A.C. Flory's Blog, page 6

“Why is he [Bernie] the only one?”

I’ve been following Kyle Kulinski on Youtube for weeks because he not only knows his stuff, he ain’t afraid to say it. And this video about Bernie Sanders is an honest message to all Democrat politicians: if you really want to fight tRump, ditch the billionaire money, be honest, and care about the people you are supposed to represent.

Bernie Sanders is travelling around the country, telling ordinary people what oligarchy really is. He’s telling them the truth, and thanks to Elon Musk’s attempt to destroy the Federal government, even Republican voters are starting to see the truth, Bernie’s truth, the truth he has been putting out there for decades.

This man is 83. He hasn’t got a hope in hell of being elected the next President of the United States, even assuming tRump steps down at the end of his term. Yet Bernie Sanders is busting a gut and wearing himself out for the ordinary people of America. He has become the default leader of the Democrats because no one else is standing up for you.

I pray Bernie lives long enough to know that his tireless work and self sacrifice have saved his people from abject servitude.

Meeks

Malcolm Turnbull on Trump

Most Australians know Malcolm Turnbull as the Prime Minister stabbed in the back by Scomo [Scott Morrison] and Mr Potato Head [Peter Dutton]. But Turnbull is also one of the few, current Liberals, who actually has two brain cells to rub together.

As a Labor supporter from way back, I have disagreed with much of what Turnbull has said and done, but I completely agree with him on this one:

Trump has turned on all of his traditional, historical allies, and while he is in power, no one can rely on the past to predict the future. Given how quickly Trump and Musk are transforming the US, there is a great big question mark over how long he will be in power, and who will come to power once he finally dies.

And yes, I believe that Trump has no intention of stepping down at the end of this four year term. That puts him in the same boat as every other wannabe dictator the world has ever seen. And the thing about dictators is that they’re more than happy to throw allies under the bus if it suits their purposes.

So what should Australia do?

I’ve long believed that Australia MUST ally with the countries closest to us geographically, because our cultural allies have proven, time and time again, that we are expendable.

Don’t believe me? Look up what the UK did during World War II when they retreated from the Japanese and left us to fend for ourselves. That was major betrayal #1. Major betrayal #2 was when the UK turned its economic back on us in favour of the EU.

I understand the pragmatic reasons for both of those betrayals, but just because they make ‘sense’ doesn’t mean that they didn’t leave Australia high and dry. I very much fear that the only reason we are still in Trump’s good books is because of Pine Gap, and the fact that the US needs our ‘location’ in its own strategic plans…for itself.

If/when the US no longer needs anything from Australia, I believe we will be thrown under the bus as well. Major betrayal #3.

To be completely, brutally frank, if we have to choose between two dictators, I’d rather we chose Xi Jinping because he, at least, is a rational man. You can reason with a rational man. You can’t reason with a narcissistic sociopath driven by greed and ego.

Each new day brings the threat of ultimate betrayal closer and closer. I don’t know how the Labor government can distance itself from the US without triggering a complete rift, but I know it has to walk that fine line somehow…at least until Trump comes out and officially declares himself the enemy as he has done with Mexico, Canada, Ukraine, and now the EU.

Given how quickly the situation in the US has deteriorated, I fear that day will come sooner rather than later.

Meeks

US: Nuclear weapons staff fired???

As an Aussie, what’s going on in the US is the number one reason why I don’t want a fanatical, right wing government to be elected in Australia.

And then I learn that the Trump administration is so INCOMPETENT that it could potentially destroy itself from within…and take the rest of the world with it.

This is terrifying:

I have no words.
Meeks

Dental Help in Melbourne

Last Friday, I started getting a throbbing toothache, but I thought it was my sinuses so I tried treating the problem with a decongestant. It had no effect so by Sunday I was desperate. I rang the Royal Dental Hospital of Melbourne but they were full up. The nice girl on the phone suggested I try one of their affiliated dental clinics on Monday.

This is where my story becomes rather interesting, you see, because like the Dental Hospital itself, the suburban dental clinics only charge $31.50 for an emergency consultation… Yes, your eyes are not playing tricks on you. The last time I went to a private dentist, for a simple filling, it cost me close to $300 so you can see just how incredibly cheap the clinic is.

