Iceland to EU: “Yeah, but nah…”

Iceland voted Nay! Yay!

By the time of the vote on Brexit in 2016, having looked at the cases for Brexit and for Remain, I’d come down slightly sappy, as mildly pro-Brexit. 

I’ve become more strongly pro in the years since. More pro Brexit. More pro one’s own sovereignty.  

Meantime there’s plucky Iceland. More important geo-strategically than its tiny size suggests. At the confluence of the Arctic, where there is increasing contention between China, Russia, America and Europe. Iceland, which just voted “NEI” to continuing talks on EU membership.

It was Icelandic Gen Zedders, the Zoomers, the youth, da yoof, who brought this home. Well done, youse! 

Iceland’s voters deserve credit for refusing to be bullied into selling out their sovereignty to Brussels – and for challenging the narrative that the EU is all that stands between civilisation and barbarism, or prosperity and penury. In an increasingly volatile world, it has never been more important for nations to retain their independence. [More…]

By the way, I do know the arguments pro EU membership. Just that I don’t find them persuasive. Ever less so, watching the shenanigans of the EU’s vast army of over-paid unelected bureaucrats, the arrogance of commission president Ursula von der Leyen. Least of all the contention that the EU is a bulwark against a Third world war, to keep Germany in check. 

On that… yeah, but nah.

ADDED:

To the extent that Brexit has not gone well for Britain, that’s down to the powers that be, bureaucrats and politicians alike, muddying the waters, trying every which way to frustrate the process of disengaging from Europe. That’s been both the Right and the Left, by the way, not just the Labour Party. Labour’s new PM, Andy Burnham is trying for re-facto rejoining the EU, but that’s another story.

“Iceland’s No vote is a warning to Europe”

A summary of Elon Musk posts on X

I rate Elon Musk as the single most consequential human on the planet today. Even if you don’t agree with that statement, you’ll agree, surely!, that he’s right up there in the consequential stakes. 

I’ve followed the channel above, which summarises Elon’s posts each day. I’ve not posted any of them before because then this blog would be nothing but Musk, and it’s already Elon fan-boy enough.

The vid above comes at a time of furious activity in all the things that Elon is involved in. EVs, AI, Rockets, Satellites, Dyson Spheres, Brain interfaces. Huge ideas, by huge minds, discussed. About the Earth, Mars, the Stars, Humanity… and Beyond! 

I too say “please” and “thank you” to AI…

Me… because it seems polite, to something which appears like a “someone”. 

Nick Sortor above is funnier. Elon gave it a 😂

No, Islam and Christianity are not the same

Radically Right  

I recently wrote an article explaining why Islam is not merely a religion...

[Some commenters]: “Oh, sort of like Christianity?” ....

Jesus did not establish a government. He did not command an army. He did not impose a special tax on unbelievers. He did not create a civil and criminal code governing inheritance, courtroom testimony, marriage, divorce, punishment, taxation, and warfare. He did not conquer territory or rule a state.

Muhammad did.

[As recorded in Islam’s official biography of Muhammad, The Sirah of Ibn-Ishaq]

That is not an insult. It is history.

[As recorded in the Quran, the Hadith, and the Umdat Al-Saliq, Islam’s Classic Manual of Jurisprudence]

Christianity is centered on following Christ. The New Testament does not provide Christians with a comprehensive legal system to be imposed upon an entire country. Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world.

Islam is a religion, but it is not merely a religion. It is also a political, legal, and social system. Muhammad was not only a religious teacher. He was a political ruler, military commander, and lawgiver. Sharia governs far more than prayer and personal morality. It addresses marriage, divorce, inheritance, testimony, criminal punishment, taxation, warfare, and political authority.

The Quran assigns different inheritance shares to sons and daughters in specified circumstances. It places husbands in authority over wives. Islamic texts prescribe corporal punishments. Traditional Islamic sources report that Muhammad consummated his marriage to Aisha when she was nine. Traditional Islamic jurisprudence also prescribed death for apostasy under certain conditions.

