The Weekly Weird #8

World Economic Forum assesses risks and call girls, George Carlin resurrected by AI, India gets (really) hacked, German farmers say "Nein!", Scotland poops on speech (and Jesus)

Jan 18, 2024

It’s time once more for our weekly whirligig of dystopian fun!

We cracked 10,000 downloads of the podcast as of a few days ago - not bad after four episodes - so a big thank you to everyone for listening and sharing.

Quick shout-outs to

Elle Griffin

for being the guest on our most-downloaded episode so far (#104), and to

The Fifth Column

for generously sharing this podcast with their subscribers, some of whom have since joined the party over here - welcome all!

Episode 105 drops this Sunday: Tim Boucher, the author of the AI Lore books, joins me to discuss his work, which involves imagining and creating a dystopian future dominated by AI, using generative AI. We had a great chat and I hope you check it out.

So, without further ado, to the task at hand…

World Economic Forum Assesses Risks And Call Girls

Today is Day 4 of “Coachella for billionaires”1 in Davos, Switzerland, and all is not right with the world the WEF want to fix. Hot off the press is their Global Risks Report 2024, on page 11 of which is a chart ranking global risks by severity in two columns, short term (≤ 2 years) and long term (≥ 10 years). What do you think they rank as the most severe short term risk worldwide?

War? Terrorism? Famine?

Survey says: Misinformation and disinformation.

The #1 global risk to mankind over the next two years, according to the people who care so much about the planet that they flew to one of the most well-connected-by-rail countries in the world on private jets to drink champagne together, is inaccurate and/or deliberately false information.

Of note, in the list of short term threats, ‘Technological power concentration’ is 12th, ‘Censorship and surveillance’ 21st. In the list of long term threats, i.e. things that will be risky eight years beyond the short term, ‘Technological power concentration’ is still 12th and ‘Censorship and surveillance’ 14th, while ‘Misinformation and disinformation’ has dropped from 1st to 5th place.

To interpret the implications of their risk-weighing: Over the next decade, the world will increase censorship and surveillance while maintaining the same level of technological power concentration, presumably to combat misinfo/disinfo, only to reduce the prevalence of said misinfo/disinfo by a scant four places? Also, the four items above 5th place on the long term list are presumably there because they (in the view of the WEF risk-bean counters) are issues that, while present now, get worse over the next decade, so possibly we might increase censorship and surveillance in return for no actual reduction in misinfo/disinfo?

Sounds swell.

Inflation makes the short term list in 7th place, but gets beaten like a rented mule down to 32nd place within ten years, a fine achievement indeed. However, inflation is apparently rampant in Davos when it comes to the cost of, as Terry Pratchett wrote in the Discworld novels, “women of negotiable affection.”

$2,500 per night in 2023 according to the New York Post

$3,250 per night in 2024 according to True North

Granted, the 2024 figure is not from as reputable a news source as the New York Post (cough cough), and is the upper bound of an average range they found by searching online, but it represents 30% year-on-year inflation nonetheless.

Since Milton Friedman described inflation as “always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon,” we can only conclude that this is categorical proof that the rich have in fact gotten richer. Unless it’s a supply shock because there are fewer women there this year who are interested in being fondled by this guy…

NB: He’s really wearing that. It is not Photoshopped. General Zod meets samurai cosplay. One star.

Speaking of digital fakery…

George Carlin Resurrected By AI

As previously commented on in the Weekly Weird, resurrecting the dead with AI is not just a thing, it’s a burgeoning growth industry. The latest example of the trend involves one of my all-time favourite stand-up comedians, Rufus himself, the purveyor of the Seven Words, the dropper of the hardest truth bomb ever aired on HBO, the ultimate New Yorker, the sadly departed (until recently) George Carlin.

Dudesy, “a comedy AI”, has generated a full-length ‘George Carlin’ special called “I’m Glad I’m Dead,” complete with canned laughter from an AI audience.

From the YouTube description explaining the master plan behind the comedic exhumation:

I tried to capture his iconic style to tackle the topics I think the comedy legend would be talking about today. The chaos of the current American political landscape and class system, the influence of reality TV, and the increasing role of technology in society as AI is poised to change humanity forever are just a few of the subjects I cover.

