Nothing. That’s why the CIA won’t talk about it.

I’m stuck on level five. They say I’m too dumb. Could you help me to leave level five, please?

Reminds me of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_radiological_accident

If you ever find an inexplicably warm object in the middle of the snowy wilderness, don’t cuddle up with it no matter how tempting it may be.

The Lia radiological accident began on December 2, 2001, with the discovery of two orphan radiation sources near the Enguri Dam in Tsalenjikha District in the country of Georgia. Three villagers from Lia were unknowingly exposed. All three men were injured, one of whom eventually died. The accident was a result of unlabeled radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) cores which had been improperly dismantled and left behind from the Soviet era.

They ate dinner and had a small amount of vodka, while remaining close to the sources. Despite the small amount of alcohol, they all vomited soon after consuming it, the first sign of acute radiation syndrome (ARS), about three hours after first exposure. Vomiting was severe and lasted through the night, leading to little sleep. The men used the sources to keep them warm through the night, positioning them against their backs,

Two days after exposure, on December 4, patient 2-MG visited a local doctor but did not mention the mysterious heating source, and the doctor assumed he was drunk.

No, you’re totally right. This is fine.

The climbers scampered down the mountain after stashing the C.I.A. gear on a ledge of ice, abandoning a nuclear device that contained nearly a third of the total amount of plutonium used in the Nagasaki bomb.

It hasn’t been seen since.

And that was 1965.

How Did the C.I.A. Lose a Nuclear Device?

Oh probably because they’re incompetent as fuck?

Or they wanted to “lose” it because they were actually selling it to some insane rich villain in another country

These people are mentally ill

Yes and I don’t say this as a knock on mental illness. I say it because many conservatives are raised to believe that mental illness is either a supernatural force of the devil or a moral failing. I sincerely believe that if many conservatives would just give therapy a trial run, and try to unpack half the shit that they instead insist on holding on to then unleashing upon society, the world would be a much more pleasant and peaceful place.

However, most will never do that because not going to therapy A. proves they’re totally not crazy otherwise they’d be in therapy, right? and B. Trying to control everyone else, provides them with their own sense of control.

I always did love laser tag

I don’t see how it possibly couldn’t. Like everything else in the U.S. right now, it’s being propped up on lies and illusions that are held together with super glue. Idk if you saw the news about Flock, but even their license plate scanning “AI,” turned out to just be relying on a sweatshop in the Philippines.

So even the fucking license plate scanning/matching never worked, yet, somebody in government still decided to help flock install surveillance cameras all over the country, and give an unknown startup a huge government contract for tech that didn’t even exist. Then multiple cities just assumed, well if they have a contract with the federal government, they must be legit, we better give them a contract too.

What are the chances somebody like Peter Thiel, who has been pushing for the government to embrace AI and issue these huge public-private contracts since 2016, actually believed his own lie? I really don’t think any of this is actually coming as a surprise to him.

I’m not sure about the others (like Zuckerberg or Bezos), but I get the feeling Musk might have actually believed he was working towards achieving AGI, but, only because Thiel made him believe that in order to get him (and sooo many others who followed) to build these giant data centers that will rely on nuclear power (and coincidentally Thiel’s uranium mine that he recently purchased).

I’m not sure what actually happens to all of these data centers once people realize it was all a scam, but I’m not sure it’s safe to assume they’re all going to end up just sitting empty.

Not that they will be used for “AI,” but I worry that once the bubble actually bursts, shits going to somehow get even weirder in a very bad Blade Runner meets Grapes of Wrath way, and people like Thiel will be left holding all the resources and controlling all the surveillance we already installed all over the country because rich people were dumb enough to let some billionaire hype technology that didn’t actually exist, and now the economy is FUBAR because they thought they were being so smart and getting in early on the next .com boom

In exchange, as critics would point out, the company would get the mother of all tax breaks. No property taxes and no taxes on equipment purchased to build the data centers, like servers and networking gear.

