Free Republic

'Thank you so much for sharing,' says a member of an online forum, discussing tips on how to create your own version of artificial intelligence 'chatbot' ChatGPT. Are there any plans to share your previous models?' It sounds innocent enough, but this is just one of dozens of dark web pedophile groups exchanging advice on how to build 'uncensored' chatbots that can produce reams of child porn. Chatbots are computer programs that use artificial intelligence (AI) to interact with humans. They have become increasingly sophisticated in recent years, with users able to ask them to generate lengthy pieces of text,...

We live in a world created in 1945. The United States is the world’s dominant political, economic, and military power. We treat those facts as if they are somehow immutable. They are not. We are standing on the brink of losing it all. The Biden administration continues to blunder forward with its reckless policy of escalation in Ukraine treating the entire enterprise as if it were a video game of some sort. There are in the minds of these men and women no consequences for their actions. Only the other side takes losses. Only the other side feels pain. ......

The Biden administration on Tuesday formally accused Russia of violating the New START arms treaty over what it said was Moscow‘s failure to allow inspections of weapons sites or agree to meetings on treaty disputes. President Biden agreed to extend the New START treaty — one of the last major arms control treaties still in force — for five years shortly after taking office in January 2021 — without seeking changes or concessions from the Kremlin related to its strategic forces buildup. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine barely a year later has put bilateral relations in a...

Russia is flouting its obligations under a major arms control treaty with the United States, according to State Department officials. “Russia is not complying with its obligation under the New START Treaty to facilitate inspection activities on its territory,” a State Department spokesman said Tuesday. "Russia’s refusal to facilitate inspection activities prevents the United States from exercising important rights under the treaty and threatens the viability of U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s team outlined that breakdown in a notification to key congressional leaders on Tuesday. The assessment points to the degeneration of the last major arms...

Saudi Arabia is opening its economic doors about trading in currencies other than the US dollar, Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan sounded off at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “There are no issues with discussing how we settle our trade arrangements, whether it is in the US dollar, whether it is the euro, whether it is the Saudi riyal,” Al-Jadaan said in an interview with Bloomberg. “I don’t think we are waving away or ruling out any discussion that will help improve the trade around the world.” (snip) The term petrodollar refers to the US dollar’s position as the...

The Brunson Brothers election integrity lawsuit was dismissed by the US Supreme Court on Monday.

Multi-storey and underground car parks could collapse under the weight of electric vehicles, engineers have warned. Electric cars, which are roughly twice as heavy as standard models, could cause ‘catastrophic’ damage, according to the British Parking Association (BPA), which wants local authorities to conduct urgent structural surveys. Most of the nation’s 6,000 multi-storey and underground facilities were built according to guidance based on the weight of popular cars of 1976, including the Mk 3 Ford Cortina. But the electric cars currently on the UK market are far bulkier. For instance, the best-selling Tesla Model 3 weighs 2.2 tons fully loaded,...

Germany’s gas reserves are emptying at record speed: 1% per day as the current wind/solar energy lull means more gas gets burned for electricity, heating. Pleiteticker.de here reports how Germany’s natural gas reserves “are emptying at record speed” because wind and solar power have been on the scarce side over the past few weeks. This means gas turbines have had to jump in to pick up the slack in electricity production – not one the German government had hoped as it wrestles with the heightening energy crisis. “Germany is converting gas into electricity in record quantities,” pleiteticker.de reports. “Thanks to...

The spectre of future energy blackouts is once again looming in Germany, with the country’s plan to cut consumption falling significantly short amid cold winter weather. A cold snap that has hit the north of Europe is now seriously threatening Germany’s energy security, with the country now reportedly falling far short of hitting gas savings targets of 20 per cent needed to avoid rolling blackouts. While many officials across the country had warned that there is a very real threat that Germany could be facing serious energy shortages over the next few months, bigwigs close to the government have repeatedly...

Whoop there it is! The US Treasury 10y-2y yield curve descended further into inversion at -82 basis point, the worst since 1981. This is not a good sign, since the 10Y-2Y curve typically inverts just prior to a recession. The current US Treasury curve is currently humped at 1 year, then declining rapidly. The swaps curve is peaking at 9 months, then declining rapidly. The Fed Funds Futures market is pointing to a peak Fed Funds rate of 5% at the May 3rd FOMC meeting. Yes, a recession is headed our way.

