Uncovering the Truth - 7/27/23

Yesterday morning a congressional commission heard testimony from three very credible witnesses regarding unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs). One of those three, David Grusch, was a respected former military intelligence analyst who claims to have evidence verifying the existence of non-human corpses (referred to as biologics) found in the wreckage of one or more crashed UAPs. From everything reported, Grusch’s credentials are impeccable, having no doubt undergone the degree of vetting one would expect before being asked to testify before Congress. Although he’s told this story before, sometime back in June to Newsmax, this time he testified under oath.

When questioned about specifics, Grusch stated that he could not discuss certain classified aspects in public, but would gladly do so in closed-door sessions attended by those with adequate security clearance. He also stated there have been twelve such crash sites and that a top-secret faction of the government has, for quite some time, been enmeshed in an effort to reverse-engineer the alien crafts. Not only that, but some of those attempts have resulted in injuries, possibly even deaths. Grusch also stated that he has been administratively and physically threatened as a result of going public with this information. He believes his life is in danger.

The other two witnesses were highly regarded Navy pilots. One, commander David Fravor was the former commanding officer of the elite Black Aces Squadron. He was one of the pilots during the infamous Tic-Tac incident when fighter jets from the USS Nimitz encountered several UAPs off the coast of Southern California. That particular event is thought to be the most credible encounter made public to date, primarily because these UAPs were physically seen by several pilots, but more importantly also tracked on radar, something that eliminates any theories of optical illusions.

According to Commander Fravor, the UAPs performed maneuvers at unfathomable speeds. When asked if he and his crew would have had any defensive capabilities in the event these things had been aggressive, he simply replied, “No.” All three men stated that their motivation for speaking out was grounded in concerns for national security and that they perceived the issue as a dangerous potential threat.

Much of this has been published before but I think the real takeaway here is we’re about to see a concerted effort by a bipartisan group in Congress (talk about aliens) to get to the bottom of the coverup and air all the secrets, assuming they exist. Obviously, something is happening, and in the event our government really does possess the remains of twelve crashed alien vessels, one would have to believe other nations do as well.

But as I discussed in a previous newsletter, the idea that aliens would travel across light years only to crash once arriving here on Earth seems fishy to say the least. If we do uncover the truth, I don’t think it’s going to be a simple matter of space vehicles traveling in some linear path from point A to B in a conventional way, regardless of how advanced their technology is. Possibly we’ll find these visitors are inter-dimensional travelers rather than interstellar, or even holographic projections, something Grusch alluded to himself during the testimony. Now I realize that sounds crazy to a lot of people but these concepts are completely compatible with certain aspects of physics. It’s important to remember we are currently experiencing a technological renaissance unlike any in our history.

There’s probably a 99% chance those who have studied these things still don’t understand them…at all, even if they’ve had access for decades. When Grusch talked about previous accidents, he wouldn’t go into specifics in a public setting.

Regardless of what’s actually happening, unscrewing the lid on all this could open a fairly large can of worms….

Tastes Like Chicken?

A company called UPSIDE Foods has come up with a process for growing cultured meat. Now this isn’t the plant-based meat replacement available in your local grocery store today, but something that’s supposed to be the real deal. It’s grown with stem cells from cows, chickens, and even fish which are placed in petri dishes containing amino acids and carbohydrates to help the muscle cells multiply and grow.

Yummy!

Of course, the main selling point here is grounded in the reduction of greenhouse gasses and one more aspect of the comprehensive effort to mitigate global warming. However, there’s also a humane component in that many people see moral and ethical problems when it comes to raising animals on a massive scale for food. There could be pent-up demand for those searching for a way to enjoy a good New York Strip with their favorite Cabernet without slaughtering an innocent animal.

But don’t rush to Mcdonald's and ask for your Franken-burger and a side of chicken Mc-Clone-its just yet. All of these companies are still struggling to get production costs down to a point where the general public might be enticed into testing a batch of their zombie fish tacos. At this time, the costs are reportedly prohibitively high, but the company will no doubt increase efficiencies as the process…evolves.

Also, I couldn’t help thinking about how this concept could come into play for interplanetary travel someday. The ability to cultivate meat from stem cells seems like a solid possibility for providing ongoing supplies of food and a definite enhancement to current concepts such as growing and processing algae as base food.

