"Advocates of #AI can be deft practitioners of circular logic. Ask them how the economics are supposed to work, they will tell you the AIs will answer that when they get advanced enough. Same for the cost of datacenters, the climate impacts, education, & medicine. More & more stochastic parrots will somehow solve all of it, and we will all live in a heavenly state, techno-raptured by the likes of Sam Altman and Elon Musk."

https://emptywheel.net/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-ai-part-five/

Dieses Jahr herrscht Kriegsweihnacht.

Bertolt Brecht: „Der Krieg ist das Geschäft, bei dem die Reichen sich die Taschen vollstopfen und die Armen sterben.“

Rosa Luxemburg: „Der Krieg ist der Weg der Kapitalisten, die Arbeiterschaft zu schädigen und zu verringern.“

Peter Kropotkin: „Der Krieg ist das Ergebnis der Herrschaft und des Kapitalismus. In einer Gesellschaft, die auf gegenseitiger Hilfe basiert, wäre Krieg unmöglich.“

#Weihnachten #Krieg #Frieden #Kapitalismus #Patriarchat

In two recent public speaking engagements, I made a comparison between the obesity epidemic in various pockets of the globe and AI. Several people came up afterwards and said that was the best analogy they'd heard, so maybe it's worth repeating here. Also, I feel like this one will hold up a while.

What I said was some recent CDC figures show that something like 55 percent of the average American diet comes from processed or highly processed "foods," and the numbers are even higher for kids. In a similar way, so much of what AI produces is akin to highly processed data: Its myriad origins are murky at best, you often don't feel great after using it a while, and if you are exposed to it too much it might just freaking kill you.

Every time you have an interaction, or think you have a 'relationship' with a company, remind yourself:

- the sole purpose of every company is to make money for its shareholders

That's it. Your 'relationship' is, for them only about that one thing. So forget the ads, the finessing at performance reviews etc.

You are a means to profit, so a company will turn on you or discard you at any time that benefits shareholders.

To change that build outside this system or support those who do.

Want to know what climate change will look like?

The drought in Tehran has gotten so bad that people are seriously talking about evacuating the city!

"Tehran — the richest city of Iran, the most politically powerful city with more than 15 million in the metropolitan — is facing day zero in a few days or a few weeks," said Kaveh Madani, director of the United Nations University's Institute for Water, Environment and Health.

"Day zero" means NO WATER.

All of Iran is in a drought — the worst in nearly 60 years. Tehran has had no rain at all since the start of September, and no rainfall is expected for the foreseeable future.

The city depends on five major reservoirs for its water: Lar, Latyan, Amir Kabir, Mamlu and Talegan. Lar Dam is at only 2% of its capacity, while Latyan is 9% full. Amir Kabir, one of the most important dams for Tehran, is 11% full. Mamlu reservoir is only 1% full. Only Taleqan remains above one-third.

Right now the incompetent government is *talking* about rationing — but water pressure is already down to zero at night in many neighborhoods. Young Tehranis are tracking water pressure with crowd-sourced maps, shading parts of the city in red to show almost constant outages. Meanwhile, some rich neighborhoods still fill their swimming pools.

I'm not saying this drought is solely due to climate change, nor that climate change will cause droughts everywhere. But this is the sort of thing we should expect: prolonged droughts in some areas, leading eventually to mass migrations.

https://peterfrankopan.substack.com/p/makran-or-bust-tehrans-water-crisis

‘scattered people’, ‘head-bangers’ or simply ‘enemies’

David Wengrow on how a very great many historical humans did not live in empires - or possibly even under much rulership at all.

https://aeon.co/essays/an-archeological-revolution-transforms-our-image-of-human-freedoms