#nick singleton | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mywifeleftme · 1 year ago

Text

157: The Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band // "Born Into Trouble as the Sparks Fly Upward."

"Born Into Trouble as the Sparks Fly Upward." The Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band 2001, Constellation (Bandcamp)

22 years ago Montreal’s other iconic prodigiously-membered post-rock band released their second LP. It’s not easy keeping all of these pro-Zion-but-not-Zionists straight, so I’ve helpfully listed and ranked each of the musicians who have passed through this constantly shifting collective from first to least-first. Let’s go!

Members of A/The/e Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band, Ranked

1. Mike Garson - piano 2. Annie Clark - guitar, keyboards, backing vocals 3. Brian Teasley- percussion 4. Daniel Hart - violin 5. Szabolcs Szczur – accordion 6. Davey 'Crabsticks' Trotter – Mellotron 7. Timothy Matthews – mbira 8. Buffi Jacobs – cello 9. Bach Norwood – piano, keyboards, backing vocals 10. Harriet Ballance - triangle, backing vocals 11. Japhy Ryder – floristry 12. Stuart "Peebs" Peebles – piccolo 13. Chandler Petrino – natural horn, oboe 14. Jared Pechonis – theremin 15. Toby Halbrooks - theremin 16. Corn Mo - backing vocals 17. Patrick Hewitt – theremin 18. Darin Hieb – trumpet, backing vocals 19. Rachel Woolf – flute 20. Mark Beardsworth – claviola 21. Allen Halas – percussion 22. Edwin Mendoza – viola 23. Todd Beaupré – vibraslap 24. Thaddeus Ford – trumpet 25. Paul Deemer – trombone, trumpet 26. Mike St.Clair – trombone, synth effects 27. Josh Guyer – trombone, spoons 28. Chris Curiel – trumpet 29. Heather Test – French horn 30. Victoria Arellano – classical harp 31. Sean Redman – violin, mandolin 32. Kelly Test – percussion 33. Mike Mordecai – percussion 34. Jason Garner – drums 35. Audrey Easley – flute, piccolo, EWI 36. Rick G. Nelson – viola 37. Nick Groesch – piano, keyboards 38. Keith Hendricks – percussion 39. Evan Hisey – keyboards 40. Dylan Silvers – guitar 41. Daniel Hart – violin 42. John Lamonica – percussion 43. Marcus Lopez – percussion 44. Matt Bricker – trumpet, synth effects 45. Taylor Young – percussion 46. Joe Butcher – steel drum 47. Evan Jacobs – piano, keyboards 48. Todd Berridge – viola 49. Nick Earl – guitar 50. Evan Weiss – trumpet 51. Jay Jennings – trumpet 52. Tamara Brown – violin 53. Merritt Lota – steel drums 54. Daniel Huffman – guitar 55. Timothy Blowers – harp 56. Anthony Richards – steel drums 57. Louis Schwadron – French horn 58. Andrew Tinker – French horn 59. Nick Wlodarczyk – trombone 60. Paul Gaughran – flute 61. Isabelo Cruz – French horn 62. Bryan Wakeland – drums 63. Hayley McCarthy – viola 64. Dave Dusters – percussion, backing vocals 65. Billy Mills-Curran – flute 66. Logan Keese – trumpet 67. Ricky Rasura – classical harp 68. Tonya Hewitt – banjo 69. Daniel Poorman – slide whistle 70. Andy Parkerson – clarinet 71. Joseph Singleton – viola 72. Jenelle Valencia – violin 73. James Reimer – trombone 74. Regina Chellew – guitar, trumpet, backing vocals 75. Ryan Fitzgerald – guitar, backing vocals 76. Cory Helms – guitar, backing vocals 77. Jessica Jordan – backing vocals 78. Jenny Kirtland – backing vocals 79. Kristin Hardin – backing vocals 80. Elizabeth Evans – backing vocals 81. Neil Smith – backing vocals 82. Julie Doyle – backing vocals 83. Christine Bolon – backing vocals 84. Natalie Young – backing vocals 85. Constance Dolph – backing vocals 86. Elizabeth Brown – backing vocals 87. Apotsala Wilson – backing vocals 88. Jennie Kelley – backing vocals 89. Roy Thomas Ivy – backing vocals 90. Jamey Welch – backing vocals 91. Ethan Voelkers – backing vocals 92. Mark Pirro - bass 93. Frank Benjaminsen – backing vocals 94. Stephanie Dolph – backing vocals 95. Jennifer Jobe – backing vocals 96. Mike Elio – backing vocals 97. Kelly Repka – backing vocals 98. Jason Rees – backing vocals 99. Jeneffa Soldatic – backing vocals 100. Michael Turner – backing vocals 101. Don Congeler – backing vocals 102. Michael Musick – backing vocals 103. Melissa Crutchfield – backing vocals 104. Sandra Powers Giasson – backing vocals 105. Paul Hillery – backing vocals 106. Stephen Dix – backing vocals 107. Jessica Berridge – backing vocals 108. Melisma MacDonald – backing vocals 109. Ross Cink - backing vocals 110. Lucy Williams - choreography 111. Josh David Jordan – backing vocals 112. Brad Butler – backing vocals 113. Jason Rees – backing vocals 114. Andrew Aldenenotti – backing vocals 115. Getting hit by a bus wearing a flowing white robe 116. Tim DeLaughter - vocals, guitar, piano

Hold on. I’ve just received word that these musicians are actually members of some other band? Apologies for the confusion!

