Google Goes All-In for Nuclear Power

 Google's decision to sponsor construction of nuclear power plants is interesting for several reasons. One of course is the Three Mile Island/Chernobyl anti-environment concern; in times of war or just terrorism via drones and hypersonic vectors nuclear atomization and dispersion could be hazardous to the health of Californians and others downwind like Nevada. Google could obviously choose to locate nuclear plants across the border in Mexico and around the nation near its data centers creating more work for climatologists predicting fallout patterns and shadows for possible disasters.

The choice for Google to go nuclear to provide abundant power for AI like Gemini with the Silkwood factor forgotten in history exemplifies the human acceleration toward building up  semi-intelligence with the simultaneous externality of increased entropy.

 In less than one generation the country has gone from vacuum tubes and transistors with mainframe computers and no pcs or smartphones-instead rotary dial phones on party lines were the norm, to vast networks of sprawling AI data centers demanding power for everyone's AI assistant on their smartphone and devices, laptops etc. The attraction for more ease and convenience outweighs- easily, the social good sense to configure a real material environment where the biosphere is not itself made into an externality of 'progress' and reciprocally forced into decline. 

Some evolutionary biologists have speculated that the most successful life on other are prokaryotes because they have been around for billions of years and may outlast the ark of creative intelligence that appeared briefly in the brief time of the complex organism of homo sapiens before they destroyed themselves. It is good to know that at least the meek or rather the simple will inherit the Earth if humanity destroys itself for lack of good sense in quest of excess profit.

Google Goes Nuclear

This phenomenon of the accretion of technology without a corresponding increase in environmental conservatism brings me to consider the complex of compresent developments of war saturating the planet following the catalyzing effect of the Ukraine war field test and development laboratory.

The Russians have developed the marvelous Oreshnik hypersoninc, marved missile that is truck launched, flies to space and releases several multiple reentry warhead vehicles that travel down to Earth targets at mach 11 twisting and spiraling on their way to evade Patriot missiles. Concurrently the U.S. navy has hypersonic whaling guns that shoot missiles from the bow at distant military targets. On a single day Ukraine may send 500 drones to attack Moscow while Russia retaliates with Islander hypersonic missiles that are short range and low trajectory flying under radar. The world is being saturated by smart bombs that fly, crawl and swim under the ocean surface. I can hardly wait until the year 2040 to see how that works out.

Protect Status from Hate Crimes for Religions, Yet Not for Atheists?

Religions interestingly, were included as a protected status under hate crimes laws. Provocateurs attacking religious people with bias rather than simply hate and anger need be mindful of their actions plainly. I wonder though about atheists; if they are regarded as a religion then they too have a protected status- hence it would be illegal or rather a hate crime for a clan of people dressed as hooded big birds to burn Darwin's Origin of the Species on the lawn of prominent prosyletizers of godlessness on a dark and stormy night with a full moon breaking through foreboding clouds. Good historians might be able to attack various points of religious history, and good theologians might point out some interesting facts, yet it would probably be the uneducated that would most attack people of faith with the vigor of destruction.

Make McKinley Great Again

 Mt. McKinley looks like Mt. Snow to me. Great one No denial that the rock extrusion was referred to in Koyukon Athabascan as the Great One. Denali = Great one. Most people in Washington D.C. don’t speak any Athabascan languages. They like to name things for politicians. So make the name great again in English language. It is a pretty good hill after all. Adjectives to nouns is a very controversial post-modern phenomenon. Ascension to higher language can be challenging.

Pope Trump Will Never Happen- Separation of Church and State

 I believe the purpose of President Trump issuance of an AI image of himself in Pope's garb may have been to reference himself as the leader of the United States rather than someone living in Rome. The question about foreign allegiance of Catholic Presidents was a concern in the 1960s with J.F.K and of course former President Biden was Catholic and showed his allegiance to Pope Francis touching his head with his own.. The topic is not difficult to understand. What was surprising is that most politicians would not risk losing votes, yet President Trump is not running for re-election so he didn't mind trying to make America Great Again reminding Americans to invest at home rather than abroad and to follow his leadership rather than that of the Catholic Church. I seem to recall that Francis was for illegal migration to America and supported other policies that were antipathetic to the M.A.G.A. agenda. Beside separation of Church and state, the real question is, as Jesus asked rhetorically, if anyone will have faith when he returns?

