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I am delighted to present two recent conversations I had with the pseudonymous Rurik Skywalker (formerly Rolo Slavsky) on his excellent and always thought provoking Slavland Chronicles Substack. If you are are not familiar with Rurik’s work—and why not?—he provides invaluable insights into all thing Russian, and much more, from the perspective of a Russian patriot.

Always challenging, often provocative and utterly fascinating, it is safe to say that we do not agree on a number of issues. And that is partly why I hope we will do more of these interviews. As Rurik eruditely explains, we need some “peasant solidarity” if we are going to prevail over corporate and oligarch tyranny. We must put aside our divisions, respect our differences and find common ground.

Rurik and I have discovered we share more common ground than we hold opposing views.

I am lucky to have the opportunity to talk with knowledgeable people and I always learn a lot from them. The discussions with Rurik have been a great experience and I hope to do more interviews with him in the future.

So prepare to be challenged, perhaps even offended, and please dive into these conversations.

Read about Slavland Cronicles

Welcome to The Slavland Stalker

The post In Discussion with Rurik Skywalker appeared first on Iain Davis.

Latest eatery to reduce services in Bay Area amid surge of crime and violence

Taco Bell restaurants in Oakland have suspended indoor dining access and will serve customers only at drive-thru windows amid a crime wave sweeping the Bay Area, according to reports.

The popular Mexican-style fast food chain is the latest business to radically alter operations in the California city, which has been descending into lawlessness for some time, as InfoWars has documented.

Additionally, the same locations have gone cashless and will only accept electronic payments, according to signage photographed by local residents.

The changes apply to at least four out of five Taco Bell franchises in the city, which are owned and operated by Diversified Restaurant Group.

“Providing a safe environment for team members and customers is the priority at Taco Bell restaurants. The franchise owner and operator has informed us that they are consistently evaluating and working to ensure a safe environment by implementing procedures, such as closing dining rooms, and hiring security guards, and they have taken extra measures to meet with local law enforcement,” Taco Bell Corp. told ABC7 News in a statement.

In January, In-N-Out announced the closure of its only Oakland location — despite being profitable — citing violent crime and thefts affecting employees and guests, potentially making it the first location to ever be shut down by the wildly-popular West Coast-based company. 

Other restaurant chains, including Raising Cane’s and Denny’s, have also reduced services in Oakland or closed altogether due to rampant crime and insecurity.

InfoWars has been documenting the surge of crime across the United States, including carjackings, ‘street takeovers,’ smash-and-grab loot mobs, home invasions, and physical attacks on innocent victims.

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Hidden Camera Inside Boeing Plant Reveals Horrifying Truth About Air Travel Safety

Dan Lyman on X | Gab

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The real threat is AI’s impact on information. This is in part because induction is an inappropriate source of knowledge—truth and fact are not a matter of frequency or statistical probabilities.

Artificial intelligence (AI) cannot distinguish fact from fiction. It also isn’t creative or can create novel content but repeats, repackages, and reformulates what has already been said (but perhaps in new ways).

I am sure someone will disagree with the latter, perhaps pointing to the fact that AI can clearly generate, for example, new songs and lyrics. I agree with this, but it misses the point. AI produces a “new” song lyric only by drawing from the data of previous song lyrics and then uses that information (the inductively uncovered patterns in it) to generate what to us appears to be a new song (and may very well be one). However, there is no artistry in it, no creativity. It’s only a structural rehashing of what exists.

Of course, we can debate to what extent humans can think truly novel thoughts and whether human learning may be based solely or primarily on mimicry. However, even if we would—for the sake of argument—agree that all we know and do is mere reproduction, humans have limited capacity to remember exactly and will make errors. We also fill in gaps with what subjectively (not objectively) makes sense to us (Rorschach test, anyone?). Even in this very limited scenario, which I disagree with, humans generate novelty beyond what AI is able to do.

Both the inability to distinguish fact from fiction and the inductive tether to existent data patterns are problems that can be alleviated programmatically—but are open for manipulation.

