Trump playing 4D chess:
The rest of us should just pray no opponent goes for a nuclear opening…
The latest stunt of the US Junta now is to ban words like abortion, autism, birth, woman (not man but men that have sex with men), disability, diverse, race, minority, Native Americans…
Yeah, Trump can go fuck his minions.
Assumably, I’m banned in the Un*ted Sh*t of Amer*ca… so hey, I’d as likely visit this asshole of the world as I am to go on a fishing trip to the South Pole…
The Economist Democracy Index and Visual Capitalist classifies the United States as a flawed democracy.
The US is not a flawed democracy, it’s an emerging dictatorship.
Yes, for sure, some better president will take power. Yes, sure, they will not overreach as much as Donald Trump.
It doesn’t matter.
The unimaginable power of the president tells us that this is not a democracy. It may behave democratically, but hey, a tiger may not eat you… but it can… would you pet it?
I can only assume, once this thing emerges fully, it will erupt into a civil war… or, should we hope it does?
Otherwise, Trump could do the sensible thing and spontaneously combust. His whole gaggle of MAGA-minions could as well.
The way the economy is going, my 401K might turn into a 401-cave…
Four types of force majeure:
Which one of these describes Donald Trump? (Select all that apply…)
I believe the largest threat from AI in the coming years, possibly even decades, will not be that it will take over and turn humans into zoo animals. Rather, humans will overestimate its “intelligence” and use it to their own detriment.
This will mostly consist of companies and individuals putting too much faith in AI and making bad decisions because of it. E.g. company owners firing talent and trying to do with AI or individuals getting stuck in trying to create the perfect prompt when figuring out how to do it without AI would have been faster, or at least safer when talking about accuracy.
AI hallucinate, may require enormous amounts of compute without giving us correct answers, and the people doing AI don’t really know what they are doing.
So, do I say AI is useless and should not be used?
I think the Russians (yeah, those guys) say it best: Trust, but verify.
Do not take what comes out of an AI as gospel or truth. Or, as Qui-Gon Jinn said: The ability to speak does not make you intelligent.
One trick in order to think more clearly about AI is to drop the “I” (intelligence). Instead, you get “artificial content generators” (or “artificial decision makers”—just don’t mix “intelligence” in there and you’re ok):
I.e. more of a music box than a musician…
By all means, use GPTs or Image Checkpoints, but know that e.g. the text they generate are artificially generated and are neither fresh, original nor necessarily accurate.
However, right now there is a huge problem with AI in that the companies selling it steals copyrighted material with the insane notion that AI’s learning would be human level and this copying, rehashing and abusing of material would be something every human does when they learn something new.
Eh, they are not human! (Not even close.) Also, ok, so pay the price of one book per user that gains knowledge from that book then, or?
So, it could be good to not use AI too much before a satisfying model of payment to content creators have been put into place. After all, no content creators, no artificial content generators.
What Trump heard: “Please, please, Sir! Make a deal.”
What actually happened: “Please, please, Sir! Come down off the ledge!”
MEGA!
Make Earth Great Again!
United States are going all out America first, moron version. This will cause enormous changes in the security policy of the world.
Here are some predictions.
Already today, a number of nations are dusting off old plans and/or creating new plans for becoming nuclear states.
Nothing will likely happen if the next US election puts someone that does America first non-moron version in power. But if not, e.g. if Musk becomes president or Vance or really any republican, then things will get very “interesting” in the next four years.
Some other predictions.
If, after the next election, US is still not understanding it lives in a global world we’ll see nukes in Poland and Turkey, possibly even Germany, Ukraine and even Sweden.
In Asia, it’s possible South Korea will become nuclear, maybe Indonesia or even Japan.
Trump and his cronies will have wound the doomsday clock to five seconds to midnight, and they will uncork the champagne, thinking they’ve done a great job.
They are after all incompetents, senile and demented. (I guess that’s also a prediction, even though everything suggests it to be a fact…)
Header image: By Stefan Un – Flickr: DSC01071, CC BY 2.0, Link
I don’t know if you’ve had this feeling lately that something is genuinely flawed in the United States and how Trump is running it?
For Europe, of course, the talk of the future role of the US in NATO (do they even plan for there to be one?), treating the ICC as some kind of criminal organization (yes, the same ICC that prosecute individuals for the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression) and Trump’s obsession with Greenland are red flags. For the rest of the world, I guess Canada, Mexico, Panama, tariffs, illegal deportations of… well… non-citizens (?) etc., would also qualify.
All this has mostly been explained away as Trump being Trump, and wait for the checks and balances to kick in before you panic… (Tell that to the illegally deported non-citizens…)
Well, to be honest. The political opposition to Trump seems rather impotent right now.
With the exception of Sanders, AOC and assorted YouTube channels, who is opposing this? Who is opposing it enough to get noticed by international media?
I couldn’t tell you.
The feeling I have, though, is that Trump, as president has too much power, in fact, is abusing his power to the max.
This sense appears to be shared by others. Vox writes about some rather alarming shortcomings of US democracy.
In short, they notice that the tariffs is a case when the executive branch does legislation.
Most definitions of a democracy include a term called separation of power:
“separation of powers, division of the legislative, executive, and judicial functions of government among separate and independent bodies. Such a separation, it has been argued, limits the possibility of arbitrary excesses by government, since the sanction of all three branches is required for the making, executing, and administering of laws.”
/ Encyclopedia Britannica
I.e. Trump overreaches when he starts doing legislation (tariffs), and anybody who cannot see “arbitrary excesses by government” in the Trump administration might need to push their MAGA-hat back a bit…
So, what is supposed to prevent this overreach?
Not a republican congress or senate. Especially not with every republican in the US either being a MAGA-fanboy or hiding under their desk. Trump obviously does what he sees fit without any pushback from the senate or congress.
But there are supposed to be more checks and balances than that, right?
Like “the Office of Legal Counsel” and “the Council of Economic Advisers” (by no means full of MAGA in this day and age) as well as the Justice Department itself…
Even more hilarious, there are informal checks and balances like the president’s “fear of losing the war for public opinion” or his “own moral code”.
And, of course, if you can afford it, sue.
This isn’t how a democracy is supposed to work.
But then again, the US isn’t ranked pretty high in democracy rankings:
To me, the notion that the leader of the executive branch would go crazy with executive orders left, right and center is rather foreign. But maybe I live in a very secluded part of the world… who knows what happens down on the continent, right?
I’ve now aged quite a bit and the wisdom I’ve gained is that the US president is in fact an elected dictator that is free to do whatever he wants, commit any crime without punishment and while Americans seems to think the world begins and ends with America, this maniac in the White House does cause havoc in the rest of the world as well.
What are we supposed to do? Trade with China?
I guess we could trade with Africa. It is, after all, both a nearby continent and one with enormous potential. Yeah! Let’s do business with Africa instead of America.
Also, I think someone in Greenland should arrange America safaris: Above all, do not leave your armored vehicle while out on the streets!
2020: The Corona Crash
2022: The Putin Crash
2025: The Trump Crash
One does not belong with the other two, can you see which one?
Talkwards 