VP Vance Doesn't Understand Russia and Seems to Have Fallen Under the Military-Industrial Complex Spell

 VP Vance seems not to understand Russia history, Russian security requirements or the utility of resolving the Ukraine war directly. He believes Russia need make concessions. He is wrong about that; the administration need cut the Palestinian drag on weird multiple locations for Palestinian territories approach and draw a rational line somewhere, soon.

The U.S. isn't going to become militarily involved lest things escalate and should supply Ukraine with any military support at all; that just kicks the can down the road after the Russians roll up all of Ukraine (clue-bad time to negotiate then).  The N.A.T.O. Euro-U.S. military industrial complex legacy is a juggernaut that needs conflict. It is a raging beast with razor sharp teeth hungry for yogurt. VP Vance should not become prey to the endless agitation for eastward military expansion by the military industrial complex.

Russia is starting the slow advance moving across the Dnepr to secure Transnistria presently since Ukraine has moved troops north for photo op invasions of Russia. Recognize all of the areas Russia presently has on the East side of the Dnepr as Russian, guarantee no N.A.TO. expansion in to Ukraine, reduce Ukrainian forces to 250,000, create a no tax free trade zone 25 miles on either side of the Dnepr River for the world to invest in, end all U.S. sanctions on Russia and that would cover most of the real issues. 

Don't complicate a fairly simple situation. No war crimes trials for either side, no reparations. Just pretend a vast left-wing tornado happened in Ukraine and move on. the U.S. needs Russia to at least be neutral in regard to a possible future Chinese military adventure attacking elements of the west including Western Taiwan.

Real ID for Homeless Vets via Fingerprints

 Since there are millions of homeless Americans- they are always undercounted since many don't loiter in places where they could be counted, the federal Real ID program should be upgraded to let some of those document challenged persons qualify with fingerprints. 

There are substantial challenges for many of the homeless including some veterans in keeping documents together. A lost wallet can mean no legal employment with cash and theory to begin the mission of document target acquisition. Many cannot afford to pursue the documents they need (sometimes across several states) to qualify for Real ID. U.S. military personnel are fingerprinted at some point so Real ID could use some sort of fingerprint database for the homeless to have their's scanned and voila- Real ID. Homeless veterans should not need to pay for a Real ID to travel on an aircraft should they decide to shower, launder and get a seat.

Advance (poetry)

 

Anticipate the work of social times
applications of shadows and silence
about each stage progressing like Jacob’s ladder
actions included are mercy ship beatitudes
apposite echoes of causes first and last.

Hannity Reported on Trump-Carney Meeting

 Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney was brave enough to face the dragon in his lair and talk with President Trump. Fox news is a good enough source for what the administration thinks about things. Obviously one should find more than one source to learn about many topics. 

Donald Trump is a brash natural sort of politician, and that isn't easy to encounter by some professional politicians used to spinning nuanced b.s. in order not to lose votes. Sean Hannity made a video on the meeting and described P.M. Carny as a leftist. He used the global warming concern as evidence for the P.M.'s leftist orientation and described global warming as a hoax designed to let government take the public's money.

Mr. Hannity might try not to sound so much like the uneducated on environmental issues- global heating isn't a hoax. One needs to be really ignorant to fail to understand the concatenated effects of 8 billion people acting on the environment. Populist low-brow conservative yippie dispositions just makes things worse; each American reportedly already as about a teaspoon of microplastics in their brain. Imagine Lysenko as environment chief, that would be the hoax. Mr. Hannity is right to be worried about censorship in Canada of course. Freeing the U.S.A. from Democrat party censorship was one very positive effect of the Trump administration.

