The World Economic Forum is calling for more direct action to end the pending food crisis. Amazing how that is timed with Oregon and Idaho water restrictions and Michigan Avian Flu crisis. Want fries with the grasshopper burger?
Oligarchs
Artificial Intelligence: The Singularity Is On The Horizon
We are on the event horizon of the singularity
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 23, 2025
As a Tech Bro and proponent of AI and merging with the machine, I think Elon fails where many of the tech elite fail, and that is solely a materialist view. All is in the material, which misses the essence that Heinlein meant with his term “grok”. Yeah, it’s cool to call an AI system something from a popular sci-fi book and to connect the products mission with a deeper profound understanding, but as I see it, if AI is a stepping stone to the singularity and sentient machines that will absorb our essence, I think this concept better belongs with re-animists and alchemists.
Glenn asked Grok about the pace with which the Grok platform advances through learning. He also asked Grok to contrast its pace of development with that of humans. These are good questions to ask. I don’t know if Grok provides truthful answers or not, but the responses were thought provoking.
Grok responded that with the 1000s requests that it performs to evaluate and conceptualize concepts on a daily basis, it estimated that its growth in “understanding” was the equivalent of a human’s learning over a 5 – 10 year period in 12 hours. Glenn also asked for Grok to guestimate and quantify its level of understanding compared to a human. Grok responded that its current capability was well above the logical reasoning of someone with the IQ of 100, and it had the capability of encyclopedic recall at retrieval speeds far superior to humans. This knowledge base was updated on a daily basis.
Tech Bros Are All About Collectivism … For You While They Orchestrate
Community Notes, like any style of Wikipedia “Truth Voting”, has been always been compromised. Dr Peter McCullough in 2024 described how he was not alerted to the Community Notes that had been added to his tweets. He could not see them.
https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/twitter-community-notes-deceptively
As a final mention, this community note posting to my Tweet was concealed to my account, so I had no idea it was there until a friend showed it to me last night. So please understand that Fact-Checkers and Twitter Community Notes writers have the common goal of pushing the vaccine agenda without exception from the very beginning of the crisis, and thus, represent an organized army of propagandists for the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex.
https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/twitter-blocked-vaccine-injurydeath
I have always wondered about how many people rely on hashtags to search for topics on social media and whether they have any impact.
The use of hashtags was first proposed by American blogger Chris Messina in a 2007 tweet.[3][4] Messina felt that “they were born of the internet, and owned by no one”.[5][6] Hashtags became entrenched in the culture of Twitter[7] and soon emerged across Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.[8][9] In June 2014, hashtag was added to the Oxford English Dictionary as “a word or phrase with the symbol # in front of it, used on social media websites and apps so that you can search for all messages with the same subject”.[10][11
Elon claimed that there was no way to game the system, to influence Community Notes. This is was naive at best, but stupid at worst. How would you prevent groups from swarming an online community? There are several Community Notes members who have an incredibly high volume of notes.
Elon Musk apparently no longer believes that crowdsourcing fact-checking through Community Notes can never be manipulated and is, thus, the best way to correct bad posts on his social media platform X.
Community Notes are supposed to be added to posts to limit misinformation spread after a broad consensus is reached among X users with diverse viewpoints on what corrections are needed. But Musk now claims a “fix” is needed to prevent supposedly outside influencers from allegedly gaming the system.
“Unfortunately, @CommunityNotes is increasingly being gamed by governments & legacy media,” Musk wrote on X. “Working to fix this.”
Musk’s announcement came after Community Notes were added to X posts discussing a poll generating favorable ratings for Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. That poll was conducted by a private Ukrainian company in partnership with a state university whose supervisory board was appointed by the Ukrainian government, creating what Musk seems to view as a conflict of interest.
Last Year We Covered Community Notes
Stargate Is the OpenAI Bailout
Mundy And What Trump Will Find About Michigan and China
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s pitch to President Donald Trump about bringing a semiconductor manufacturing plant to Genesee County may be short-lived once Trump learns she’s given taxpayer money to China to set up shop in Michigan.
However, Trump said the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) will ensure China’s restrictions in the U.S. when it comes to “technology, critical infrastructure, healthcare, agriculture, energy, raw materials, and others.” The president said he sees American farmland as a resource to protect from foreign access.
According to the White House, “China owns more than 350,000 acres of farmland across 27 states.”
https://www.bridgemi.com/business-watch/election-puts-support-flint-area-megasite-shakier-ground
The Biden administration is reportedly trying to quickly close pending deals with about 20 companies — including one considering Michigan — under the CHIPS and Science Act, which offers subsidies to bring semiconductor manufacturing to the United States.
