For the first time, a full-sized digital scan of the Titanic has been made public, which could reveal new secrets about the ship that lies 12,500 feet down in the Atlantic.
Titanic’s front section
BBC News said the scan was conducted about a year ago by Magellan Ltd, a deep-sea mapping company, and Atlantic Productions, who are making a documentary about the Titanic.
Titanic’s stern
The vessel is split into two sections, the bow and the stern, separated by 2,600 feet and surrounded by a large debris field.
Titanic’s bow
Magellan and Atlantic Productions spent over 200 hours surveying the wreckage with submersibles, capturing over 700,000 images — this allowed them to create a never before seen, high-definition, 3D reconstruction of the vessel.
Looking at the present, with each passing day, I see a very probable future: a new despotism creeping slowly across America. Faceless oligarchs sit at command posts of a corporate-government complex that has been slowly evolving over many decades.
In efforts to enlarge their own powers and privileges, they are/were willing to have others suffer the intended or unintended consequences of their institutional or personal greed. For Americans, these consequences include chronic inflation, recurring recession, huge unemployment, the poisoning of air, water, soil, and bodies, and, more important, the subversion of our constitution. More broadly, consequences include widespread intervention in international politics through economic manipulation, covert action, or military invasion…
I look at present members of the Establishment or people on its fringes who, in the name of Americanism, betray the interests of most Americans by fomenting militarism, applauding rat-race individualism, protecting undeserved privilege, or stirring up nationalistic and ethnic hatreds. I see pretended patriots who desecrate the American flag by waving it while waiving the law.
In Nazi Germany, the Gehieme Staatspolizei, or Gestapo, was literally the Homeland Police (Security). It was the MOTHERLAND in the USSR, the FATHERLAND in Nazi Germany, and now the HOMELAND in Nazi America! Homeland Security and the FBI are the American Gestapo.
In the months after Hitler took power, the SA and Gestapo agents went from door to door looking for Hitler’s enemies. Socialists, Communists, trade union leaders, and others who had spoken out against the Nazi Party were arrested, and some were killed. By the middle of 1933, the Nazi Party was the only political party, and nearly all organized opposition to the regime had been eliminated. Democracy was dead in Germany.
This will be the fate nowadays of gun owners, anti-vaccine advocates, freedom activists, self-sufficient people, and everyone against the current diabolical regime that got in place by stealing, lying, and cheating.
Many different groups, including the SA and SS, set up hundreds of makeshift “camps” in empty warehouses, factories, and other locations all over Germany where they held political opponents without trial and under conditions of great cruelty.
Quick Note: If the FEMA camps don’t ring you any bells…it should. Do You Live Near Any Of These FEMA Camps? Christians, Gun Owners, Veterans, Tea Partiers, Homeschoolers, etc., Are The Targets In The New World Order
Despite the finger-pointing and outcries of dismay from those who are watching the government discard the rule of law at every turn, the question is not whether Joe Biden is the new Adolf Hitler, but whether the American Police State is the new Third Reich.
February 22, 1933, SS and SA become auxiliary police units Less than a month after Adolf Hitler is appointed chancellor of Germany, he calls on elements of the Nazi Party to act as auxiliary police. The SS, initially Hitler’s bodyguards, and the SA, the street fighters or Storm Troopers of the Nazi Party, now have official police power. This further increases the power of the Nazi Party in German society.
With every passing day, the United States government borrows yet another leaf from Nazi Germany’s playbook: Secret police. Secret courts. Secret government agencies. Surveillance. Censorship. Intimidation. Harassment. Torture. Brutality. Widespread corruption. Entrapment. Indoctrination. Indefinite detention.
These are not tactics used by constitutional republics, where the rule of law and the rights of the citizenry reign supreme. Rather, they are the hallmarks of authoritarian regimes, where the only law that counts comes in the form of heavy-handed, unilateral dictates from a supreme ruler who uses a secret police to control the populace.
I know you already guessed and you are right, that danger is now posed by the FBI, whose laundry list of crimes against the American people includes surveillance, disinformation, blackmail, entrapment, intimidation tactics, harassment and indoctrination, governmental overreach, abuse, misconduct, trespassing, enabling criminal activity, and damaging private property, and that’s just based on what we know.
Whether the FBI is planting undercover agents in churches, synagogues, and mosques; issuing fake emergency letters to gain access to Americans’ phone records; using intimidation tactics to silence Americans who are critical of the government; recruiting high school students to spy on and report fellow students who show signs of being future terrorists; or persuading impressionable individuals to plot acts of terror and then entrapping them, the overall impression of the nation’s secret police force is that of a well-dressed thug, flexing its muscles and doing the boss’ dirty work of ensuring compliance, keeping tabs on potential dissidents, and punishing those who dare to challenge the status quo.