America doesn't need Canadian water for the S.W. It would be easy to make lots of freshwater by desalinating saltwater through evaporation and condensation using the sunlight of the S.W. I would be annoyed at the lack of creative industriousness if Americans invested in bringing water from Canada instead of manufacturing it themselves. All that need be done is to use solar power to pump water from the Pacific to the continental divide along the Mexican border roughly, ans let in spill downhill in canals covered with transparent material that would collect evaporating water and let it flow down the sloped roof to twin fresh water collecting canals running back to the Pacific and Gulf of America. Obviously there would need to be many dams or locks along the way. Environmental engineering is an underutilized resource generating option.

Quantum Field, True Vacuums and Phase Changes

 I am somewhat intrigued by the idea of a true vacuum existing before the start of the Universe that had quantum fields in it. The paradigm of a true vacuum existing before the start of a Universe implies that some sort of quanta exist in a true vacuum too. Virtual particles that aren’t really particles,  just being disturbances in a quantum field, arise for some reason. In present theory the best guess is that some virtual disturbances exist eternally- even when nothing else does. Lots of room for speculation about spirit in that paradigm.

It does make sense logically that the Universe of mass and energy we live in doesn’t occur in a true vacuum. A true vacuum should have nothing in it one might think, instead of being filled pervasively with various sorts of fields including gravity and electro-magnetism. Perhaps that line of thinking prompted some physicists to research the concern that sometime the Universe could experience a quantum phase change and revert to a true vacuum rather than a false one. 

The false vacuum hosts all of the entanglements of quanta in a Higgs Field- the Higgs Field is regarded as existing before the Big Bang- before gravity, strong force, weak force and electromagnetism. Alternatively the Higgs unrolled from the initial state of virtual disturbance simultaneously and allowed the Unified force to exist through it even with inflation faster-than-light (light not existing yet and gravity not unbound enough for a split second to slow expansion or draw mass together when not much mass had begun to exist.

The Higgs boson is an excitation of the Higgs field. It is an elementary particle that can decay into gluons and quarks yet it does so through the Higgs mechanism rather than breaking up into other particles. Perhaps the Higgs boson returns to forever and its disturbance knocks gluons and quarks into being (I don’t know). This is interesting information. I believe the inference is that all of mass and energy is produced temporally by the Higgs field phenomenon including gravity.

That idea isn’t new. Some popular cosmology books described that sombrero hat analogy paradigm in the late 1990s wherein the true vacuum is the most stable and low emery state of the Universe and that [recently the Universe is stuck at a higher level of vacuum. What has changed are research methods to investigate that paradigm using qubits and quantum computers to model the way a phase change could take place. It doesn't seem like an evolution; it happens everywhere all at once. Plainly the science has a long way to go yet it is interesting to speculate about when the quantum fluctuation that kicks off a sudden complete collapse of the soufflé of a Universe to its lowest and true vacuum state will occur.

https://scitechdaily.com/quantum-simulation-shows-how-reality-could-collapse-like-a-house-of-cards/

Western Leadership Failed to Adapt to the New Post Cold War Russia

 The military industrial complex of the United States was conditioned for more than a half century to regard Russia as the main adversary. When the Cold War and Soviet Communism ended most of the American establishment failed to adapt to the change and to engage positively with Russia. Fundamentally they transitioned from anti-communism to anti-Russia.

Russia did move toward being a free enterprise country. It largely ended communism although elites and government made property rights rather exclusively. Without heavy western investment in Russia that conditioned worsened in the sanctions era. Even so Russia has one of the lowest corporate tax rates in the world.

Russians and communists are different. There is no reason to regard Russians differently from anyone else when the communist burden is removed and continues. Russia sought to reform its society, create an income tax (the Ukraine war helped with that as it did Abraham Lincoln during the U.S. Civil War). And establish institutions including government for a democratic society. With N.A.T.O. expanding eastward and the loss of Its Ukraine properties and hegemony over Ukraine the development of democracy in Russia was put on hold. War loomed with the west. Russia looked to its former communist brother in arms China for help and found China more than willing to move their relationship closer since China wanted to keep communist supervision and authority over its partially market oriented society.

