The global warming elites are besides themselves about Brazil’s fires, which seem to be about average for this time of the year, fires being a natural part of forest life. But, this does not stop the globalist elites who now see this as grounds for invading Brazil!
  https://www.technocracy.news/could-brazil-be-invaded-to-save-the-amazon/
  https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/amazon-fires-show-limits-sovereignty/596779/

“Aug. 5, 2025: In a televised address to the nation, U.S. President Gavin Newsom announced that he had given Brazil a one-week ultimatum to cease destructive deforestation activities in the Amazon rainforest. If Brazil did not comply, the president warned, he would order a naval blockade of Brazilian ports and airstrikes against critical Brazilian infrastructure. The president’s decision came in the aftermath of a new United Nations report cataloging the catastrophic global effects of continued rainforest destruction, which warned of a critical “tipping point” that, if reached, would trigger a rapid acceleration of global warming. Although China has stated that it would veto any U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force against Brazil, the president said that a large “coalition of concerned states” was prepared to support U.S. action. At the same time, Newsom said the United States and other countries were willing to negotiate a compensation package to mitigate the costs to Brazil for protecting the rainforest, but only if it first ceased its current efforts to accelerate development. The above scenario is obviously far-fetched—at least I think it is—but how far would you go to prevent irreversible environmental damage? In particular, do states have the right—or even the obligation—to intervene in a foreign country in order to prevent it from causing irreversible and possibly catastrophic harm to the environment?

     Back in 1987 philosopher Allan Bloom published The Closing of the American Mind, which was an early critique of the emerging culture of political correctness and all things mad from the Left. The main argument was against the emergence of moral and cognitive relativism, rejection of the objectivity of science and knowledge, and Bloom asserted the need to defend Western civilisation, including the canon of great and classic literature. But, in the years up to today, this return to the classics has not occurred, and Western civilisation faces a relentless attack in the universities. This comes from the ageing boomer academics, as well as the more recent clones from gen X and Y, who ape them. Added now to this lamentation about the state of the university, comes The Coddling of the American Mind (2018), by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, a lawyer and psychologist. The book deals with updated themes discussed by Bloom and other “cultural wars” authors, but the book is very toned down, in my opinion, due to the authors being liberals, which is their right, of course.

     Thus, the dissent Right come out as Nazis and the like (p.12), and the election of Donald Trump is beyond the pale, (p.140), and they proclaim, after discussing numerous incidents of the suppression of mainstream views that: “the shock of Trump’s victory must have been particularly disillusioning for many black students and left-leaning women. Between the president’s repeated racial provocations and the increased visibility of neo-Nazis and their ilk, it became much more plausible than it had been in a long time that “white supremacy,” even using a narrow definition, was not just a relic of the distant past.” (p.140) never mind that although left women would have opposed Trump, millions of Blacks voted for him. Thus, Lukianoff/Haidt Trump directly equate Trump  to extremism, but we do not see the liberal Left so equated with the actions of Antifa, also discussed in the book. The Charlottesville protests are equated to a bunch of “Nazis” bashing people (pp. 90-91), even though these people were in an absolute minority. Again vDare has dealt with all aspects of this, including the distortion of Trump’s claim, that there were “very fine people on both sides” (p.91), which they take as an endorsement of extremists from the Right, which hardly follows. Lukianoff and Haidt would then have to claim that everybody from the Dissent Right was a “Nazi,” which is just the sort of distortion that they argue against elsewhere in their book, like on page 89, where they talk of “labelling running wild – a list of serious accusations made without supporting evidence.” (p. 89) Did they examine everyone present at the protest? Of course they did not. Again the vDare site has numerous article refuting much of their claims, with Ann Coulter leading the charge. Hopefully she will debate these authors and put them in their place.

     This article deals with Canada, which is a similar “swamp” to Australia, so it should be relevant:
  https://business.financialpost.com/opinion/setting-the-record-straight-on-the-benefits-and-heavy-costs-of-immigration-to-canada

“In a recent campaign speech, Maxime Bernier, leader of the People’s Party of Canada, cited the results of one of our studies, which showed that recent immigrants are imposing a heavy fiscal burden on Canadians. He used this information to justify his plan to reduce future levels of immigration. The CBC had journalist Jonathon Gatehouse do a “fact check” of Bernier’s claim about the fiscal burden. In a publication sponsored by the CBC, he concludes that this claim is “false.” Since this verdict implies that our study also reached false conclusions, we feel compelled to do our own fact check of the analysis produced by Gatehouse. The author makes much of the well-known fact that immigrants have a positive effect on aggregate national income (GDP), which says nothing about the fiscal burden. He also fails to note that recent immigrants have lowered Canada’s per capita income since, according to official statistics, they have lower average incomes than other Canadians. He also cites a number of published studies and data he considers relevant. They involve well-known facts and again tell us nothing about the fiscal burden. For example, he notes that the gap in the unemployment rate between recent immigrants and native-born Canadian males has narrowed, but neglects to mention that this always happens when an economic boom creates increased demand for labour and leads to the hiring of previously unemployable workers.