Manipulation and Propaganda

When Google launched its Gemini AI in February, it immediately became clear that the AI had a woke agenda. Among other things, the AI pushed woke diversity ideals into every conceivable response and, among other things, refused to show images of white people (including when asked to produce images of the Founding Fathers).

Tech guru and Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen summarized it on X (formerly Twitter): “I know it’s hard to believe, but Big Tech AI generates the output it does because it is precisely executing the specific ideological, radical, biased agenda of its creators. The apparently bizarre output is 100% intended. It is working as designed.”

There is indeed a design to these AIs beyond the basic categorization and generation engines. The responses are not perfectly inductive or generative. In part, this is necessary in order to make the AI useful: filters and rules are applied to make sure that the responses that the AI generates are appropriate, fit with user expectations, and are accurate and respectful. Given the legal situation, creators of AI must also make sure that the AI does not, for example, violate intellectual property laws or engage in hate speech. AI is also designed (directed) so that it does not go haywire or offend its users (remember Tay?).

However, because such filters are applied and the “behavior” of the AI is already directed, it is easy to take it a little further. After all, when is a response too offensive versus offensive but within the limits of allowable discourse? It is a fine and difficult line that must be specified programmatically.

It also opens the possibility for steering the generated responses beyond mere quality assurance. With filters already in place, it is easy to make the AI make statements of a specific type or that nudges the user in a certain direction (in terms of selected facts, interpretations, and worldviews). It can also be used to give the AI an agenda, as Andreessen suggests, such as making it relentlessly woke.

Thus, AI can be used as an effective propaganda tool, which both the corporations creating them and the governments and agencies regulating them have recognized.

Misinformation and Error

States have long refused to admit that they benefit from and use propaganda to steer and control their subjects. This is in part because they want to maintain a veneer of legitimacy as democratic governments that govern based on (rather than shape) people’s opinions. Propaganda has a bad ring to it; it’s a means of control.

However, the state’s enemies—both domestic and foreign—are said to understand the power of propaganda and do not hesitate to use it to cause chaos in our otherwise untainted democratic society. The government must save us from such manipulation, they claim. Of course, rarely does it stop at mere defense. We saw this clearly during the covid pandemic, in which the government together with social media companies in effect outlawed expressing opinions that were not the official line (see Murthy v. Missouri).

AI is just as easy to manipulate for propaganda purposes as social media algorithms but with the added bonus that it isn’t only people’s opinions and that users tend to trust that what the AI reports is true. As we saw in the previous article on the AI revolution, this is not a valid assumption, but it is nevertheless a widely held view.

If the AI then can be instructed to not comment on certain things that the creators (or regulators) do not want people to see or learn, then it is effectively “memory holed.” This type of “unwanted” information will not spread as people will not be exposed to it—such as showing only diverse representations of the Founding Fathers (as Google’s Gemini) or presenting, for example, only Keynesian macroeconomic truths to make it appear like there is no other perspective. People don’t know what they don’t know.

Of course, nothing is to say that what is presented to the user is true. In fact, the AI itself cannot distinguish fact from truth but only generates responses according to direction and only based on whatever the AI has been fed. This leaves plenty of scope for the misrepresentation of the truth and can make the world believe outright lies. AI, therefore, can easily be used to impose control, whether it is upon a state, the subjects under its rule, or even a foreign power.

The Real Threat of AI

What, then, is the real threat of AI? As we saw in the first article, large language models will not (cannot) evolve into artificial general intelligence as there is nothing about inductive sifting through large troves of (humanly) created information that will give rise to consciousness. To be frank, we haven’t even figured out what consciousness is, so to think that we will create it (or that it will somehow emerge from algorithms discovering statistical language correlations in existing texts) is quite hyperbolic. Artificial general intelligence is still hypothetical.

As we saw in the second article, there is also no economic threat from AI. It will not make humans economically superfluous and cause mass unemployment. AI is productive capital, which therefore has value to the extent that it serves consumers by contributing to the satisfaction of their wants. Misused AI is as valuable as a misused factory—it will tend to its scrap value. However, this doesn’t mean that AI will have no impact on the economy. It will, and already has, but it is not as big in the short-term as some fear, and it is likely bigger in the long-term than we expect.