The failure for western leadership to adapt after the Cold War to the new Russian political reality is costly. Toynbee observed the challenge and response nature of leadership of civilizations. Toynbee could have included adaptation in his formula paradigm as well. The west in effect has driven Russia closer to China, and has strengthen Chinese leadership because the west refused to adapt to recognition of Russia as a worthy, friendly potential fellow travelers in freedom, free enterprise and national security, Since Russia is not fascist or communist the de facto position of western leadership to Russia is racist (reductio).

The failure of American leadership to adapt to the new Russia (with some notable exceptions like Donald Trump) may cost the west dearly as it

Determinism and Free Will May Share the Same Space-Time

 One can have free will and determinism concurrently. It is not one or the other. There are multiple levels of protocols for freedom to act within. Some are determined, and others are not. Computer programs may be written that way for example. The Universe is itself contingent and emergent being- determined in some parameters and undetermined within others. It is challenging to guess accurately about God's pre-knowledge of quantum structures and relations. Presently scientists even guess about what consciousness is and how it arises. 

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/where-does-consciousness-come-from-two-neuroscience-theories-go-head-to-head/

Priorities of Pork Chops and Mirrors (a poem)

 

Slim brackets and parenthetical recalcitrance
set in tall, dark forests where shadows roam with wolves
wild skyhooks to other worlds and futures
bear stripping the skin of salmon
peacefully
crunching down time
oysters plated
mushrooms sliced expertly
to adorn coldly created
pork chops of privilege

  Electro-magnetic stairways to heaven
sold by the pound with orbital threshold cannon shots
a thundering steed loses the doctor to a low branch overhead
that scythe awaited  fate
girders erected to be demolished
beryllium dampeners absorbing the neutrons of them all

  Life of a zillion zebra striped insects landing on a sailboat
driven offshore to rest a moment
zebranomics kicking at the goads
inventions budding with springy steps
giant leaps across a moon of reflective thought
pockmarked landscape of pogo sticks
past tense littering the silliness of war
where no-reason is the entry to death-of-others
bullets shot through gelatinous bags
to accurately measure the meter crossed
in time to stop

  Each point of a wave
-in fact an infinite number of points
was confined to one dimension of a line
slithering sinusoidal dancers
collapsed for the wave function 
whereof one cannot speak
thereof one must be silent
like the night before photons
before the Word spoke into darkness
that comprehended it not.

Don't Be Surprised if Zelensky Attacks Moscow May 9th

 Just so people won't be surprised that aren't following the war, Ukraine Martial Law President Zelensky is planning an attack on May the 9th to soil Russia's World War Two Victory parade on 9 May. President Trump could only suspend U.S. Intelligence and support to Ukraine to defrappe the likely attack.

President Trump apparently doesn't understand that Ukraine's war leader who has plans to bring women, young and old people (over 60) into battle readiness is simply playing him for time. He utilizes the 'how do you keep a Turkey in suspense comedic tactic'  to stall for time to let Europe and N.A.T.O. members have time to resupply Ukraine with weapons. 

Sweden for example is sending a pair of flying radar platforms and other jet fighters to let Ukraine coordinate better against Russia offensively and defensively. Zelensky already has U.S. supplied HIMARS and ATACMS that have ranges of a couple hundred miles more or less, Patriot missiles etc. Zelensky hopes to continue the war as long as possible and to bring the world to war if necessary to keep from needing to concede any land already lost to the Russian reconquista.

Zelensky has developed Neptune cruise missiles (a pagan name choice) that is launched from an advanced location might be able to close the 600 miles from Ukraine to Moscow. The Ukraine air force has F-16s that could launch Taurus KEPD 350 cruise missiles supplied by Germany or Sweden if they surreptitiously supplied Zelensky with several. Britain has said they would supply Ukraine with Storm Shadow missiles. Several weapons systems exist for F-16 that can travel more than 300 miles. So a jet flying low protected by Swedish radar might get close enough to launch a few ground hugging cruise missiles.

The question is how Russia would respond? They could nuke Kiev and Stockholm yet that probably isn't in the cards to play yet. Zelensky hopes to provoke Russia into retaliating in a way that will invoke a N.A.T.O. treaty response including that of the United States. That is why I wrote this post; so a few people would be aware of the lunacy of the European Ukraine war situation and to be squared away in case civilization ends after a global nuclear conflict May 9th-12th.

