Russia is slowly moving forward at multiple parts of the frontline.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-fortifications-8a72981dfdb755de6f8011b13f4d062e
https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-takes-100-square-miles-140010022.html
Ukraine claims it foiled a Russian attempt to assassinate President Zelensky.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68968256
Russia’s odd “turtle tanks” are artefacts of the peculiar nature of the Ukraine War and don’t herald a permanent type of new vehicle.
https://youtu.be/PCrAve7ynhw?si=IQigNgfs1_rEFXVt
Russia has now lost 3,000 tanks and 1,300 lighter armored combat vehicles in the Ukraine War. Furthermore, thousands of their artillery pieces, trucks, and armored vehicles not meant for direct combat have also been lost.
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html
In spite of these heavy losses, Russia has so many weapons left over from the Soviet era that it won’t run out of them, even at current loss rates, for two or three years. As the shortages near the critical threshold, I predict Russia will make up for it by starting to import old Soviet and Soviet-compatible weapons from friendly countries like North Korea.
https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/military-balance/2024/02/equipment-losses-in-russias-war-on-ukraine-mount/
The Moscow Victory Day Parade only had one Russian tank–a WWII-era T-34.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-again-had-only-one-173044546.html
The Russian public’s support for the Ukraine War remains steady. Predictions that the economy would collapse and Putin would be overthrown aren’t close to coming true.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/russians-coming-terms-putin-war-000029755.html
‘Several Russian financial, economic, and military indicators suggest that Russia is preparing for a large-scale conventional conflict with NATO, not imminently but likely on a shorter timeline than what some Western analysts have initially posited.’
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-20-2024
Glimpse the future: A Russian kamikaze drone attacks a Ukrainian drone ship in the Black Sea.
https://www.twz.com/news-features/russian-fpv-drone-seen-attacking-ukrainian-uncrewed-surface-vessel-for-the-first-time
‘ATACMS Obliterates Russian Air Defense System As It Desperately Tries To Defend Itself’
https://www.twz.com/news-features/atacms-obliterates-russian-air-defense-system-as-it-desperately-tries-to-defend-itself
Russian troops can consistently jam U.S.-made Excalibur guided howitzer shells.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-gave-sending-ukraine-excalibur-130324037.html
Ukraine destroyed two, expensive MiG-31 interceptors on the ground at a Russian air base in Crimea.
https://www.twz.com/news-features/mig-31-foxhounds-confirmed-destroyed-in-new-imagery-of-belbek-air-base
Missiles and artillery fired from within Russia have been hitting targets inside of Ukraine. The Ukrainians have Western-made weapons with the ranges to destroy those Russian sites, but donors like the U.S. refuse to let Ukraine use them against Russian territory for fear it will lead to an expansion of the fighting. There’s a growing consensus among Western leaders that they should ease the rule and let Ukraine use their weapons to attack Russian soil. Putin is warning that this would lead to “serious consequences.”
Is it another bluff? Maybe. Regardless, we’re entering unknown territory.
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/05/28/putin-says-western-weapons-striking-russia-would-have-serious-consequences-a85248
‘Biden secretly gave Ukraine permission to strike inside Russia with US weapons’
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/30/biden-ukraine-weapons-strike-russia-00160731
In spite of the colossal damage it has suffered, Hamas still exists and its troops are killing Israeli troops. Eradicating the organization may be impossible.
https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-end-insurgency-0fcb4e20821ba8c0e49edf6571486d3b
Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court requested arrest warrants for several leaders in Hamas and Israel’s government, including Benjamin Netanyahu, for their roles orchestrating violence against civilians. Both sides are outraged at being equated with the criminals on the other side.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/20/politics/biden-denounce-icc-warrant-israel-hamas/index.html
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gazans-hamas-see-false-equivalence-icc-charges-2024-05-20/
President Biden has said he will withhold some military aid to Israel if it sends ground troops into the last Palestinian-controlled city in Gaza, Rafah. There are widely held fears that such an operation would kill large numbers of civilians.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/08/politics/joe-biden-interview-cnntv/index.html
An Israeli bombing raid killed 45 people and severely burned many more in a crowded Gaza refugee camp, drawing international condemnation. The bomb was made in the U.S.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/29/rafah-strike-us-munition-israel/
The $300 million pier the U.S. military built in Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid broke apart during a storm. It only operated for a few weeks.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/28/politics/us-gaza-pier-broken-apart/index.html
Israeli troops seized control of Gaza’s land border with Egypt. They claimed it was necessary to shut down secret tunnels that were being used to smuggle things across the border.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1994g22ve9o
Russia has successfully convinced Niger to kick out American and French troops and to lets its own troops take over their bases.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/10/pentagon-orders-all-us-combat-troops-to-withdraw-from-niger-00157329
A group of American civilians were arrested in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for supporting a failed coup.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13437171/congo-malanga-drc-coup-cia-utah-tiktok.html
Iran’s President and foreign minister died in an accidental helicopter crash. It will have no real effect on their government in the long run.
