China Preps For War: Spy Balloon Belies Much Larger Economic Warning Signs

No Laughing Matter: John Cleese Declares "I'm Afraid They Are Going To Have To Arrest Me" Authored by Jonathan Turley, In the classic movie comedy, A Fish Called Wanda, John Cleese lamented, “do you have any idea what it’s like being English? Being so correct all the time, being so stifled by this dread of, of doing the wrong thing.” Now 86, Cleese has a more pressing concern about being English: whether his exercise of free speech will make him a criminal in his own country. In a recent interview, Cleese observed that...

The "Good News" Is Always The Same: The Stock Market Is Up... Until It Isn't Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog, Cloaking a fake "market" with artifice to maintain its asymmetrical distribution of wealth and income also cloaks its detachment from the real world. I often refer to the dynamics of self-correction and self-liquidation. Systems that use feedback to rebalance extremes are self-correcting: rather than accelerate as they approach a cliff, they slow down and reorganize to avoid runaway self-reinforcing feedback (i.e. positive feedback), a.k.a. run to failure. Some things are self-liquidating by...

Pentagon Picks OpenAI To Replace Anthropic Update (2345ET): Sam Altman on Friday night announced that OpenAI and Department of War have struck a deal in which the DoW will be able to use the company's AI for military applications, and has agreed to abide by the company's red lines regarding safety (which were similar to rival Anthropic).  "Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems," Altman said on Friday night, adding "The DoW agrees with these...