Good New Yorker article about the way the Russian propaganda machine is structured and functions:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/inside-putins-propaganda-machine

I don't know. The idea is that the brain is a brainwaves transponder.

Can anyone help out? — Wayfarer

Me think there is merit to the idea that we are our brainwaves.

And now for a waltz, a rarity in pop music.


Joe Jackson - Forty Years

(On the 40th anniversary of the end of World War II)

Here in Berlin
People line up to get in
To wait for the end
Living in glorious sin
They've looked around
And now there is no looking back
To when rivers ran red
Now it's the sky that grows black
Shadows are cast
As two giants roam over the earth
We light a match
But what is that little flame worth

Once allies danced and sang
But it was forty years ago

Here in D.C.
They talk about 'Euro-disease'
And how the French
Are always so damn hard to please
Motions are passed
In Brussels but no one agrees
And no one walks tall
But no-one gets down on their knees

Once allies laughed and drank
But it was forty years ago

Where I come from
They don't like Americans much
They think they're so loud
So tasteless, and so out of touch
Stiff upper lips
Are curled into permanent sneers
Self-satisfied
Awaiting the next forty years

Once allies cried and cheered
But it was forty years ago

"Russia is the world's largest wheat exporter. It plans to export more of the grain in the new (July) marketing season due to a large harvest and stockpile, reported Reuters, citing IKAR consultancy on Wednesday, raising its estimate for the wheat crop.

Russia, which competes mainly with the European Union and Ukraine for wheat supplies to the Middle East and Africa, has been limiting its grain exports with taxes and an export quota since 2021 amid efforts to slow domestic food inflation."

So Russia will profit from high food prices.

From a Wittgensteinian POV it seems that all we're capable of is syntactic manipulation (language + logic), semantics "drops out of consideration". — Agent Smith

This i see as Witty's greatest failing. Linguists are better at cracking those language nuts than philosophers, IMO. I also note that dictionaries exist and are quite useful to folks. Including to computers I would think, ie in machine translation I imagine that the coders include a lexical (or semantic, I don't know) map between the two languages.

It's hard to know just where. — ssu

My prognosis is: North Africa, Egypt, the Indian subcontinent, a number of African countries strongly relying on world markets, and poor island states. (for the worse effects)

I think the worst affected areas will be the Sahel. — ssu

This a food price crisis, and I would think that as such, it will hit poor countries that are net importers of staple food. There's a long list of those, all the more so because a long period of globalisation and low food prices on the global markets -- a period that appears to be ending now -- has led many countries to neglect their domestic food production in favor of their 'comparative advantage' on world markets. It worked for them as long as globalisation was reasonably 'functional', but now with Covid and this war, it doesn't work anymore.

For instance Egypt has a strong comparative advantage on the world tourism market, and that's what they developed, and they kept imoprting more and more wheat. Now there're few tourists going there, so...?

Comment: another aspect of the war is evidently economical, with far reaching consequences. (not sure that this comment was particularly illuminating but I'm told that the people want comments)


Ukraine war has stoked global food crisis that could last years, says UN
Shortages of grain and fertiliser could cause ‘mass hunger and famine, says chief, as World Bank pledges $12bn to ease shortfall

The United Nations has warned that the war in Ukraine has helped to stoke a global food crisis that could last years if it goes unchecked, as the World Bank announced an additional $12bn in funding to mitigate its “devastating effects”.

UN secretary general António Guterres said shortages of grain and fertiliser caused by the war, warming temperatures and pandemic-driven supply problems threaten to “tip tens of millions of people over the edge into food insecurity”, as financial markets saw share prices fall heavily again on fears of inflation and a worldwide recession.

Speaking at a UN meeting in New York on global food security, he said what could follow would be “malnutrition, mass hunger and famine, in a crisis that could last for years”, as he and others urged Russia to release Ukrainian grain exports.

He said he was in “intense contact” with Russia and other countries to try to find a solution.

Joe Jackson - 40 Years



(contribution to the thread's soundtrack)

As I said, it's not different from posting anything else. You can ask me questions about what the journalist meant.

It's about a post-UN world, where there's nothing left of the old allies' dreams of collective security.