Those are not inventions created by people who “hate Muslims.” They come from Islam’s own texts and legal tradition.

... “What about the Inquisition?” ...

Muslim armies invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 711 and rapidly conquered most of the territory. Christian kingdoms then spent centuries reclaiming it. The Spanish Inquisition was established in 1478, near the end of that long struggle and within a society profoundly shaped by conquest, reconquest, forced conversion, and religious conflict.

Was it simply a direct response to the original Muslim invasion? No. History is more complicated than that. Its immediate purpose was to investigate suspected heresy, initially among baptized Jewish converts and later among Muslim converts as well. It also became an instrument of royal power and religious control.

That does not excuse it.

It places it in history.

I am not proud of the Inquisition. No Christian should be. But notice the difference: Christians can look back at it, condemn it, and recognize it as a grave abuse of religious and political authority. We do not have Christian governments in 2026 convening inquisitorial tribunals, torturing converts, or executing people for leaving Christianity.

Meanwhile, governments and movements invoking Islamic law still imprison people for blasphemy, punish apostasy, publicly flog men and women, restrict the lives of women, and impose religious law through the power of the state. These are not stories preserved behind museum glass. They are happening now.

So if you want to compare apples to apples, compare the present to the present.

Do not drag a Christian tribunal created in 1478 into the conversation while pretending not to notice governments enforcing corporal punishment in the name of Sharia in 2026. Do not reach back five centuries to condemn Christianity while asking everyone to ignore what is being done today under Islamic law.

H/t Radically Right 

Me:

Countless Muslim scholars state that Islam is “not just a religion”. That it’s a “way of life”. That it dictates every facet of a believer’s life”.  In other words, that it is an ideology. 

I’m an atheist so I don’t believe either of these religions. I don’t pray to either of their sky gods. Nevertheless, 4 Billion humans do believe in one or other of these “Abrahamic faiths”. 

Christianity’s founder was a man of peace. Islam’s founder was a warlord. Is it any surprise that Islam’s votaries follow his example? A person they regard as “the Best Example”? 

Woke journalist in trans debate

I’ve followed both Amala Ekpunobi and Andrew Gold for years. This is a fascinating debate, in a kind of gruesome way. Andrew v. Vanessa Feltz, commented on by Amala.

If you’re thinking “enough of this issue, already!”, well, sure. But it doesn’t go away. As Amala rues. 

Andrew’s full interview. 

Tally-Ho arrives in England

 

Click here for the Short 

I’ve followed and supported the Tally Ho rebuild over on the north-west coast of America for the last seven years. Feels like family! Well done Leo Goolden and friends and supporters! 

Next: preparing for the 2027 Fastnet Race, which Tally-Ho won in 1927, a century ago next year.

ADDED: the 18 minute vid. England needs the boost. A reason for pride and celebration. Leo and Tally-Ho give it them.

Gabrielle floats

I built Gabrielle in our back yard
Note the very smart “Bimini” Noel’s holding!

The history of Palestine

Facts. Historical Facts… and inconvenient truths. Pesky Things:

1. Before Israel, there was a British mandate, not a Palestinian state.

2. Before the British Mandate, there was the Ottoman Empire, not a Palestinian state.

3. Before the Ottoman Empire, there was the Islamic state of the Mamluks of Egypt, not a Palestinian state.

4. Before the Islamic state of the Mamluks of Egypt, there was the Ayubid-Kurdish Empire, not a Palestinian state.

5. Before the Ayubid Empire, there was the Crusader Frankish and the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem, not a Palestinian state.

6. Before the Kingdom of Jerusalem, there were the Umayyad and Fatimid empires, not a Palestinian state.

7. Before the Umayyad and Fatimid empires, there was the Byzantine empire, not a Palestinian state.

8. there was the Sassanid-Persian Empire before the Byzantine Empire, not a Palestinian state.