So long as President Trump support Ukraine militarily in any way Mr. Zelensky and European N.A.T.O. members will continue to press forward. The obvious realistic way to end the war is for the U.S. to quit supplying anything military to Ukraine, to stop negotiating with Ukraine, and let the war play out. President Trump could let it be known that he would resume a negotiating role if Ukraine agrees to several stipulations that Russia would be happy to accept, and then a cease fire could be implemented. It only takes one bad judgment or mistake to cascade World War Three into blossoming. One of the bold new N.A.T.O. members leaping to sustain and elevate the conflict militarily- like Sweden, or even old members like England liking the power of driving the Russians back farther east and using the U.S. in a Master-Blaster way to further British interests, could misunderestimate its position and Russian response and spark the fire of nuclear holocaust. Russian might tend toward overestimating the U.S. and N.A.T.O. response to a decision it makes to retailiate against some N.A.T.O. member for sending missiles to punish a weapons and intelligence supplier because if N.A.T.O. gets involved that does mean nuclear war. N.A.T.O. seems badly structured for preventing nuclear war. It was better at fighting some NAZI-style invasion without facing an adversary loaded with nuclear weapons. It is not surprising that the Cold War 1.0 ended peacefully since there was no rational alternative. Modern N.A.T.O. swells forgot the lessons of history that allowed the survival of global civilization.

President Trump did get a minor official under Zelensky to sign off on a Ukrainian minerals deal. Yet that could be fools gold since the U.S. probably would be required to defend the mines as Russia is on the verge of capturing them-especially around the City of Pokrovsk. So Zelensky played Trump into supporting him militarily in exchange for a mess of pottage in effect, since the mines were to be lost anyway. The contract says that the United Stated could get some money after ten years and if the Ukraine Congress approves it, maybe.

The Brits are spinning the deal as a move for peace. In other words it puts the U.S. in a position of being on the front line of a war to defend financial interests. It was maladroit timing. If that works out positively I will be quite surprised.  Ukraine announced victory in the battle for Pokrovsk several hours ago. That must be because the U.S. decided to get involved there. In fact the Russians are closing in around Pokrovsk forming a giant, methodical effective encirclement starting with advancing closer and cutting off supply roads etc.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-minerals-deal-ukraine-russia-b2742685.html

The minerals deal should never have occurred because it is one of those escalations of a conflict through the greed of a third party. Perhaps President Trump becomes myopic when money is concerned. Of course it would be good if Ukraine could repay the hundreds of billions it got from U.S. to support its war with Russia. The war though is more than about money or even land; it is about Europe's will to have power and hegemony over Eurasia and it could well reach the point of the final war of civilization. There is no clever deal that will solve the problem.

Black Hole Information Loss Paradox Solved?

 Physics is always changing, as Heraclitus might have observed, in contrast to Parmenides who said nothing changes. Of course equations made on the foundation of GR may be wrong if GR and that space-time paradigm turns out to be wrong as some physicists speculate. I don't believe that black holes have ever been observed to evaporate to nothing yet since it takes several trillion years approximately. Thus in effect a mathematically consistent account in a particular paradigm has been found to work, yet it is nonetheless just a theory.

 Einstein was brilliant man of his era. It seems to many that there definitely is a lot more to the Universe than GR and the unified space-time paradigm. A deeper account is going to be found. Of course there are many candidates for that already that also seem less than decisive and final. Some believe black holes are connected via quantum tunneling to white holes, and if that is so then any information going to another universe or place would be lost in the present Universe of origin and instead end up someplace else- perhaps in offshore accounts in the Cayman Island Galaxy.

https://www.sciencealert.com/gravity-may-be-a-clue-that-the-universe-is-a-giant-computer

As I understand it there is no real wave function collapse- that is it is rather a mathematical and measuring result of the math of calculation. The collapse is mathematical. One cannot measure the speed and location of a particle simultaneously; the measurement occurs at a particular place, and the particle is not moving or speeding at that location. The particle is really a sample of a wave and the measurement at a particular place figuratively 'collapses' the wave to be measured as a discrete particle. 