     No doubt people like Trump need to learn from Africa, and if he replicates African border control policies, well how can the crazed Demo-rats object, without withering under the rusty iron lash of racism? Oh, the pain!
  https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/aug/25/africa-illegal-immigration-meets-border-crackdowns/

“African borders are often a tangle of razor wire, with soldiers at crossing points checking papers, waving on those with valid IDs and turning back the rest. Even so, an estimated 1,200 undocumented migrants every night cross the Limpopo River, South Africa’s equivalent of the Rio Grande separating the U.S. and Mexico. Most are from Zimbabwe, where shortages of food and fuel and an unemployment rate of more than 80% have sparked a steady exodus to the more stable and more prosperous South Africa. A milewide “dead zone” fenced on both sides stretches east and west from Beit Bridge, the sole legal crossing between the two countries. Police and military are on patrol day and night. Some of those caught say they are beaten and sent back. Others pay bribes and go on to Johannesburg, the financial hub of South Africa and a city whose economy is larger than the whole of Zimbabwe’s. The beefed-up border is a startling sight for a continent where such barriers not long ago were the rare exception rather than the norm. Human rights groups say borders across the continent are becoming harder to cross, with guns, dogs and government policies determined not just to keep out illegal crossers, but also to return those who still have no status after entering up to a decade ago. This year, Angola has deported an estimated 330,000 “irregular migrants” who have fled ethnic violence.”

     I will be doing an article on this theme shortly, maybe today if I can clear the multicultural mess from my desk (I didn’t), but for an appetiser, here is Aussie film maker Richard Wolstencroft , defending comedian John Cleese’s remarks that London is no longer an English city. In fact, things are much worse than this, as English people have been so deracinated that English ethnic identity has ceased to exist. I will do an article about this, as promised. It is hard to keep moving when the bad news each day weighs so heavily upon one. It is enough to give one stomach ulcers, and it already has:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=JfledU44C8c

“One day a man had him enter his finely furnished home, and told him: ‘Above all do not spit on the floor.’ Diogenes, who wanted to spit, sent his spit to the gentleman’s face, while shouting that this was the only dirty place he had found where he could do it.” (Diogenes Laërtius)

     The sight of a wind turbine sends me into fits of rage, like e-scooters and all the gee whiz tech that makes inner city elites, uni. types, those sorts of people feel morally superior to people like me who have to burn every scrap of lead-paint encrusted timber, and toxic coloured paper to survive this colder than usual (due to global cooling leading up to an ice age), Melbourne winter.
  https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-08-26-wind-turbines-create-more-global-warming.html

“Researchers from Harvard University have made an interesting and hilarious discovery with regards to wind power, which actually causes more global warming than the burning of fossil fuels does. While massive wind farms are said by some to be the “renewable” energy source of the future, two Harvard scientists have found that the spinning blades of these massive metal monstrosities create more climate warming than coal plants, as one prominent example of the fossil fuel energy that climate alarmists claim is creating global warming. In fact, wind turbines are more “polluting” in terms of the heat they give off than any fossil fuel energy source currently in use, which just goes to show that so-called “clean” energy is, at least in this case, a myth. Published in the journal Joule, the paper concluded that, if all of the electricity demands of the United States could suddenly be supplied by nothing but wind turbines, the surface of the continental states would increase in temperature by a shocking 0.24 degrees Celsius. This figure is vastly greater than the 0.1 degree Celsius temperature reduction that climate fanatics are aiming to achieve by “decarbonizing” our nation’s electricity sector before the finality of this current century. “If your perspective is the next 10 years, wind power actually has – in some respects – more climate impact than coal or gas,” says David Keith, a professor of applied physics and public policy at Harvard, and one of the study’s two primary co-authors.”