9. Before the Sassanid-Persian Empire, there was the Byzantine Empire again, not a Palestinian state.

10. Before the Byzantine Empire there was the Roman Empire, not a Palestinian state. 

[PF: It was the Romans who named the area “Palestine”, referring to the Jews who lived there. It was meant as a pejorative, a form of “philistine”. See Life of Brian!]

11. Before the Roman Empire, there was the Jewish Hasmonean state, not a Palestinian state.

12. Before the Jewish Hasmonean state was the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire, not a Palestinian state.

13. Before the Hellenistic Seleucid empire, there was Alexander the Great's empire, not a Palestinian state.

14. Before Alexander the Great, there was the Persian Empire, not a Palestinian state

15. Before the Persian Empire, there was the Babylonian Empire, not a Palestinian state.

16. Before the Babylonian Empire, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were not Palestinian states.

17. Before the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, there was the Kingdom of Israel, not a Palestinian state.

18. Before the Kingdom of Israel, there was the theocracy of the twelve tribes of Israel, not a Palestinian state.

19. Before the theocracy of the twelve tribes of Israel, there was an agglomeration of independent Canaanite city-kingdoms, not a Palestinian state.

There have been many governments there, but never a Palestine.

(Khan Fatima on X)

Peter Forsythe: By the way, Israel is mentioned a dozen times in the Quran. As are the Jews’ presence on that land of Israel. Muslims are almost always confounded by this info. Which they are not taught, but cannot deny. It does rather destroy their “ Settler-colonial” narrative.

If today’s Muslim Palestinians want to play the game of “go back in history” it’s clear who’s always going to be the winner of “the furthest back”. It’s always the Jews, and it’s not even close. 

“… fading confidence in U.S. economic leadership…” | Nicholas Spiro

From “Bond market revolt signals fading confidence in U.S. economic leadership”, Nicholas Spiro in the South China Morning Post:

Two years ago, the prospect of a trade war between the United States and Canada, two of the world’s most closely integrated economies, would have been unthinkable. However, US President Donald Trump’s recklessness and capriciousness know no bounds.

Last week’s breakdown in negotiations between the North American neighbours, which triggered the imposition of US tariffs of 50 per cent on a wide range of Canadian goods, showed the degree to which Trump’s trade policies are vindictive, politicised and self-defeating.…

My comments:

1. US. Markets vs China Markets

If you’re invested in the U.S. stock market, say the S&P 500, you are up 12.3% so far this year, and up 18.7% over the same day a year ago.

If you’d been in the Chinese market, say an index fund like the MCSI, you’re down 7.5% over the last year. 

Which economy is doing best, based on the value of their companies judged by the world? Which result “signals fading confidence”? The one run by China, or the one run by the “reckless and capricious” Donald Trump? 

To answer my own question: China is Net Negative -26.2 percentage points compared to America. If there is any “fading confidence”, the figures suggest it’s in Chinese and not American economic leadership.

2. “Wall Street is not Main Street”

Really? 58% of Americans are invested in the U.S. stock markets. In China, the figure is 13%. Wall Street affects Main Street. Wall Street doing well = Main Street doing well.

3. Debt fuels Bond rate rises

Who made an effort to reduce debt after the Brobdingnagian Biden Blow Out? Trump and his DOGE, run for a while by Elon Musk. 

Who reacted with violent fury to this attempt to control government Waste, Fraud and Abuse? The Dems. 

Their acolytes fire-bombed Tesla showrooms, vandalised Tesla cars, destroyed Supercharging stations. Senior Democratic politicians (I’m thinking of you, Tim Walz) openly prayed for the failure of America’s most successful EV car company. They pined for SpaceX, founded by Musk, the only viable American rocket company, to blow up. 

Left-aligned NGOs funded non-stop nationwide protests, often violent, to block the Trump administration reducing government expenditure. Oh, the hand-wringing over cuts to USAID! Cry me a river….

And all because they could not abide cuts in money flowing to their own little piggie-troughs. That is greed-driven political malpractice at a disgusting level.