https://apnews.com/article/iran-president-ebrahim-raisi-426c6f4ae2dd1f0801c73875bb696f48
Right after Taiwan swore in a pro-independence candidate that Beijing hates, the Chinese Navy and Air Force staged massive military drills that encircled the island.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/22/asia/china-military-drills-taiwan-punishment-intl-hnk/index.html
Peter Zeihan’s dour 2019 predictions about the future of China’s economy have proven accurate:
“So I would argue that fixing this [by] deflating the bubble, I think that I think that ship sailed 20 years ago, and so the question becomes ‘is this triggering going to be internal or external?’ Let’s start with internal. Demographically, we are going to be seeing a contraction in Chinese domestic economic activity simply because of demographics within the next five years.”
An economic “contraction” doesn’t necessarily mean negative growth; it can mean a sharp decrease in the positive growth rate. For example, if my personal income rises by $5,000 per year, but then one year the growth rate shifts down to only a $1,000 increase each year, in economic terms I’ve experienced a contraction. China’s GDP growth rate and domestic spending growth rate are both way down from where they were in 2019 when Zeihan made his prediction.
The “Madsen M50” was simple as a WWII submachine gun, but better, and it was made by Denmark of all countries.
https://youtu.be/95YPVQR_7yw?si=rkwiFMCd_6rUx_Ks
Anglo-American troops raped thousands of women during the liberation of France. Tens of thousands of French civilians were also accidentally killed by Allied bombers and artillery strikes during the War.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/taboo-french-women-speak-rapes-143322935.html
Several major U.S. military laser weapon programs have been recently canceled.
https://www.twz.com/news-features/u-s-military-laser-weapon-programs-are-facing-a-reality-check
The U.S. Navy has failed to learn from its past procurement mistakes.
https://www.twz.com/sea/navys-new-constellation-class-frigate-is-a-mess
‘Report: 14,000+ Google Search Ranking Features Leaked’
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-data-leak-37462.html
‘Nvidia’s profits soar as AI boom shows no sign of slowing down’
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/5/23/chk-nvidias-profits-soar-as-ai-boom-shows-no-sign-of-slowing-down
OpenAI unveiled it’s latest and most advanced LLM, “GPT-4o”. At the demo, the machine was able to carry on a conversation with a human presenter in a totally natural and intelligent manner.
https://www.youtube.com/live/DQacCB9tDaw?si=GPXXv9mHoh5NcA1d
Actress Scarlett Johansson claimed OpenAI had cloned her voice without her permission to synthesize GPT-4o’s voice, and quickly sued the company. Though they say they didn’t break the law and used a different human to create the voice, OpenAI nonetheless disabled the voice feature indefinitely. Scarlett Johansson famously voiced “Samantha,” a sentient AI character in the 2013 movie Her.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/entertainment/openai-accused-mimicking-scarlett-johansson-tech-company-pauses-chatgpt-voice
GPT-4 has passed the five-minute Turing Test.
“GPT-4 was judged to be a human 54% of the time, outperforming ELIZA (22%) but lagging behind actual humans (67%).”
https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.08007
ChatGPT is one of the fastest-growing digital services in history. In less than a year, it accumulated 100 million weekly users.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/6/23948386/chatgpt-active-user-count-openai-developer-conference
That said, only 2% of British people use LLMs on a daily basis.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c511x4g7x7jo
A large number of AI safety staff quit OpenAI nearly at once. While NDA’s prevent most of them from talking about it, people in the know say they were unhappy with Sam Altman’s dishonesty and lack of commitment to their mission.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ASzyQrpGQsj7Moijk/openai-exodus
The founder of the dating app Bumble predicts that personal AIs will match humans with romantic partners in the future.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13407769/Bumble-founder-future-dating-AI-interview.html
Someday, machines will be better than humans at everything, including creating entertainment products.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68897555
‘AI might wreak havoc on traditional studio moviemaking, with its massive budgets and complex technical requirements. But in the process, it is likely to make high-quality filmmaking much less expensive and logistically arduous, empowering smaller, nimbler, and less conventional productions made by outsiders with few or no connections to the studio system.’
https://reason.com/2024/05/25/ai-is-coming-for-hollywoods-jobs/
An important lesson from the last few years is that job automation will sweep across the workforce in unexpected ways. For example, no one believed jobs involving artistry would be automated before jobs involving simple physical labor, like flipping burgers. It might prove more profitable for companies to replace their leaders with AIs sooner than they replace their assembly line workers.
