• ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE HUMANOID ROBOTS have now achieved the ability to walk 5 mph, recognize & pick up 45-pound items, with sensors which “perceive and understand their surroundings.” Tesla robotics engineers have demonstrated that these multi-purpose robots can soon be “autonomously capable of handling a wide range of responsibilities from everyday grocery shopping to complex technical repairs.”  https://www.impactlab.com/2023/05/22/tesla-bot-ai-humanoid-robots-unveil-impressive-new-capabilities/
  • “A SIGN OF A CIVILIZATION IN HEADLONG DECLINE IS ITS EMBACE OF ABSURDITIES, and California is leading an epidemic of nihilist nonsense. A few examples: (1) Crime, homelessness, medieval decay and absence of ability to walk alone safely in any major city after dark, decaying and crowded freeways inadequate water storage, pot-holed streets; (2) Dysfunctional public schools, scrapping scholastic tests allowing illegal quotas to warp admissions, institutionalizing racialized dorms & graduation ceremonies; (3) Income, sales, electricity & gas taxes among the steepest in the nation, still spending over $30billion annual deficit, then contemplating $800 billion in ‘reparations’ to some 5% of the state’s current ‘Blacks’ – whose ‘ancestors’ eight generations ago might have been slaves anywhere in America; (4) Ideology has made a mockery of equality under the laws, with arrest, indictment & conviction, even for corruption, increasingly hinging on local politics.  [VICTOR DAVIS HANSON – 5/21/23]    https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/21/the-absurdities-of-our-age/
  • “WITH RISE OF THE TUMBLR/TIKTOK GENERATIONS, VIRTUALLY THE ENTIRE ELITE PROGRESSIVE DISCOURSE HAS COLLAPSED into symbolic abstractions, quibbling over semantics rather than many realities of their constituents’ experience… Progressives mistake Spin for Truth, believing their own spin, with deployment of euphemism seen more by the progressive faithful as a moral mission than mere acts of marketing or political rhetoric… Their blueprint for winning is by making the enemy socially or culturally unacceptable rather than making the case for particular policies; by manipulating new vocabulary to describe a situation that one would be a ‘bad person’ to question (e.g., unhoused asylum seekers, orderly crossings, gender-affirming care), and lobbying symbols as if the memes and slogans have anything to do with crafting sustainable policy or making peoples’ lives any better. The irony is that all their grand ambitions of a planned society depend on having substantive conversations and debates, so by burying themselves in propaganda and preventing the very possibility of polite dissent, they’ve doomed their best intentions.”  [WASHINGTON EXAMINER – 5/23/23]
  • THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK:

Some 362,000 robotexts per minute are sent in America, with over 157 billion scams identified last year, by over 320,000 who reported they’d been duped. Scammers use texts more than emails since they’re opened 95% of the time, according to Better Business Bureau’s Scam Tracker website.  The FCC finally rolled out a new ‘rule’ in March requiring phone companies to “block certain spam tets before they ever reach customers,” but so far similar attempts have been futile. The scams continue to get more creative (looking like they’re coming from Amazon, UPS, bank, security service, etc.), so beware.  [FORTUNE]

A quarter of Americans have turned away from their religions, led by Gen Z, now ages 11 to 26, according to the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute. Some 39% of Catholics and 28% of non-evangelical Protestants lead the list of those choosing to be unaffiliated with any religion, over half of whom say they either simply “stopped believing in the teachings, or, in many cases, disagreed with their religion’s stance against LGBTQ+ people.  [AXIOS]

“As great power competition heats up and ‘mutually assured destruction’ from nuclear weapons is back in daily media blurbs, the estimate of existing nuclear arsenals is roughly:  Russia 4,500, U.S. 3,700, China 400, Pakistan & India each 160, North Korea 20.  France, U.K. and Israel also have up to a few hundred each. [COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS]     Meanwhile, for a practical explanation of the Russian and Chinese geopolitical objectives, priorities, and likely future direction:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iibs7buNwxQ