The Garden of Forking Paths

Freepik & Robert E. 

Quantum lives here along with many worlds, strangeness and the problem with infinite choice.

Jorge Luis Borges

You no doubt wish to see the garden?”

I recognized the name of one of our consuls and I replied, disconcerted, “The garden?”

“The garden of forking paths.”

“Before unearthing this letter, I had questioned myself about the ways in which a book can be infinite. I could think of nothing other than a cyclic volume, a circular one. A book whose last page was identical with the first, a book which had the possibility of continuing indefinitely. I remembered too that night which is at the middle of the Thousand and One Nights when Scheherazade (through a magical oversight of the copyist) begins to relate word for word the story of the Thousand and One Nights, establishing the risk of coming once again to the night when she must repeat it, and thus on to infinity. I imagined as well a Platonic hereditary work. transmitted from father to son, in which each new individual adds a chapter or corrects with pious care the pages of his elders. These conjectures diverted me; but none seemed to correspond, not even remotely, to the contradictory chapters of Ts’ui Pên. In the midst of this perplexity, I received from Oxford the manuscript you have examined. I lingered, naturally, on the sentence: I leave to the various futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths. Almost instantly, I understood: ‘the garden of forking paths’ was the chaotic novel; the phrase ‘the various futures (not to all)’ suggested to me the forking in time, not in space.  A broad rereading of the work confirmed the theory. In all fictional works, each time a man is confronted with several alternatives, he chooses one and eliminates the others; in the fiction of Ts’ui Pên, he chooses— simultaneously—all of them. He creates, in this way, diverse futures, diverse times which themselves also proliferate and fork. Here, then, is the explanation of the novel’s contradictions. 

Freepik & Robert E.

The Aleph

Another World - 1947 M.C. Escher

Just finished The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges.

Jorge Luis Borges

Upon reading Borges' The Aleph, Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker comes to mind as
both connect to the vagaries of quantum without question. 

First Edition

How, then, can I translate into words the limitless Aleph, which my floundering mind can scarcely encompass? Mystics, faced with the same. problem, fall back on symbols: to signify the godhead, one Persian speaks of a bird that somehow is all birds; Alanus de Insulis, of a sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere; Ezekiel, of a four-faced angel who at one and the same time moves east and west, north and south. (Not in vain do I recall these inconceivable analogies; they bear some relation to the Aleph.)

Hand with Reflecting Sphere 

 

I want to add two final observations: one, on the nature of the Aleph; the other, on its name. As is well known, the Aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Its use for the strange sphere in my story may not be accidental. For the Kabbala, the letter stands for the En Soph, the pure and boundless godhead; it is also said that it takes the shape of a man pointing to both heaven and earth, in order to show that the lower world is the map and mirror of the higher; for Cantor’s Mengenlehre, it is the symbol of transfinite numbers, of which any part is as great as the whole.

It seems, to Borges, the connect to reality involves brownian motion, the meander and the random walk as all three provide viable avenues enabling one to explore an existence we will never fully understand. 

Simulation of the Brownian motion of a large particle, analogous to a dust particle,
that collides with a large set of smaller particles, analogous to molecules of a gas,
which move with different velocities in different random directions.

Glen Canyon, US - Christian Mehlführer

Five eight-step random walks from a central point.
Some paths appear shorter than eight steps where
the route has doubled back on itself.

Good for cleaning and disinfecting ...

Sen. Ron Johnson speaks during a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee hearing titled "How the Corruption of Science Has Impacted Public Perception and Policies Regarding Vaccines."
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

You can't fix stupid, rev XXX or, I am not a scientist nor a doctor but will support findings
no doc or scientist will support.

To whit.

For years, Sen. Ron Johnson has been spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation about COVID-19 and the safety of vaccines.

He’s promoted disproven treatments for COVID-19 and claimed, without evidence, that athletes are “dropping dead on the field” after getting the COVID-19 vaccination. Now the Wisconsin politician is endorsing a book by a discredited doctor promoting an unproven and dangerous treatment for autism and a host of ailments: chlorine dioxide, a chemical used for disinfecting and bleaching. 

The book is “The War on Chlorine Dioxide: The Medicine that Could End Medicine” by Dr. Pierre Kory, a critical care specialist who practiced in Wisconsin hospitals before losing his medical certification for statements advocating using an antiparasite medication to treat COVID-19. The action, he’s said, makes him unemployable, even though he still has a license.

Kory has said there’s a globally coordinated campaign by public health agencies, the drug industry and the media to suppress evidence of the medicinal wonders of chlorine dioxide. His book, according to its website, contends that the “remarkable molecule” works “to treat everything from cancer and malaria to autism and COVID.”