youtube

157/365

#backing vocals #a silver mt. zion #efrim manuel menuck #defector #this is so stupid #montreal music #'00s music #post-rock #underexplained lists #music review #vinyl record #montreal

5 notes · View notes

newsguide0 · 8 days ago

Text

CFB World reacts to Nick Singleton’s massive announcement

Following a brilliant season in 2024 with Penn State, Nick Singleton will have another ride in University Park. The running back announced on Monday that he will return for his senior season with the Nittany Lions. Singleton rushed for 1099 yards and 12 touchdowns in 2024. “After discussing my football future with my family, I have decided to return to Penn State for the 2025 season,” Singleton…

View On WordPress

0 notes

cryptoto · 9 days ago

Text

CFB World reacts to Nick Singleton's public announcement

After a brilliant season with 2024 Penn StateNick Singleton will take another walk at University Park. The running back announced Monday that he will return for his senior season with the Nittany Lions. Singleton rushed for 1,099 yards and 12 touchdowns in 2024. “After discussing my football future with my family, I have decided to return to Penn State for the 2025 season,” Singleton said in a…

0 notes

hamsdd · 9 days ago

Text

CFB World reacts to Nick Singleton's public announcement

0 notes

sportskeeda-updates · 20 days ago

Text

Top 3 Penn State special team players to watch out for in Orange Bowl ft. Ryan Barker, Riley Thompson, & Nick Singleton https://www.sportskeeda.com/college-football/top-3-penn-state-special-team-players-watch-orange-bowl-ft-ryan-barker-riley-thompson-nick-singleton?key4=sktumblr&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr

#CollegeFootball

0 notes

leafatlas · 26 days ago

Text

Penn State runs away from Boise State, advancing to CFB Playoff semifinal

December 31, 2024 Written by: Shehan Jeyarajah, CBS Sports: Penn State held off Boise State’s strong attempt to win the 2024 Fiesta Bowl 31-14 and advance to the semifinals of the College Football Playoff. Running back Nick Singleton broke off a 58-yard touchdown run and tight end Tyler Warren added a pair of touchdown catches to give the Nittany Lions a monster victory and keep the program…

View On WordPress

0 notes

cavenewstimes · 4 months ago

Text

Singleton, Allen score TDs as No. 9 Penn State beats No. 19 Illinois 21-7

By TRAVIS JOHNSON Updated [hour]:[minute] [AMPM] [timezone], [monthFull] [day], [year] STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) — James Franklin asked Penn State fans to bring White-Out energy into Beaver Stadium on Saturday night. They didn’t let him down, wearing white, painting their faces and shaking pom poms to help rally the Nittany Lions in their Big Ten opener. Nick Singleton ran for 102 yards and a…

0 notes

newstfionline · 5 months ago

Text

Friday, September 6, 2024

Canadian PM Trudeau weakened after main ally unexpectedly pulls support (Reuters) Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suffered an unexpected blow on Wednesday when the small party helping keep his minority Liberal government in power withdrew its automatic support, forcing him to attempt new alliances to govern. The move leaves Trudeau reliant on support from other opposition lawmakers to survive confidence votes in the lower chamber of parliament at a time when polls show he will lose badly if an election were held now. An election must be held by the end of October 2025 under Canadian law. Trudeau, 52, first took office in November 2015 but has over the last two years struggled to fend off attacks from the opposition center-right Conservatives, who blame him for high inflation and a housing crisis.

Americans who have a job are feeling secure. Not so for many who are looking for one (AP) Laid off by the music streaming service Spotify last year, Joovay Arias figured he’d land another job as a software engineer fairly soon. His previous job search, in 2019, had been a breeze. “Back then,” he said, “I had tons of recruiters reaching out to me—to the point where I had to turn them down.” Arias did find another job recently, but only after an unexpected ordeal. “I thought it was going to be something like three months,” said Arias, 39. “It turned into a year and three months.” As Arias and other jobseekers can attest, the American labor market, red-hot for the past few years, has cooled. The job market is now in an unusual place: Jobholders are mostly secure, with layoffs low, historically speaking. Yet the pace of hiring has slowed, and landing a job has become harder. “If you have a job and you’re happy with that job and you want to hold onto that job, things are pretty good right now,” said Nick Bunker, economic research director for North America at the Indeed Hiring Lab. “But if you’re out of work or you have a job and you want to switch to a new one, things aren’t as rosy as they were a couple of years ago.”

Colombian truckers block highways in main cities in protest over increases in fuel prices (AP) Thousands of Colombians were forced to walk to work on Tuesday, as truckers in major cities blocked highways to protest a recent increase in the price of diesel fuel. Truckers unions have said that plans by the government to eliminate diesel fuel subsidies would push their businesses to the brink of bankruptcy, while the administration of left-wing President Gustavo Petro argues it must phase out subsidies to cut a growing budget deficit and direct more funds to education and health. On Saturday, the government raised the price of diesel fuel to around $2.90 per gallon, an increase of 50 cents. In response, the unions have been holding protests around the country, which intensified on Tuesday, with roadblocks in the cities of Bogotá, Medellin and Cali, that have diminished the amount of food arriving at wholesale markets.

Spanish singles found a new dating strategy. It’s in the fruit aisle. (Washington Post) Bored of swiping on apps, some single people in Spain have found an analogue method of finding romance: going to a popular grocery store at 7 p.m. and positioning an exotic fruit in their trolley cart. “If you want to date, you just go Mercadona, the supermarket, grab a pineapple and put it upside down in your cart,” said Damon Fan, a 24-year-old entrepreneur and content creator living in Barcelona. “If you find someone you like, and they happen to have their pineapple, you can start to talk,” he explained in a phone interview Wednesday. The method, which spread on TikTok, has led to dozens of Spanish singletons recording their experiences on the app—some with more apparent success than others. It is also the latest sign of a global turn against dating apps, driven by swipe-fatigue and many reporting that they are finding online dating increasingly fruitless. In an email Wednesday, Mercadona confirmed that the trend was happening in its stores, but stressed that it was not part of any marketing strategy. (Overall pineapple sales were also normal for this time of this year, it added.)