The end of human rights as "normative" (as the UN would have it) for instance. Human rights are now just some "Western" concept, waged by the West when it suits them, which is true. Any international norm, any international organisation like WHO requiring any modicum of transparency in information sharing between states, would ultimately go down the drain.

Because Western.

Spheres of influence are the new thing, in a multipolar world.

Dystopian.

So the role you play is determining what's interesting? — Isaac

More precisely, what,s interesting and unlikely to have been reported in mainstream English language sources. Who as you know are quite narrow-mindedly... well.. shall we call it "cheerleading Ukraine"?

I can add comments...

Sure, but they wont attract one's attention to interesting content.

I mean, you never post from an English language news site? What's the essential difference?

So you're doing what? The choosing for us? Why would anyone want someone else to do that for them? — Isaac

Because I read the French press, and they don't.

... media in Sweden being much more factual and unbiased than in many other nations. — Christoffer

It may well be the case. I encourage you to post English versions of interesting Swedish articles here, if you care. I kind of agree with the peace lovers that the English press does follow a rather narrow script on Ukraine. I do post stuff from the French press here, that I believe deviate from what the typical English language media would or could report. I'm sure it's taken by some as further example (if need be) of my French air of haughtiness. But in truth I post this stuff because I naively think it can be useful.

Something like this, for instance.

I agree with your description. But isn't there something more to 'thinking' than mechanical logic? I think Niels Bohr said to Einstein once: "you're not thinking, you're just being logical."

Another way to present what a computer does -- and one that gets closer to your initial puzzlement at the fact that to teach a machine syntax is easier that to teach it the meaning of words -- is the Chinese room argument of John Searle. Which is intended to refute a position Searle calls strong AI: "The appropriately programmed computer with the right inputs and outputs would thereby have a mind in exactly the same sense human beings have minds."

I think Searle is right: following the right instructions, he could process Chinese sentences into other Chinese sentences (or into English sentences) without understanding a word of Chinese. And there lies a response to your question: even a human being (like Searle in his Chinese room) will find it easier to learn a few rules of grammar than the nuanced meanings of thousands words. You could learn Chinese grammar in a week or two. But the vocabulary will take you half a lifetime.

Summer has set in here in Roma, Italia. While I sip from my Peroni at a bar terrace, I lazily read through your excellent wikipedia summeries... Thank you (and Street) for that little moment of bliss.

badly written wikipedia summeries — Streetlight

:sweat:

I don't think you work for the FSB, other than pro bono. I believe @boethius does. He's far better at it than you will ever be.

Good metaphor. I would say a computer is still a sort of clutch. It doesn't really do the work for you, it just assists.

Like an abacus cannot count, like a clutch cannot walk, a computer cannot think.

They already had them — ssu

And they still have the know-how. Technically speaking, the Ukrainians could build nuclear missiles tomorrow. The problem would be access to military grade uranium or plutonium.

Perhaps for the same reason than an abacus can help you count, but will never help you think.

A computer is basically a sophisticated abacus, right? It can mimick logic like an abacus mimics arithmetics.

I would've expected our copies of nature's creations to be hi-fi so to speak, right down to the sequence in which they occurred. — Agent Smith

More likely, the sequence reflects what was necessary or possible. You cannot invent syntax before vocabulary, because the latter is needed for the former to exist.

An interesting corollary of this fact is that it's likely that syntax evolved way before semantics in the primate brain. — Agent Smith

That does not follow, though, because evolution did not have to mimick computer science. My understanding is that apes and even birds have a vocabulary, but they lack syntax -- the capacity not just to say a word but to combine several words into a meaningful whole.

Says the guy who thinks NATO handing Ukraine a few Nukes under the table to nuke Moscow and St. Petersburg is A. a good idea — boethius

Stop lying. I never said it was a good idea. Only that if Russia nukes Ukraine, as you fantacized about, then Ukraine might be able to retaliate.

I genuinely believe you are on Putin's payroll. That's not an insult. In fact it's a compliment: at least you're getting paid for your lies, and your lies are much better crafted than others', more professional. You're the master of them all.

