Keep Drinking the Kool-Aid

Posted on 28/10/2024 by Grumpa Joe

Just as I suspected, the dream of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is just that, a dream. The book I am reading, titled “Feeding the Machine,” exposes the millions of workers behind the technology that is supposedly going to change the world. Although AI will help many of us be more productive when we find an APP developed expressly for a specific application we can use it for. My personal experience with AI is limited at best, and I find it annoying. Most times, I use a Chat bot at a website like my bank, or a vendor like the phone or cable service. The first thing I find useless are bots that answer only very specific questions. Most Chat-bots are developed like that. If you are seeking answers to a complicated problem there is a 99.999% chance you will need to connect with a human to get near an answer. Our suppliers, however, make us go through the steps before they give us a number to call for help. Evidently, a large number of callers are happy with the canned answers they receive.

The workers being employed live in East Africa and work nine hours a day in almost slave-like conditions. They watch videos to highlight activities that may escape the sensors used by AI applications. An example cited involved a lady walking a bicycle across a street in the crosswalk and being struck by a self-driving car. The AI used in the car could not determine that a human walking directly in front of the car was a safety issue. The job of the reviewer is to highlight this anomaly on the video to bring it to the attention of the programmer who then modifies the the algorithm to prevent a collision. The work to do this is mindless and boring. Managers require that the worker perform a set number of observations per minute and the worker keystrokes are measured and reported. If the worker does not match the requirements of the job, he is penalized, often by firing.

While all these observations are going on, billions of dollars are spent making artificial intelligence more intelligent and faster. We endure the chatbots just so big companies can use fewer paid employees to do the job. They truly believe we, the consumers, are getting the absolute best service experience that can be provided. It doesn’t matter what we believe we are getting. If they are making more money, we lose, and they keep on convincing themselves that they are making us happy.

Someday, AI may threaten society and cause people to lose their jobs, but I will not be around to witness the debacle. In the meantime, the venture capitalists who continue to pour money into AI companies will keep feeding us the Kool-Aid to convince us of how wonderful life will be when it all begins to happen.

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Election Memes

Posted on 27/10/2024 by Grumpa Joe

No additional words are needed.

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History Repeats Itself Again and Again

Posted on 27/10/2024 by Grumpa Joe

History repeats itself, and the Democrats are part of the reason, as pointed out in this excellent piece by Daniel Greenfield.