Consider the FBI’s far-reaching powers to surveil, detain, interrogate, investigate, prosecute, punish, police, and generally act as a law unto themselves—much like their Nazi cousins, the Gestapo—and then try to convince yourself that the United States is still a constitutional republic.
Just like the Gestapo, the FBI has vast resources, vast investigatory powers, and vast discretion to determine who is an enemy of the state.
Today, the FBI employs more than 35,000 individuals and operates more than 56 field offices in major cities across the U.S., as well as 400 resident agencies in smaller towns, and more than 50 international offices. In addition to their “data campus,” which houses more than 96 million sets of fingerprints from across the United States and elsewhere, the FBI has also built a vast repository of “profiles of tens of thousands of Americans and legal residents who are not accused of any crime.
All of this is made possible by the agency’s nearly unlimited resources (its minimum budget alone in fiscal year 2015 was $8.3 billion), the government’s vast arsenal of technology, the interconnectedness of government intelligence agencies, and information sharing through fusion centers—data collecting intelligence agencies spread throughout the country that constantly monitor communications (including those of American citizens), everything from internet activity and web searches to text messages, phone calls and emails.
Much like the Gestapo spied on mail and phone calls, FBI agents have carte blanche access to the citizenry’s most personal information.
AI excels at echo-chamber reinforcement of risky or error-prone suppositions and policies:Spirals of Delusion: How AI Distorts Decision-Making and Makes Dictators More Dangerous. What’s the threshold for concern that the AI conclusions are riskier than presented? How do we calculate the possibilities that the AI conclusions are catastrophically misguided?
At what point will decision-makers realize that trusting AI is not worth the risk? If history is any guide, that realization will only arise from financial losses and bad decisions. For the rest of us, it might just be the novelty wears off as the inadequacies pile up: Noam Chomsky: The False Promise of ChatGPT.
In the real-world, the costs are all we know for sure and profits remain elusive and contingent.
No one knows how the flood of AI products will play out, but we do know it’s unleashed a corporate frenzy to “get our own AI up and running.” Corporate fads are one of the least discussed but most obvious dynamics in the economy. Corporations follow fads as avidly as any other heedless consumer, rushing headlong into whatever everyone else is doing.
Globalization is a recent example. Back in the early 2000s, I sat next to corporate employees on flights to China and other Asian destinations who described the travails and costly disasters created by their employers’ mad rush to move production overseas: quality control cratered, proprietary technologies were stolen and quickly copied, costs soared rather than declined, and so on.
So let’s talk about costs of AI rather than just the benefits. Like many other heavily-hyped technologies, Large Language Model (LLM) AI is presented as stand-alone and “free.” But it’s actually not stand-alone or free: it requires an army of humans toiling away to make it functional: “We Are Grunt Workers”: The Lowly Humans Helping Run ChatGPT Make Just $15 Per Hour (Zero Hedge).
“We are grunt workers, but there would be no AI language systems without it. You can design all the neural networks you want, you can get all the researchers involved you want, but without labelers, you have no ChatGPT. You have nothing.”
The tasks performed by this hidden army of human workers is euphemistically sanitized by corporate-speak as data enrichment work.
What makes this form of AI pricier than conventional search is the computing power involved. Such AI depends on billions of dollars of chips, a cost that has to be spread out over their useful life of several years, analysts said. Electricity likewise adds costs and pressure to companies with carbon-footprint goals.
Corporations are counting on the magic of the Waste Is Growth / Landfill Economy to generate higher margins from whatever AI touches–don’t ask, it’s magic–but few ask how all this magic will work in a global recession where consumers will have less income and credit to buy, buy, buy.
LLM-AI is riddled with errors, and nobody can tell what’s semi-accurate, what’s misleading and what’s flat-out wrong. Despite wildly optimistic claims, locating the errors and semi-accuracies can’t be fully automated. Errors are inconsequential in an AI-generated book report, but when patients’ health is on the line, they become very consequential: I’m an ER doctor: Here’s what I found when I asked ChatGPT to diagnose my patients.
This raises fundamental questions about precisely how much work LLM-AI can perform without human oversight, and the all-too breezy claims that tens of millions of jobs will be lost as this iteration of AI automates vast swaths of human labor.