Regardless, keep in mind there’s probably no limit to how far job automation can go. In 50 years, if you’re part of that lucky 1% of the adult human population that still has a “real job,” don’t gloat at the unemployed masses because it will only be a few years before your position is also taken by a machine.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/28/technology/ai-chief-executives.html
A roundup of famous American economists’ future predictions from 1980 is full of huge misses.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/05/economists-predictions-from-1980.html
Here’s a gem from 2010: “‘CIBC’s former chief economist Jeff Rubin has touted peak oil for years, and his price estimates have been dead on. Lately, he predicted $225 oil by 2012 and rising.’
https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-rudin-i-know-a-place-where-demand-for-oil-grows-even-faster-than-china-2010-2
Here’s a very fascinating case study of a young Mexican man who was born deaf and whose parents never taught him sign language. As a result, he never developed any kind of linguistic ability and had a totally different way of thinking (he lacked “symbolic thinking” and couldn’t conceive of attaching names to objects) and dealing with people. After illegally immigrating to the U.S., a linguist stumbled upon him and slowly taught him sign language.
‘As part of her discussion of the human rights of the deaf, Schaller makes the argument, familiar also from Benjamin Whorf (and also brought up in the commentary on Henrich’s WEIRD article) that language diversity itself is an insight into human cognitive diversity: ‘Every language is an outcome of how the human brain works. We don’t know how much we can do with our one brain, even, and each language has used the brain in a slightly different way.’ However, there’s an even deeper and more profound cognitive diversity in her discussion of Ildefonso: the possibility of language-less human thought, something that theorists like Merlin Donald have attempted to discuss.’
https://neuroanthropology.net/2010/07/21/life-without-language/
Tesla has abandoned its effort to make cars through a “gigacasting” process because it was too expensive and they weren’t able to master it.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-retreats-next-generation-gigacasting-manufacturing-process-2024-05-01
Something that makes no sense in Star Wars and many other space movies is the inability of spacecraft to quickly point in any direction to bring their guns to bear on the enemy. Usually there’s a good guy fighter plane being pursued by a bad guy fighter plane, and the good guy yells out “I can’t see him because he’s behind me! Help!”
In reality, since there’s no air resistance to deal with in space, the good guy could instantly flip his fighter plane around and shoot the bad guy. You see two examples of that in the movie “Oblivion.”
https://youtu.be/zRvXcyznOsQ?si=86sSlxUQHrvnw4Nc
Blue Origins launched six tourists into space.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/19/world/blue-origin-rocket-ns-25-mission-scn/index.html
In 1999, the Space Shuttle Columbia nearly suffered a catastrophe that would have forced it to attempt an emergency landing back on Earth right after it lifted off.
https://youtu.be/qiJMdfj9NmI?si=g-PHc0zHoyTXtF0M
One cubic millimeter of human brain tissue contains 1,400 terabytes of data about the neurons, supporting cells, and connections between them.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/15/world/human-brain-map-harvard-google-scn/index.html
‘AlphaFold 3 predicts the structure and interactions of all of life’s molecules’
https://blog.google/technology/ai/google-deepmind-isomorphic-alphafold-3-ai-model/
‘Overall, this is very impressive performance, although I should note that it is not up to the various headlines of “AlphaFold 3 Predicts All The Molecules of Life!” and so on. In almost every area it’s a significant improvement over anything that we’ve had before – including previous AlphaFold versions – and in some of them (protein-antibody and protein-RNA) it appears to be (for now!) the only game in town, even though it’s not an infallible oracle in those cases by any means.’
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/alphafold-3-debuts
Most of the new drugs “discovered by AI” actually weren’t, and they’re not likelier to work than drugs discovered by humans.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/ai-drugs-so-far
‘These results strongly suggest Neanderthal-derived DNA is playing a significant role in autism susceptibility across major populations in the United States.’
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-024-02593-7
Alzheimer’s is partly genetic. Though this bit of information helps, the amount we still DON’T know about the disease or how to treat it is shocking.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/06/health/alzheimers-apoe4-gene-risk/index.html
Even more evidence has arisen that Ozempic treats serious health problems aside from obesity.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/24/health/ozempic-benefits-diabetic-kidney-disease/index.html
1/8 of American adults have taken the weight-loss drug Ozempic or one that is similar.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/10/health/ozempic-glp-1-survey-kff/index.html
1/3 of American adults are obese.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention-source/obesity-rates-worldwide/
The recipient of a genetically engineered pig kidney died after two months. It’s still unclear whether his death was due to a problem with the organ.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/may/12/pig-kidney-xenotransplant-patient-dies-two-months-later
There are many types of mental disability and they have many different causes. Among them are mutations to single genes. A new gene that causes it, RNU4-2, has just been discovered. 0.41% of mentally disabled people have the condition due to it.
Better knowledge of the human genome and cheaper prenatal DNA screening will let us reduce the population prevalence of mental and physical disorders in the future.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38645094/
Sony has created a tiny robot that can do precise microsurgeries. In this video, it makes an incision in a corn kernel and then stitches it up.
https://youtu.be/bgRAkBNFMHk?si=LmjjLDkwgHp4zbgp