To The Australian    On Brexit, Tony Abbott is right ("Exit Brexit at your peril, Brits", 3/9) that for Britain "deciding to leave the EU but failing to carry it through" will be "defeat on an epic scale" and "a national humiliation to echo down the ages". He is also correct to remind us that in the past "the high priests of Europe have always found ways to subvert every outbreak of independence or of national feeling" in peoples they intend to rule. Thus, Britain has become a torch-bearer for world freedom, not just British freedom. There are bigger issues involved than those matters of economics and trade on which Abbott comments. There is the need to escape the proto-totalitarian fetters of the European Court of Human Rights and EU bureaucratic tyranny. Even more important is the need to re-establish the full sovereignty for the British people of their Crown and its royal house. That monarchical independence is vital to the soul of Britain.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic

To The Age    Paola Totaro quotes a British legal expert on Brexit as noting of the Queen's willingness to have the UK parliament prorogued that "it would have been undemocratic to have consented and undemocratic not to assent" ("PM's move "boxed in" Queen", 31/8). The question then is which choice is more democratic than the other. In your editorial ("Johnson should heed Whitlam-era lessons", 30/8) you argue that UK prime minister Boris Johnson is "using his executive power to stymie the will of Parliament", but the more important truth is that he is using it to faithfully represent the will of the people as unequivocally established in the 2016 referendum. On the issue of Brexit that referendum decision must take ethical precedence over the personal views of MPs in parliament. This constitutional issue is more important than all other parliamentary business. Not to honour the referendum would be a disgraceful refusal to play the game and fundamentally corrupt the UK political process.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave

     The splendour of nuclear bombs is seldom recognised, given their bad press in genociding people and leaving others to die in agony. The negatives are clear, but maybe we are prejudging things a little quickly since the angry atom can also do good, by blowing bad things up, especially if it is not really a thing which is blown up, but a whirling wind in its early stages. Trump has been given a false news report that he said that hurricanes could be nuked in the early stages to break them up, and denies it, but the idea seems to have merit … well, anyway, I like it. It is the sort of thing a superhero would do, like from The Avengers team, or Justice League. Say, that one is close to home, isn’t it, there is not far in word play from “Justice League” to “League of Rights”! Which super will I be?
  https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/08/26/hillary-clinton-mocks-president-trump-over-fake-news-we-should-not-nuke-hurricanes/

“Hillary Clinton took to Twitter Monday to react to reports President Trump suggested nuking hurricanes in order to drive them away from the U.S. coast – a report the president has called “ridiculous” and “FAKE NEWS.”
“We should not nuke hurricanes,” the failed presidential candidate wrote on Twitter:

To The Australian         Danny Gilbert claims ("For too long constitutionally invisible, indigenous Australians need their voice", 30/8) that Aboriginal constitutional recognition and our Aboriginals being heard "cannot be separated". That is patently untrue. Aboriginals have been heard and are being heard in all sorts of ways with powerful interests supporting them and massive government funding being provided. All this despite no mention in the Constitution, a document which happily treats all Australians today on an equal footing. Gilbert ignores the major objections to recognition of Aboriginals constitutionally - that it is fundamentally inequitable, divisive and dangerous to our security and stability as a nation. Instead he resorts to a ridiculous sweeping statement that our Aboriginals "have always been out in the cold." On the contrary, throughout our history there have been many fruitful interactions between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians and many Aboriginals have led most rewarding lives.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic

     When we talk about spying in Australian people think of China, which does what it wants. After all it is a super-power, and what are we? Nothing, pathetic, oh it hurts, but let’s face facts. But, it gets worse because it seems anyone can spy on us, maybe even kids in their mom’s basement? Seems so:
  https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-26/intelligence-agencies-warn-about-unprecedented-levels-of-spying/11441876?pfm=ms

“Foreign espionage is taking place in Australia at a greater rate than any other time in history.
Key points:

     It seems that either white Canadians are happy with their Great Replacement, or that things have gone so far now that minority-majorities now decide what goes:
  https://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-politics-idUSKCN1VG23K

“Anti-immigrant ads on billboards across Canada are being taken down after a public outcry and multiple petitions against them, the company that owns the billboards said. The ads were launched in support of Maxime Bernier, leader of the small right-wing anti-immigration People’s Party of Canada, and called for a halt on mass immigration to Canada. They started appearing in several Canadian cities last week and were bought by True North Strong and Free Advertising Corp (TNSFAC). Bernier, 56, has focused on limiting immigration and protecting so-called Canadian values in contrast with more moderate Conservatives, prompting some pundits to refer to him as Canada’s Donald Trump. Canada will have a federal election on Oct. 21 and immigration has broad support, some polls show. A Pew Research Center report published Aug. 9 found that Canadians have among the highest support in the world for immigration. Although the People’s Party of Canada was not responsible for the ad, Bernier was upset that it was taken down. “The message on the billboard is not ‘controversial’ for two thirds of Canadians who agree with it, and for those who disagree but support free speech and an open discussion,” Bernier said on Twitter on Monday. Pattison Outdoor, which owns and manages outdoor advertising space across Canada, had originally declined to remove the advertisements, but reversed the decision on Sunday.