The world is pumping out 57 million tons of plastic pollution a year (AP) The world creates 57 million tons of plastic pollution every year and spreads it from the deepest oceans to the highest mountaintop to the inside of people’s bodies, according to a new study that also said more than two-thirds of it comes from the Global South. It’s enough pollution each year—about 52 million metric tons—to fill New York City’s Central Park with plastic waste as high as the Empire State Building, according to researchers at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. They examined waste produced on the local level at more than 50,000 cities and towns across the world for a study in Wednesday’s journal Nature. The study examined plastic that goes into the open environment, not plastic that goes into landfills or is properly burned. For 15% of the world’s population, government fails to collect and dispose of waste, the study’s authors said—a big reason Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa produce the most plastic waste. That includes 255 million people in India, the study said.

Chinese families seeking to escape a competitive education system have found a haven in Thailand (AP) The competition started in second grade for DJ Wang’s son. Eight-year-old William was enrolled at a top elementary school in Wuhan, a provincial capital in central China. While kindergarten and first grade were relatively carefree, the homework assignments started piling up in second grade. By third grade, his son was regularly finishing his day around midnight. Wang, who traveled often to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand for his job in tourism, decided to make a switch, moving his family to the city that sits at the base of mountains. The family is among a wave of Chinese flocking to Thailand for its quality international schools and more relaxed lifestyle. While there are no records tracking how many are moving abroad for education, they join other Chinese expats leaving the country, from wealthy entrepreneurs moving to Japan to protect their wealth, to activists unhappy with the political system, to young people who want to opt out of China’s ultra-competitive work culture, at least for a while.

For many investors and intellectuals leaving China, it’s Japan—not the US—that’s the bigger draw (AP) One by one, the students, lawyers and others filed into a classroom in a central Tokyo university for a lecture by a Chinese journalist on Taiwan and democracy—taboo topics that can’t be discussed publicly back home in China. “Taiwan’s modern-day democracy took struggle and bloodshed, there’s no question about that,” said Jia Jia, a columnist and guest lecturer at the University of Tokyo who was briefly detained in China eight years ago on suspicion of penning a call for China’s top leader to resign. He is one of tens of thousands of intellectuals, investors and other Chinese who have relocated to Japan in recent years, part of a larger exodus of people from China. Their backgrounds vary widely, and they’re leaving for all sorts of reasons. Chinese migrants are flowing to all corners of the world, from workers seeking to start businesses of their own in Mexico to burned-out students heading to Thailand. Those choosing Japan tend to be well-off or highly educated, drawn to the country’s ease of living, rich culture and immigration policies that favor highly skilled professionals, with less of the sharp anti-immigrant backlash sometimes seen in Western countries. It’s tough to enter the U.S. these days. Tens of thousands of Chinese were arrested at the U.S.-Mexico border over the past year, and Chinese students have been grilled at customs as trade frictions fan suspicions of possible industrial espionage.

Israeli strikes kill 5 in occupied West Bank, Palestinian officials say (AP) Palestinian health officials say Israeli strikes in the occupied West Bank killed five people, including the son of a prominent jailed militant. Israel has been carrying out large-scale raids in the territory over the past week that it says are aimed at dismantling militant groups and preventing attacks. The Palestinians fear a widening of the war in Gaza. The strikes overnight in the northern West Bank town of Tubas killed five people.

Gazans Grapple With Prospect of Israeli Presence Postwar (NYT) Cease-fire talks in Gaza have stalled again, in part over Israel’s demand to retain a military presence in the territory, which Hamas and Egypt oppose. But the view among some Gazans on that point is less clear-cut. Their lives have been devastated after almost a year of war and they say they find the idea of Israeli soldiers staying on—and of the checkpoints becoming permanent—disturbing. But if that helps bring an end to the war, it is a price they are willing to pay. Other Gazans expressed serious misgivings about allowing an Israeli military presence in Gaza, and some opposed it outright. “Of course I do not accept the presence of checkpoints on our return to the north,” said Mohammad Qadoura, 40, who was displaced from his home in Gaza City. “But if this would lead to the end of the war, I would reluctantly agree.”

China’s Xi pledges over $50 billion in financial aid to Africa to deepen ties (CNBC) Chinese leader Xi Jinping announced that he would allocate $50 billion in financing to Africa over the next three years. Xi Jinping also promised to “create at least one million jobs for Africa” and said China “is ready to deepen cooperation with African countries.” The announcement took place at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation currently happening in Beijing, where more than 50 African leaders are securing agreements regarding industry, natural resources, energy and infrastructure.

Collapse after collapse—why Lagos buildings keep crashing down (BBC) A building has collapsed in Nigeria’s megacity, Lagos, once every two weeks on average so far this year. Whereas the commercial cost can be calculated, a figure can never be put on the value of the lives lost underneath the rubble. The gaps among the buildings, replaced by piles of debris, represent a failure of governance as well as giving rise to allegations of contractors trying to cut corners to save money. There are regulations, there are maintenance schedules, there are inspectors—but the system does not work. Those responsible are never held to account, and so nothing ever changes. Lagos, dubbed by one expert who spoke to the BBC as “the building-collapse capital of Nigeria”, has seen at least 90 buildings falling down in the last 12 years, leaving more than 350 people dead, according to the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria.