The book jacket features a prominent blurb from Johnson calling the doctor’s treatise: “A gripping tale of corruption and courage that will open eyes and prompt serious questions.” 

Chlorine dioxide is a chemical compound that has a range of applications, including as a disinfectant and deodorizer. Food processing plants apply it to sanitize surfaces and equipment. Hospitals use it to sterilize medical devices, and some municipalities use low levels to treat public water supplies. Paper mills rely on it to whiten wood pulp. Safety experts advise those who handle it to work in well-ventilated spaces and to wear protective gloves.

The FDA warns against purchasing or drinking Chlorine Dioxide but it's being touted for prevention and treatment of coronavirus disease.

Chlorine dioxide solution is a diluted version of sodium chlorite. When citric acid is added, the mixture becomes chlorine dioxide a powerful bleaching agent. Both sodium chlorite and chlorine dioxide are the active ingredients in disinfectants and have additional industry uses. They are not meant to be ingested.

Chlorine dioxide kits are sold online under various names: Miracle Mineral Solution, Miracle Mineral Supplement, Master Mineral Solution, Water Purification Solution and Chlorine Dioxide Protocol.
They are often referred to as MMS.

Cargo Cult Science

Brilliant, funny, honest and demanding, Richard Feynman's statement rings evermore true in the age of bloviation and AI slop. To whit ... It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are.
If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.

This also applies to Cargo Cult Science and AI in ways boggling the mind.

The final chapter, "Cargo Cult Science", was adapted from Feynman's 1974 commencement address at the California Institute of Technology,[3] in which he cautioned graduates not to minimize the weaknesses of their research in the pursuit of a preferred conclusion. He drew an analogy to the cargo cult phenomenon in the South Pacific Ocean in which, as he understood it, islanders built a mock airstrip to cause airplanes loaded with imported goods to land. The cargo cult islanders carved headphones from wood and wore them while sitting in handmade lashed-up control towers. They waved landing signals to conjure the cargo planes out of the sky.[4]: 1h43m 

Similarly, he argued, adopting the appearances of scientific investigation without a self-critical attitude will fail to produce reliable results. Feynman used the term "cargo cult" to describe situations where people focus on superficial aspects of a process without understanding the underlying principles.[2]: 338 

Sound familiar? :)

When you have deceit ...

OpenAI chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane.Photo-illustration: WIRED Staff; Getty Images

OpenAI has allegedly become more guarded about publishing research that highlights the potentially negative impact that AI could have on the economy, four people familiar with the matter tell WIRED.

The perceived pullback has contributed to the departure of at least two employees on OpenAI’s economic research team in recent months, according to the same four people, who spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity. 

One of these employees, Tom Cunningham, left the company entirely in September after concluding it had become difficult to publish high-quality research, WIRED has learned. In a parting message shared internally, Cunningham wrote that the team faced a growing tension between conducting rigorous analysis and functioning as a de facto advocacy arm for OpenAI, according to sources familiar with the situation.

When you have deceit, you have nothing and this has been the case with OpenAI with Sam Altman as CEO. Lying, weaseling and incompetency rules, something shameful as the tech OpenAI created is legit to the nth degree. This is what's happening with capitalism in general because when not controlled, society suffers. In the end, losing one's soul is not optional as eventually, the chickens come home to roost. 

GS ...

Window View

The future awaits ...

Diagonal

The Sound

The used car salesman speaks ...

President JD Vance in Peachtree City, Ga., on Aug. 21.Megan Varner / Getty Images file

Peter Thiel's creation is hedging on presidential aspirations, thus possibly compromising the most important resource on his becoming president in 2028, money.

WASHINGTON — A high-stakes challenge to campaign finance restrictions being heard by the Supreme Court on Tuesday has the potential to fizzle because of Vice President JD Vance's reluctance to reveal whether he will run for office in 2028.

That, at least, is what one of the lawyers will tell the justices during the oral argument, which concerns limits on how much party committees can spend in coordination with candidates.

The Supreme Court's conservative majority has long been skeptical of campaign finance restrictions on free speech grounds, and Republicans have often brought challenges against them.

Vance, who was among those challenging the spending limits in the case before the court this week, has been equivocal about his plans in various public remarks, most recently in an interview with NBC News last week.

Roman Martinez, whom the court appointed to defend the restrictions when the Trump administration announced it would not do so, says the case is moot, meaning it should be dismissed and the current restrictions should remain in place.

One of Martinez's key arguments, outlined in court papers, is that Vance, who originally challenged the regulations when he was a Senate candidate, no longer has a stake in the case because he is not currently a candidate, nor has he announced any intention to be one in the future.

