I wasn't sure which forum category this nutty subject matter (it's a doozy) would best fit, so dropping here.

Aside from "biologics" (a term I'm still unsure about), over in the related fantasy realm I learned a crazy, wild, new acronym. Are you a "TESCREAList"?

Quote:TESCREAL—pronounced “tess-cree-all.” It’s a strange word that you may have seen pop up over the past few months. The renowned computer scientist Dr. Timnit Gebru frequently mentions the “TESCREAL” ideologies on social media, and for a while the Twitter profile of billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen read: “cyberpunk activist; embracer of variance; TESCREAList.” The Financial Times, Business Insider and VentureBeat have all used or investigated the word. And The Washington Spectator published an article by Dave Troy titled, “Understanding TESCREAL—The Weird Ideologies Behind Silicon Valley’s Rightward Turn.”

My guess is that the acronym will gain more attention as the topic of artificial intelligence becomes more widely discussed, along with questions about the strange beliefs of its most powerful Silicon Valley proponents and critics. But what the heck does “TESCREAL” mean and why does it matter?

I have thought a lot about these questions, as I coined the term in an as-yet unpublished academic paper, co-written with Gebru, tracing the influence of a small constellation of interrelated and overlapping ideologies within the contemporary field of AI. Those ideologies, we believe, are a central reason why companies like OpenAI, funded primarily by Microsoft, and its competitor, Google DeepMind, are trying to create “artificial general intelligence” in the first place.

The problem that Gebru and I encountered when writing our paper is that discussing the constellation of ideologies behind the current race to create AGI, and the dire warnings of “human extinction” that have emerged alongside it, can get messy real fast. The story of why AGI is the ultimate goal— with some seeing ChatGPT and GPT-4 as big steps in this direction — requires talking about a lot of long, polysyllabic words: transhumanism, Extropianism, singularitarianism, cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism and longtermism. I have written about the last two of these in previous articles for Truthdig, which probed how they have become massively influential within Silicon Valley. But you don’t have to look very hard to see their impact, which is pretty much everywhere. “TESCREAL” is one solution to the problem of talking about this cluster of ideologies without a cluttering repetition of almost-impossible-to-pronounce words. John Lennon captured the problem when he sang, “This-ism, that-ism, is-m, is-m, is-m.”




To minimize the “is-m, is-m, is-m,” I proposed the acronym “TESCREAL,” which combines the first letter of the ideologies listed above, in roughly the same order they appeared over the past three and a half decades. Gebru and I thus began to reference the “TESCREAL bundle of ideologies” to streamline our discussion, which gave rise to the terms “TESCREALism” (a reference to the bundle as a whole) and “TESCREAList” (someone who endorses most or all of this bundle). So, we traded a messy list of words for a single clunky term; not a perfect fix, but given the options, a solution we were happy with.

Little that’s going on right now with AI makes sense outside the TESCREAL framework. The overlapping and interconnected ideologies that the “TESCREAL” acronym captures are integral to understanding why billions of dollars are being poured into the creation of increasingly powerful AI systems, and why organizations like the Future of Life Institute are frantically calling for “all AI labs to immediately pause for at least six months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.” They also explain the recent emergence of “AI doomerism,” led by the TESCREAList Eliezer Yudkowsky, who in a recent TIME op-ed endorsed the use of military strikes against data centers to delay the creation of AGI, including at the risk of triggering an all-out thermonuclear war.

At the heart of TESCREALism is a “techno-utopian” vision of the future. It anticipates a time when advanced technologies enable humanity to accomplish things like: producing radical abundance, reengineering ourselves, becoming immortal, colonizing the universe and creating a sprawling “post-human” civilization among the stars full of trillions and trillions of people. The most straightforward way to realize this utopia is by building superintelligent AGI.