Perhaps its comparable to the way a particle or structure can have no dimensions from some reference frames and one or more in others. Superposition could be the infinite number of hypothetical places beyond the point particle location a wave could be. Entanglement might be accomplished by massless information shared via a lower dimensional primeval two dimension host Universe supporting the existence of four dimensions. Who knows? 

 Personally I believe God has all the information and no information is lost except that God wants erased.

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/black-hole-information-paradox-solved/#:~:text=Black%20holes%20encode%20information%20on,the%20question%20remains%20fundamentally%20unresolved.

AI Generative Video Prompts and AI Imagination

A brief, productive chat with Open AI about images made for video by AI and AI's imagination. I will post what it said about creativity and imagination below, as well as a cheat sheet on how to make good prompts for AI video makers.

Later this year Open AI will have a video generator named Sora for people to use via the same website. Initially- pro users first, then perhaps available free to a limited extent later.

There is actually a business for people called 'prompt engineers'. Good prompts have lots of detail like a movie screenplay.

  First though, what it said about the imagination of generative AI;

ChatGpt- "The Big Philosophical Idea: Will AI Ever Truly Imagine?

Right now, AI only recombines what it already knows.

It doesn’t want anything. It doesn't wonder. It doesn't dream.

True imagination (like in humans) comes from:

Desire (I want to express something.)

Conflict (I struggle to create something new.)

Freedom (I can choose to break every rule.)

For AI to have real imagination, two things would need to happen:

🔹 It would need a self.

(Some inner "I" that can feel, desire, be dissatisfied.)

🔹 It would need the ability to value the unknown.

(Choosing to create something not just based on probability, but because it longs for it.)

Speculation:

Some scientists believe that future AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) could simulate an inner life, with synthetic "desires" and "curiosity."

If that happens, it might start dreaming not because it was told to, but because it wants to — and then?

We could see AI art that shocks, mystifies, and even teaches us new beauty we couldn't imagine ourselves. 😲

But that’s still science fiction right now.

For today:

✨ The imagination is still ours.

✨ The AI is the mirror we bend to reflect it."

I had asked the AI about making a video with a basketball player spinning a planet on a finger. ChatGpt explained how to make it more detailed. Following is data that the machine code had to say about making good prompts for generative AI videos...

ChatGpt- "Pro Sora Prompt Formula (Cheat Sheet)

Here’s your one-page guide to crafting epic prompts for AI video generation like Sora:

1. Start with WHO / WHAT

Main subject (person, creature, object).

Style hints (young, futuristic, ancient, surreal, realistic, cartoonish).

Example:

"A tall basketball player in a silver uniform."

2. Set the WHERE

Environment, setting, atmosphere (natural world, fantasy, space, city, dreamscape).

Include era if relevant (future, ancient, 1980s, etc).

Example:

"Inside a dark cosmic arena floating in space, stars glowing in the distance."

3. Describe the ACTION

What’s happening? How does it move?

Single action or multiple actions.

Example:

"He spins a glowing blue planet rapidly on his finger."

4. Guide the CAMERA

How should the viewer see it?

Zoom in, tracking shot, slow-motion, handheld, cinematic swoop, wide panorama?

Example:

"Camera slowly zooms in close to the spinning planet, slight orbiting motion around the subject."

5. Add MOOD & STYLE

Lighting (bright, dramatic, soft, neon, dark).

Colors (golden, purple, deep blue, pastel, monochrome).

Vibe (dreamlike, intense, relaxed, chaotic).

Example:

"Cinematic, dramatic lighting with shimmering blue and purple hues, slow ambient background motion."

Bonus Tips:

Even one sentence per section is enough if you’re fast prompting!

Use vivid sensory words: glowing, shimmering, swirling, crackling, ancient, ethereal.