AI excels at echo-chamber reinforcement of risky or error-prone suppositions and policies:Spirals of Delusion: How AI Distorts Decision-Making and Makes Dictators More Dangerous. What’s the threshold for concern that the AI conclusions are riskier than presented? How do we calculate the possibilities that the AI conclusions are catastrophically misguided?
At what point will decision-makers realize that trusting AI is not worth the risk? If history is any guide, that realization will only arise from financial losses and bad decisions. For the rest of us, it might just be the novelty wears off as the inadequacies pile up: Noam Chomsky: The False Promise of ChatGPT.
For his part, Kerry neglected to mention that, though agriculture is purportedly responsible for roughly 33% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions, it is undeniably responsible for the sustenance — and continued existence — of 100% of the world’s roughly 8 billion people.
Special presidential envoy for climate John Kerry recently warned that the world can’t tackle climate change without first addressing emissions from agriculture.
Kerry noted that agricultural production is responsible for roughly one third of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions and argued that reducing those emissions must be “front and center” in the quest to defeat global warming. Kerry made the remarks at the Department of Agriculture’s AIM (Agriculture Innovation Mission) for Climate Summit in Washington, D.C.
The attack on farming by Western leaders is beyond shocking. It is criminal, treasonous. For his part, Kerry neglected to mention that, though agriculture is purportedly responsible for roughly 33% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions, it is undeniably responsible for the sustenance — and continued existence — of 100% of the world’s roughly 8 billion people.
In places like Minnesota, the Democrat party is — and has long been — known as the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, or DFL. It is time to take the “F” out of “DFL.” Given its job-killing policies, the “L” should be removed as well. I propose that these letters be replaced by “TG,” for transgender. It would be more accurate to refer to today’s Democrats as members of the DTG Party.
“The world should increase use of nuclear power!” Elon Musk tweeted last week while commenting on a Times Magazine article featuring J. Robert Oppenheimer’s grandson, who stated transitioning to a net zero-carbon economy would involve nuclear power.
We presented a bull nuclear thesis to readers back in December 2020, recommending uranium on the belief that nuclear energy would eventually be incorporated into the ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) framework, as highlighted in our article “Is This The Beginning Of The Next ESG Craze,” is proving to be accurate.
“It’s also important to underscore that nuclear energy became unpopular in part due to its association with nuclear weapons and fears about its safety. But the actual safety record shows it is one of the safest sources of energy, and it is becoming more popular to be an environmentalist and pro-nuclear,” Charles Oppenheimer wrote.
Meanwhile, seven years and $16 billion over budget, Southern Co.’s Vogtle nuclear power plant project in Georgia is coming online and will unleash a new nuclear generation of carbon-free electricity.
“It’s also coming online just as the world has hit an inflection point in the conversation on atomic power,” Bloomberg explained.
Source: Bloomberg
Vogtle’s new plant will be the nation’s largest nuclear power plant and the first to be constructed in decades.
(Photo by Christophe Gateau/picture alliance via Getty Images)
A barrage of Russian missiles damaged a U.S.-made Patriot air defense system near Kyiv early Tuesday morning, weeks after the $1 billion system shot a Russian hypersonic missile out of the sky.
U.S. officials told CNN the extent of the damage is still under assessment and will determine whether Ukrainians can repair the system on the spot.
Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday that Ukraine had successfully intercepted all six hypersonic missiles fired by the Russian military. The attack signaled an air alert, which Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense called “one of the most intense attacks on the capital city since the invasion.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Tuesday in a post on Telegram that a precision strike by a hypersonic Kinzhal missile had destroyed a Patriot air defense system in Kyiv, contradicting the Ukrainian government’s report.
Although the chart no longer is found on the Smithsonian website, the mentality that created it lives on in the policies of the Biden administration. To show its commitment to equity—equal outcomes—the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) implemented a new policy on May 1, 2023, that punishes homebuyers with high credit scores who can put down at least 15–20 percent on a mortgage by making them pay higher interest rates and extra fees. Declares a Wall Street Journal editorial:
In the summer of 2020, the Smithsonian Institution created a chart meant to condemn what it calls “whiteness,” and it listed a number of characteristics it claimed were essential to “white culture.” Among the so-called characteristics it described in pejorative terms was delaying gratification, or saving for the future, what Austrian economists would call low time preference.
The chart, which was withdrawn after widespread protest, sought to identify the characteristics needed to build not only an economy but civilization itself with a racist culture. Thus, the kind of lifestyle and values that might culminate in someone having high credit scores and saving up for a significant down payment for a house were something not to be emulated or praised, but rather to be called out and declared shameful.