#headlines #news

0 notes

pswgallery · 8 months ago

Text

ToCall No. 20 contributors

Alexander Limarev (Russia)

Amanda Earl (Canada)

Andrea Familiar (Spain)

Andreas Bülhoff (Germany)

Andrés Felipe Uribe Cárdenas (Germany & Colombia)

Andrew Morrison & Maria Stadnicka (UK)

Anett Lau (Germany)

Angela Caporaso (Italy)

Ankie van Dijk (Netherland)

Ashlee Zlatna (USA)

Brandstifter (Germany)

Charlotte Jung (Sweden & USA)

Cinzia Farina (Italy)

Claudia de la Torre (Mexico & Germany)

Claudia García (Argentina)

Davide Tocco (Italy)

Derek Beaulieu (Canada)

Diego Espíritu (Mexico)

Ege Berensel (Turkey)

Egidija Čiricaitė (Lithuania & UK)

Frank Singleton (USA)

Ivan Pope (UK)

Jérémie Wenger (Switzerland & UK)

Jim Andrews (Canada)

Katy Wimhurst (UK)

Kevin Stebner (Canada)

Luc Fierens (Belgium)

M.P. Pratheesh (India)

Michael Hampton (UK)

Mike Ferguson (UK)

Nick Montfort (USA & Norway)

Nicky Melville (UK)

Patrizia Cacciaguerra (Germany & Italy)

psw (Germany)

Rachel Smith (UK)

Raffaella della Olga (France)

Serse Luigetti (Italy)

Shloka Shankar (India)

sk. (Germany)

Stefana McClure (USA)

Stephan Wagner (Canada)

Susan Connolly (Ireland)

Sylee Gore (UK)

Terri Witek (USA)

Thorsten Fuhrmann (Germany)

#tocall magazine #tocall

0 notes

ofuntamedhearts · 10 months ago

Text

𝑪𝑯𝑨𝑹𝑨𝑪𝑻𝑬𝑹 𝑺𝑯𝑬𝑬𝑻

𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐬 !

FULL NAME. Athena Marissa Singleton

NICKNAME. Thea

GENDER. Cis Female

HEIGHT. 5′5″

AGE. 26 (Born on April 13th)

ZODIAC. Aries sun (impulsive, curious, direct), Aries moon (bold, hot-tempered, adventurous), Capricorn rising (ambitious, disciplined, unwavering)

SPOKEN LANGUAGES. English

𝐩𝐡𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 !

HAIR COLOR. Brown

EYE COLOR. Brown

BODY TYPE. Petite

VOICE. Soprano

DOMINANT HAND. Right

SCARS. She has so many scars over her body. Nicks and scrapes from living in a rural environment and growing her own food, raising livestock has given her a lot of opportunity for injury.

TATTOOS. Full moon tattoo on the back of her neck

PIERCINGS. Two holes in each earlobe and one cartilage piercing

BIRTHMARKS. None

MOST NOTICEABLE FEATURE(S). Smile, eyes

𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐝 !

HOMETOWN. Baltimore, Maryland

SIBLINGS. Artemis and Apollo (twins)

PARENTS. Bobby Singleton and Aphrodite Walker

𝐚𝐝𝐮𝐥𝐭 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 !

OCCUPATION. Bartender, Alpha of the Deep Water Pack.

CURRENT RESIDENCE. Mystic Falls, Virginia

CLOSE FRIENDS. Her pack and her siblings.

RELATIONSHIP STATUS. Single

FINANCIAL STATUS. Like any good wolf, money is not her forte. Stealing, however, is her forte so she has found a way to get herself many nice things. She also is a good talker and not afraid to use her sexuality to get what she wants and has romanced her way into a nice apartment as well. She is well kept.

DRIVER’S LICENSE. No license, but that does not stop her from driving.

𝐬𝐞𝐱 & 𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 !

SEXUAL ORIENTATION. Bisexual

PREFERRED EMOTIONAL ROLE. In terms of her pack and her siblings, Thea is a caretaker. She will rule with an iron fist but can soften herself when the moment calls for it. She has never been in a long term romantic relationship. Her father and mother had such a tumultuous relationship growing up that she refuses to allow herself to let anyone get out of a platonic role.

PREFERRED SEXUAL ROLE. Nothing with strings, quick and dirty is her preferred way to go. She is not the spend the night type.

RELATIONSHIP TENDENCIES. Once she cares about someone, there is no stopping it unless she's been betrayed. She sees betrayal as something that is unforgivable and once that line has been crossed there is no going back and no forgiveness. Will lay down her life for the people that she loves, but will lay down her pride for nothing.

LIBIDO. Medium.

TURN ON’S. Confidence, compliments, good hygiene, firm voice, directness.

TURN OFF’S. Clinginess, pet names, too much affection. It overwhelms her and makes her shut down.

LOVE LANGUAGE. Her preferred love languages to receive are acts of service and quality time. Her preferred love languages to give are gift giving and acts of service.

𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐨𝐮𝐬 !

