It's certainly possible that some people do, sincerely, 'fear' that the onrushing machine god will speak chinese and that it would be just the worst if all humans were rendered obsolete by the wrong side's robot when that's supposed to be our job; but, especially with how tepid the results are for the money poured in, it seems much more the case that we are seeing a lot of nakedly cynical playing of the 'give us what we want, lest the chinese win' by people who are otherwise on deeply shaky ground in terms of things like massive copyright infringement, voracious data mining, and an endless hunger for capital without any signs of returns.

It's like a vastly hypertrophied case of the 'race to 5G' stuff; where, if we didn't give Verizon whatever they asked for, China would have a faster rollout of 5G and we would lose the 4th industrial revolution or something? It was never entirely clearly what losing the race was going to involve.

The existential tone of the claims seem especially curious given how meagre the leads people are pouring billions into seem to be; and how readily 'AI' models can be poked at via distillation attacks or good, old-fashioned, electronic intrusion. If The Singularity kicks off that presumably changes everything beyond the powers of meaningful prediction(though that holds for whoever develops it as well as everyone else; given the odds that it will slip the leash); but as long as you are in the realm of incrementally more or less flakey chatbots it seems a bit weird to even talk like there is some sort of victory condition that will trigger and cause one side to lose.

Trump wants to be the king you pay tribute to in order to do business.

Renewables being cheaper has moved a lot of stuff over already. The reality is that a lot of the cost of burning fossil fuels is outsourced or hidden, and efforts to make the people burning it pay are also proving to be effective.

The Chinese government has been pushing that narrative for years. They are the stable partner. World's second largest economy with much higher growth than all the other big ones. They don't force their ideology on you either.

It sucks because they aren't wrong about those things, and the stuff we compete with (lucrative markets, less exploitative, democracy) are not quite so tangible, not such big concerns for countries trying to deal with big economic problems or lift millions out of poverty. We need to be more competitive, but in a way that doesn't compromise our core values.

$230

My jaw drops, but then I split. Half of me remains smugly looking down on fuckwits, but the other half hears that Samuel Adams' Utopia, which costs about the same, is supposedly showing up in CostCos, and while I can't justify getting a bottle .. maybe I don't have to justify things.

No.

No, it would still be stupid to do.

It was sane, post Brexit anything is possible.

I did test drive it, but that's the dealer, not the manufacturer. Due to GDPR they wouldn't be able to share it with the manufacturer, or retain it for longer than a few months (for speeding tickets etc to come in).

They could break the rules, but if it then leaked or I found out somehow, they would be in it pretty deep.

Thanks. I try not to get my hopes up, but it does seem like I'm the last year or two we have moved closer on a number of treatments.

Joking aside, the diagnostic criteria is basically "has some of the known symptoms, ruled out everything else". That's why House didn't like it, he thought there was always a root cause, and it looks like science may have discovered it.

The question now is, how do you undo it? Some of the damage may be permanent, but just getting the auto immune system to stop attacking the rest of the body would make a huge difference to a lot of people, and not just people with Lupus.

I know at least three companies that took the opportunity to move as much of their stock and equipment out of the UK, while EU rules were still in place, and then closed up shop here in the UK. Another ended up opening a new facility in Ireland where they re-tested stuff so it could meet EU requirements, as the new British CA mark is pretty much worthless.

Of course it cost them money, but not as much money as they would have lost by staying. And that's with the UK's newly devalued currency making out exports cheaper.

The UK also had a veto over most of the rules that the EU introduced. I don't think it ever used it. In fact, in almost every case, the UK voted for the proposed rules. It was something like under 2% that it didn't want, mostly because the EU tends to make sure everyone is happy before even having the vote - you know, how adults agree stuff.

There was a lot of misinformation about EU rules. The classic one is the "bendy banana" rule, which governs the acceptable ripeness of bananas sold there. Much hang wringing was done, but actually it was a British rule that had become a de-facto one in the rest of the EU, so they just adopted it from us.

The day after the referendum, some member of the public on TV said she was going to vote remain, but at the last moment remembered the bananas and thought "this has to stop". I think fortunately they didn't give her name, but I do sometimes wonder if she eventually realized and was ashamed of it.

The rest of the world isn't going to forget what Trump did, or the ability of the American people to elect someone like him. It's going to take a long time and a lot of work to rebuild the trust and relationships that existed before, if it is even possible.

The US is seen as politically unstable. Every 4 years there is a good chance that whatever policy was made will be reversed, whatever the priorities were will change.

Recently the French police have started slashing the boats before they set off, on the basis that it's unsafe and they are protecting the occupants.

Really the only way to resolve this issue is to have a proper integrated system to deal with people seeking asylum in Europe, but that would be politically unacceptable in the UK.

Brexit was sold as being protectionist, but it was actually the opposite. We gave up huge amounts of sovereignty.

For example, we used to control both sides of our border with France, but Brexit gave up control of the French side and sure enough the boats started coming. The French are not all that interested in policing our border for us, beyond what they can get out of any deals they made with us.

On rule making too, we are now pretty much obliged to accept whatever the EU does, because we are too small to make big demands of our own. Every time we diverge from what the EU does, it damages our economy even more. Farming is a good example. Brexit was supposed to help our farmers, but it's shafted them with extra red tape and costs when they want to export. Some naive fantasists thought we would become self sufficient and eat British grown food, but it's not really to our tastes and many can't afford the price rises that would come with it.

So don't worry, the next protectionist will argue that Brexit wasn't done right and their version will somehow not be a total disaster.

True. I wonder how bad that would be. How much stuff would get kicked up with enough delta V to enter a long duration orbit