[skipping down to last two paragraphs of essay:]

If TESCREALism was not an ascendant ideology within some of the most powerful sectors of society, we might chuckle at all of this, or just roll our eyes. But the frightening fact is that the TESCREAL bundle is already shaping our world, and the world of our children, in profound ways. Right now, the media, the public, policymakers and our political leaders know little about these ideologies. As someone who participated in the TESCREAL movement over the past decade, but who now views it as a destructive and dangerous force in the world, I feel a moral obligation to educate people about what’s going on. Although the term “TESCREAL” is strange and clunky, it holds the keys to making sense of the “accelerationist” push to develop AGI as well as the “doomer” backlash against recent advancements, driven by fears that AGI — if created soon — might annihilate humanity rather than ushering in a utopian paradise.

If we are to have any hope of counteracting this behemoth, it is critical that we understand what “TESCREAL” means and how these ideologies have infiltrated the highest echelons of power. To date, the TESCREAL movement has been subject to precious little critical inquiry, let alone resistance. It’s time for that to change.

Hey, at least one Progressive Elitist is starting to catch on. NYT writer is starting to get it. LOL, Progressive Privilege on full display. 


https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/02/opini...cated.html

https://dnyuz.com/2023/08/02/what-if-wer...guys-here/

Quote:In this story we anti-Trumpers are the good guys, the forces of progress and enlightenment. The Trumpers are reactionary bigots and authoritarians. Many Republicans support Trump no matter what, according to this story, because at the end of the day he’s still the bigot in chief, the embodiment of their resentments, and that’s what matters to them most.
I partly agree with this story; but it’s also a monument to elite self-satisfaction.


So let me try another story on you. I ask you to try on a vantage point in which we anti-Trumpers are not the eternal good guys. In fact, we’re the bad guys.


This story begins in the 1960s, when high school grads had to go off to fight in Vietnam, but the children of the educated class got college deferments. It continues in the 1970s, when the authorities imposed busing on working-class areas in Boston, but not on the upscale communities like Wellesley where they themselves lived.


The ideal that “we’re all in this together” was replaced with the reality that the educated class lives in a world up here, and everybody else is forced into a world down there. Members of our class are always publicly speaking out for the marginalized, but somehow we always end up building systems that serve ourselves.


The most important of those systems is the modern meritocracy. We built an entire social order that sorts and excludes people on the basis of the quality that we possess most: academic achievement. Highly educated parents go to elite schools, marry each other, work at high-paying professional jobs and pour enormous resources into our children, who get into the same elite schools, marry each other and pass their exclusive class privileges down from generation to generation.


Daniel Markovits summarized years of research in his book “The Meritocracy Trap”: “Today, middle-class children lose out to the rich children at school, and middle-class adults lose out to elite graduates at work. Meritocracy blocks the middle class from opportunity. Then it blames those who lose a competition for income and status that, even when everyone plays by the rules, only the rich can win.”


The meritocracy isn’t only a system of exclusion; it’s an ethos. During his presidency Barack Obama used the word “smart” in the context of his policies over 900 times. The implication was that anybody who disagreed with his policies (and perhaps didn’t go to Harvard Law) must be stupid.


Over the last decades we’ve taken over whole professions and locked everybody else out. When I began my journalism career in Chicago in the 1980s, there were still some old crusty working-class guys around the newsroom. Now we’re not only a college-dominated profession, we’re an elite-college-dominated profession. Only 0.8 percent of all college students graduate from the super elite 12 schools (the Ivy League colleges, plus Stanford, M.I.T., Duke and the University of Chicago). A 2018 study found that more than 50 percent of the staff writers at the beloved New York Times and The Wall Street Journal attended one of the 29 most elite universities in the nation.


Writing in Compact magazine, Michael Lind observes that the upper-middle-class job market looks like a candelabrum: “Those who manage to squeeze through the stem of a few prestigious colleges and universities in their youth can then branch out to fill leadership positions in almost every vocation.”


Or, as Markovits puts it, “Elite graduates monopolize the best jobs and at the same time invent new technologies that privilege superskilled workers, making the best jobs better and all other jobs worse.”


Members of our class also segregate ourselves into a few booming metro areas: San Francisco, D.C., Austin and so on. In 2020, Biden won only 500 or so counties, but together they are responsible for 71 percent of the American economy. Trump won over 2,500 counties, responsible for only 29 percent. Once we find our cliques, we don’t get out much. In the book “Social Class in the 21st Century,” sociologist Mike Savage and his co-researchers found that the members of the highly educated class tend to be the most insular, measured by how often we have contact with those who have jobs unlike our own.


