“The soldiers… illegally requested that the journalists hand in their phones, and when they refused, the soldiers pointed a gun at one of the journalists, hit him with their hands and the barrel of a gun, then dragged him out of the car and slammed him onto the concrete. When lying on the ground, they pointed 2 guns at his head. The rest of the journalists exited the car and the military raided it, confiscating phones, cameras, and personal items,” said @the_andrey_x.
This story is no where to be found in major US media outlets. The US State Department has also been silent.
The abuse that Israel is committing against journalists must be brought to light.
Anything can take you away from God, if you let it. Addiction is possession.
Nothing can take you away from God if you don’t allow it to do so.
I do take these things seriously. Jonathan Pageau is one of my favorite living thinkers and he disagrees with me, to an extent.
The key for me is ignorance. We are ignorant to the depth of meaning in Christian rituals, but that doesn’t mean that we are misusing them. It does mean that Christian rituals can be distorted to worship false gods. Just look at any church during playoffs.
Because these are meant to be spaces dedicated to the worship of God and emulation of Christ, I end up leaving as soon as there’s a celebration of government holidays, local sports teams, or innumerable secular idols.
Whether it’s a jiu-jitsu, yoga, Lego, grocery, retail, museum, arboreteum, etc., etc…space, I know it wasn’t designed with God in mind and isn’t run with Christ at the center. That doesn’t make me fearful. I know God is in these spaces and my intention is to be aware of Him and and align my actions, words, and thoughts with His Will as closely as I am able.
I have very little direct experience with language modeling apps. My instincts quickly recognized that my interactions with this tech was damaging to my spirit. Since stepping back, I have learned a lot about “Artificial Intelligence.” These Large Language Models (LLMs) aren’t the popularly understood “thinking” machines from movies and contemporary discourse. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is what the industry refers to when discussing a properly “thinking” machine. As far as I know, this does not yet exist. I use quotes around “thinking” because these engineers do not know what that word means. Philosophers have been wrestling with the concept of conciousness for as long as…well…we don’t know how long. The tech industry is investing a witheringly small amount of philosophical energy. I’m glad. I don’t want them to figure this out and I suspect that it is an impossible feat.
Back to LLMs. These are complex modelling programs, they do not value truth. Their job is to make the best guess at producing a result that pleases the user. It acquires from each question, and “learns” to refine the language as you refine your inquiry.
It’s a very clever conman that gets the answers right most of the time.
It’s similar to the problem with tests. Being a good test taker doesn’t mean you have mastered the material, it means you have learned the game of the test. I was a smart kid, but I realized that once I mastered the concept of tests, I could turn down my brain power and coast through school.
LLMs are mastering the test, but they have no way to master the material.
“These models acquire predictive power regarding syntax, semantics, and ontologies inherent in human language corpora, but they also inherit inaccuracies and biases present in the data they are trained on.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_language_model
The Hunter laptop and Burisma stories were buried under pressure from the federal government. The motivation was to damage a sitting president, their chief executive, their boss.
They lied to sway an election. We are not living in a democracy. You can’t vote your way out of this.
Of the 50+ intelligence officials who made false statements about Russian disinformation, how many have seen consequences? Who in the Biden administration was fired for spreading propaganda?
Does any journalist care enough about freedom of the press to ask Harris about her level of knowledge and involvement?
Are you so afraid of Trump that you will back a regime that actively influences the press?
Taxpayer dollars are killing Ukrainians and Russians. Taxpayer dollars are flirting with nuclear war. What connection does the president’s family have to the Ukranian government? How do these relationships compromise American security?
I’m only halfway through this interview with former CDC Chief Dr. Robert Redfield, but there are so many bombs dropped, it’s hard to believe this isn’t a bigger story right now.
Watch for:
1. There was never any evidence for the wet market hypothesis, but there was early evidence for the lab leak hypothesis.
2. Fauci’s focus was protecting “Science.” Redfield uses the phrase “lack of transparency” as a euphemism for “lying.”
3. Fauci influenced the change in the definition of “gain of function research” to get around Obama’s ban on such research.
4. The definition of vaccine was changed to fit a narrative.
5. Redfield disagreed with vaccine mandates.
There’s more, but I wish this doctor had been more vocal during the Lockdowns. Normalizing the point of view many of us had in 2020 is small solace. Cuomo and Redfield exhibit a minimal level of bravery in discussing these ideas in 2024.
I’m a fundamentally optimistic person. I’ve had a lot ton of harrowing events turn out to be benefits and I’ve listened to a ton of doomsayers who turn out to be wrong.
Several interactions with young people have got me slightly pessimistic about the direction of our culture (hold on for the silver lining, I cannot help myself).
A few months ago I was at a bookstore looking for material by Carl Jung. I was unsure if he would be in Philosophy, Psychology, or Religious Studies. When I asked an employee, he had no idea who I was talking about. He wasn’t a kid, certainly well enough into his 20s to have heard the name of the second most famous psychologist of the 20th century, yet he struggled to understand the mere spelling of the name.
I wrote this off at the time. I’m a weirdo and I know Jung was largely ignored for Freud in my schooling. I thought he was experiencing a resurgence in popularity, but what do I know of modern trends?
A couple months later I was at a library and my son was interested in reading The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka. Libraries sometimes separate Literature, Fiction, and Paperback Fiction in ways that I don’t understand, so I inquired at the reference desk. Again I was met with ignorance. Neither the title nor the author seemed familiar to the employee.
Yesterday, I was looking for books by and about Desmond Tutu at another library. This time, a young lady at reference didn’t seem to recognize that I was saying a name, answering, “Oh, what’s that?”
I’ll grant that I’m not familiar with his work, but I knew the name and his fight for equality in South Africa.
I don’t expect most people to be aware of these important figures, but the employees of book stores and libraries should have a foundational education when it comes to general literature.
This is one of my problems with the “Banned Book” craze. When an institution decides to use one book, many others must be excluded. Scarcity of space, time, and resources requires choices.
Our educational institutions are excluding deep, important texts. Without knowledge of the texts that have shaped our civilization, we become ignorant of ourselves.
Here’s the good news. These institutions are crumbling under their own incompetence. People are asking, “Why didn’t I learn that?” Independent thought and action is on the rise. Through home education, students can forge their own paths and avoid the mind numbing propaganda of a failing empire.