It's done every single day. The contempt, the ignorance, the crass stupidity with which the UK treats a neighbouring country as if it was their doormat. Decolonize Ireland already.

So you see? You don't need to go all the way to Somalia or South America to find some example of imperialism. You can just look right under your nose, at the fabric of your own country. How it bears the mark of the empire. How eager the English are to forget what the Irish want to remember. And how it's now unraveling.

"eventually consciousness and qualia will eventually be explained with neuroscience" — GLEN willows

Yes, in the same way that one day, neuroscience will eventually be explained by neuroscience.

You mean, the way the Brits forgot all their crimes in Ireland?

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/abroad/english-ignorance-about-ireland-just-isn-t-funny-anymore-1.3677267

I don't give a fuck about human life. — Merkwurdichliebe

Some people here do, and they might found your cynicism offensive. Just so you know.

But he is only more intelligent than you — Merkwurdichliebe

And you can tell because?

. I still read your posts even if I think most of them are not well thought out. — Benkei

You shouldn't really. They are wasted on you.

I am telling the truth. Street has condoned terrorism against French people. It's up there, unless the mods deleted it.

That's how much the guy cares for human life, at least his web persona.

I am not interested. Have a good day.

Most of the world don't want to live under America's boot, either. — Apollodorus

Then why are so many trying to emigrate there, or in Europe?

You should read his posts then, not I. I've read enough, you haven't.

I am not really interested in reading the posts of a person who supports terrorism and mass murder, thank you.

Street shows signs of worsening agitation. I'm afraid he's gona blow a gasket.

Apparently not... — SophistiCat

Maybe it's harder for me to give up on a discussion than it should be. In any case you've long adopted the only sane and effective approach re. our most "peace-loving" friends, and I respect that.

Russian recruiting offices attacked with Molotov cocktails
Twelve fires have targeted buildings used for army recruitment, as testimonies of army reservists receiving "invitations" to report build up.

By Benoît Vitkine (Moscow, correspondent)
Posted today at 2:00 p.m.

In the middle of the night on May 4, in the center of Nizhnevartovsk, a city of just under 300,000 inhabitants located in northern Siberia, an apparently young man walks with a determined step. His face hidden under a hood and a mask, a plastic bag in his hand, he heads for Peace Street, 78. Methodically, he pulls out seven glass bottles and lines them up on a sidewalk corner. Then, perfectly calm, he lights his Molotov cocktails one by one and throws them at the door and windows of the military registration office that is there.

Not a single word is spoken, and it is impossible to trace the video, which appeared the next day on social networks. There is nothing to identify the man with the Molotov cocktails or the accomplice who films him. On May 13, the police reported having arrested two suspects, remanded in custody for two months. But unlike the usual arrests of "saboteurs" and "spies", very much staged with a lot of Nazi symbols, no details were given.

The case of Nizhnevartovsk is not isolated. In Tcherepovets, in the Vologda region (north-west), the same scenario occurred on May 12, with attackers a little less effective. They had to try twice to detonate their Molotov cocktails. The facade of the voenkomat (the military office) nevertheless caught fire.

In other similar cases, the perpetrators remain hidden. An understandable element knowing the very heavy penalties incurred. Only surveillance cameras, when installed, provide an overview of the facts. Otherwise, only partially charred facades remain, the photos of which begin to circulate in the early morning. In all, since the beginning of the "special operation" on February 24, twelve fires or attempts to burn such buildings have been listed in the local media.

The figure of twelve seems important, but it should be put into perspective: Russia has just under 1,500 voenkomat. This name, contraction of "military commissariat", is inherited from the Soviet period. The role of the institution is to manage the recruitment of contractors for the army at the local level, to organize conscription and to keep the list of men who can be mobilized up to date. ...

If it is to be seen as a mode of protest against the conflict, in the same way as the posters or the tags visible in Russian cities, the target, as well as the chronology, are telling. The first attack dates back to February 28, but there has been a clear acceleration since the beginning of May. The latest, in the suburbs of Moscow, was perpetrated on the night of May 17 to 18. ...

More and more elements show an intensification of the work of these military offices, which certain Russian sites in exile go so far as to compare to an “underground mobilization”.