Armed with all kinds of economic, cultural and political power, we support policies that help ourselves. Free trade makes the products we buy cheaper, and our jobs are unlikely to be moved to China. Open immigration makes our service staff cheaper, but new, less-educated immigrants aren’t likely to put downward pressure on our wages.


Like all elites, we use language and mores as tools to recognize one another and exclude others. Using words like problematic, cisgender, Latinx and intersectional is a sure sign that you’ve got cultural capital coming out of your ears. Meanwhile, members of the less-educated classes have to walk on eggshells, because they never know when we’ve changed the usage rules, so that something that was sayable five years ago now gets you fired.


We also change the moral norms in ways that suit ourselves, never mind the cost to others. For example, there used to be a norm that discouraged people from having children outside of marriage, but that got washed away during our period of cultural dominance, as we eroded norms that seemed judgmental or that might inhibit individual freedom.


After this social norm was eroded, a funny thing happened. Members of our class still overwhelmingly married and then had children within wedlock. People without our resources, unsupported by social norms, were less able to do that. As Adrian Wooldridge points out in his magisterial 2021 book, “The Aristocracy of Talent,” “Sixty percent of births to women with only a high school certificate occur out of wedlock, compared with only 10 percent to women with a university degree.” That matters, Wooldridge continues, because “The rate of single parenting is the most significant predictor of social immobility in the country.”


Does this mean that I think the people in my class are vicious and evil? No, most of us are earnest, kind and public spirited. But we take for granted and benefit from systems that have become oppressive. Elite institutions have become so politically progressive in part because the people in them want to feel good about themselves as they take part in systems that exclude and reject.


It’s easy to understand why people in less-educated classes would conclude that they are under economic, political, cultural and moral assault — and why they’ve rallied around Trump as their best warrior against the educated class. Trump understood that it’s not the entrepreneurs who seem most threatening to workers; it’s the professional class. Trump understood that there was great demand for a leader who would stick his thumb in our eyes on a daily basis and reject the whole epistemic regime that we road in on.


If distrustful populism is your basic worldview, the Trump indictments seem as just another skirmish on the class war between the professionals and the workers, another assault by a bunch of coastal lawyers who want to take down the man who most aggressively stands up to them. Of course, the indictments don’t cause Trump supporters to abandon him. They cause them to become more fiercely loyal. That’s the polling story of the last six months.


Are Trump supporters right that the indictments are just a political witch hunt? Of course not. As a card-carrying member of my class, I still basically trust the legal system and the neutral arbiters of justice. Trump is a monster in the way we’ve all been saying for years and deserves to go to prison.


But there’s a larger context here. As the sociologist E. Digby Baltzell wrote decades ago, “History is a graveyard of classes which have preferred caste privileges to leadership.” That is the destiny our class is now flirting with. We can condemn the Trumpian populists all day until the cows come home, but the real question is when will we stop behaving in ways that make Trumpism inevitable.

Well, here is an interesting one. Anyone review studies? I would love to know if this is truly the case.


Neonatal, Infant, and Under Age Five Vaccine Doses Routinely Given in Developed Nations and Their Association With Mortality Rates

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defen...mortality/

Quote:A new study finds developed countries requiring the most vaccine doses for infants have higher childhood mortality rates, contradicting assumptions that more vaccines equate to lower deaths. The data suggest unintended consequences may increase all-cause mortality

Quote:Conclusions


There are statistically significant positive correlations between mortality rates of developed nations and the number of early childhood vaccine doses that are routinely given. Further investigations of the hypotheses generated by this study are recommended to confirm that current vaccination schedules are achieving their intended objectives.

I hope she sues and wins. If I am not mistaken, it is a HIPPA violation for a doctor to disclose confidential patient correspondences with the office staff. (I could be mistaken, not my area of expertise).

Her crime, making a statement that "political messaging in a healthcare setting was offensive". But wait, it was the Holy political symbol... blasphemer was punished. 