“This is a generational opportunity,” Mr. Napier said as he was wrapping up. “It is here today.” Which was to say, it would be gone tomorrow. BorderPlex would find a more accommodating place for its largess. In case anyone missed the point, he explained it: “A vote to delay is a vote ‘no.’”

“You know, forget I even said anything. Sorry to bother you folks. You probably wouldn’t be interested anyway. It’s more of a Shelbyville idea…” 😏

Reddit post with a gift link to article: https://www.reddit.com/r/Longreads/comments/1phhbug/a_mysterious_company_came_to_town_with_a_165/

But if the broligarchs don’t actually expect to ever get any of this “AI” shit actually working, then what is the end game?

Obviously the majority of people are only in it to make quick money, but what about the psychos at the very top who are directing policy and building these giant nuclear powered “AI” data centers?

If Thiel/Musk/Zuckerberg don’t actually have the expectation that “AI” will eventually work itself out, then it won’t matter how money the rich (but not broligarch rich) Wall Street bros and bankers dumped into the “AI” boom.

It won’t be like the .com boom and the Internet, because it doesn’t actually exist. If the economy completely collapses, and dollar becomes worthless currency, the “money” the average rich asshole hoards away after investing in the 2025 “AI” boom, will have about as much value as monopoly money.

Meanwhile the fucking Bond villain billionaires like Thiel (who have been dreaming of this exact scenario for over 20 years) hold all resources (including a recently purchased uranium mine).

So, “hypothetically,” if that was Thiel’s endgame, and the “AI” jig is up, then they no longer have to pretend they’re trying to develop artificial intelligence or AGI. But they do already hold control of most resources, have mass surveillance capabilities, and each broligarch owns one or more of these giant supercomputers/data centers that have been built in cities all over the U.S. world and soon in outer space.

In this totally fictional scenario, once the dollar collapses (likely followed by all of society collapsing along with it), what do the broligarchs actually use their giant nuclear powered “AI” data centers for?

AI or no AI, they’re currently being built, so what is their actual purpose?

“laughable,” arguing that you can’t declare the majority of Americans impoverished because the suburbs they choose to live in are expensive, which is what Green did when he used the middle class suburb of Caldwell, New Jersey, as his median.

“My plastic surgeon said smiling is a waste of Botox, but I can’t help but let out a boisterous ha cha fucking cha at the absurdity. If poor people don’t want to spend so much money on cost of living they should just go live in the places nobody lives because there are no jobs or resources.”

“Poor people are just so bad at managing money. That’s why they have to blindly trust everything we say. We know how to spend money wisely, and we know what’s best for the economy and them.”

“Get out of the way Plebs! We’re betting it all on AI!”

“Oh my! Well, that was unfortunate but also completely unforeseeable. I guess the only thing left to do is brush ourselves off, pat ourselves on the back for being such altruistic utilitarians, ignore the screams from the plebs and go again.”

“So where’s our bailout? Time is money.”

I mean, there is actual “AI” tech that exists, and isn’t just people working in sweatshops, like this: https://deeplabcut.github.io/DeepLabCut/README.html

It’s just kind of difficult to get consistency between trials, and reliability seems to boil down to completely eliminating variability. So kind of useless outside of a lab setting (as is).

I tend to feel like it’s more trouble than it’s worth and too unreliable (as is) to usually bother with it, but I know people who are just fellow lab rats (not broligarchs) and are super devoted to getting AI to work for their projects. Like most sectors in this country, even science is being forced to embrace AI. Regardless of if it actually makes sense for your line of work or not, the expectation is get it working or face the chopping block, and there are definitely people who are trying their hardest to really get this shit off the ground (because the alternative is be prepared to be out of a job for being obsolete).

This is also why it’s kind of surprising to learn that even “AI” that’s simply comparing license plates from one camera to the next, is actually just due to human slave labor.