CHARACTER’S THEME SONGS. I Did Something Bad by Taylor Swift / Kiwi by Harry Styles / Flowers by Miley Cyrus / Heartless by Kanye West / Charleston Girl by Tyler Childers / Problem by Natalia Kills / Bad at Love by Halsey

HOBBIES TO PASS TIME. Boxing, sparring, flirting, shopping, drinking

MENTAL ILLNESSES. None

PHYSICAL ILLNESSES. None (shout out to good genes)

SELF CONFIDENCE LEVEL. Thea is probably the most confident muse that I've ever written. She knows exactly who she is, what she wants, and how to get it. She is sure in all of her abilities; very intelligent both academically and on a street smart level, she is emotionally intelligent, sexually savvy, and is good with people until she chooses not to be. Her least confident ability is her capability to hold a romantic relationship, which is why she has never had one. She refuses to do anything she isn't going to be good at.

#muse: thea #hellsmouth.intro #hc: thea

1 note · View note

burlveneer-music · 11 months ago

Text

Magic In Threes - Incidental Music - new album from Nashville "Kings of Chill" is full-on library music whether they know it or not

Magic In Threes are back with their long awaited 8th album, "Incidental Music" on G.E.D. Soul Records. From mellow freak beats to swinging smoke jaunts, Incidental Music delivers the signature vibes Magic In Threes have come to be known for. Dive head first into the blazed-out, bizarre groovy rhythms from the famed "Kings of Chill". Dave Singleton - Bass, Guitar, Keys, Percussion Nick DeVan - Drums, Keys, Percussion Mikie Martel - Flugelhorn Jody Douglas - Flute Caleb Breaux - Drums and Synth on "Smoked Poke Salad"

#Bandcamp #Magic In Threes #library music #funk #r&b #nashville #2024 #g.e.d. soul

0 notes

tastydregs · 2 years ago

Text

Why I’m Not Worried About A.I. Killing Everyone and Taking Over the World

This article was co-published with Understanding AI, a newsletter that explores how A.I. works and how it’s changing our world.

Geoffrey Hinton is a legendary computer scientist whose work laid the foundation for today’s artificial intelligence technology. He was a co-author of two of the most influential A.I. papers: a 1986 paper describing a foundational technique (called backpropagation) that is still used to train deep neural networks and a 2012 paper demonstrating that deep neural networks could be shockingly good at recognizing images.

That 2012 paper helped to spark the deep learning boom of the last decade. Google hired the paper’s authors in 2013 and Hinton has been helping Google develop its A.I. technology ever since then. But last week Hinton quit Google so he could speak freely about his fears that A.I. systems would soon become smarter than us and gain the power to enslave or kill us. “There are very few examples of a more intelligent thing being controlled by a less intelligent thing,” Hinton said in an interview on CNN last week.

This is not a new concern. The philosopher Nick Bostrom made similar warnings in his widely read 2014 book Superintelligence. At the time most people saw these dangers as too remote to worry about, but a few people found arguments like Bostrom’s so compelling that they devoted their careers to them. As a result, there’s now a tight-knit community convinced that A.I. poses an existential risk to the human race.

I’m going to call their viewpoint singularism—a nod not only to Verner Vinge’s concept of the singularity, but also to Bostrom’s concept of a singleton, an A.I. (or other entity) that gains control over the world. The singularists have been honing their arguments for the last decade and today they largely set the terms of the A.I. safety debate.

But I worry that singularists are focusing the world’s attention in the wrong direction. Singularists are convinced that a super-intelligent A.I. would become so powerful to kill us all if it wants to. And so their main focus is on figuring out how to ensure that this all-powerful A.I. winds up with goals that are aligned with our own.

But it’s not so obvious that superior intelligence will automatically lead to world domination. Intelligence is certainly helpful if you’re trying to take over the world, but you can’t control the world without manpower, infrastructure, natural resources, and so forth. A rogue A.I. would start out without control of any of these physical resources.

So a better way to prevent an A.I. takeover may be to ensure humans remain firmly in control of the physical world—an approach I’ll call physicalism. That would mean safeguarding our power plants, factories, and other physical infrastructure from hacking. And it would mean being cautious about rolling out self-driving cars, humanoid robots, military drones, and other autonomous systems that could eventually become a mechanism for A.I. to conquer the world.

In 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue computer beat the reigning chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov. In the years since, chess engines have gotten better and better. Today, the strongest chess software has an Elo rating of 3,500, high enough that we should expect it to win almost every game against the strongest human players (who have Elo ratings around 2,800). Singularists see this as a template for A.I. mastery of every significant activity in the global economy, including important ones like scientific discovery, technological innovation, and warfare.

A key step on the road to A.I. dominance will be when A.I. systems get better than people at designing A.I. systems. At this point, singularists predict that we’ll get an “intelligence explosion” where A.I. systems work to recursively improve their own code. Because it’s easy to make copies of computer programs, we could quickly have millions of virtual programmers working to improve A.I. systems, which should dramatically accelerate the rate of progress in A.I. technology.

I find this part of the singularist story entirely plausible. I see no reason to doubt that we’ll eventually be able to build computer systems capable of performing cognitive tasks at a human level—and perhaps beyond.

Once an A.I. achieves superintelligence, singularists envision it building some kind of superweapon to take over the world. Obviously, since none of us possess superhuman intelligence, it’s hard to be sure whether this is possible. But I think a good way to sanity-check it is to think about the history of previous superweapons.

Take the atomic bomb, for example. In 1939, physicist Leo Szilard realized that it would be possible to create a powerful new kind of bomb using nuclear fission. So did he go into his garage, build the first atomic bomb, and use it to become the most powerful person on the planet?

Of course not. Instead, Szilard drafted a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt and got Albert Einstein to sign it. That led to the Manhattan Project, which wound up employing tens of thousands of people and spending billions of dollars over a six-year period. When the first atomic bombs were finished in 1945, it was President Harry Truman, not Szilard or other physicists, who got to decide how they would be used.