Oregon Clinic Drops Breast Cancer Patient Over “Gender Critical” Views

https://www.thepublica.com/oregon-clinic...cal-views/

Quote:A woman in Oregon receiving treatment for breast cancer has been dropped by her health clinic of 12 years because she expressed views critical of gender ideology.

Barbera explained that she had written a message to her doctor on MyChart, a website where patients can access their personal health information, describing that she found the inclusion of “political messaging in a healthcare setting” as “offensive.”

Initially, the Doctor, who she revealed had been her primary care provider for over ten years, said that he would not take the flag down. But while Barbera had initially believed their correspondence to be private, she later discovered that the note to her physician had been viewed and shared by other staff at the clinic.

Weeks later, Barbera received an email from Oregon Health Science University’s (OHSU) Stein Berger, informing her that she had been “discharged from receiving medical care at the Richmond Family Medicine Clinic,” effective immediately, with services to be cut off from all OHSU Family Medicine Clinics, including immediate care clinics, from July 29th. The email did in fact specify that she was being removed “because of ongoing disrespectful and hurtful remarks about our LGBTQ community and staff.”

This is not the first time a woman has lost access to critical medical services due to her “gender critical” views.

In October of last year, a woman identified as Emma by the UK’s Daily Mail was banned from having an operation in London’s Princess Grace Hospital because she requested single sex accommodation. The woman, who had been scheduled for a complex colorectal operation, also expressed that she did not want to “use pronouns or engage with such manifestations of gender ideology.”

Despite having experience being the victim of sexual assault, Emma was banned from having her procedure at the facility for requesting single-sex care.

New cancer pill has major promise. The success rate so far has been outstanding.

The medicine, AOH1996, has been called a 'cancer killer'

https://www.mylondon.news/news/health/ne...r-27439994

Quote:Scientists have developed a pill that appears in pre-clinical research to “annihilate” all solid cancer tumours and leave healthy cells unaffected.



Researchers at City of Hope, one of the US’ largest cancer research and treatment organisations, published a study on Tuesday detailing early test results of “cancer-killing pill” AOH1996.


The drug targets a cancerous variant of proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) – a protein that in its mutated form is “critical” in DNA replication and repair of all “expanding tumours”, City of Hope said.


Linda Malkas, a professor in the Californian treatment centre’s department of molecular diagnostics and experimental therapeutics, has been developing the pill over the past 20 years.


She said: “PCNA is like a major airline terminal hub containing multiple plane gates.
“Data suggests PCNA is uniquely altered in cancer cells, and this fact allowed us to design a drug that targeted only the form of PCNA in cancer cells.


“Our cancer-killing pill is like a snowstorm that closes a key airline hub, shutting down all flights in and out only in planes carrying cancer cells.”


The professor called the results “promising” but made clear that research has found AOH1996 can suppress tumour growth in cell and animal models, and the first phase of a clinical trial in humans is underway.

The pill has been shown to be effective in treating cells derived from breast, prostate, brain, ovarian, cervical, skin and lung cancers.


It was tested in more than 70 cancer cell lines and found to selectively kill cancer cells by disrupting the normal cell reproductive cycle, according to the research centre.


PCNA has previously been deemed “undruggable”.
Lead author of the study, Long Gu, said: “No one has ever targeted PCNA as a therapeutic because it was viewed as ‘undruggable,’ but clearly City of Hope was able to develop an investigational medicine for a challenging protein target.”


The study – titled “Small Molecule Targeting of Transcription-Replication Conflict for Selective Chemotherapy” – was published in the Cell Chemical Biology journal.

The United States has ordered its nonessential personnel and family of government employees to leave Haiti at once due to Gang Crisis. (July 28, 2023)...

Quote:The US government is "extremely limited in its ability" to assist Americans in the country who may need emergency help, it said, warning that "kidnapping is widespread" and that the Haitian Ministry of Health had "confirmed an outbreak of cholera."

Staff at the US embassy in Port-au-Prince already live under tight security, confined to a protected residential area and forbidden to walk around the capital or use any public transport or taxis.