     I don’t write on the climate change issue because I do not know much about science, and others here are best to address it. However, here is a case where climate change, allegedly, and the law meet, and the mainstream did not do so well. Note that I am not necessarily endorsing any of the following remarks, merely quoting a source in the public interest, as an Australian:
  https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-08-26-climate-change-hoax-collapses-as-michael-mann-bogus-hockey-stick-graph.html 
  https://principia-scientific.org/breaking-news-dr-tim-ball-defeats-michael-manns-climate-lawsuit/
  https://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/Mann-Ball%20Libel%20Claim.pdf

“Supreme Court of British Columbia dismisses Dr Michael Mann’s defamation lawsuit versus Canadian skeptic climatologist, Dr Tim Ball. Full legal costs are awarded to Dr Ball, the defendant in the case. The Canadian court issued its final ruling in favor of the Dismissal motion that was filed in May 2019 by Dr Tim Ball’s libel lawyers. The plaintiff Mann’s “hockey stick” graph, first published in 1998, was featured prominently in the U.N. 2001 climate report. The graph showed an “unprecedented” spike in global average temperature in the 20th Century after about 500 years of stability. … On Friday morning (August 23, 2019) Dr Ball sent an email to WUWT revealing: “Michael Mann’s Case Against Me Was Dismissed This Morning by The BC Supreme Court and They Awarded Me [Court] Costs.” A more detailed public statement from the world-renowned skeptical climatologist is expected in due course. Professor Mann is a climate professor at Penn State University. Mann filed his action on March 25, 2011 for Ball’s allegedly libelous statement that Mann “belongs in the state pen, not Penn State.” … Previously, on Feb, 03, 2010, an … academic investigation  by Pennsylvania State University had cleared Mann of misconduct. Mann also falsely claimed the NAS found nothing untoward with his work. But the burden of proof in a court of law is objectively higher. Not only did the B.C. Supreme Court grant Ball’s application for dismissal of the 8-year, multi-million-dollar lawsuit, it also took the additional step of awarding full legal costs to Ball. This extraordinary outcome will likely trigger severe legal repercussions for Dr Mann in the U.S. and may prove fatal to alarmist climate science claims that modern temperatures are “unprecedented.” According to the leftist The Guardian newspaper (Feb, 09, 2010), the wider importance of Mann’s graph over the last 20 years is massive: “Although it was intended as an icon of global warming, the hockey stick has become something else – a symbol of the conflict between mainstream climate scientists and their critics.” Under court rules, Mann’s legal team have up to 30 days to file an appeal.” That is the principal scientific.org statement, not my personal expression; take it for what it is.”

To The Age        You claim in your latest editorial ("Johnson should heed Whitlam-era lessons", 30/8) that UK prime minister Boris Johnson is "using his executive power to stymie the will of Parliament", but the more important truth is that he is using it to faithfully represent the will of the people as unequivocally established in the 2016 referendum. In the modern world parliaments on certain issues are not truly representative of their peoples and appear to have fallen hostage to financially powerful interest groups and elites. On Brexit that is what has happened in Britain. Johnson is on the brink of becoming a great British hero. If he succeeds in detaching the UK from the EU, watch how he then leads the Conservatives to a massive electoral victory afterwards. The essence of the Remainers, alas, is that they have been unwilling to lose gracefully.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave

     A number of my students complain that they do not have any talent for mathematics, which they take as a reason for enjoying failure. But, here is a comment from a leading mathematician, Professor Tao, I think originally from Australia, who rejects the talent thesis, and argues for hard work:
  https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-to-be-a-genius-to-do-maths/