No, the real threat is AI’s impact on information. This is in part because induction is an inappropriate source of knowledge—truth and fact are not a matter of frequency or statistical probabilities. The evidence and theories of Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei would get weeded out as improbable (false) by an AI trained on all the (best and brightest) writings on geocentrism at the time. There is no progress and no learning of new truths if we trust only historical theories and presentations of fact.

However, this problem can probably be overcome by clever programming (meaning implementing rules—and fact-based limitations—to the induction problem), at least to some extent. The greater problem is the corruption of what AI presents: the misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation that its creators and administrators, as well as governments and pressure groups, direct it to create as a means of controlling or steering public opinion or knowledge.

This is the real danger that the now-famous open letter, signed by Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, and others, pointed to: “Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth? Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization?”

Other than the economically illiterate reference to “automat[ing] away all the jobs,” the warning is well-taken. AI will not Terminator-like start to hate us and attempt to exterminate mankind. It will not make us all into biological batteries, as in The Matrix. However, it will—especially when corrupted—misinform and mislead us, create chaos, and potentially make our lives “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”

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MUST WATCH: Funeral Home Director John O’Looney Exposes The Secret COVID Holocaust

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The political and media establishments don’t want conversations like this to take place

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson sat down with former CNN host Chris Cuomo to show Americans that people who have some disagreements can and should have discussions about political topics many veer away from.

Tucker explained he’d often criticized Cuomo on television without actually knowing him and that after they had a few conversations he realized their chats could be good for the public to see.

Carlson also hinted he may soon have more guests with opposing viewpoints on his show.

“I wonder how many other people like Chris Cuomo are out there? People I dismissed or mocked because we disagreed on some things who actually, if you got to know them, you might learn something,” Carlson said.

The talk covered many subjects, most notably disagreements on the January 6th debacle and Tucker’s interview with Putin.

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Meanwhile, violent criminals pouring over Biden’s open borders

…[F]or I have seen violence and strife in the city. Day and night they go about it upon the walls thereof: mischief also and sorrow are in the midst of it.” – Psalm 55:9,10

There is a Mexican NGO called the Consejo Ciudadano para la Seguridad Pública y la Justicia Penal, A.C. (Citizen Council for Public Security and Penal Justice).

This NGO releases an annual list of the world’s 50 most violent cities.

The list does not include cities located in war zones.

To qualify for the list, a city (or metropolitan area) must have at least 300,000 inhabitants.

The calculations are based on the rate of homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.

Of the 50 most violent cities on the 2023 list, 46 were in the Western Hemisphere.

The only exceptions were four cities in South Africa.

The country with the most violent cities on the list was our neighbor to the south, Mexico, with 16. In second place was Brazil, with 10 cities, followed by Colombia with eight.

The United States of America was #4 on the list with six cities.

Honduras had two cities on the list. Haiti, Ecuador, Trinidad and Tobago, and Jamaica each had one city on the list.

The Central American nation of El Salvador had no cities on the list. Its president Nayib Bukele made an amazing discovery – if you put criminals in jail they can’t commit crimes against the general population.

The #1 most violent city on the 2023 list was Colima, Mexico. In 2023, this metropolitan area with 328,527 inhabitants had 461 homicides, which is a rate of 140.32 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.

Last year, Colima was also #1 on the 2022 list.

From 2022 to 2023, Colima’s population decreased and its homicide rate and total went down. In 2022, the population was 330,329, with 601 homicides, at a rate of 181.94 per 100,000 residents.

Ciudad Obregon, also in Mexico, was #2 on the latest list with a rate of 117.83 per 100,000.

Mexico had seven cities in the top 10: #1 Colima, #2 Ciudad Obregon, #4 Zamora, #5 Manzanillo, #6 Tijuana, #7 Zacatecas, and #10 Ciudad Juarez.