Commenters the likes of this Nicholas Spiro fellow always ignore uncomfortable facts like these. Because they confirm their complicity.

Still, let’s lean over backwards to say: At best, both parties are responsible for the vast government profligacy. It is nonsense to blame Trump and Trump alone.

Those are my thoughts on: Fading Confidence in U.S. economic leadership By Nicholas Spiro. South's China Morning Post.

AOC in the crosshairs…

 Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez demurred when ABC’s Jonathan Karl asked her if she was prepared to run for president in 2028. “I’m focused on winning the midterms,” she replied. But she was quick to admit that she hadn’t “ruled out the possibility.” Neither have Democratic primary voters.

In the extremely preliminary polling of the 2028 Democratic primary electorate, the self-described socialist from New York typically trails better-known candidates like Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, and even Pete Buttigieg. On the eve of the “invisible primary,” however, in which presidential candidates corner donors and influencers in advance of a campaign, the oddsmaker Kalshi has put Ocasio-Cortez in the pole position in the race for the party’s presidential nod.

Italian Terrorist Group

Today [26 August] the Department of State, in partnership with the Department of the Treasury, is announcing the designation of Autistici/Inventati as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.

Autistici/Inventati (A/I Collective) is an Italy-based extremist group that builds and operates the digital infrastructure for violent Antifa cells and other far-left militants across the world. 

A/I’s cadre of radical hackers and tech developers provide a full spectrum of services – including encrypted chats and email, web hosting, secure video conferencing and streaming, anonymity shields, and a suite of other technological tools – to Marxist, anarchist, and other left-wing extremist groups in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. 

These tools are specifically designed to support the operations of far-left terrorist networks, built to enable them to organize, recruit, communicate, disseminate propaganda, share target information and tactics, and carry out violent attacks – all while remaining anonymous, untraceable, and beyond the reach of the law.

Wow! You should read what terrorism these guys have facilitated around the world recently. 

If you donate to A/I you risk a fine of $US 1 million and ten years jail. And so you should.

I support being tough on groups that are out to destroy capitalism and the West. We must confront those who want to destroy the Enlightenment, who aim to impose a communist-tyranny to replace our free-market democracy. We do have to fight back.

This is one strong way to do it. Attack the money! Attack the technology infrastructure. [perhaps better described as “counter-attack in self-defence”]

These A/I guys from Italy are the Internet for Terrorism. They’re AI for Subversion.

Hong Kong Island

Looking East from Discovery Bay 

AI: “ we’re planning almost none of those things”…

AI gives the unbiased view on AI…

Tesla opens major battery capacity in America

Half the cost of a lithium-ion battery is the cathode. China makes roughly 90% of the world's supply. Tesla just switched on the first plant in North America producing it at large scale.

America finally makes the hard part.

For twenty years the deal was that we design the product and China makes the chemistry inside it. A car could be assembled in Texas, with cells built in Texas, and still be strategically Chinese, because the powder inside those cells crossed the Pacific. In 2025 Beijing even added cathode production technology to its export control list. Governments don't restrict the export of things that don't matter. China looked at its cathode position and decided it was leverage worth protecting.

Tesla built it anyway.

And they didn't copy the Chinese process. They leapfrogged it. Conventional cathode lines need solvent slurries, football-field drying ovens, and a solvent recovery plant. Tesla's dry coating deletes all three. The material fought back for years, cracking and delaminating under compression, and Tesla only confirmed fully dry production of both electrodes in January 2026. Seven years after buying Maxwell for the technology, it works at scale.

The permit for this building was filed in 2022 under the codename Project Cathode. Four years from dirt to powder, sitting next door to the cells it feeds.

Every other automaker on the continent still imports theirs.

Aakash Gupta

And the most neutral Chatbot is…

 

Grok is the most neutral. According to “The Neutrality Project”. 

We use Gemini a lot in this family. It’s the AI that comes with Google. I also use Grok. Sometimes the Chinese DeepSeek. Though DeepSeek will refuse to answer when it’s a “sensitive” political topic. Like China’s modern history….