Every Republican President Is Hitler
Sat, 26 Oct 2024 9:48 PM PST by Daniel Greenfield
“If the British had not fought in 1940, Hitler would have been in London and if Democrats do not fight in 1968, Nixon will be in the White House,” Vice President Hubert Humphrey warned.
Chicago Mayor Daley had accused Nixon of “Hitler type” tactics.Comparing any Republican presidential candidate to Hitler had been a standard Democratic political tactic for some time no matter how inappropriate it might be.
Before Democrats were comparing Nixon to Hitler, they were comparing Barry Goldwater to Hitler. Goldwater had a Jewish father and a distaste for Socialism, which would have made him unwelcome in the ranks of the racially and politically pure National Socialists, but that didn’t stop the Hitler accusations from being hurled by the Democratic party and its political allies in the press.
Governor Pat Brown of California said, “Goldwater’s acceptance speech had the stench of fascism. All we needed to hear was Heil Hitler.” Mayor Jack Shelley of San Francisco claimed that Goldwater strategists got all their ideas from Mein Kampf.
Even though Goldwater had been an early NAACP member, NAACP leader Roy Wilkins warned, “Those who say that the doctrine of ultra-conservatism offers no menace should remember that a man come out of the beer halls of Munich and rallied the forces of rightism in Germany. All the same elements are there in San Francisco now.”
The NAACP accused Goldwater of appealing to “fear and bigotry”. Martin Luther King said, “We see danger signs of Hitlerism in the candidacy of Mr. Goldwater.”
Union leaders launched a national campaign to denounce Goldwater as Hitler II. “I have drawn a parallel between Goldwater and Hitler and I make no apology for drawing that parallel,” George Meany of the AFL-CIO declared. While Goldwater wasn’t Hitler, the CIO part of the AFL-CIO had strong Communist influences and after the Hitler-Stalin pact, some unions within it staged strikes to sabotage production and prevent aid from reaching the Allies who were fighting Hitler. Not only was Goldwater not Hitler, but some of the organizations represented by Meany had aided Hitler when Stalin told them to.
Accusing Republicans of being Hitler for assorted petty reasons dates back to the time when Hitler was still around. FDR accused Republican candidate Wendell Willkie of using “Hitler tactics” by repeating his slogans frequently. But it was the frequent associations of Republicans and Hitler by Democrats that was the true Big Lie. Its only purpose was a senseless association through the repetition of ridiculous and baseless accusations that every single Republican was just Hitler in a better suit.
Typical of this tactic was Rep. Tom Lantos ranting, “If you overlook your involvement in the KKK, or the Nazi party, or the Republican Party, you are lying.” The issue at hand had nothing to do with Nazism. It was about Clinton’s Secretary of Agriculture taking bribes. The goal was to associate Republicans with Nazism by classing the two together as frequently as possible regardless of relevance, decency or truth.
In the Iran-Contra trial, Oliver North was accused of “following Adolf Hitler’s official strategy”. What did one have to do with the other? Nothing. But this sort of lazy accusation had become typical and routine. William Shirer, who had also compared Nixon’s bombing of Hanoi to the Holocaust and called Nixon an “apt pupil” of Hitler (Pentagon spokesman Jerry Friedheim was Goebbels), compared Reagan to Hitler for intervening in Grenada. Then Shirer compared Bush I to Hitler for trying to outlaw flag burning.
By the Reagan years, the left had achieved a banality of Hitler analogies. Everything Reagan did was just like Hitler. All of Reagan’s associates were just like Hitler. It was Hitlers all the way down.
President George W. Bush inherited this banality of Hitlers. To left-wing Truthers, open and covert, 9/11 was the Reichstag fire, the Patriot Act was the beginning of a national dictatorship and Bush was a dictator. As Kurt Vonnegut quipped, “The only difference between Bush and Hitler is that Hitler was elected.” Hitler wasn’t elected, Bush was, but you can’t expect a left-wing loudmouth to know history.
Congressman Charles Rangel compared the Iraq War to the Holocaust. “This is just as bad as the 6 million Jews being killed.” (Rangel had also claimed that the Contract with America was worse than Hitler.) Senator Durbin compared Gitmo to Nazi concentration camps. Senator John Glenn compared Republican arguments to Nazi propaganda. “It’s the old Hitler business… if you hear something repeated, repeated, you start to believe it.” Like repeatedly accusing Republicans of Nazism.
Congressman Keith Ellison, a former Nation of Islam supporter who had defended its anti-Semitism, compared the September 11 to the Reichstag fire while hinting at 9/11 Trutherism.  Al Gore claimed that “The administration works closely with a network of rapid-response digital Brown Shirts”.
Democratic Senator Robert Byrd, a former Klansman, compared Bush to Hitler stooge Herman Goering. Byrd, who had filibustered the Civil Rights Act, also compared efforts to block Democratic filibusters to Nazi Germany. The “nuclear option” that Byrd was denouncing became a reality under Obama and Reid, but by then using it did not make Senators Democrats into the successors of Nazi Germany.
To most people, Nazi analogies summon up images of the Holocaust and a ruthless dictatorship. To the left however, any populist reaction against their rule is Nazism.  In their world, there is a battle between progressive and reactionary forces. Any movement that dares to run for office by challenging progressive policies is reactionary, fascist and the second coming of the Third Reich. Republican victories are lazily attributed by liberal hacks to mindless public anger being exploited by right-wing demagogues.
And so the only thing we can truly be certain of is that any Republican nominee will be Hitler. It doesn’t matter what he believes. It doesn’t matter if Democrats considered him a moderate 5 minutes ago. Accusations of Nazism remain the default argument for a Democratic Party turned far to the left.
Republicans aren’t progressive. Therefore they’re Hitler. It’s really that simple.
Optimists thought that the Democrats had reached “Peak Hitler” under Bush. But for the left there is no Peak Hitler. The same tired line of attack has been trotted out for fifty years. It will go on limping around the liberal corral for another fifty years or a hundred years. The Big Lie will continue being repeated to indoctrinate each new politically active progressive with the conviction that anyone to the right is Hitler and that every election is a brand new battle to stop Hitler 2.0 from taking over America.
Goldwater was Hitler. Nixon was Hitler. Reagan was Hitler. Bush was Hitler. None of the latter three men declared the Fourth Reich, made themselves dictators for life and ran concentration camps. But the Big Lie retroactively rewrites the past by claiming that last decade’s Hitler was a decent moderate while the latest Republican Hitler is a terrifying monster. Goldwater, Nixon and Reagan were all resurrected as moderate contrasts to each other and then to Bush. The process of recreating Bush as a moderate is already done. And so each Republican makes the electoral journey from Hitler to a political moderate whom a latter generation of liberals mourns while complaining that this latest Republican really is Hitler.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center’s Front Page Magazine.Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.Thank you for reading. 

