Observations

Innovation at War

  On 22nd April, 2021[1] I predicted that Russia would invade Ukraine and so break its UN charter commitments and the promise it made in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty. So it was no surprise to me to see an armoured column snaking south towards Kiev ten months later.  Apparently[2], when […]

We Happy Few – Christmas Reflections

The Illustrated London News's illustration of the Christmas Truce: "British and German Soldiers Arm-in-Arm Exchanging Headgear: A Christmas Truce between Opposing Trenches" The sub-caption reads "Saxons and Anglo-Saxons fraternising on the field of battle at the season of peace and goodwill: Officers and men from the German and British trenches meet and greet one another—A German [...]

The Thinking Machine is Here

Lee Se-dol in 2016. In 2016, AlphaGo, a machine that used large data sets to teach itself how to play Go defeated Lee Se-dol in a contest leading to this young South Korean professional Go champion to retire because, “AI is an entity that cannot be defeated”. So what you ask.  Well, Go is a […]

A Different Age

I have started writing my autobiography.  Not that I intend publishing, rather I am writing things down because, while my parents and grandparents relayed some of their stories to me, it was by no means a thorough review. I’d like my family to know more about the world I grew up in and how the […]
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Inciting the Mob

I reacted with both anger and disgust at the recent brutish harassment of the leader of the UK opposition outside parliament following yet another Boris Johnson lie, this time repeating a right wing conspiracy slur in Parliament (that has been debunked many times) about Sir Kier Starmer’s time as Chief Prosecutor when a serial paedophile […]
The post Inciting the Mob first appeared on David Cairns of Finavon.