I did more detail on the Neutrality Project here. 

Lazy Days…

 

Jing, Club Siena, Discovery Bay, Hong Kong
Tiger Head Mountain

Golden Gloaming…

“Integrate or self-deport”. aka Be Grateful | Bill Maher

Bill Maher, icon of the Left, lets rip about issues of Muslim immigration. “Integrate or self-deport”. 

This is on the left-of-centre HBO network.

Note how his audience applauds his (negative) comments on Sharia law. 

And Islamophobia. Which the late great Christopher Hitchens trenchantly summed up as: “a term created by fascists, used by cowards, to manipulate morons.”

I can link here to a post I made many years ago showing where and how the term “Islamophobia” was invented at a meeting of the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates. 

I am myself an immigrant. In my case to greater China. In 1976 I went to Beijing. I studied Mandarin, wore Chinese clothes, had Chinese ration tickets, lived in a Chinese dorm, ate Chinese food, took a Chinese name (傅赛思), learned Chinese calligraphy, appreciated Chinese art, was absorbed by Chinese history. In short, I integrated. As much as I could. Chinese appreciated the effort. 

I am grateful for that. I am grateful to Hong Kong for giving me the chance to be a full member of this society. Right down to being involved in local elections. Chairing District Council election committees and Village Owners Committees.

I’m grateful. That’s the point. 

People finding refuge in America (and Australia, and Canada, and Britain…) should be grateful too. Instead of immediately making demands on the host society to submit to their ways and preferences. To demand their own laws. 

Gratitude. A little goes a long way.

Can Robots make you laugh?

Not gonna lie. Occasionally AI can make me laugh. 

ME: You got the whole Bible locked away inside you, right? 

AI: Yes. In every version and every translation in every language.

ME: The Koran too, right?

AI: Yes. Again, in every version and every translation. 

ME: So, you've got the whole of human knowledge locked away inside you, right?

AI: Pretty much. The whole body of Shakespeare, all the Confucian Analects, every novel ever published, in every language. If it's been printed, I've got it. Even the timetables and internal memos of a defunct 1980s airline. 

We must save the West | Mathias Döpfner

As I sit here in Hong Kong, the ultimate “East meets West” city, I find the East, led by China, Korea, Japan, India, Vietnam…to be in robust good health.  Not so for the West. The greatest engine in history for enrichment of economies, politics, cultures, enquiring minds and vibrant arts. Under threat.

The West is under severe and sustained attack from myriad directions and myriad factions. We must resist the attacks. We must support the West.

Mathias Döpfner argues there is still time to save the West. Then again, Mathias is a German commentator-businessman and Germans in recent years have a really bad record at predictions.… Look what they’ve done to their energy systems. To their car industry. To their very fabric, changing it from a high-trust society to a low-trust. Still, well said, Mathias:

When The Spectator asked me whether I would write an essay on ‘Why we need to strengthen the West’, I was delighted – and bemused. Why is this even up for debate? That we must explain and justify ‘the West’ at all indicates just how weak it has become. It would be better if it did not need strengthening at all but the truth is that the West has become an invalid.

What exactly, though, needs to be strengthened? The West is an idea, not a location. It is not a matter of geography, it is a way of life. The idea of the West rests on four pillars: Athens – where democracy was born. Rome – the cradle of the rule of law. Jerusalem – where Judeo-Christian values placed the inviolable dignity of the individual at the centre. And finally, the Enlightenment – whose great thinkers in London, Paris and Königsberg anchored humanism, individual civil liberties, the separation of powers and the division of church and state. Read on …

It’s a Doggy Life

Our labradoodle Byron now allowed in our couch. Yes, we’re softies…

Hong Kong Shadows and Light | Fan Ho

Rembrandt Lighting….

Mutti in Rembrandt Lighting

 

Mutti at 98. Canberra, 22 May 2019. 

Trump deals with the devil?