Note that #6 Tijuana and #10 Ciudad Juarez are both located on the border with the United States. That should make Americans feel secure.

Other Mexican cities on the list were #12 Celaya, #13 Cuernavaca, #15 Acapulco, #18 Uruapan, #20 Irapuato, #23 Leon, #35 Chihuahua City, #40 Cancun, and #45 Morelia.

In 2022, Mexico had 17 cities in the top 50, while in 2023, it had 16. So I guess you have to say that’s a slight improvement, but still very bad.

Also in 2022, Mexico had nine of the top 10 cities, while in 2023, it had seven. Once again, a slight improvement, but still very bad.

Haiti’s capital city of Port-au-Prince was #3 on the list, with a homicide rate of 117.24 per 100,000.

Ecuador’s largest city Guayaquil was #8 with 88.82 per 100,000.

South Africa’s most violent city was Mandela Bay at #9, with a rate of 78.33 per 100,000.

The most violent city in the U.S.A. was Memphis at #14, with a homicide rate of 69.66 per 100,000.

That means that Memphis is more violent than all but 13 cities in the world.

Memphis was followed by New Orleans at #22, Baltimore at #28, Cleveland at #30, Detroit at #32, and our glorious capital city of Washington, D.C. at #36.

There is a lot of violence in our country and in our hemisphere. Policymakers should do what they can to reduce it.

For starters, I just don’t think that letting in millions of unvetted foreigners is going to improve the situation.

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Hidden Camera Inside Boeing Plant Reveals Horrifying Truth About Air Travel Safety

Six-week audit of Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems found dozens of problems in the 737 Max manufacturing process

The Federal Aviation Administration’s six-week audit of the clowns running Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems has found dozens of problems in the 737 Max manufacturing process, according to The New York Times, citing an FAA presentation.

During Boeing’s audit, the FAA conducted 89 product reviews, which evaluated the manufacturing process. Of the 89 audits, the planemaker passed 56 but did not meet specific standards in 33, resulting in 97 alleged noncompliance. 

The presentation comes two months after a door plug ripped off a 737 Max 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight. Since then, Boeing has come under intense scrutiny over its manufacturing process. The latest findings should concern airlines operating fleets of these planes and passengers. 

The audit then focused on Spirit AeroSystems, which makes fuselage or other parts for the 737 Max. According to the presentation, Spirit only passed six audits while failing seven. 

FAA investigators noticed mechanics at Spirit using a hotel key card to measure door seals. Some mechanics also used Dawn soap as a “lubricant” during the door fitting process. 

When asked about mechanics using hotel key cards or Dawn soap, Spirit spokesman Joe Buccino said the company was “reviewing all identified nonconformities for corrective action.”

Additionally, the Spirit audit found five problems with the door plug component. It shockingly failed the installation part. The audit also raised concerns about the technicians who carried out the work. 

Many of the problems found by auditors fell in the category of now following an “approved manufacturing process, procedure or instruction. Other issues include a lapse in quality control in the manufacturing processes. 

The FAA gave Boeing three months to develop a comprehensive plan for quality-control improvements. Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun said, “We have a clear picture of what needs to be done.” 

Meanwhile, Boeing and federal regulators have their hands full after several aircraft incidents last week. 

• ZeroHedge (Tuesday): “Plane Was Nosediving”: United Airlines Boeing 737 Engine Erupts In Flames Over Texas
• ZeroHedge (Friday): United’s Boeing 737 Max Jet Veers Off Runway In Houston, Marking Third Incident In Week
• ZeroHedge (Friday): Tire Separates From Boeing 777, Crushes Cars In San Francisco Parking 

And there’s this from Monday evening: 

• Boeing Whistleblower Found Dead In A Truck From “Self-Inflicted Gunshot Wound”

All the chaos surrounding Boeing’s “death trap” planes has caused a boycott, as passengers are using online travel booking website Kayak’s plane filter to find Airbus flights only for their next trip. 

Oh, and there’s this. 

What a disaster.

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Hidden Camera Inside Boeing Plant Reveals Horrifying Truth About Air Travel Safety