Maybe a superintelligent A.I. could come up with an idea for a powerful new type of weapon. But like Szilard, it would need help to build and deploy it. And getting that help might be difficult—especially if the A.I. wants to retain ultimate control over the weapon once it’s built.

When I read Bostrom’s Superintelligence, I was surprised that he devotes less than three pages (starting on page 97 in this version) to discussing how an A.I. takeover might work in concrete terms. In those pages, Bostrom briefly discusses two possible scenarios. One is for the A.I. to create “self-replicating biotechnology or nanotechnology” that could spread across the world and take over before humans know what is happening. The other would be to create a supervirus to wipe out the human race.

Bostrom’s mention of nanotechnology is presumably a reference to Eric Drexler’s 1986 book envisioning microscopic robots that could construct other microscopic objects one atom at a time. Twenty years later, in 2006, a major scientific review found that the feasibility of such an approach “cannot be reliably predicted.” As far as I can tell, there’s been no meaningful progress on the concept since then.

We do have one example of a nanoscale technology that’s made significant progress in recent years: integrated circuits now have features that are just a few atoms wide, allowing billions of transistors to be packed onto a single chip. And the equipment required to build these nanoscale devices is fantastically expensive and complex: companies like TSMC and Intel spend billions of dollars to build a single chip fabrication plant.

I don’t know if Drexler-style nano-assemblers are possible. But if they are, building the first ones is likely to be a massive undertaking. Like the atomic bomb, it would likely require many skilled engineers and scientists, large amounts of capital, and large research labs and production facilities. It seems hard for a disembodied A.I. to pull that off—and even harder to do so while maintaining secrecy and control.

Part of Bostrom’s argument is that superintelligent A.I. would have a “social manipulation superpower” that would enable the A.I. to persuade or trick people into helping it accomplish its nefarious ends.

Again, no one has ever encountered a superintelligent AI, so it’s hard to make categorical statements about what it might be able to do. But I think this misunderstands how persuasion works.

Human beings are social creatures. We trust longtime friends more than strangers, and we are more likely to trust people we perceive as similar to ourselves. In-person conversations tend to be more persuasive than phone calls or emails.

A superintelligent A.I. would have no friends or family and would be incapable of having an in-person conversation with anybody. Maybe it could trick some gullible people into sending it money or sharing confidential information. But what an A.I. would really need is co-conspirators: people willing to help out with a project over the course of months or years, while keeping their actions secret from friends and family. It’s hard to imagine how an A.I. could inspire that kind of loyalty among a significant number of people.

I expect that nothing I’ve written so far is going to be persuasive to committed singularists. Singularists have a deep intuition that more intelligent entities inevitably become more powerful than less intelligent ones.

“One should avoid fixating too much on the concrete details, since they are in any case unknowable and intended for illustration only,” Bostrom writes in Superintelligence. “A superintelligence might—and probably would—be able to conceive of a better plan for achieving its goals than any that a human can come up with. It is therefore necessary to think about these matters more abstractly.”

Stephen Hawking articulated this intuition in a vivid way a few years ago. “You’re probably not an evil ant-hater who steps on ants out of malice,” Hawking wrote. “But if you’re in charge of a hydroelectric green-energy project and there’s an anthill in the region to be flooded, too bad for the ants. Let’s not place humanity in the position of those ants.”

But it’s worth thinking harder about the relationship between human intelligence and our power over the natural world.

If you put a modern human in a time machine and sent him back 100,000 years, it’s unlikely he could use his superior intelligence to establish dominance over a nearby Neanderthal tribe. Even if he was an expert on modern weaponry, he wouldn’t have the time or resources to make a gun before the Neanderthals killed him or he just starved to death.

Humanity’s intelligence gave us power mainly because it enabled us to create progressively larger and more complex societies. A few thousand years ago, some human civilizations grew large enough to support people who specialized in mining and metalworking. That allowed them to build better tools and weapons, giving them an edge over neighboring civilizations. Specialization has continued to increase, century by century, until the present day. Modern societies have thousands of people working on highly specialized tasks from building aircraft carriers to developing A.I. software to sending satellites into space. It’s that extreme specialization that gives us almost godlike powers over the natural world.

My favorite articulation of this point came from entrepreneur Anton Troynikov in a recent episode of the Moment of Zen podcast.

“The modern industrial world requires actuators starting from the size of an oil refinery and going down to your scanning electron microscope,” Troynikov said. “The reason that we need all of this vast array of things is that the story of technology is almost the story of tool use. And every one of those tools relies on another layer of tools below them.”

The modern world depends on infrastructure like roads, pipelines, fiber optic cables, ports, warehouses, and so forth. Each piece of infrastructure has a workforce dedicated to building, maintaining, and repairing it. These workers not only have specialized skills and knowledge, they also have sophisticated equipment that enables them to do their jobs.

Which brings me to Bostrom’s second scenario for A.I. takeover. Bostrom predicts that a superintelligent A.I. might create a virus that wipes out humanity. It’s conceivable that an A.I. could trick someone into synthesizing a virus in an existing biology lab. I don’t know if an A.I.-designed virus could literally wipe out humanity, but let’s assume it can for the sake of argument.

This thing can’t run itself. LIONEL BONAVENTURE/Getty Images

The problem, from the A.I.’s point of view, is that it would still need some humans around to keep its data centers running.

As consumers, we’re used to thinking of services like electricity, cellular networks, and online platforms as fully automated. But they’re not. They’re extremely complex and have a large staff of people constantly fixing things as they break. If everyone at Google, Amazon, AT&T, and Verizon died, the internet would quickly grind to a halt—and so would any superintelligent A.I. connected to it.