So, do any of the broligarchs receiving these huge contracts actually believe that eventually they’ll get AI to work once enough data and money is dumped into it and the little people at the bottom figure out all the kinks for them?

Or is it just that everybody at the top acknowledges this is a dead end, but once you’re in the secret club at the top of the food chain, and you’re making ridiculous amounts of money, your incentive is just to keep your mouth shut, keep making money, and fuck the consequences because once society collapses you’ll get to be kings of your own little monarchs anyway?

If it is the second, and nobody at the top really believes AI is going anywhere, then what are all the giant, energy sucking data centers that are being built across the country actually for?

I mean there are legit companies doing good work that get passed over all the time.

How did these 3 guys get hundreds of millions in government contracts for a product that didn’t even exist.

And not only did it not exist, they were demanding everybody let them violate their privacy so that their non-existent product could “end crime.”

I’ll just come out and say it, the “scandal” imo isn’t the company was a fraud part. The scandal is that people within the government wanted so badly to amp up surveillance and the police state within the U.S. they just went ahead and dumped all this money into A.I. that didn’t actually exist because “A.I. is already here and it will fix everything, and even if you don’t want it, too fucking bad.”

Like it was never that the government thought A.I. tech was that important, or the future, or whatever bullshit. They’ve just realized the tech industry allows them the ability to spy on people, control information, and make a shit ton of money doing it.

Yeah, so again, I just can’t imagine why anybody wouldn’t immediately comply when these very trustworthy men who keep their faces covered, abduct them off the street, and whisk them away in unmarked cars.

The history of the organization seems very odd

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flock_Safety

It began as a side project in which the three co-founders built their first video surveillance cameras by hand around Langley’s dining room table. When a DeKalb County detective told Langley that his camera product had helped with solving a home break-in, Langley called the two other co-founders and told them to quit their jobs.

What?? How did a detective use it to solve a crime? Who was he? And based off of this one dude you all 3 just quit your jobs??? What??

Then we just jump ahead to 2022 and these cameras that didn’t even work had raised over $380 million in venture funding?

Then by the next year they were being used to sub for actual police due to a shortage of police officers?

So they just go from the Hardy Boys help solve a mystery in Georgia in 2017 and then suddenly by 2023 Marc Andreesen (big surprise) is suddenly funnelling millions into their business.

Oh, good, this citation will probably help make clear what the fuck actually happened between 2017 and 2023: Flock Safety. “Media Kit: Our Founding Story”. Flock Safety. Retrieved April 8, 2022.

The main thing flock is really supposed to do is capture and match pictures of license plates at different locations. It’s not even complex.

So how tf did they get the green light for the first government contract if they never even had that capability?

Wait, what? I was just making a joke.

Unless you are the coked out billionaire? In that case I would like to know what you were thinking when you vouched for these people.

I was just pointing out it’s definitely going to contribute to the bubble popping, but it’s even worse than other AI companies bc it was mainly government contracts (which means they’ll probably still be getting funded for the foreseeable future even while other companies go under).

It’s insane they were ever allowed to receive a government contract for tech that didn’t even exist, so I would just really like to know how that happened? Like legally how could this have happened if not for somebody in some position of power helping these people get their foot in the door.

But it’s especially infuriating that this company has received so many government contracts from ICE and all over the U.S., and in some cases literally just gone into towns and put cameras up without permission. Then refused to get around to taking them down in some cases, so towns just started covering them up with trash bags.

Its like an entire business model where some creepers with a cardboard box pretend lemonade stand just decided one day to start selling pretend AI instead. And we just let them? Who fucking signed off on this?

Who is it that even helped them get their foot in the door in the first place? Who was the coked out billionaire who apparently just fucking picked their name from a list he glanced at for 5 minutes on his way to rehab? Somebody needs to find that person, and we all need to be allowed to give him a swift public kick in the ass.

He looks angry he was summoned from Geppetto’s workshop half way through his reverse transition into a wooden boy to sign this unethical business deal.