"Vice President's Vance's claim is now moot because he has repeatedly stated that he has no concrete plan in place to run for any particular office in 2028," Martinez said in an email.

Don't worry, this 1990 Yugo's a gem.

Yugo Ciao in Kragujevac

Thinking about summer :)

Tiny wild daisy

Reaching out ...

Lilly

Just resting

A touch of yellow

Woosley Hall - Thinking Xmas :)

Woosley Hall - A treasure for the ages. The glee club Xmas concert awaits:)

A ceiling for the ages

Organ - Bach would approve

Details. Details, Details :)

I think I've seen enough ...

Pete Hegseth Official portrait, 2025

A house GOP representative finally spoke the truth about Hegseth and it's about time. 

Don Bacon doubles down on Hegseth criticism: ‘I think I’ve seen enough’

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) took his criticism of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth a step further Friday, claiming the Pentagon chief’s recent decisions have “ruined his credibility.”

“I’ve been on the record already,” he told Politico’s Dasha Burns, who also hosts “Ceasefire” on C-SPAN. “After Signalgate, I think I’ve seen enough. What I really wanted to see was someone take responsibility — own to a mistake.”

“And then when he blamed the media or the, you know, the journalist for the story, it just — it ruined his credibility,” he added.

The Nebraska Republican noted that Hegseth “had some issues” going into confirmation hearings, after President Trump tapped him to lead the Pentagon. But, once he was confirmed, Bacon continued, he wanted to give the former Fox News host “a fair chance.”

“But I — what I’ve seen is what I call just poor decision-making,” the lawmaker, who will retire at the end of the term, told Burns.

His remarks come after a watchdog report released earlier this week found that Hegseth endangered the troops and violated department policy by using his personal cell phone to send classified information about a pending strike on Houthi targets in Yemen through the Signal app.

It's time for Hegseth to go, now. 

Gerrymandering writ large

A map of Texas’ congressional districts during a hearing in Austin in August.
Credit...Brandon Bell/Getty Images

The supremes did it again, codifying the dubious practice of gerrymandering writ large. The term toadies applies to the big 6, the grammatically correct crew certifying the fact this is the worst sc in history.

Only two decades ago, all nine Supreme Court justices agreed that extreme partisan gerrymandering could violate the Constitution, though they differed on what courts should do about it.

On Thursday, by contrast, the court’s conservative majority allowed Texas to use voting maps made to disadvantage Democrats in the 2026 election, without a hint of constitutional difficulty. To the contrary, the majority chastised a lower court for not taking the state at its word that politics, not race, motivated the maps. The court, it said, had “failed to honor the presumption of legislative good faith.”

In the space of a generation, then, the Supreme Court’s attitude toward partisan gerrymandering has shifted from tolerating it as a necessary evil to embracing it as savvy politics.

The shadow docket strikes again.

In an unsigned opinion on Thursday, over the dissents of the three Democratic appointees, the majority protected the state’s new maps, overturning a lower court’s finding that race was improperly used to draw them. Indeed, the majority chastised the lower court for not taking the state at its word that politics rather than race inspired the maps.

Any questions?

Why AZ?

Note: The numbers currently shown for TSMC and Amkor are projections.Sources: Greater Phoenix Economic Council; Maricopa Association of Governments; Arizona State University.
Jacqueline Gu/The New York Times

Let's think about this. Outside of the fact Ronnie eliminated the ability of the US to make anything anymore and the fact TSMC is doing the drill here is ... tech needs water, lots and lots of water and AZ "ain't" got any. Combine this with climate change and AZ becomes uninhabitable within the next 20 years. If I were doing the drill, Michigan and it's connect to the Great Lakes makes sense. Cold as hell in the winter but, Michigan will endure as the northern and southern tiers of the world will thrive while the center will not. Nature finds a way, always.

The computer chip factories rising from an empty expanse of the Sonoran Desert test the concept of immensity. The complex is under construction across 1,149 acres, an area larger than New York’s Central Park. It represents an investment of $165 billion, making it one of the most expensive undertakings on earth.

Here on the northern edges of Phoenix stands a display of the American reach for industrial self-sufficiency. The factories are engineered to make advanced computer chips — the brains of modern manufacturing. Those chips will power data centers that deliver artificial intelligence.

American political leaders celebrate the presence of the plants as insurance against geopolitical turmoil and disasters like pandemics. Whatever happens, the nation will have its own supply of computer chips.

But the company at the center of this enterprise — one cast as vital to national security — is not American. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC, the global leader in the industry, has marshaled the investment, the people and the know-how to turn these plans into reality.

The question remains ... why AZ?