Over in Europe, things are looking bad for the economy, largely driven by a rapid increase in household and business energy bills. In the UK, average household energy bills have recently risen to about triple where they were just a year ago; and Bloomberg reports that “tens of thousands” of UK businesses are at risk of closure due to soaring energy costs. In Germany, KAKE reports on October 7 that energy costs are “savaging German industry,” with natural gas prices in particular up 400% from January to September 2022. So how did they get into this mess? You might think,...

An energy crisis the likes of which hasn't been seen in decades is unfolding around the world.The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February of this year created a ripple effect in global markets. Western nations that once relied on energy supplies from Russia—the world’s second largest natural gas producer and third largest petroleum producer—condemned the invasion by refusing to buy Russian energy, or were cut off by President Vladimir Putin.Nowhere is this crisis more pronounced and more dangerous than in Europe, where a long-standing gambit on cheap Russian gas has backfired. At the onset of the war, the European Union’s...

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who has been in the Senate for 21 years, pledged this week to help President Joe Biden advance policies counterproductive to the America First movement. Speaking on the With All Due Respect podcast with Andrew Halcro, Murkowski made it clear she will work with the Biden administration in the next two years if she is able to defeat challenger and Trump-endorsed Kelly Tshibaka. I’m working with them to advance things,” she said in reference to Biden’s massive federal spending packages, including the Biden administration’s inflation-fueling infrastructure bill. Experts believe Biden’s massive spending has fueled 40-year-high inflation,...

The emir of Qatar on Wednesday made an urgent appeal to Russia and the West, saying his nation will not be able to re-supply Europe with enough liquefied natural gas to stave off an energy crisis this winter, and urged both parties to bring a speedy end to the war. In an exclusive interview with French news outlet Le Point, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani emphasized that although gas and oil supply chains struggled before the Kremlin's invasion in February, the war has taken a severe toll on the industry. "We want to help Europe, and we will supply...

The chairman and CEO of energy company Chevron has warned Americans to brace for price increases in natural gas this winter. CEO Mike Wirth made the comments in an interview with CNN on Sept. 13 in which he warned consumers that “there’s certainly a risk that costs will go up” when it comes to natural gas. “Prices already are very high relative to history and relative to the rest of the world. We’re already seeing this impact being felt in the European economy and I do think it’s likely that Europe goes into a recession,” Wirth said. Europe has been...

The European energy disaster gets worse by the day. Energy bills ten times higher than the year before threaten the closure of major industries and small businesses in Britain, Germany, and the rest of the E.U. The base case now seems to be that Europe will be almost entirely deprived of Russian gas during the forthcoming winter. Over the last several months, a series of retaliations—some European states refusing to pay for gas in rubles, various closures by Poland and Ukraine of the pipeline network—have been paired with Russian reductions (from 40 percent to 20 percent to 0 percent) of...

The European Union will propose measures to cap revenues from low-cost electricity generators and force fossil fuel firms to share the profits they make from soaring energy prices, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday. “In these times it is wrong to receive extraordinary record revenues and profits benefiting from war and on the back of our consumers. In these times, profits must be shared and channelled to those who need it most," von der Leyen said in a speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg. A draft of the Commission proposals, seen by Reuters, would skim...

FLORENCE – “Unity of Europe is a paramount concern, as dividing us is one of the main objectives of the war waged by Russia,” declared French President Emmanuel Macron earlier this month. Macron, who has billed himself as Europe’s top leader since the departure of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, has sought to maintain internal coherence and cohesion within the European Union (EU) while also maintaining functional communication channels with Russia amid the raging war in Ukraine. After closing ranks and displaying remarkable unity in face of Russia’s aggression earlier this year, however, cracks are beginning to appear within the...

Europe, which went all in on “green” energy, is facing the ugly reality of renewable fuels. Perhaps the only true benefit of the current European energy crisis is to make apparent to an economically motivated citizen population that “wishing and hoping” will not make the Green New Deal renewable energy dream a reality. Instead of doubling down on wind and solar power, the EU nations are reacting to Moscow’s natural gas shutdown with a scramble to find enough hydrocarbon fuels to keep Europeans warm this winter. On September 5, Russia announced that the shutdown of natural gas to Europe to...

Russia expects the price of its natural gas exports will more than double this year compared to a year ago, according to an economy ministry forecast seen by Reuters. This year's average price is now seen at $730 per 1,000 cubic meters, up 140% from 2021 and up 39% from the Kremlin's previous forecast for 2022. European gas prices have skyrocketed since Russia's invasion of Ukraine as state-run energy giant Gazprom reduces flows via the Nord Stream pipeline. After this year, Russia sees its gas export prices retreating to $471.8 in 2023 per 1,000 cubic meters, $383.9 in 2024 and...