Could an A.I. dispatch robots to keep the internet and its data centers running? Today there are far fewer industrial robots in the world than human workers, and the vast majority of them are special-purpose robots designed to do a specific job at a specific factory. There are few if any robots with the agility and manual dexterity to fix overhead power lines or underground fiber optic cables, drive delivery trucks, replace failing servers, and so forth. Robots also need human beings to repair them when they break, so without people the robots would eventually stop functioning too.

Of course this could change. Over time we may build increasingly capable robots, and in a few decades we may reach the point where robots are doing a large share of physical work. At that point, an A.I. takeover scenario might become more plausible.

But this is very different from the “fast takeoff” scenario envisioned by many singularists, in which A.I. takes over the world within months, weeks, or even days of an intelligence explosion. If A.I. takes over, it will be a gradual, multi-decade process. And we’ll have plenty of time to change course if we don’t like the way things are heading.

Singularists predict that the first superintelligent A.I. will be the last superintelligent A.I. because it will rapidly become smart enough to take over the world. If that’s true, then the question of A.I. alignment becomes supremely important because everything depends on whether the superintelligent A.I. decides to treat us well or not.

But in a world where the first superintelligent A.I. won’t be able to immediately take over the world—the world I think we live in—the picture looks different. In that case, there are likely to eventually be billions of intelligent A.I.s in the world, with a variety of capabilities and goals. Many of them will be benevolent. Some may “go rogue” and pursue goals independent of their creators. But even if that doesn’t happen, there will definitely be some A.I.s created by terrorists, criminals, bored teenagers, or foreign governments. Those are likely to behave badly—not because they’re “misaligned,” but because they’re well-aligned with the goals of their creators.

In this world, anything connected to the internet will face constant attacks from sophisticated A.I.-based hacking tools. In addition to discovering and exploiting software vulnerabilities, rogue A.I. might be able to use technologies like large language models and voice cloning to create extremely convincing phishing attacks.

And if a hacker breaches a computer system that controls a real-world facility—say a factory, a power plant, or a military drone—it could do damage in the physical world.

Last week I asked Matthew Middelsteadt, an A.I. and cybersecurity expert at the Mercatus Center, to name the most important recent examples of hacks like this. He said these were the three most significant in the last 15 years:

• In 2010, someone—widely believed to be the U.S. or Israeli government—unleashed a computer worm on computer systems associated with Iran’s nuclear program, slowing Iran’s efforts to enrich uranium.

• In 2015, hackers with suspected ties to Russia hacked computers controlling part of the Ukrainian power grid. This caused about 200,000 Ukrainians to lose power, but utility workers were able to restore power within a few hours by bypassing the computers.

• In 2021, a ransomware attack hit the billing infrastructure for the Colonial Pipeline, which moves gasoline from Texas to Southeastern United States. The attack shut down the pipeline for a few days, leading to brief fuel shortages in affected states.

This list makes it clear that this is a real problem that we should take seriously. But overall I found this list reassuring. Even if A.I. makes attacks like this 100 times more common and 10 times more damaging in the coming years, they would still be a nuisance rather than an existential threat.

Middelsteadt points out that the good guys will be able to use A.I. to find and fix vulnerabilities in their systems. Beyond that, it would be a good idea to make sure that computers controlling physical infrastructure like power plants and pipelines are not directly connected to the internet. Middelsteadt argues that safety-critical systems should be “air gapped”: made to run on a physically separate network under the control of human workers located on site.

This principle is particularly important for military hardware. One of the most plausible existential risks from A.I. is a literal Skynet scenario where we create increasingly automated drones or other killer robots and the control systems for these eventually go rogue or get hacked. Militaries should take precautions to make sure that human operators maintain control over drones and other military assets.

Last fall, the U.S. military publicly committed not to put A.I. in control of nuclear weapons. Hopefully other nuclear-armed powers will do the same.

Notably, these are all precautions we ought to be taking whether or not we think attacks by rogue AIs is an imminent problem. Even if superintelligent A.I. never tries to hack our critical infrastructure, it’s likely that terrorists and foreign governments will.

Over the longer term, we should keep the threat of rogue A.I.s in mind as we decide whether and how to automate parts of the economy. For example, at some point we will likely have the ability to make our cars fully self-driving. This will have significant benefits, but it could also increase the danger from misaligned A.I.

Maybe it’s possible to lock down self-driving cars so they are provably not vulnerable to hacking. Maybe these vehicles should have “manual override” options where a human passenger can shut down the self-driving system and take the wheel. Or maybe locking down self-driving cars is impossible and we’ll ultimately want to limit how many self-driving cars we put on the road.

Robots today are neither numerous nor sophisticated enough to be of much use to a superintelligent A.I. bent on world domination. But that could change in the coming decades. If more sophisticated and autonomous robots become commercially viable, we’ll want to think carefully about whether deploying them will make our civilization more vulnerable to misaligned A.I.

The bottom line is that it seems easier to minimize the harm a superintelligent A.I. can do than to prevent rogue A.I. systems from existing at all. If superintelligent A.I. is possible, then some of those A.I.s will have harmful goals, just as every human society has a certain number of criminals. But as long as human beings remain firmly in control of assets in the physical world, it’s going to be hard for a hostile A.I. to do too much damage.

0 notes

jeffstincotingz · 2 years ago

Text

Oh. My. Gosh!!!!! Look at what I just found right here:

Here, as you can see, Jeff Stinco is listed on the website called OnThisDay.com, where they have listed him under the August 22, 1978 section underneath "Famous Birthdays".