Think like a movie director, not a list-maker."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcKxwBuOIoI

Lakers are on the Edge of Oblivion for the 2024-25 Playoffs

 The Los Angeles Lakers are facing expulsion from the first round of the N.B. A. playoffs after consecutive losses in Minnesota to the Timberwolves. It isn’t that they are a bad team or badly coached. The problem is that they didn’t give the elite rim protector and monster of the paint Christian Koloko a regular veteran minimum contract to play in the playoffs and so they have only one tall guy who is fairly slim and a roll player best used against select teams. Another problem is the rookie Coach Reddick. He is good enough yet makes rookie mistakes like playing a 40 year old virtually the entire game so the elite closure scored zero points in the fourth quarter due to exhaustion.

Sitting on the bench was an elite three point shooting rookie Dalton Knecht. His defense is not so hot yet the shooting option was needed for the series. One can’t always know how certain players will perform a priori; one must give them a chance. Coach Reddick wasn’t willing to bring Koloko and Jemenson aboard for the playoff run, and wouldn’t risk winning or losing with a rookie having a supporting role who had similar stats to first year Kobe Bryant, and instead let his team slip to one win versus three losses and the exit door in the floor for the long drop and plop into next season.

The Lakers should keep the coach for he will with luck learn from the experience, not trade Dalton Knecht for a used center, and shop about for a journeyman center without desparation since they have Koloko, Hayes and Maxi Kleber already. If it’s not broke don’t fix it. There isn’t anyone on the team the Lakers should be willing to trade for a center. Alternatively, if a good one appears it wouldn’t hurt to bring a journeyman aboard.

No It Wasn't Fair Dinkum for Trump to Kill Zelensky at the Vatican

 If President Trump had killed Volodimir Zelensky at the Vatican with the secret Spock death-grip- when Zelensky approached him as a head of state attending the Pope's funeral, he would have been guilty of killing 'an internationally protected person'. Those are government officials, diplomats, guests and so forth. President Trump might have been tempted to end the war directly by removing the main obstacle to peace. 

Zelensky seem to be playing the President, disrespected the Vatican to conduct business, and appears to be making a subtle wise-guy style joke of President Trump.

President Trump apparently hasn't realized that Mr. Zelensky will spam and sham his entire administration as the Democrats did with charges against him in his first term. Euros and Democrats support the war in Ukraine no matter how long it takes. As in denying Trump a Nobel Peace Prize the first term they have no intention of allowing Donald Trump to get anywhere in his second term in regard to public acknowledgment of achievement. President Trump will need to settle the Ukraine War without the help of Zelensky, the Democrat Party or Euro diplomats.

Even if the next Pope forgave President Trump for his offence and persuaded Vatican lawyers not to bring charges, U.S. law would have been broken so far as Zelensky is considered to be an internationally protected person. It is possible that since Zelensky's subscription expired and he is there by martial law that he isn't an internationally protected individual- like everyone else outside the protected class. The Pope would however be required to name Zelensky as an uninvited guest in order to remove his protected status.

Effect on Prices Globally for Increases of Chinese Minimum Wage

 The minimum wage of the United States today is about 7.25 per hour. When I had my first job parking cars the minimum wage was $1.60 hourly. A minimum wage increase of several million or hundreds of millions of people is a large chunk of change. The U.S. minimum wage hasn't gone up much in a half century.

China hasn't got a nation-wide minimum wage. The minimum wage is set at a provincial level and of course people living in cities need and get higher minimum wages than country folk. About 470 million Chinese work in cities. I believe the minimum wage in Shanghai is about $1.20 an hour. It is less for the 270 million rural workers generally.  The scale of even modest, nation-wide increases in minimum wages in China has immediate, large effects on the cost of made in China products sold globally.

Maybe western ideologues will expect Chinese communist leadership to duplicate western models of sending proplits of rising prosperity to CEOs instead of workers and to keep minimum wages down. I believe that's unreasonable. In the west the voters have need trained to be like good communists and accept low minimum wages and submit to low tax flummery  and profit lion shares for the rich. In China the communist leadership may not only worry about being replaced if they don't raise worker minimums and increase average standard of living; they could be accused of counter-revolutionary activity.