“Does one have to be a genius to do mathematics? The answer is an emphatic NO. In order to make good and useful contributions to mathematics, one does need to work hard, learn one’s field well, learn other fields and tools, ask questions, talk to other mathematicians, and think about the “big picture”. And yes, a reasonable amount of intelligence, patience, and maturity is also required. But one does not need some sort of magic “genius gene” that spontaneously generates ex nihilo deep insights, unexpected solutions to problems, or other supernatural abilities. The popular image of the lone (and possibly slightly mad) genius – who ignores the literature and other conventional wisdom and manages by some inexplicable inspiration (enhanced, perhaps, with a liberal dash of suffering) to come up with a breathtakingly original solution to a problem that confounded all the experts – is a charming and romantic image, but also a wildly inaccurate one, at least in the world of modern mathematics. We do have spectacular, deep and remarkable results and insights in this subject, of course, but they are the hard-won and cumulative achievement of years, decades, or even centuries of steady work and progress of many good and great mathematicians; the advance from one stage of understanding to the next can be highly non-trivial, and sometimes rather unexpected, but still builds upon the foundation of earlier work rather than starting totally anew. (This is for instance the case with Wiles‘ work on Fermat’s last theorem, or Perelman‘s work on the Poincaré conjecture.)

     Are you a lesbian yet? No? well, you are being oppressed extensively by the patriarchy, you know that invention of feminist academics, that serves as fodder for all of their papers and books, which gives them cosy well-paying jobs at tax payer’s expense.
  https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-08-27-nbc-news-attacking-heterosexuality-the-very-basis-of-human-life.html
  https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2019/08/23/nbc-news-heterosexuality-is-just-not-working/
  https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/miley-cyrus-split-liam-hemsworth-isn-t-just-celebrity-fodder-ncna1042931

“Women are increasingly opting out of heterosexuality because it is “the bedrock of their global oppression,” NBC News asserted in a bizarre opinion piece this week. “Men need heterosexuality to maintain their societal dominance over women,” writes Marcie Bianco for the NBC News website. “Women, on the other hand, are increasingly realizing not only that they don’t need heterosexuality, but that it also is often the bedrock of their global oppression.” Ms. Bianco lumps together a series of recent news stories, “from Jeffrey Epstein to the Dayton and El Paso mass shooters, to Miley Cyrus’s separation and Julianne Hough’s declaration that she’s ‘not straight,’” which, she says, “together have laid bare the strictures of an American patriarchy on the edge of a nervous breakdown.” “As the status quo, heterosexuality is just not working,” she concludes, before explaining just how evil men are and how women are learning to live without them. “As a snapshot of 2019 America, these stories present a startling picture: Men continue to coerce, harass, rape and kill girls and women — and go to extreme lengths to avoid responsibility for their actions,” she states. “On the other side of the issue, girls and women are challenging heterosexuality, and even absconding from it altogether.” “Patriarchy is at its most potent when oppression doesn’t feel like oppression, or when it is packaged in terms of biology, religion, or basic social needs like security comfort, acceptance and success,” Ms. Bianco declares. “Heterosexuality offers women all these things as selling points to their consensual subjection,” she concludes, in a painful piece of contorted logic that reveals far more about the writer than it does about society and its institutions. “Historically, women have been conditioned to believe that heterosexuality is natural or innate, just as they have been conditioned to believe that their main purpose is to make babies — and if they fail to do so, they are condemned as not ‘real,’ or as bad, women,” she pronounces.”

     Same sex marriage Australia is exceeding the wildest expectations of the elites, showing the world that gender, like everything else, with the one exception of white racism, the greatest evil in the multiverse, is a full-on social construction:
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7400895/Victoria-fifth-state-allow-transgender-adults-children-change-birth-certificates.html?ico=pushly-notifcation-small

“Victoria has become the fifth state to allow transgender and gender diverse people to change their sex on their birth certificate. The birth certificate bill passed 26-14 in the Victorian Upper House on Tuesday night, meaning it will officially become law once it receives the royal assent. Under the new laws, transgender people will have the freedom to have their legal documents reflect the sex they identify with socially even prior to undergoing gender reassignment surgery. Children will also be able to self-nominate to change their gender or select a non-binary descriptor of their choice with permission from their parents. A statement from a psychologist or doctor will also need to accompany the submission for a minor, The Age reported. 'Interstate and international evidence shows that whilst not a large number of people take up the these options it's simply is an option that's there to people,' Equality Minister Martin Foley told 3AWon Wednesday. 'It’s the choice to make sure that identity documents reflect the reality of the life that people live.' Victoria joins Tasmania, Northern Territory, South Australia and the ACT in passing the laws. In April Tasmania was the first state to make the inclusion on birth certificates. Gender diversity activists took to social media to celebrate the success, which marks a significant win in the fight for transgender equality in Australia.”