Factoid. Another reason for Michigan. Fabs run hot, really really hot so having
said tech reside in cooler climes saves energy, right?

And so it begins ...

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repositioned the social media giant as an AI company.

Vincent Feuray | AFP | Getty Images

And so it begins. Meta is the first AI company starting to see burning through capital at stratospheric rates with no verifiable ROI is not smart but don't worry, OpenAI, and significant others, are next as AI is finally beginning to be seen as not the end all and be in terms of how the world does business
as civilization moves further into the 21st century. 

Meta Platforms shares popped about 4% higher on Thursday after Bloomberg reported that CEO Mark Zuckerberg was looking to make significant cuts to the company’s metaverse resources.

Bloomberg said that executives have considered budget cuts as high as 30% for the unit, citing people familiar with the talks.

The move would be notable for the Facebook parent company, which changed its name to Meta in October 2021 to signal its pivot beyond social media.

Zuckerberg said at the time that “the metaverse is the next frontier just like social networking was when we got started.”

The proposed cuts would likely include layoffs, according to Bloomberg, which said the cuts were part of budget planning for 2026. The cuts will likely hit the company’s virtual reality group.

Meta declined to comment on the report.

Photo by Logan Voss on Unsplash

But, as I have covered before, AI experiences diminishing returns, meaning that AI development costs increase exponentially. As such, the AI boom threatened to drain these tech giants of all their liquid cash. So, the industry switched to equity financing, which involved selling off shares to raise enough cash to keep the lights on. However, this quickly devolved into the infamous circular financing deals between OpenAI, Nvidia, Oracle, CoreWeave and Microsoft, which, in the end, wasn’t even enough cash to cover the spiralling costs of AI.

So, over the past year, Big Tech has turned more and more towards debt financing, or taking out loans, to cover their mounting AI costs. To give you an idea of how rapidly they are taking on debt, Big Tech is predicted to spend $400 billion on AI in 2025 and has issued $200 billion in AI-related bonds (or debt) so far this year, with half of that happening since September.

AI costs are really spiralling out of control. AI expenditure is set to double next year. By 2028, Morgan Stanley predicts that the AI industry will spend $2.9 trillion, the vast majority of which will require debt financing. According to J.P. Morgan, the AI sector will need $1.5 trillion in bonds (or debt financing), to cover the costs of constructing planned data centres alone.

To understand why, we need to understand what a bond is and how it relates to Credit Default Swaps (CDS). Stick with me; this gets juicy, I promise.

Bonds are a way for a corporation or a government to raise funds by directly selling their debt to investors. It is basically a corporation or government saying, “Give us your money now, and we will pay it back plus interest over time.”

But many investors want to mitigate the risks of their bonds. After all, if the government or corporation defaults on this debt, there is no way for the investors to get their money back.

This is where CDS comes in. These are effectively insurance policies for people who hold bonds, typically issued by investment banks or similar. So, if a bondholder is worried the government or corporation isn’t going to pay out and will fold on their obligations, they take out a CDS. This will cost them an annual premium, which is confusingly called a spread, based on how risky the debt is considered to be. Spreads are usually presented as a percentage cost of the bond value, so if a CDS has a spread of 1%, it will have an annual premium of 1% of the value of the bond covered. But in return, if the bond issuer defaults, the organisation providing the CDS will reimburse the full bond value.

Well, the entire future of AI depends on bonds.

And so it begins - K. Vonnegut

The man has a problem ...

The man has a problem ...

The publisher of the Franklin children's book series has rebuked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after he posted a meme of the anthropomorphic turtle firing on drug boats.

Hegseth's social media post from Sunday shows the turtle, clad in tactical gear, standing on a helicopter and aiming a rocket-propelled grenade at one of several boats in the water below. It's designed to look like an edition of the children's book, but titled Franklin Targets Narco Terrorists.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth listens as President Donald Trump speaks during a Cabinet Meeting at the White House on Dec. 2. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

& this ...

A Pentagon watchdog has determined that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth risked the safety of U.S. service members by sharing sensitive military information on the Signal messaging app, according to a source who has reviewed the forthcoming inspector general report. 

The report, which is expected to be released as early as Thursday, was launched after a journalist for The Atlantic revealed in March that he had been added to a chat on the encrypted messaging app in which Hegseth and other top officials were discussing plans for U.S. airstrikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen. 

A summary of the report provided to NPR finds that had a foreign adversary intercepted the intelligence discussed in the chat, it would have endangered both U.S. service members and the mission at large.

Time for Pete to go, now.

All taken away ...