If you click on the ‘Contact us’ option of the hospital’s website you will see:

Clicking on ‘Find dental clinics’ opens up a page that asks for your suburb or postcode. Enter your postcode and you will be shown a page of clinics closest to you. For me, it looks like this:

Eltham is just down the road from Warrandyte so I rang first thing Monday morning [yesterday]. As luck would have it, they couldn’t see me until today [Tuesday], but the wait was worth it. My thanks to both Sandra and Brenda, two excellent dentists who were very thorough and gave me all my options. They spent close to an hour and a half with me, because the problem with my tooth was rather unusual, yet all it cost me was $31.50.

So, if you are on a pension – see the website for full details – and you need dental care, these dental clinics are an oasis in the desert. I don’t know why the Victorian government doesn’t take out four page ads to brag about this initiative, because it is a great idea and is desperately needed by people getting squeezed in this cost-of-living crisis!

Oh, and if you’re interested, I’m sore but happy. I’ll probably lose this tooth in the long term, but for now, I know it will get better.

cheers,
Meeks

A political ad to make you laugh :)

Here in Australia we have a long tradition of ‘taking the piss’ out of our politicians and their self-serving propaganda. This short video ‘advertisement’ is taking the mickey out of the Liberals’ nuclear plan:

If you can’t be bothered watching the video, it basically calls BS on the projected cost and completion speed of Peter Dutton’s policy of building nuclear power plants in a country that does NOT want them.

Here in Melbourne it’s still hot, still unpleasant. Can’t wait for Autumn.

cheers,
Meeks

What the Labor government means to me in 2025

I’ll start with some truth telling:

I’m on the age pension and I’m luckier than most because I have a secure roof over my head. But money is still very tight. I stopped paying for private health insurance a few years ago because none of the plans I could afford would cover me for cataract surgery, or hip replacement surgery, both conditions that I will need at some time in the future. I have house insurance but I don’t have ‘contents’ insurance so if my house burns down in a bushfire, I can rebuild the house, but I won’t be able to put anything in it . I also stopped using my beloved, 30 plus year old Toyota Corolla because it was too expensive to repair. Now I share the Offspring’s car.New clothes? In my dreams.New appliances? Nope. We make do with a gas cooktop on which one and a half burners don’t work. And the oven? The heating element is dodgy so we use the grill function to bake. It’s weird, but it works.I’ve also reduced the number of ebooks I buy on Amazon. Instead, I’m re-reading some of the 900+ ebooks I’ve already bought.

And yet, despite cutting costs at every turn, one unexpected bill can throw me into a complete tailspin. Like now. The last remaining alpaca died yesterday and we can’t bury her – ground’s too hard, we’re too weak – so I have to pay $300 to have her carted away.

Yup, stress…

Want to know what made me smile recently? My electricity bill. It was for $76. And the reason it was so low is because:

I have solar panels on my roof and only run appliances during peak solar gain, andI received a $75 energy rebate from the Victorian Labor government.

If Dutton had his way, the cost of living relief I get would disappear. Why? Because he’s already said that Labor was wrong to hand out money like that when inflation is high. Meaning: to get inflation down further, faster, you and I have to suffer for a ‘common good’ he doesn’t believe in.

It’s time to do an accounting, Australia. Add up what you get, thanks to Labor, and then ask yourself how much you’d get from Dutton. I’ll save you the effort. The answer is zero.

Dutton does not care about you and me. We’re little people, unimportant in his grand scheme of things. And he doesn’t even try to hide it.

We are Australians. We believe in a fair go for everyone. We believe in helping our mates. Don’t let Dutton take that away from us.

Meeks

Deepseek pops Big Tech Bubble

Yes, another AI post, but this one is slightly different because the appearance of Deepseek, the brand new, open source, ridiculously cheap, Chinese AI feels like Karma. Why? Read on.

I’ll start with the phrase ‘open source’. If you’re not a baby nerd like me, you may not know that open source software gives users all the code to do with as they wish. Linux based products are open source. Firefox, the browser I use, is open source. This means that if I had the skills, I could use that code to customize the software to my exact specifications. To suit me.