Sometimes between 2018 or 2019, On This Day listed James Corden next to Jeff Stinco, who is still in the "Famous Birthdays" section for August 22, 1978, and I am supposed to be okay with that? This is not right at all.

Here are the people born on August 22, 1975. Jeff Stinco isn't even listed here, for crying out loud!

Here, they made Jeff's name go up in terms of popularity between him and James Corden. At least they knew something they didn't know about. But they still went ahead and made his year of birth/age incorrect!

Here is a full length version of famous people who were born in August 1975, and Jeff Stinco is not even listed on there, he's listed on the August 1978 section instead! What the firetruck?????

This isn't even funny. This isn't even that funny. This is not funny at all! Is On This Day joking? Do these people know that this is a game? I'm really angry about this. They literally put Jeff Stinco and James Corden right next to each other on the August 22, 1978 section on their website. You can't just put this iconic pop punk king next to some loser who does carpool karaokes for a living on his talk show and who can't act to save his life like that! That's not how it works around here, On This Day!

Here, in the world of Jeff Stinco, you have to at least fucking try to get his year of birth and his age correctly right. 1978 is not the year he was born in!

Jeff Stinco was born in 1975, meaning that he was born around the same time as Charlize Theron (who was born sixteen days before Jeff) and Rodrigo Santoro!

He was not born around the same time as James Corden and Kobe Bryant!

Jeff Stinco and James Corden don't even belong together, and I wouldn't want to believe that a beautiful angelic man like Jeff, would be born around the same time as some slimy slimeball talk show host!

Now what if I changed every single website and told everybody that Jeff Stinco was born in 1975 and that he should've been a Grammy winner, a Oscar winner, a Emmy winner, and also even a Tony winner, to make him become a EGOT at 47 years old?

Now that is some comedy gold right there.

Because Jeff Stinco, Charlize Theron, Sara Ramirez, Mbali Gasa, Sheree Murphy, Shelly Cole, Vera Jordanova, Daniella van Graas, Stéphanie Szostak, Eliza Carthy, Shaniqua Miles, Chynna Clugston Flores, Eicca Toppinen, Kyle Cook, Nick Loeb, Rodrigo Santoro, Casey Affleck, Taika Waititi, Mandy Leigh, Ingrid Rubio, Aryiro Strataki, Chris Nevin, N.D. Kalu, Trevor Pryce, Andy Hallett, Beau Morgan, Kaipo Spenser, Antony Cotton, Jamie McGonnigal, Renate Götschl, Rik Platvoet, Victor Zambrano, Alshermond Singleton, Edgar Renteria, Jimmy van Fessem, Koray Candemir, Jeremy Scott, Mahesh Babu, Mathew James Coad, Mike Lamb, Lise Mackie, Davey von Bohlen, Ronald Clarke, Anders Myrvold, Paul Gaudoin, Raegan Scott, Regan Upshaw, James Carpinello, Jason Gleasman, Joe Perry, Shoaib Akhtar, Mike Vrabel, Viaceslav Ivanovski, Bertrand Berry, Vijay Bharadwaj, Didier Agathe, Felicia Zimmermann, George Stults, İlhan Mansız, Simon Katich, Marcus Mastin, Marianne Garvey, Tracie Thoms, Alicia Witt, Charles Cornelius Smith, Clint Bolton, Robert Enes, Joe Andruzzi, Mark de Vries, Jeremy Horn, Molly Tuter, Petria Thomas, Morgan Ensberg, Shea Seals, Jonny Moseley, Mark Rudan, Gareth Farrelly, Jamie Cureton, Dante Basco, Radhi Jaïdi, Takahiro Suwa, Daniel Harding, James Black, Gaahl, Mase, and Mineiro all share the same birthday month and year as each other.

August 1975.

Is when these people were born.

That.

Just that.

That alone is literally funny.

Jeff Stinco and 81 other famous people were all born on August 1975.

It's way better than just putting Jeff's name up with people like James Corden, Kobe Bryant, Jess Margera, Kel Mitchell, Amber Brkich, and Countess Vaughn, and then claiming that he was born on August 1978, just like them, but he is not.

Holy Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Girmante Vaikute, I am so angry right now. I am so angry at these people and these websites not knowing who Jeff Stinco is and what year he was born in.

If James Corden ever starts doing a carpool karaoke episode with Jeff Stinco when he finally comes back to singing again on his talk show, I will lose my shit at this and there will be h-e-double hockey sticks to pay.

How dare you compare Jeff to that loser who is not a good actor, who is not a good comedian, his jokes are not even that funny, and oh, should I say this, he is terrible to his fans too, may I should say it again for once though?

I got anger management issues about three different things all at once: Jeff Stinco's year of birth and his age not being right by people, images and videos of Britney Spears attending the premiere of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood still being there on her name to this very exact day, and men with beards having no more than over 100,000 tweets to their names on Twitter and they are the ones who are child sex predators who does bad things to children. Those are the real things I am disgruntled about.

You're in a world into not being a Stinc Icon, On This Day. Screw your "accuracies" if you can't get Jeff's age right!

Make Jeff Stinco a singer again, On This Day. You'll get it right soon, you know? And he will get his singing career back and live his life in peace, thank you very much for reading this and goodbye ;)

#jeff stinco #jeff stinco deserves better #make jeff stinco a singer again #fuck james corden #james corden sucks #jeff stinco and james corden don't go well together #fuck you on this day for messing up jeff stinco's year of birth and his age!!!

1 note · View note