     That is a good question, surely worth throwing a few lavish taxpayer’s funded research grants at:
  https://www.amren.com/commentary/2019/08/why-dont-we-murder-more-white-people/

“San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) is a large museum next to the Moscone Convention Center downtown. This non-profit is funded by the City of San Francisco, the National Endowment for the Arts, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and the James Irvine Foundation. From July 23 to August 25, YBCA screened Jonathan Garcia’s movie Why Don’t We Murder More White People? It was on an endless loop and each cycle lasted 11 minutes and 17 seconds, and is now on Youtube. Mr. Garcia produced this video as a year-long YBCA fellow, for which he got a stipend and an honorarium. YBCA identifies him as: “Community Engagement & Inclusion Associate, Chief-of-Staff of the SOCIAL CLUB, author.” Most of the video is of non-whites complaining about whites. They say such things as:

     A sweet old lady does not want her world to change, and all hell breaks loose:
  https://www.apnews.com/97dbf997b5124586b67e2d6f83eeebc4?utm_source=amerika.org

“A city council candidate in Michigan who said last week that she wants to keep her community white “as much as possible” withdrew from the council race on Monday. Jean Cramer stopped by Marysville City Hall to say she was leaving the race and later, at the request of city officials, put her withdrawal in writing in a one-sentence letter that did not give a reason for why she dropped out, the Times Herald in Port Huron reported. Her name will remain on the Nov. 5 election ballot. Cramer, 67, created a furor after a moderator at an election forum Thursday asked her and the other candidates if the city should do more to attract foreign-born residents. Cramer replied: “Keep Marysville a white community as much as possible.” She added: “White. Seriously. In other words, no foreign-born, no foreign people.” Her comments troubled other candidates at the forum. “Just checking the calendar here and making sure it’s still 2019,” Mike Deising said. The Times Herald later asked Cramer if she wanted to clarify her remarks. Cramer said she did not believe people of different races should get married. “Husband and wife need to be the same race. Same thing with kids,” Cramer said. “That’s how it’s been from the beginning of, how can I say, when God created the heaven and the earth.” She said she did not believe her comments were racist. Cramer doubled down on her statements Friday during a follow-up interview with the Times Herald outside her Marysville home. “As far as I know, as long as we’ve been here, Marysville has been a white community, a white city,” she said. Cramer’s comments prompted Mayor Dan Damman and others to ask her to withdraw from the council race in the city about 55 miles (88 kilometers) northeast of Detroit. More than 90% of Marysville’s 9,700-person population is white. “After the initial shock of what she said really sank in and (given) the deep-seated viewpoints that she has, I don’t believe that she is fit to serve as an elected official in Marysville or anywhere else,” Damman said Friday. Cramer was one of five candidates running for three council seats in November. City Manager Randy Fernandez said that Cramer’s name will remain on the Nov. 5 city election ballot despite her withdrawal. He said city officials consulted with the state and it was determined that she would have had to leave the race by the April 26 withdrawal date for her name to be removed.”

     My hatred, an unbalance pathological rage against runaway technology continues. What has made me really cranky today, is not merely running out of meds, but this: AI has now made writers redundant. In my case, that would not have been too hard, since a bunch of monkeys fed on rotten bananas, which reminds me of the bullpen here, could do better, but it hurts anyway. Read on and wonder if I am a real person, or just a bot in the matrix:
  https://www.technocracy.news/newspeak-ai-totally-fake-news-could-destroy-internet/

“An artificial intelligence system that generates realistic stories, poems and articles has been updated, with some claiming it is now almost as good as a human writer. The text generator, built by research firm OpenAI, was originally considered “too dangerous” to make public because of the potential for abuse. But now a new, more powerful version of the system – that could be used to create fake news or abusive spam on social media – has been released. The BBC, along with some AI experts, decided to try it out. The model, called GPT-2, was trained on a dataset of eight million web pages, and is able to adapt to the style and content of the initial text given to it. It can finish a Shakespeare poem as well as write articles and epithets. At the time, the firm said: “Due to our concerns about malicious applications of the technology, we are not releasing the trained model. As an experiment in responsible disclosure, we are instead releasing a much smaller model for researchers to experiment with.” As a result, the released version had far fewer parameters – phrases and sentences – than used during training. This month, OpenAI decided to expand the parameters, offering a much broader database of training data. Tech news site The Next Web said of the update: “This one works almost good enough to use as a general artificial intelligence for text generation – almost.”