Author: Blazingcatfur
‘Godfather of AI’ says it could drive humans extinct in 10 years
Artificial intelligence could wipe out the human race within the next decade, the “Godfather of AI” has warned.
Prof Geoffrey Hinton, who has admitted regrets about his part in creating the technology, likened its rapid development to the industrial revolution – but warned the machines could “take control” this time.
The 77-year-old British computer scientist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics this year, called for tighter government regulation of AI firms.
Political Stories That Shaped Canada in 2024
The year-end political upheaval in Ottawa and a looming 25 percent tariff by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump have ensured that 2024 doesn’t end quietly for Canadians.
Here’s a look at some of the issues that had political ramifications in Canada in 2024.
It’s time to become the 51st state of the US
We need to get Brexit done properly. Let’s finally face up to reality and put our Maga hats on
‘The Briton… should cheerfully acquiesce in the decree of Destiny, and stand in betimes with the conquering American.” So said William Thomas Stead, the prominent Victorian newspaperman and strident reformer.
Stead looked at Britain’s colonial apotheosis with apprehension, understanding that the growth of new great powers meant “we can never again be the first”. As his countrymen grew fat and complacent on the spoils of imperial decadence, Stead saw clearly that the only avoidance of incipient decline would come by uniting our fortunes with those who had passed us in the great race.
What ails Canada’s EV sector? ‘Everything, everywhere, all at once’
If Canada’s electric vehicle transition started out the year with a burst of momentum, one that was riding high amid billions of dollars of public and private investment, then it was also the year when things started to go on the skids.
Go to hell, Trump tells death row inmates whose lives were spared
Donald Trump has used a Christmas message to tell the 37 federal death row prisoners whose sentences were commuted by President Biden to “go to hell” and has vowed to expand capital punishment.
The president-elect, 78, was incensed by Biden’s decision to convert the sentences of nearly all inmates on federal death row to life behind bars.
While Trump approved 13 executions during his first term, Biden introduced a moratorium on federal capital punishment.
REEFER MADNESS: Nearly half of young adults in Canada are marijuana users
Almost half of young adults in Canada reported using marijuana in the past year, according to a new report by the Department of Health.
Blacklock’s Reporter says the findings, part of the Canadian Cannabis Survey 2024, revealed cannabis use remains especially common among young working adults in Western provinces.
Family-owned restaurant forced to close after ‘frivolous’ gender discrimination ‘Ladies Night’ suit
A popular restaurant in California’s Bay Area is shutting its doors after settling a costly discrimination lawsuit — over its ‘Ladies Night’ promotion.
Lima Restaurant — a family-run Peruvian eatery in Concord, Calif., about 20 miles outside of Oakland — told patrons it will serve its final meal on New Year’s Eve because of the gender discrimination lawsuit.
Chef/owner John Marquez said the lawsuit, filed last year, has cost his restaurant tens of thousands of dollars — putting a major dent in the business’ cash flow.
What we know about the succession rules for Canada’s Liberals as Trudeau faces calls to resign
The turmoil that’s threatening to topple Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has members of his political party poring over the rulebook for replacing him.
Trudeau is under mounting pressure from elected lawmakers in his ruling Liberal Party to leave after nine years in power. Some have warned that if he stays, they face the prospect of a crushing defeat to the Conservative Party in next year’s election.
Unfit for Duty, Part II: What the Canadian Armed Forces Needs to Rebuild
For a time in the 2010s, it looked like Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government was committed to investing in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). In 2017, as part of a major foreign policy statement, then-Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan announced a new defence policy: “Strong, Secure, Engaged.” Canada was to be strong at home, secure in North America, and engaged in the world.
The government promised to increase spending on defence from a paltry 1 percent of GDP to 1.4 per cent by 2024, to buy advanced fighter jets and build surface frigates, and to grow the regular forces to 71,500 troops. While most of this sounded good, none of this lofty rhetoric was achieved. Current Defence Minister Bill Blair has admitted the CAF is short some 16,500 troops, and the Parliamentary Budget Office puts spending at just 1.29 percent of GDP, far below our NATO commitment of 2 percent. Some defence analysts consider it unlikely the Trudeau government ever intended to take serious action.
Taqiya: the West should know better
Asking asylum seekers about their beliefs is a waste of time. Lying to deceive the enemy is allowed by their religion. The result is that the loss of border control is being followed by the loss of internal control.
Anyone who went to a European Christmas market in the 1990s and early 2000s would never have thought that their life could be in danger. Those days are gone.
In October we discovered that the killer who murdered the children in Southport, England, was not a slightly crazy Rwandan Christian refugee, as the English government and all the mainstream media had assured us, but a terrorist with an Al Qaeda manual in his house and chemical material to make a bomb. For four months they kept the truth hidden. Why?
Animosity Against Jews Demonstrates Leftist Icon Greta Thunberg’s Extremism
Greta Thunberg, once the darling of the climate change movement, has revealed herself as virulently anti-Israel, which should make her a pariah in any legitimate social or political cause. Since the October 2023 Hamas slaughter of Israeli civilians, including children and infants, Thunberg, now 21 years old, has called for “crushing Zionism” and repeatedly accused Israel of “genocide.”
After the USS Gettysburg Misfire, Can We Talk About TWA 800?
On Sunday, December 22, a US Navy guided-missile cruiser, the USS Gettysburg, mistakenly shot down an American fighter jet over the Red Sea. This was not the first incident of friendly fire by the U.S. Navy, nor the most tragic.
On Sunday morning, July 3, 1988, at the tail end of the Iran-Iraq War, an Aegis cruiser in the Persian Gulf, the USS Vincennes, fired two Standard Missiles at a commercial Iranian Airbus, IR 655. Captain Will Rogers III and his crew had mistaken the ascending passenger jet with 290 people on board for a descending Iranian F-14, a fighter plane.
In 2024, the war on Britain’s past became unhinged
Western cultural institutions have been waging a war on the past for several years now. They have turned national histories into sources of shame, damned key works in the Western canon as racist and pulled down historical monuments. 2024 has been no exception.
Over the course of the past 12 months, we’ve seen schools, universities and the media all engaged in rewriting, demonising and cancelling the legacy of Western civilisation.
Progressive policies are fuelling rise in New York subway murders
This year will go down as the deadliest in the New York City subways in decades, if not ever. The indescribably savage immolation of a woman passenger on the morning of December 22 brings the number of murders in the subway in 2024 to 11. Since 2020, 40 people have been murdered in the system, more than the total number dating back to 1990.
Images of the scene from Sunday morning are ghastly. A human figure is engulfed in flames while a man, eventually identified as the killer, sits calmly watching a few yards away. The murderer, an illegal migrant from Guatemala, evidently used a lighter to set his victim’s clothes aflame. He was caught later that day, snoozing on another train.