As a hard-wired carnivore with a soft spot for all animals, this process has real appeal for me. And even though the image of test-tube meat probably won’t result in the best marketing material, as the saying goes, you never really want to know how the sausage is made. If the price is right and it doesn’t taste like my perception of Soylent Green, it might be a hit. It could even turn out to be an investment opportunity for those willing to take a long-term approach. However, vegetable-based meat companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat have struggled since their inception.

Once it’s been out for a while, and if no one starts growing battery plugs on their necks as a result of ingesting it, I definitely plan to give it a try.

RIP Tweety-Bird

Elon Musk rebranded Twitter to X this week. It’s apparently part of a larger strategy to create one all-encompassing app. One that incorporates everything other social media sites do as well but including online financial transactions. It sounds ambitious and of course controversial. The chorus of pundits singing funeral dirges lamenting the death of Twitter was ubiquitous throughout the internet. Many maintain that after throwing billions away in a misguided attempt to take over Twitter, Elon destroyed whatever value was left by discarding a known brand. The outrage equaled a level one would expect as if he’d pulled out a gun and shot a real bluebird.

And even though all these “experts” still post daily about how much Twitter, um X, sucks, they still keep accounts, and strangely are engaging at above-average rates—something that increases potential ad revenue.

It seems pretty clear to me that Musk’s grand plan has always been to create the “everything app” and his acquisition of Twitter was simply the first step. The new X will eventually resemble only a small part of the original Twitter. Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitter clone (Threads) appears to have stumbled after a promising start. Its user engagement numbers have fallen steadily and dramatically since its roll-out and any perceived threat to Twitter has evaporated.

Hopefully, though, the Musk / Zuckerberg cage match is still on.

Bill Gates - Drilling For Hydrogen?

This one surprised me when I ran across it in some obscure section of the internet. Bill Gates is well-known for dabbling in all things God-like, everything from genetically modified mosquitos to fight Malaria, to acquiring much of the farmable land on Earth.

I go back and forth on Gates. On one hand, he seems genuinely dedicated to searching for solutions to world problems such as disease and hunger, particularly in developing nations. But other times some of his actions seem more self-centered, as though it’s all simply an orchestrated public relations strategy designed to bag him a Nobel Prize.

And now he’s apparently funding a secretive project focused on drilling for hydrogen as an alternative fuel source. The advantage of hydrogen is that it’s a very efficient and clean-burning fuel. The downside is that it tends to be a bit volatile, infamously used as a replacement for helium prior to the Hindenburg disaster. There’s also that negative connotation from the 1940s with the Hydrogen Bomb.

Apparently, the few hydrogen-powered vehicles today require pressurized fuel tanks capable of surviving even the most severe crashes. Otherwise, they’re like traveling with small bombs in the trunk. Assuming adequate safety measures are incorporated into the designs of these cars, this might result in yet another promising alternative energy source without all the messy issues associated with battery production and disposal for electric vehicles. Definitely something to watch.

And that brings us to a really interesting development….

Barbenheimer

In one of the most unique marketing campaigns ever to come out of Hollywood, the summer blockbuster movies Barbie and Oppenheimer are being pushed as a double feature. Sort of an opposites-attract strategy. I haven’t seen either yet, but have read ‘American Prometheus’ which is the biography of Robert Oppenheimer who led the effort during World War II in the development of the Atomic bomb. I will see the movie once it’s streaming but I pretty much gave up on theaters around the time people forgot that texting during a movie wasn’t acceptable. I do, however realize the advantage of seeing these epic films in 70mm IMAX format.

Sometime in the future, I hope to write some of my thoughts on Oppenheimer the film as compared to the book. As you might expect, he was a brilliant and complex guy, conflicted by what he may have unleashed, and possibly responsible for the Soviet Union’s development of their own atomic bomb.

But for now, I’m struck by the similarities between that time during World War II and today; when brilliant men like Oppenheimer were racing to develop technology so advanced and dangerous, they weren’t completely sure the world wouldn’t be destroyed as a result. There was a point in the development of the atomic bomb when the most knowledgeable physicists in the world weren’t sure if it might create a chain reaction and end the existence of everything on Earth—right up until they actually pushed the button. This seems to me very similar to our current state of AI.