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PSA-241025-Memes to Enjoy

Posted on 25/10/2024 by Grumpa Joe
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Facebook Has Gone Too Far

Posted on 22/10/2024 by Grumpa Joe

Facebook left a message that surprised the hell out of me, “We removed your post.”

Here is the reason:

“It looks like you tried to get likes, shares, or video views in a misleading way. This goes against our Community Standards on spam.”

SPAM

“We don’t allow people to use misleading links or content to trick people to visit or stay on, a website.”

Here is what I have to say to Facebook

Here is a copy of the content they took down which I posted on 16 October 2024

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Looking Like a Gnarly Mess

It is not even noon yet, and I am fighting off sleep. Most likely, it is because I have high blood sugar from eating too large a breakfast. Instead of falling into the urge to sleep, I am writing to keep my brain neurons firing. This morning, I awoke at 6:00 a.m. and returned to bed without falling back into a sound sleep. I finally got out of bed at 8:00 and dressed for my walk. The temperature this morning was 34 degrees, and the walk was brisk. I passed a section of shaded grass that was covered in frost. Although there was some light frost it was not what we call a killing frost. Killing frost occurs when the temp drops to 28-30 degrees. Many flowers we plant for color are tropical and will not survive that temperature. The plant stems freeze through and kill any chance of the plant recovering. Nevertheless this morning was a warning that winter is definitely on its way.

The trees on my street are finally turning colors but holding their leaves. In another two weeks, most trees and flowering shrubs will be void of foliage. There is one tree, however, which holds its leaves until mid to late November. The Bradford pear will be loaded with deep green leaves and then one day you awaken to a perfect circle of yellow leaves on the ground under a bare tree. This past summer, my pear tree suffered some serious damage when a violent gust of wind broke off two four inch branches and dropped them onto the patio. The shape of the tree is now seriously lopsided. One side is in the shade of a few mighty poplars growing to the west and there is no growth on that side of the pear leaving it flat. The opposite side has been pruned by the wind leaving ugly jagged spikes of wood jutting out of the trunk. My decision is to remove the tree and let the light back into the garden. At the same time, I’ll have an apple tree removed from the front of the house. It has outlived its prettiness. The past two springs it has not had a colorful bloom of pink flowers and the leaves were sparse all summer. The trunk and branches are rough leaving it looking like a gnarly mess of twigs suspended in mid air. The tree was planted too close to the house so I am constantly pruning branches away from the roofing shingles. This pruning has also forced the tree to form into an awkward unsightly shape. I rather like the red-pink-lavender flames coming off burning apple logs.

I protested and demanded to be reconsidered. I don’t think FaceBook’s AI algorithm is ready for prime time. And if it is, they are violating my right to free speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution of the USA. Or, they are racist because I chose to use Nat King Cole’s version of the song “Autumn Leaves.” Or they are upset that I downloaded a YouTube video. Whatever the reason, here is to you FaceBook. Stick the removal up your ass.

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