Jacob Hannah, CEO of Coalfield Development: ‘It was a once-in-a-generation cash injection … So to have it all taken away is deeply damaging and demoralizing.’ Photograph: Michael Swensen/The Guardian.

Drip, drip, drip, the damage done to this once great nation continues unabated,
perpetrated by The Donald in ways staggering the imagination. 

‘Deeply demoralizing’: how Trump derailed coal country’s clean-energy revival

Biden earmarked billions for former coal communities in Appalachia
– and his successor came and took it away

For a moment, Jacob Hannah saw an unprecedented opportunity to make Appalachia great again.

In 2022, the Biden administration earmarked billions of dollars to help revitalize and strengthen former coal communities. The objective was to lay down building blocks for the region to transition from extractive industries like coal and timber to a hub for solar and other advanced energy technologies, with a view to long-term economic, climate and social resilience.

But on his first day in office, Donald Trump scrapped Biden’s clean energy and environmental programs, which he lambasted as woke, anti-American liberal hoaxes.

“We knew we were living in a historic moment, not just because of the amount of funding, but because the whole region mobilized to meet the moment,” said Hannah, 33. “It was a once-in-a-generation cash injection designed to prioritize extraction-based communities as part of the energy transition, which for the first time in almost a century made Appalachia very competitive. So to have it all taken away is deeply damaging and demoralizing.”

Yes it is.

This is not going to be hard ...

Adm. Frank Mitchell Bradley has taken part in operations that span the globe from Afghanistan to Yemen.Credit...Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times

The New York Times At the White House on Monday, Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, read a statement that said Mr. Hegseth had authorized Admiral Bradley “to conduct these kinetic strikes” and that the admiral had “worked well within his authority and the law” to make sure the boat was destroyed.

The public comments of the president, Mr. Hegseth and Ms. Leavitt all leave Admiral Bradley exposed.

“For the top two civilians in the Pentagon and the White House to effectively wash their hands of it and claim no responsibility, while simultaneously saying that they stand by the decision, goes against any kind of ideas of responsible command,” said Carrie A. Lee, the former chair of the department of national security and strategy at the Army War College. “If there has ever been a SEAL who is above reproach, it’s Mitch,” Mr. Cooper added. “I have yet to meet a finer person, much less a finer SEAL.” 

This hits home as my brother was a SEAL who saw combat, knew what was right and wrong and followed the chain of command. As for me, a communications officer back in the day, this hurts as the betrayal of Bradley by his superiors is a breach of the chain of command at the highest level because superiors must take ownership of whatever actions they do, good or bad. Trump and Hegseth, as Bradley's superiors, have not. What makes this even worse is the fact the ops taken against alleged drug smugglers from Venezuela have never been vetted. No intel on site to verify as to whether the guys in the boats were drug smugglers has ever been presented, just strikes and we now know why Trump and company is doing this, it's for the oil as Venezuela has the largest known reserves in the world. In hindsight, should Bradley disobey Hegseth? That's not for me to judge as I was not there but any notion this professional did the second hit on his own. Not a chance. Trump and Hegseth have crossed the line to hang Bradley out to dry to cover their asses and one never does that as a good superior takes care of his subordinates without question. End of rant for now.

As for the oil bit ...

U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar

© Salazar's official Youtube channel

Speaking on Fox News, Salazar said the Trump administration is taking the same steps it did before striking Iran's nuclear facilities earlier this year. "This is what he did with Iran. We gave ample notice to commercial airlines. Don't fly over Venezuela," she said.

This is what we said about Nam and Iraq ...

Just one more thing ...

Pete Hegseth Already Bragged About That Second Strike

The defense secretary admitted in September that he watched the strike.

It turns out that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth knows all about the circumstances of the America’s September 2 strike on boats in the Caribbean Sea. 

A clip of Hegseth talking the next day about the strike to Fox News in September resurfaced online Monday night. In the clip, Hegseth said he watched the bombing happen live. 

“I can tell you that was definitely not artificial intelligence. I watched it live. We knew exactly who was in that boat. We knew exactly what they were doing, and we knew exactly who they represented, and that was Tren de Aragua, a narco-terrorist organization designated by the United States, trying to poison our country with illicit drugs,” Hegseth said. 

Hegseth’s words contradict the Trump administration’s statements after details emerged earlier this week that the U.S. conducted a second strike on September 2 to kill survivors from its initial attack. The administration has attempted to shift blame and responsibility from Hegseth to Commander Frank “Mitch” Bradley. Trump himself claimed Sunday he “wouldn’t have wanted that—not a second strike.” 

If indeed the U.S. government conducted a second strike to kill survivors, that would be a war crime—and that’s assuming we are even at war, which Congress has not declared. 

Interesting is it not?