As we enter an era of the technologically unknowable, there really is no way to predict the ultimate consequences—only that our world will never be the same. And, the contemporary equivalent of that button has already been pushed…

AI Finished Game of Thrones

Fans of the HBO series (and the books) Game of Thrones know that production of the popular fantasy epic outran the books and that the world has anxiously awaited George R.R. Martin’s final two that complete the story. HBO’s conclusion left many fans underwhelmed, something that’s no doubt put an enormous amount of pressure on Martin, who’s been working on the final two since 2011. Some hard core enthusiasts are worried Martin will die of old age before finishing.

Well fans, the wait is over…sort of. A man named Liam Swayne has utilized Chat-GPT to finish the final two books. Reviews by those who’ve taken the time to read them are that they are adequate to mediocre, but strangely coherent. But Swayne's motivation was simply to gauge Chat-GPT's capabilities and never meant as a replacement for the inevitable real conclusion to the seres.

The main point here is that AI-generated books are no longer something anticipated for the future. They’re here, currently flooding Amazon to the point other book sales are suffering. Think about it. Anyone with basic skills can plug in a general synopsis and one of several AI LLMs (Large Learning Models) will spit out a full-blown novel. I have no idea about the quality level of these in the LLM’s current state of evolution, but I’m sure they’ll only improve. And that has repercussions for not only the writing world but virtually any creative endeavor.

Other AI programs are creating images based on user prompts that then go straight to animated movies. There was even a full episode of South Park floating around Twitter, fully generated by AI and nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. Hollywood actors and writers are currently on strike, understandably threatened by this technology that’s permeated the industry with the devastation of a swarm of locusts on a wheat field. But, in my humble opinion, it’s over. There’s no going back and ultimately, the entertainment industry is, and always has been, a business. AI will simply be a cheaper source of content, even free.

I do believe there will be a place for some creatives, at least in the near term. But the writing is very clearly on the wall (pun intended). Publishers are already firing thousands of editors. Tech companies no longer need humans for coding. Thousands of AI-generated books are flooding Amazon and it’s just a matter of time until full-length feature films will be popping up, especially on streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon.

Meanwhile, Chat-GPT recently broke the Turing Test, something designed decades ago to identify the difference between human and synthetic intelligence. If you consider the fact that most people had never even heard of chatbot technology seven months ago, that reality is significant, a sign of how fast everything’s moving.

There’s a very popular social media influencer named Milla Sofia, a beautiful, scantily-clad woman who posts images from around the world. Problem is, she’s not real—an AI-generated program. Think about all those human influencers traveling the world and hanging off the sides of cliffs to gain more followers while the person who invented Milla Sofia simply types a few keys and her image appears in any setting desired. And, the person orchestrating Milla’s AI world is being paid for it, monetizing the millions of humans who follow her adventures. It seems clear that at some point we won’t be able to distinguish who’s real and who isn’t—and probably won’t really even care. Also, how long until fake influencers start following each other? You can see where this might be going.

Sinead O’Connor

Sinead O’Connor died this week. She was 56 years old. Exploding onto the music scene in the early 90s, her haunting rendition of Prince’s Nothing Compares To You became an international hit. Back then, when people still watched music videos, her expressive face and shaved head seemed perfectly suited for her unique voice. Many have attempted to cover her version of the song, but none seemed to ever reach the nuanced levels of her perfectly-pitched voice.

Sinead’s career was instantly destroyed at the end of a performance on Saturday Night Live at the peak of her fame when she tore up a picture of the Pope. I was watching that night and remember being completely dismayed, and somewhat angry. Nobody even really understood what she was protesting, but her aggressive and angry actions seemed intrusive and inappropriate. Years later, anyone who bothered to understand why she felt compelled to do what she did, found out it was an attempt to protest child abuse by the Catholic Church. This was well before the depth of the church’s scandal became well-known to the general public.

She never seemed to recover, spending the rest of her career fighting personal demons and psychological issues. Her son committed suicide last year and that seems to have been the final blow from which she couldn’t recover.

RIP Ms. O’Connor. Your once-in-a-generation voice will be heard and appreciated for decades to come.

I’ve gone long again. I wanted to talk about the potential marriage of LLMs and Quantum, as well as a review of my favorite western movie of all time—Tombstone. Hopefully next time.