A quick skid off the rails this late-afternoon Saturday here in California’s Central Valley — hot again, so what’s new.
Maybe a bit off the beaten path for a couple of items, both a look at self-serving assholes, both creepy, both dangerous. First, a robot displays side effects of humanoid-like devices keeping the machine’s idea of order:
Details via DigitNews yesterday:
An unpleasant incident involving a robot happened in Moscow at the Moscow Chess Open chess tournament: the Chessrobot chess robot broke the finger of 7-year-old Christopher, who is in the top 30 strongest chess players in Moscow under 9 years old.
Here is how the Baza Telegram channel describes the incident: “The robot ate the boy’s piece and put his own in its place, but Christopher hurried a little and was already making a return move. The robot did not like such a hurry – he grabbed the boy’s index finger and squeezed it hard. The people around rushed to help and pulled out the finger of the young player, but the fracture could not be avoided. Whether the robot will be put to sleep after this is unknown.“
Commentary by President of the Moscow Chess Federation Sergey Lazarev. “The robot broke a child’s finger — this, of course, is bad. The robot was rented by us, it has been exhibited in many places, for a long time, with specialists. Apparently, the operators overlooked. The child made a move, and after that it is necessary to give time for the answer of the robot, but the boy hurried, the robot grabbed him. We have nothing to do with the robot … The child played the very next day, finished the tournament in plaster, and the volunteers helped to record the moves. Moskomsport just called, the parents want to contact the prosecutor’s office, we will communicate, sort it out and try to help [?????]than we can. And the operators of the robot, apparently, will have to think about strengthening the protection so that this situation does not happen again..”
These are Terminator times:
Relax! How can you fucking relax? If it’s not a bot eating chess pieces, it’s this asshole, who represents the panhandle of Florida, where I grew up, lived for decades, and some sad, horrible shit:
Modern conservatism: Unable to defend their indefensible policies and positions, they resort to personal attacks and juvenile insults.
Also, once again, misogyny is a feature, not a bug. https://t.co/61nQuI5HVo
— Alheli Picazo (@a_picazo) July 23, 2022
Despite the years and the wired future in the past, once again here we are…
(Illustration out front: ‘Tower of Babel,’ 1928 woodcut by MC Escher, and found here.)