Chinese workers, like Americans, want an increase in minimum wages. For about 77 million people to have meaningful wage increase means costs need be passed on to consumers. In other words, even without tariffs the cost of made-in-China goods was destined to increase in order to increase the Chinese standard of living. The U.S.A. did need to eventually return to material production many of the items outsourced to China in order to raise U.S. minimum wages much.

Chinese workers, like Americans, want an increase in minimum wages. For about 77 million people to have meaningful wage increase means costs need be passed on to consumers. In other words, even without tariffs the cost of made-in-China goods was destined to increase in order to increase the Chinese standard of living. The U.S.A. did need to eventually return to material production many of the items outsourced to China in order to raise U.S. minimum wages much.

The growth in the U.S. economy since the 1970s sent a disproportionate percent of profit to the rich instead of sharing proportionately with workers via minimum wage increases. Instead of minimum wage increases consumers following the end of the Cold War 1.0 got deflation on the cost of select consumer goods made in China, Thailand, Vietnam etc. It is likely that Chinese wages will rise even as the labor participation rate declines because of aging of the Chinese population. For the U.S. minimum wage to triple ( a small yet significant reparation for the relative stagnation of minimum wage the past half century) domestic production would need to increase, taxation on capital gains increase and the cost of government be reduced with increased efficiency. 

Needless to say environmental protections need be strongly reinforced because of the extreme stress on the environment created by the vast global demographic facts of population and countless deleterious economic environmental externalities (i.e. microplastics).

Challenges of Ecclesiastic and Social Organizations in the Formative Stage

Early in church history there was a challenge to organize and share the same beliefs  Many doctrinal questions arose that needed to be addressed.  Even leadership itself was an issue. There were five important cities for a time, including Jerusalem, that had important church centers.

Human social organizations including church organizations have unmathematical vectors of growth and proliferation. They are not clean, simple, linear structures easy to formulate. Post cold war Russia faced a comparable challenge, as did the USA to a lesser extent that needed resolution via civil war. Boris Yeltsin passed on the rump of the former Soviet Union to Vladimir Putin. How was Yeltsin to know the west would invest in snatching Ukraine from Russian hegemony and in effect launder Ukraine as stolen property and use it as a military spearhead against Russia? The Russia-Ukraine war is another example of civil conflict following the formation of massive social organizations.

 The church had schisms and actual heresies like that of Arius, Mani, Marcionism, Montanism, and Sabellianism etc. One may tend to feel that Plotinus was treated badly. Even Augustine left off being a neo-Platonist and accepted Christ as his Lord and Savior.

Plotinus described his experience of transcendence and an intense, deeper, personal encounter with what Christians call the Shekinah Glory of God. It is an immediate experience of the transcendence of realty. Some of course would say that it is just an inward, psychological event, yet to those that experience it, reality itself and the boundaries of subject-objective being are briefly overcome, That is an experience of the super natural or super reality.

 What Plotinus called heyschasm is an unforgettable experience yet it too fades somewhat with time, as it must for the individual need exist in reality until the end of his life. Plotinus incidentally was regard as a heretic by the early church for claiming to have directly experienced God

Compare a Chinese heresy where a rebel leader believed, misunderstanding scripture, that he was the actual brother of Christ, and his leadership of rebels in a civil war produced 20 million deaths. Hong Xiuquan 

He perished after spending his last days detached, in a harem, while war raged outside his palace. Lack of doctrinal agreement and consensus is a problem inherently possible in the foundation of social organizations - in addition to similar issues arising from future revisions, upgrades and corruptions. 

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-19977188 

Plotunus and Heyschasm; A Supernatural Experience of Transcendence

 Plotinus described his experience of transcendence and an intense, deeper, personal encounter with what Christians call the Shekinah Glory of God. It is an immediate experience of the transcendence of realty. Some of course would say that it is just an inward, psychological event, yet to those that experience it, reality itself and the boundaries of subject-objective being are briefly overcome, That is an experience of the super natural or super reality.

 What Plotinus called heyschasm is an unforgettable experience yet it too fades somewhat with time, as it must for the individual need exist in reality until the end of his life. Plotinus incidentally was regard as a heretic by the early church for claiming to have directly experienced God.