The statement did not mention the number of staff and family members who would be impacted by the departure order, nor any specific reason for the change as Haiti has seen swirling crises for months.

Gangs control around 80 percent of the Haitian capital, and violent crimes such kidnappings for ransom, armed robbery and carjackings continue to escalate in the impoverished Caribbean nation.

With Haitian security forces overwhelmed, the US State Department advisory warned that "mob killings against presumed criminals have been on the rise since late April."

Experts say the history of previous failed missions to Haiti and fears of becoming stuck in a deadly quagmire have made countries hesitant to take on the lead-nation role.

Brian Nichols, the lead US State Department official for the Americas, told a US congressional hearing on Thursday that "progress" was being made on that front.

"I would note that any country that does take the lead, I'm confident will enjoy support from other key peacekeeping contributors, as well as from the United States, from Canada, France," Nichols added.

At the same hearing, Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida described Haiti as a "disaster."

"Its as bad a situation as anywhere else on the planet," he said.

Quote:Home to High-Security Lab and Source of Rumors, Plum Island Faces Uncertain Future

By Corey Kilgannon
Sept. 14, 2016

PLUM ISLAND, N.Y. — There have been comparisons to the H.G. Wells novel, “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” a nod from Hannibal Lecter in “The Silence of the Lambs,” and a murder mystery called “Plum Island,” by Nelson DeMille, in 1997. When the carcass of an unidentified animal was found on a Long Island beach a few years ago, it became popularly known as the Montauk Monster, and local residents said it had come from — where else? — Plum Island.

The site there is officially called the Plum Island Animal Disease Center. It is a federal facility, the nation’s most important lab for combating infectious animal diseases.

But the fact that the island is one and a half miles off Long Island, and that access to it is so highly restricted, has made the high-security lab the source of a cascade of science fiction scenarios and conspiracy theories, which proliferate in films, books and local lore, and include rumors about government experimentation with hybrid animals, Cold War biological weapons and even the outbreak of Lyme disease.

On Tuesday, officials allowed a small group of reporters who had undergone an extensive background check a rare glimpse at this island of intrigue.

But first, there was a morning ferry ride from Connecticut, carrying Plum Island workers. The commuters filed into a modern cinder block building; a poster above the security desk bore the heading “Betrayed”; listed below were “Traditional Espionage Indicators.”

Could Plum Island really become a Trump golf resort? And what would a luxury development be named? Anthrax Estates?

The federal General Services Administration has omitted such thoughts from its online sales listing, noting that “the island boasts a sandy shoreline, beautiful views and a harbor strategically situated to provide easy access.” The listing even offers to include the ferries and official vehicles in the deal.

Located 100 miles east of New York City, with sweeping water views, the island has already drawn unsurprising interest from local real estate agents and developers, including, yes, Donald J. Trump.

There has been little, if any, preliminary assessment of the property by outsiders, officials said. Development cannot begin until after the research center is shut, since ferrying workers and equipment onto the island could compromise security guidelines, Mr. Verrico said.

The guidelines were palpable even to journalists on the tour, which was organized to show the public that the island was, as officials said, “secure but not secret.”

Secure it was. Federal officials asked for information from journalists interested in visiting Plum Island in July, and would consider only United States citizens. On Tuesday, armed guards searched reporters before both arrival and departure and shadowed the group wherever it went.

Open food containers were prohibited, as was the use of laptop or tablet computers. Photography in unauthorized areas, most of them at the research center, which occupies a small portion of the island, was forbidden.

Full article: Home to High-Security Lab and Source of Rumors, Plum Island Faces Uncertain Future

Quote:GSA, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), looks to sell the Plum Island asset in accordance with the Consolidated Security, Disaster Assistance, and Continuing Appropriations Act of 2009 which calls for the sale of the property to occur as a result of the determination by DHS to construct and operate a new National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) in Manhattan, Kansas and move its operations from the Plum Island Animal Disease Center (PIADC) to the NBAF.

Sale of Plum Island, New York

Quote:Haiti has its first outbreak of the fatal pig virus African swine fever in 37 years, the World Organisation for Animal Health said, fuelling concerns about the disease's spread in the Americas.

