantaneously a hit, a powerful statement that music has power and force to move the mind and the soul. It was so popular that it was expended into a TV ad campaign. In the television versions, either Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries or Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain was the music responsible for those powerful waves.

But this isn't about the Blown-away Man and Maxell but rather about digital with analog overrode and how it applies to the uncanny valley and AI. 

1. Is this face of a real person or artificially synthesized? (See answer below.)

You might be confident in your ability to tell a real face from one created using artificial intelligence. But a new study has found that your chance of choosing accurately would be slightly better if you just flipped a coin—and you are more likely to trust the fake face over the real one.

Farid has been exploring synthetic images—and how well people can tell them apart from the real ones—for years. He initially focused on the rise of computer-generated imagery. But the medium’s path has accelerated in recent years as deep-learning-based neural networks known as GANs (generative adversarial networks) have become more sophisticated at generating truly realistic synthetic images. “If you look at the rate of improvement of deep fakes and [GANs], it’s an order of magnitude faster than CGI,” he says. “We would argue that we are through the uncanny valley for still faces.

As corollary, the impedance to ubiquitous AI has been the amount of power said tech uses as neural nets are analog, taking measurements of the outside world while computationally, the backend evaluates the data input crunching bits, thus creating a computational mismatch requiring enormous power to overcome, a problem considered to be almost impossible to solve until now.

Algorithms that use the brain’s communication signal can now work on analog neuromorphic chips, which closely mimic our energy-efficient brains.

Today’s most successful artificial intelligence algorithms, artificial neural networks, are loosely based on the intricate webs of real neural networks in our brains. But unlike our highly efficient brains, running these algorithms on computers guzzles shocking amounts of energy: The biggest models consume nearly as much power as five cars over their lifetimes.

Enter neuromorphic computing, a closer match to the design principles and physics of our brains that could become the energy-saving future of AI. Instead of shuttling data over long distances between a central processing unit and memory chips, neuromorphic designs imitate the architecture of the jelly-like mass in our heads, with computing units (neurons) placed next to memory (stored in the synapses that connect neurons). To make them even more brain-like, researchers combine neuromorphic chips with analog computing, which can process continuous signals, just like real neurons. The resulting chips are vastly different from the current architecture and computing mode of digital-only computers that rely on binary signal processing of 0s and 1s.

The BrainScaleS-2 neuromorphic chip, developed by neuromorphic engineers at Heidelberg University, uses tiny circuits that mimic the analog computing of the real neurons in our brains.

2. Is this face of a real person or artificially synthesized? (See answer below.)

Wth this being said, everything's different now as AI's a reality not to be denied and man is not ready for it. Bill Joy, in 2010 wrote

What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines' decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.

Answers

1. Fake

2. Real

Rewired ...

Brains adapt just as life adapts when faced with different environments, something readily seen with astronauts dealing with weightlessness.

Brains of Cosmonauts “Rewired” During Space Missions

A new study published in Frontiers in Neural Circuits is the first to analyze the structural connectivity changes that happen in the brain after long-duration spaceflight. The results show significant microstructural changes in several white matter tracts such as the sensorimotor tracts. The study can form a basis for future research into the full scope of brain changes during human space exploration.

Our brain can change and adapt in structure and function throughout our lives. As human exploration of space reaches new horizons, understanding the effects of spaceflight on human brains is crucial. Previous research has shown that spaceflight has the potential to alter both the shape and function of an adult brain.

The tech used ...

To study brain structure and function after spaceflight, the researchers used a brain imaging technique called fiber tractography. 

“Fiber tractography gives a sort of wiring scheme of the brain. Our study is the first to use this specific method to detect changes in brain structure after spaceflight,” explained Wuyts.

Wuyts and his team acquired diffusion MRI (dMRI) scans of 12 male cosmonauts before and right after their spaceflights. They also collected eight follow-up scans, seven months after spaceflight. The cosmonauts all engaged in long-duration missions of an average length of 172 days.

The researchers found proof of the concept of ‘the learned brain’; in other words, the level of neuroplasticity the brain has to adapt to spaceflight. “We found changes in the neural connections between several motor areas of the brain,” said first author Andrei Doroshin, of Drexel University. “Motor areas are brain centers where commands for movements are initiated. In weightlessness, an astronaut needs to adapt his or her movement strategies drastically, compared to Earth. Our study shows that their brain is rewired, so to speak.”

Time Dilation yet again ...

Einstein's right yet again in terms of time dilation, space/time and all things related to gravity. 

The idea that time would be affected by gravity was first proposed by Albert Einstein in 1915, as part of his theory of general relativity. Space and time are inextricably linked, and large masses warp the fabric of spacetime with their immense gravitational influence. This has the effect of making time pass more slowly closer to a large mass like a planet, star, or, in the most extreme example, a black hole. This phenomenon is known as time dilation.

Here on Earth, time dilation effectively means that time moves more quickly at higher elevations. So for instance, time passes faster on the summit of Mount Everest than at sea level, but it applies over smaller distances too – someone living in a 10th floor apartment will age faster than someone on the first floor, and your head ages faster than your feet.

The problem with physics is the very small of quantum remains separate from the very large of relativity, a nonissue with nature but in terms of finally understanding how the two scientifically relate to one another is something this experiment hopes to resolve.

The team says that this work could not only help make atomic clocks 50 times more precise than they are now, but it could open up new tools to probe the mysteries of physics. Currently, the force of gravity can’t be explained in terms of quantum physics, but being able to measure its effects on smaller and smaller scales could unlock its secrets and perhaps reveal the missing link between quantum and classical physics.

A 1-mm cloud of strontium atoms suspended in a laser lattice helped physicists measure the effect gravity has on the flow of time more precisely than ever before. Jacobson/NIST

Jam @ Sugar Hollow - JD & Friends

Blues Rock - This time, Low Down Dirty Shame, written by Moanin' Bernice Edwards & Ollie Shepard. Intense cover without question.

Situational Awareness/rev II

HIV-1, shown here, was identified nearly 40 years ago. Earlier this month researchers reported the discovery of a more virulent variant of the virus. Credit: Callista Images/Cultura Creative Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo

A Quiet Dread, posted in BRT on 12/21/21, details the possibility of COVID mutating into a nightmare of biblical proportions if it decides to incorporate SARS or MERS into its dataset along with the transmissibility of Omicron in order to better survive the vagaries of reality that all life must face. Seems William A. Haseltine, a renown expert on infectious disease, concurs ...

As SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, has spread throughout the world, many observers have failed to take note of the millions of illnesses and deaths caused by HIV—another virus that has approached pandemic status during its history. Now an HIV variant that is more virulent and transmissible has been discovered in the Netherlands, where it apparently has been circulating for decades, according to new research. Luckily, none of the variant’s new mutations make it resistant to widely used therapies. But the finding may offer a warning for how the COVID pandemic could proceed in the coming months: viruses do not necessarily evolve to become milder.

As often stated, there is no certitude, only probabilities, a notion apropos to Covid without question.

First of all, the virulence of SARS-CoV-2 has been very stable—with the exception of Delta, which is twice as likely to land you in the hospital. Delta was a warning shot across our bow, showing the virus can become both more transmissible and more virulent. There is nothing that we know of that restrains this virus from becoming as lethal as its cousin SARS-CoV-1. We still have no clue whether one genetic change or many make SARS-CoV-1 so much more virulent than SARS-CoV-2. As long as we are in the dark about what it is that determines the virulence of the virus, we have no idea which direction the next variant will come from. So I’ve been telling policy makers to be optimistic about the upside but prepare for the downside.

Truer words never spoken ...

William Alan Haseltine