Having digested Carlin’s previous material, Dudesy has attempted to recreate George’s inimitable magic, and I say attempted because it’s still in ‘uncanny valley’ in terms of the voice impression and cadence, but I have to admit that some of the subjects, like God, cancer, mass shootings, and the two-party system, are definitely in Carlin’s wheelhouse, and some of the jokes ain’t half bad either.

At around 38 minutes in, AI Carlin describes what being dead is like, saying that it’s a lot like heaven except “this heaven didn’t come from a god, it came from artificial intelligence.”

And then, an interesting and not un-creepy glimmer of self-awareness from the generative AI:

Which brings me to my next subject: What in the fuck am I? Am I the real George Carlin? Am I a digital copy? Am I a technological abomination? Am I the future of comedy? Am I the end of humanity? These are the same questions I was asking myself when I was alive and I still have the same answer: I have no fuckin’ idea! All I can tell you is, from my side of things, it feels like me.

But of course, this is George Carlin we’re talking about (is it?), so there’s a punchline:

I consider myself to be George Carlin, and from your side of things, if you’ve seen some of my specials from when I was traditionally alive maybe you might notice a small difference in the delivery of a joke or the turn of a phrase here or there, but you have to admit, this is pretty close to the George Carlin you remember and that’s gonna have to be good enough, so you might as well fuckin’ enjoy it.

He ain’t wrong. Enjoy.

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India Gets (Really) Hacked

A major broadband provider in India, Hathway, has allegedly suffered a serious data breach in which a hacker managed to access and make off with the personal details of around 35 million customers.

According to Restore Privacy, the “threat actor” named ‘dawnofdevil’, a member of a data leak and brokering collective, has created a helpful search tool for the affected people to find their own data by email and mobile phone number. All this while also trying to sell their personal details, including home addresses and KYC information, for $10,000.

Hathway have apparently not yet responded to enquiries from journalists about the alleged breach.

HackRead has more, and it’s worth checking out not just for the details of this case, but for the coverage of all the other massive hacks happening over there.

Boy, when you get hacked in India, you really get hacked.

German Farmers Say “Nein!”

Farmers in Germany have mobilised en masse, blocked roads, gathered in the capital, and generally done their best to bring their country to a standstill in protest against cuts to agricultural subsidies that they say will make farming less viable, maybe even impossible.

Global News with a brief summary:

DW with more background and some vox pops covering the objections of the protestors:

Contrast the above with BBC News’s coverage, which seems to be limited to basically a couple of articles, here from 8 January and here from a couple of days ago. The first article is pretty straightforward reporting from Jessica Parker, the BBC’s Berlin correspondent, titled German farmers blockade Berlin with tractors in subsidy row. In the second article though, Parker shares a by-line with BBC Verify’s Adam Robertson, and things get decidedly spicier.

Pause button: “What’s BBC Verify?” I hear you ask.

Last year, the BBC launched a new brand, BBC Verify, lauded by Deborah Turness, CEO of BBC News, for the ground-breaking way it would handle bringing news to the public (emphasis mine):

BBC Verify comprises about 60 journalists who will form a highly specialised operation with a range of forensic investigative skills and open source intelligence (Osint) capabilities at their fingertips.
They'll be fact-checking, verifying video, countering disinformation, analysing data and - crucially - explaining complex stories in the pursuit of truth.
This is a different way of doing our journalism.

Yeah, the head of BBC News described “fact-checking, verifying video…[and] explaining complex stories in the pursuit of truth” as a “different way of doing [their] journalism.” That happened. She wrote that. In words. And put it on their website, where it remains.

So, with an intrepid army of truth-seekers on the case, how did BBC Verify manage to make Jessica Parker’s initial story about the German farmer protests truthier? For a start, the headline changed to Germany’s far right seek revolution in farmers' protests.