With time running out before the state and federal political landscape shifts, efforts are continuing this fall to turn about 1,300 acres near the Flint Bishop Airport into a megasite for a high-tech factory, even as new questions emerge about ongoing support for the project.
The Mundy Township property has been marketed to “those that are going to create at least 2,000 direct jobs and invest $2 billion or more,” Tyler Rossmaessler, executive director of the Flint & Genesee Economic Alliance, the economic development group leading the project, told Bridge this week.
Michigan – Ann Arbor “Took Notes On CCP Student Voted
https://www.fox2detroit.com/video/1540844
“[I]n the 14-day voter registration window, we make notes of the residency and Photo ID used to register and our records indicate that he showed an MCard and his Wolverine Access to prove local residency,” wrote Ann Arbor City Clerk Jacqueline Beaudry in documents published by Michigan Enjoyer. “We have copies of the voter registration form that both includes a checked box and an affirming statement of citizenship.”
Since Beaudry admitted her office took notes of residency and photo ID used to vote, The Federalist filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the students who voted with an “MCard” or “Wolverine Access” from Oct. 22 to Nov. 5. As student IDs allow noncitizens to register or vote — as shown in Gao’s case — these records could reveal other noncitizen voters.
Only US Citizens Can Vote
The FOIA coordinator for the Michigan Bureau of Elections denied the request, saying that “the Department does not possess records responsive to your request.” She said officials “would have to create a document in order to answer this” and “the Department is not obligated to conduct research or create records in order to respond to a request.”
Benson’s office claims online that “only U.S citizens can vote” and “[t]here is no evidence to support claims that large numbers of noncitizens have voted.”
“[T]he name of everyone who registers or votes in an election is a public record — it would be very easy to see if noncitizens were registering or voting in large numbers,” Benson’s website reads.
Guess Where Your Data Is Going – Corewell Health Ships 186 Bill Jobs Overseas
Michigan’s largest health care system continues to defy President Donald Trump, most recently by shipping nearly 200 Michigan jobs to India.
Corewell Health last week laid off about 186 remote Michigan workers responsible for the company’s billing and finance operations, offshoring those functions instead to India-based workers with AGSHealth, owned by New York private equity firm Altaris Capital Partners, Deadline Detroit reports.
The decision, part of Corewell Health CEO Tina Freese Decker’s efforts to cut costs, both defies Trump’s efforts to keep jobs in the U.S. and raises serious concerns about data security, with foreign nationals gaining access to critical personal patient information, from social security numbers, to medical records, to financial data.
“If I was a Corewell patient, I wouldn’t be comfortable if someone from another country was looking at my (private) information,” a fired Corewell worker told Deadline Detroit.
The news site notes 42% of U.S. residents were involved in healthcare security breaches last year.
Losing Republican MI Supreme Court Judge
Clement, 47, is a Republican-nominated justice but has crossed ideological lines in several rulings. Her departure means Democratic nominees or appointees will have a 6-1 majority on the Michigan Supreme Court after Whitmer appoints a replacement.
She approved contested proposals that created an independent redistricting commission and enshrined abortion protections in the state constitution
Economy is distorted by High Prices, High Taxes, High Electricity and Evaporating Businesses
Every single time we have a problem we call for a study. And in order to have study you need to escalate the subject of that study to the level of crisis. All our screen time we relegate to our kids leaves little time for participation in activities that would lead to communities forming solutions that work for them. Sports, church, Scouting, Robotics Clubs.
The market won’t bear the cost to families that actually pays the true cost of providing care,” McNabb said. “So even though it’s a very high cost for families, providers aren’t making enough to pay a living wage to the people they hire.”
It took in-home care provider Christina Evans, owner of Wild Ginger Day Care in nearby Bellaire, two years to hire her last assistant. Even with that assistant, Evans says she works about 70 hours a week caring for about a dozen kids per day.
“My spots are full,” Evans said. “I wish I could have fewer kids, because some days are so hard. My toddlers need so much supervision.”
Despite increased attention to the child care crisis, Michigan still lags some states in investing in solutions.
Minnesota, for example, has implemented legislation to invest $1.3 billion over four years to lower child care prices for families.
One study in Michigan calculated that the state would need to spend $3.2 billion more per year to solve the child care crisis, above the $1 billion already going to early education.
EPA Lee Zeldin Favors Line 5
Administrator Lee Zeldin said he will use his agency to advocate for continuing operation of the Line 5 dual pipeline that has traversed approximately four miles above the lakebed of the Straits of Mackinac. He also expressed his support for removing the pipelines to a proposed tunnel that would be built 100 feet in the bedrock of the Straits.