In reality, I don’t have the skills to do that, but lots of others do, so if you were a corporation looking to get into AI, would you go with the ridiculously expensive Big Tech offering, or would you go with the customizable Chinese AI that you could tailor to your exact needs? I know which option I would choose.

And apparently the US stock market is already choosing by dumping stocks of Nvidia chips. These are the high performance computer chips needed for AI. Based on the assumption that the AI bubble would continue forever, the stock value of Nvidia chips skyrocketed. Since Deepseek, Nvidia stocks ‘…plummeted 18% due to investor concerns about Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, erasing a record $560 billion from its market capitalization.’ The emphasis is mine. The quote was taken from the video below. :

The collapse of the AI, Big Tech bubble will have a ripple effect globally, and not in a good way, but it was a correction that had to happen, sooner or later.

Personally, I’m delighted to see Karma at work. I’m also delighted by something the Offspring said this morning, namely that fear of China may drive the US government to impose stringent regulations on the whole AI industry.

Why not just impose astronomical tariffs on Deepseek? lol Because it’s free. What percentage of zero is going to act as a deterrent?

Then, why not just ban Deepseek the way they banned Tik Tok?

That is a possibility, but given that American corporations are driven by just one thing – profit – I can’t see them being happy to pay through the nose for an inflated, and increasingly inferior, US product when they could get all the advantages of AI for a pittance. And the advantages are real. At the moment, Deepseek r1 is as good as OpenAI’s ChatGPT but…this is the model that the Chinese developers can afford to give away. I suspect they have far more advanced models that they won’t use as a ‘loss leader’.

Quite simply, the Chinese have thrown competition back in the ring. And if Nvidia’s losses are anything to go by, the Big Tech honeymoon is well and truly over.

That is my hope. If we must have AI then I’d rather have it open source than ‘owned’ by Big Tech cowboys who blatantly stole all our creative content, and copyright be damned. I doubt they will ever be punished for that theft, but Karma, in the shape of Deepseek, may do what the justice system cannot. I hope like crazy that it sends them bankrupt.

cheers,
Meeks

Seeing is no longer believing

This is a link to a New Atlas article that explores how quickly, and how well, AI video generation has progressed. Essentially, “the days of trusting what we see with our own eyes are over. The sheer quality of video these machines can produce has gone from hilarity to awe-inspiring in a matter of months.” [Quote taken from the same article]

The example used is an advertisement put together by Indie film maker László Gaál, using a video system called Veo2 [which is not yet available to the general public]. Gaál is basically beta testing the AI. And this is what he/they produced :

Keep watching till the end because the ‘behind-the-scenes’ footage is actually the most jaw-dropping part.

Have a happy weekend. This dinosaur is about to kick back and play a stupid mindless game because…I feel totally obsolete.

Meeks

Bishop asks Trump to be merciful

I am an atheist and have been for most of my life, but this bishop I respect. This bishop I would listen to because she has the courage to live her faith, instead of just mouthing platitudes. And she ‘has the balls’ to ask even the most powerful man in the room to do the same. This video is what integrity look like:

cheers,
Meeks

Digital Collage – inspired by nature

This is a graphic of the Six in the air, banking as it spots prey on the ground. Getting the sense of movement right has been hell. After multiple attempts, all of which felt ‘wrong’, I went online searching for images of birds doing what I imagine the Six is doing. This is what finally did the trick:

Compensating for two sets of arms and wings shaped a bit like those of a bat was tricky, and I’m still not sure the bones are in exactly the right place, but the sense of movement is finally how it should be. My thanks to that beautiful eagle!

And this is what the image is made of:

All of those pieces – except for the watermark – come from this free image I sourced from, I think, Pixabay:

I’ve used very little of the actual image. Instead, I used it as a pallet of colours and textures and light and shade. Then, I layered the snippets one on top of the other, all by hand, before adding transparent bits to blend the colours together.

I suspect that graphical AI, like Midjourney, use a similar technique, but the difference is that I only use free images, and I quote my source when I do posts like this. The photographers who give their art for free, for other humans to use, should be thanked, not exploited. <>

cheers,
Meeks