It’s worth reading how they frame the issue as far-right extremism (emphasis mine):

As farmers blockade roads over planned subsidy cuts, there have been numerous reports of neo-Nazi or monarchist groups turning up at rallies.
Telegram channels reveal fervent posts about hopes of an emerging mass resistance that could help "dismantle" the government.
Small, fringe far-right groups such as the Free Saxons, The Third Way and The Homeland, have a very varied number of online followers.
But Chancellor Olaf Scholz warned this weekend that extremists were using social media to "poison" democratic debate as he described any talk of uprisings as dangerous "nonsense".
A BBC team has been to five demonstrations in the past week and monitored several more.
While many farmers and Germany's main agricultural union are eager to distance themselves from extremism, far-right imagery continues to appear.

The shocking revelations about the presence of neo-Nazi troublemakers and organisers implied by the headline continues to fail to meaningfully materialise:

In the eastern city of Cottbus, we saw a man being sent away from an official protest for allegedly wearing a symbol of the Reichsbürger; a disparate far right movement that rejects the modern German state.
A senior organiser of the Cottbus demo told the BBC they learned later that known far-right figures had remained within the hundreds-strong crowd, which was made up of a cross-section of people well beyond the farming community.
There are also examples of a flag, known as the Landvolkbewegung, linked to an antisemitic agricultural movement from the 1920s.

Come to think of it, wasn’t Examples of a Flag Hitler’s original title for Mein Kampf?

It takes 13 paragraphs for them to get to the following, which seems a long time considering the headline.

The vast majority of banners we saw do not carry overt far-right messaging but instead centre on anger at the treatment of farmers.

Unsurprising, considering that it’s a farmer protest. Then, the thesis resurges in a beautiful piece of guilt-by-association:

But strikingly often, both farmers and others who attend these demos have told us they feel too much money is being sent abroad - a common refrain of the far-right.

A new-to-me definition of “violent rhetoric” is born further down:

Juergen's placard reads, "The republic is dying and the government is its killer."
He defends the violent rhetoric and expresses a widely shared anxiety about the cost of living, claiming many at the rally would also back the AfD.
"All of them want to get rid of the government, that's for sure."
Juergen doesn't claim to be a revolutionary but talks about removing the coalition government at an election or "firing them" through the courts.

Juergen “doesn’t claim to be a revolutionary, but” wants to use elections or the judiciary to change the government. Is this now the bar for violent rhetoric and revolution?

Do the writers understand that joining clauses using ‘but’ or ‘also’ doesn’t automatically create correlation?

“I am innocent,” he proclaimed, but was a longshoreman.

While everyone knows that Jack didn’t steal the cookie, he also doesn’t listen to hip hop.

The final paragraph, in contrast with the article’s title (Germany’s far right seek revolution in farmers' protests), is a Do Kwon-level rug pull:

And while there's little evidence that the far-right has fully managed to hijack the ongoing farmers protests, it's also clear that broader discontent - about issues like inflation and globalization - is being absorbed into an agricultural movement that is simultaneously energising Germany's political extremes.

And finally, moving swiftly on from abuse of language to abuse for language…

Scotland Poops On Speech (and Jesus)

Angus Cameron, a (former?) pastor at Cumnock Baptist Church in Ayrshire, Scotland, has been awarded £5,500 in damages (plus legal costs) after he “was arrested and detained in Glasgow in 2022”. Cameron was “searched on the street in front of members of the public, handcuffed and told he was being arrested for "breach of the peace with homophobic aggrevation [sic].”

Eyewitnesses apparently tried to tell the police that the preacher had done nothing wrong, but the cops ignored them and “held [Cameron] in the back of a van for over an hour” before releasing him.

From Christian Today (link above):

Mr Cameron received a phone call from the arresting officer two days later telling him that he would not be prosecuted but that a 'non-crime hate incident report' had been logged against his name in the police database, despite no crime being committed.

Let the glittering word-blade of ‘non-crime hate incident’ catch the light of your mind for a moment.

From The Daily Mail:

The father of two later contacted the Christian Institute, which managed to obtain police files related to the incident.
The organisation said the case notes showed the officers had no basis to suspect the preacher had committed an offence – which is necessary for a lawful arrest.

Glasgow is developing quite the reputation for hating on Jesus.