The USDA confirmed Haiti's outbreak last week through testing at its Foreign Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory on Plum Island in New York, the OIE said.

Quote:
USDA’s Plum Island research complex spared from sale

Perhaps you’re familiar with the USDA’s sprawling, mysterious research complex on Plum Island from our article last year, discussing how researchers there were frantically preparing for the “porkpocalypse,” aka African Swine Flu (remember that virus?). This research facility has long been slated to be shut down, with USDA’s virus research facilities to be moved to a highly secure complex in Manhattan, Kansas. But in the Covid-19 spending bill approved this week, Plum Island got spared from the auction block, in a move that James Bennet at The Washington Post characterizes as Congress working “in confounding ways.”

Quote:The U.S. government steadfastly denied the existence of biological warfare experiments on Plum Island during the Cold War era. In 1993, Newsday unearthed documents suggesting otherwise, and in 1994, Russian scientists inspected the facility to verify that any such experiments had ended, according to various reports on Plum Island.
Plum Island May Lose Its Dark Secrets

I am not a person who has visions of Skynet and the terminator with future A.I. Yet that is a risk we should all be aware of and build in safe guards if possible. "If possible" is the key phrase IMO.

The following video is about developments of the here and now and what we can expect as soon as 2025. Without risks there is seldom great reward so let us hope as the countries around the world all surge ahead (can get left behind) the rewards will outweigh the turmoil and risk that many are predicting with this technology.

When your society is based upon a totalitarian regime and you have disarmed all the serfs in your society what more of an aviation asset would you need ? Maybe a mini gun for a bigger body count ?

Quote:China’s military has a brand new toy, and it’s literally straight out of a James Bond movie. It’s called the Hunting Eagle Strike Gyrocopter. Gyrocopters have been used by military and police forces in the past mostly in reconnaissance and surveillance missions, but in 2022, China released footage on a state run CCTV channel showing the Hunting Eagle equipped with 4 anti-tank guided missiles and a sensor system to guide these missiles. This is brand new, and it has a lot of military experts scratching their heads. Why is China seemingly using these gyrocopters in their otherwise modern People’s Liberation Army? What are the pros and cons of using gyrocopters on the battlefield? And finally, what is a gyrocopter and where did it come from?

Many different topics discussed all interesting in their own way.

Quote:Paul Hynek is the youngest son of the most famous UFO researcher in history, Dr J. Allen Hynek. Paul has had his own fascinating career in high tech and finance, and like his father, has a strong connection to the world of the leading edge and fringe. He is an exponent and practitioner of life extension, and has much to say about future tech and AI, as well as the benefits of DMT. He also has many thoughts about UFOs and aliens. On top of all this, he is extremely engaging and always interesting.

Horrible nightmare conditions in big cities like New York and Chicago and dozens of other cities. New migrants (since Jan 2021) have been getting automatic passes into the U.S. for simply claiming "Asylum". Court dates scheduled (in most cases) and work permits issued!!

As the "New Migrant" population increases into the millions, the living conditions are getting horrible.

NYC and Chicago have over 80,000 alone!!

Democrat cities complaining with no help from Democrat Biden/Harris/Mayorkas DHS and HHS !!

This must be a plan by Democrats since it just keeps getting worse as they keep complaining about their own problems LOL 

Why is Democrat high level leadership causing and fueling this crisis at the suffering of innocent people?

ARTICLE:

NYC's Roosevelt Hotel becomes epicenter of city's 60,000-strong refugee crisis in shocking scenes from Manhattan

Story loaded with pictures!

Quote:Hundreds of migrants have been sleeping outside of Manhattan's Roosevelt Hotel for a second day in a row - as NYC Mayor Eric Adams said the crisis is 'not over.'   

Swathes of asylum seekers, hailing from a number of South American and African countries, lined the streets sleeping on cardboard overnight because the migrant hotel has reached capacity. 

'I want a better life,' one migrant told DailyMail.com from the queue outside the chaotic migrant epicenter on Tuesday morning. 

The immense number of migrants arriving from southern states continues to rise - as a result of policies that caused thousands of asylum seekers to overrun the US-Mexico border.