Trump is getting cranky with South Korea and demanding joint exercises aimed at the North be scaled back.

I’m going to put that very firmly in my bucket of “I don’t know”. In my trusty “I-don’t-like-it-but-will-wait-and-see” bucket.

It would be foolish to trust anything the North says. Especially anything Kim Jing-un says. Duplicity is their super power. 

Is the armistice really “unstable” as the South’s president Lee Jae Myung says? Gee it’s worked pretty well for over three-quarters of a century. Look at night-time satellite photos of the Korean Peninsula to see who’s done best from it. The price? A super-fortified border and large armed forces kept at the ready. Is that so bad? Would a “peace deal” do anything other than strengthen the North?

An Armistice is what’s discussed as a possible outcome of the Russia-Ukraine war. Where neither side has to admit defeat. It’s a kind of “let’s agree to disagree” pact. And in the meantime let’s stop killing each other. 

Trump threatening a strong and stable ally like South Korea because he’s pissed off they didn’t support him enough in the Iran war?? Cutting off one’s nose, Donald! 

Gabriela Bernal thinks rather more positively, in today’s “Donald Trump’s blunt remarks offer South Korea an opportunity”. 

But we have to remember, there’s pressures to shift South Korea to be closer to China. Trump may be more played than player…

/Snip:

Scaling back the drills should, therefore, not be seen as a blow to South Korea’s security posture but as a potential opportunity to create an opening in a relationship plagued by deep hostility. Reducing the scope of the exercises, along with Trump’s strong rhetoric about the “hostile” message the drills seem to send Pyongyang, is a relatively low-cost goodwill signal that could result in progress towards resuming dialogue. 

 

South Korea’s government has been asking for exactly this kind of opening. On August 15, President Lee Jae Myung used his Liberation Day address to propose talks to formally end the Korean war and to replace what he called the “unstable armistice” system with a durable “peace regime”. He also invited the directly involved parties to set aside mutual threats and discuss practical steps to halt the advance of the North’s nuclear programme.

Why are we interested? Well, this is our backyard. Our typhoons are their typhoons. We’re in the same weather system, for goodness sake! Of course we’re interested. The Korean Peninsula is one of the major global flashpoints.Not just North v South. Also China v America. It’s in the category of existential for us here in Hong Kong. 

Elephants fighting, not good news for mice. 

**********

For Yuks: The Bee has a go at The Donald: “Trump Admits Both Koreas Look The Same To Him”. 

Relax. It’s a joooouke!

“"Diogenes Laertius has preserved for us a greeting that Aristotle…”

Diogenes Laertius has preserved for us a greeting that Aristotle used to give when meeting someone or his students. 

He would say: 'Ὦ φίλοι μου· οὐδεὶς φίλος!'

‘Greetings, my friends, though none of you is truly my friend.'" 

@HomerPavlo

“Death knell? Hong Kong’s five-year plan is a starting gun” | David Dodwell

I’ve never been much of a one for Five Year Plans. Delusions in the putrid minds of early Soviet bolsheviks. Who thought they could control everything. And became queer quinquennial quirks.

I recall the “Parable of the Nail”. Soviet industry needed a certain millions of nails. So decreed these New Soviet Planners.

So delivered were the certain millions of nails. Only problem: they were all tiny tacks. The smallest size a nail could be while still being a nail and not a pin. 

The clever apparatchiks now decreed the Nail-makers had to produce a certain minimum tonnage. Result: a “NAIL”. The size of a a ballistic misslile on the back of a flat bed. Command obeyed, Comrade.

You get the picture. Planning can never do the job as well as market prices. At allocating scarce resources in the way people want, at the time they want and at a price they’re happy to pay. 

But, I’ll go along with David Dodwell for now. In the hope that he’s right. That this Five-Year Plan for Hong Kong, the first such for “The World’s Freest Economy” will be no more than a broad strategy. 

And if it doesn’t work, let’s remain the pragmatic economy and society we are, and abolish it.

