Lots going on as usual. I was telling an old friend over lunch at Skavone's that I've somewhat psyched myself into seeing major cities and their districts (e.g. The District, with its Beltway Bandits), as the power centers. At the level of nation-states, I'm seeing the theater, but have suspended my disbelief by and large, meaning I don't take narratives at this level too seriously in my global modeling.
I'm talking about the scripts, the fake news. Of course I take real suffering seriously, and as a symptom of stuff not working.
One reason the United Nations didn't work out is it left the refugee problem for future generations. Too many people fell through the cracks, and got no statehood. It's still that way today. The solution is not more walls and fences everywhere.
If you're new to this blog, you know there's some cosmology or cosmography or mythology at work behind the scenes, informing my vista. It's relatively easy for me to self-brainwash in certain ways.
Isn't that a truism for everybody? What's different from one to another are these "certain ways" i.e. some trains of thought will run on tracks I never even suspected existed, or could exist.
Some readers encounter the railroad I'm running and think the same thing: what planet is this guy from? Mars?
So what's in the news these days? Well, again, lots of stuff.
The war twixt the House of Saud and the Yemenis might be coming to a close, given tensions with Tehran are starting to slack off, with mediation from China. All sides are realizing there's enough oil extracting, refining and shipping for everyone who wants to play, Caracas included.
Also: Silicon Valley Bank just went under.
From my angle, the financialists, not being engineers, have a hard time getting back to the fundamentals when explaining these developments, such as the whole driverless car scenario, a huge consumer of investment capital. Investors were ready for their returns, and patience ran thin. "Running on hype" is akin to "running on empty" (on fumes).
Silicon Valley banked heavily on driverless vehicle science fiction, believing tales spun by Elon Musk and so on.
But then Musk later came around to the view that for truly driverless functioning, we'd need to solve the problem of making AI (Artificial Intelligence) into RI (Real Intelligence) -- Pinocchio would have to become a real boy after all.
That's equivalent to throwing in the cards, instead of continuing to bluff. We have RI, but in the form of real humans, who still have an edge over the competition.
ChatGPT3 is a wonderful imposter, a fun house mirror, a hallmark of what's to come: more PI (Phony Intelligence), posing as RI. Sometimes PI is plenty, but not while driving.
Speaking of PI, the lingering excuse for a State Department is doing its best to explain to the Pentagon how everything is still under control on the international scene (the "theater"). "Everything is going according to plan" say the hapless neocons, as their NordStream fork in the road proves to be a dead end.
I'd say the neocons have lost the battle for hearts and minds, but they'd given up on winning that one long ago. They've been losers for decades, even while at the helm of their mock government, their fake USA.
Speaking of PI (phony intelligence), Pi Day is almost here. Pi is "phony" in ways we should talk about. There's some fun philosophy in this neighborhood.