Although the chart no longer is found on the Smithsonian website, the mentality that created it lives on in the policies of the Biden administration. To show its commitment to equity—equal outcomes—the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) implemented a new policy on May 1, 2023, that punishes homebuyers with high credit scores who can put down at least 15–20 percent on a mortgage by making them pay higher interest rates and extra fees. Declares a Wall Street Journaleditorial:
According to calculations by Evercore ISI, buyers with strong credit scores between 720 and 739 who make 15%–20% down payments will see their rates increase by 0.750%. Borrowers who put down 20%–25% will see rates increase by 0.500%.
The winners are borrowers with weak credit scores—that is, riskier borrowers. Under current FHFA policy, a borrower with a weak credit score below 620, who is borrowing more than 95% of the value of their home, pays 3.750%. Under Ms. Thompson’s new plan, those borrowers will see their fees decrease by 1.750%.
Not surprisingly, commentators like James Bovard have rightly attacked this policy as one that imposes perverse incentives, turning the rewards for creditworthiness upside down. Bovard writes:
Starting May 1, The Post exposed last week, a Biden administration decree will require adjusting mortgage calculations to penalize homebuyers with a FICO credit score of 680 and above—almost two-thirds of the population.
This levy will be used to reduce costs for people with low credit scores—i.e., risky borrowers more likely to default on mortgages.
However, this is not merely another version of the Law of Unintended Consequences, in which well-meaning government officials implement a policy without looking at the so-called bigger picture. The consequences here are intended. The Biden administration officials know full well the implications of this new policy and is sending the message that the notion of creditworthiness itself is implicitly racist.
As Newsweek points out, the racial gaps in home ownership and credit scores are significant:
To elaborate, as interest rates increase, capital’s opportunity cost increases. Capital requires a higher overall gain from equity to compete with the higher passive interest income. Increasing taxes on capital increases the chance of capital consumption. If an industry is faced with capital consumption by decree, there is only one strategy, a staged retreat strategy. Production ultimately halts. Hence, capital taxes divert resources from productive activities to passive, debt-yielding types of activities.
The Misesian tradition provides essential insights into the nature of capital. From Frédéric Bastiat to Murray N. Rothbard, Austrian capital theory excels.
Bastiat illustrated gains from capital by giving us the anecdote of the neighbor who wanted to borrow a timber planer. Rothbard gave us the examples of royalties in the extractive industry to illustrate capital consumption. The list goes on. Often, capital’s exceptional output is because it behaves as both nonlinear and time specific.
Historically, societies have been reluctant to tax gains from capital. For example, capital gains tax was only introduced in Australia in the mid-1980s. Many of the gains from capital assets continue to receive favorable tax treatment.
The Laffer curve attempts to model government revenue against a taxation rate. Rothbard criticized the Laffer curve by saying that it should be a “straight line.” I understand Rothbard to mean that at some point the tax collected from deployed capital does not gradually decline with an increased tax rate, as the Laffer curve would suggest. Rather, the tax collected on capital gains immediately halts due to capital’s opportunity cost. Capital shifts to alternative passive investments based on the entrepreneur’s subjective value and imputed costs. The concept can be illustrated by the following formula:
[expected gain from capital] + [starting capital] − [taxes]
must be greater than (>)
[interest] + [principal] on an alternative passive investment
The opportunity cost of capital is therefore the risk-free interest rate obtainable on a passive income stream. No self-respecting entrepreneur sets out to lose capital when they can just put the money on term deposit.
An equity capital investment becomes less attractive as deposit rates rise. An equity capital investment also becomes less attractive if capital consumption, via taxation, occurs. To use a sporting analogy, capital may “sit on the sidelines” as entrepreneurs consider alternate investments. That sideline is often interest-bearing deposits. Where the expected net gain from capital only equals the alternative passive interest income stream, then said passive income stream is the preferred investment for two reasons:
There is a lower chance of capital losses on the risk-free rate.
There is a lower chance of capital consumption via taxation changes.
The first reason is straightforward. However, I see capital consumption as a more nuanced concept.
Imagine a young woman named Jane who recently adopted a vegan lifestyle after learning about factory farming in college. She discusses animal welfare and begins attending protests.
For most, Jane’s experiences sound remarkably benign.
But for the Department of Homeland Security, the young woman is following a “path of potential radicalization,” according to new documents released through a public records request.
The scenario was one of several depicted in a violence prevention workshop from the DHS Office for Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention, a division of the agency that works to counter domestic terrorism.
Jane’s supposed path towards violence — as featured in the DHS workshop — is composed of little more than everyday experiences that many Americans take as they embrace activism.
MCViewPoint 