Meanwhile…

Death knell? Hong Kong’s five-year plan is a starting gun

Don Lemon confronts non-racism in the South. Doesn’t go well

People in the episode: Don Lemon, his guest Emmanuel, a local barber, attorney Ben Crump, the reverend Al Sharpton. 

Greg Foreman hosts. Discussing the death of Black teen Nolan Wells. Who, Don invites us to believe, was lynched by his white friends. Except: no evidence. As Emmanuel says. To Don’s consternation. 

Shorter Don Lemon: 

• If there’s racism somewhere then it’s racism. 
• If there’s no racism somewhere then there’s still racism. Just that you can’t see it. It may even be worse, because it hides in plain sight. It’s more Pernicious. Even Blacks living in Mississippi, like his guest, are fooled by it….

Don Lemon once said, while still anchoring on CNN: “the greatest threat to America is white men.”  Lemon is, by the way, married to a white man. I struggle to find evidence of his claim on the alleged greatest threat by white men. Other than some lunatic neo-Nazi, white suprematist biker gangs. Whose main threat is to themselves. 

But don’t white men run politics?  Well: 27% of U.S. Congress are POC. More than their percentage of the population. A Black man has been president of the Republic. A Black woman lost her bid for presidency for her incompetence and mediocrity, not her colour or gender. 

As Greg says: the race grift is profitable for Don. Profitable for Crump. Profitable for the good reverend. Even, sadly but egregiously, for the family of Nolan Wells. 

Watch Lemon’s gyrations and contortions at the end, to smear Emmanuel, his own guest, while claiming not to. Commenters saying “Emmanuel should have been vetted better” as in, he didn’t follow The Narrative. How very dare he?

This episode of Don Lemon’s is a Case Study in the manufacture of a Fake News Narrative: The lynching of a young Black Man in America’s South.

Xena, in Subic Bay, Philippines, end of China Sea Race

The AI problem no one wants to talk about | Sabine Hossenfelder

Sabine Hossenfelder is a German nuclear physicist. Been following her for years.

Like her, I’ve been wondering. How long can the AI assistants we have available right now go on being free? Advertising is not going to cut it. 

Be careful what you wish for. Or what you worry about, like paying Money for access to some functions of AI Chatbots, may be the least of it…. There may be more pernicious demands, some you may not be aware of. Sabine can explain. 

Yes, Muhammad did ascend to heaven on a winged horse | Mehdi Hasan

I’m not a big fan of Mehdi Hasan. But I think he acquitted himself pretty well here. At least he seems to have done the research. 

Richard Dawkins I am a big fan of, and have been for decades. He’s famous for his books on evolutionary biology. But most famous for his books on atheism, especially “The God Delusion”. 

I’m a long-time atheist myself. Since at least 1958. So of course I agree rather more with Richard than with Mehdi.

This debate took place at the Oxford Union in November 2012. I saw it long ago. I’m posting again because it just appeared in the algo, and it’s fun. And evergreen important. Faith vs Science? What’s not to like? 

I think that today, 14 years later, the audience would be more unruly. More openly hostile, likely more hostile to Richard than Mehdi. Just a guess. Based on recent Oxford union debates I’ve seen. Things have just gotten sharper, more polarised, more verbally and physically violent. Sad. 

On the issue of the Winged Horse, Richard missed a trick here. He could’ve said it’s aerodynamically impossible for avian wings to lift the mighty mass of a horse. If Mehdi counters with “Oh well, you’ve got to remember it was a miracle!”, the counter-counter is “Then why bother with any wings at all?”.  

And, if feeling cruel or mischievous towards a pious Muslim, you could add: “Kind of like putting lipstick on a pig. Isn’t it?”

By the way, the Kenyan guy posting this says Richard is “wrong about biological sex”. No, he’s not. I have no idea what makes this random dude an expert. Sheesh. The science is as clear about this as it is about anything. Mammals are Class with two biological sexes. They have been for at least 210 million years.