You Want Skynet? This Is How You Get Skynet!

Yes Yes Yes

I know Your Humble Scribe was yarking and barking yesteryon about how he wasn't worried about sinister sentient AI taking over, because of the inbuilt ineptness of the tracking algorithms that it uses.

     Hmmmmm well, I did come across food for thought later in the day, in the literal and metaphorical sense of the word.  Art!

     It seems that there is a shortage of agricultural labourers on farms in Israel, which is a nuisance because then all the fruit is going to rot on the trees, or the ground, and this is no minor problem; fruit harvested late, even if not rotten, loses up to 80% of it's value.

     So, in an attempted work-around, some bright spark in Israel come up with the idea of using tethered drones to harvest fruit.  Hail to the Tevel Aerobotics Technology's 'Flying Autonomous Robots' and bow down to your prospective steel and plastic overlords.  Art!

     The creepy mechanical fruit-pickers utilise AI to determine how ripe a fruit it, whether it's blemished or skanky and thus not fit for sale, and how best to twist it off the fruit tree's branches.  They also provide a host of data analytics that farmers will be able to parse to find out where fruit grows best, which bits need more irrigation, any pest or disease problems, etcetera.  Because they are tethered, they can be kept fully charged via the cable connection, thus flying hours aren't restricted.

    As was also pointed out, farmers can whip these FARs into action 24/7/365, or perhaps 24/7/329, with one day off in ten for maintenance and repair.  They can work in darkness or rain, don't complain, take days off sick or turn up hungover on Monday morning.  Art!

     Tevel were a start-up and are now a serious business with contracts and work in Europe and South Canada.  Your next batch of apples, nectarines, peaches or apricots may indeed be untouched by human hands - until they get into your grubby little paws.

    As I warn in the title, this kind of cybernetic substitution is very much the thin end of the wedge.  Very soon it'll be F-35s being flown by AI with a perfect operational record, so don't come to me when it all ends in tears.

You Ought To Know Conrad By Now

Never one to let his idle curiosity sit by and simmer, I came across a screensaver picture this afternoon that piqued my interest.  Art!

     This bucolic spot was said to be False Bay, in South Africa, and it immediately caught my attention, because how on earth do people get to those homes on the hillside?  There are tracks running between them, but there's no visible road, nor a jetty for boats or other marine traffic.

     So, inevitably, I had to look closer and determine the proper layout of the bay.  Art!

    The only place where the beach arcs round and there's no road at the water's edge is that bit at lower port, and if we can get Art to put down his bowl of coal -

     I wonder if this is the relevant bit?  

     Incidentally, that town in the upper picture, 'Stellenbosch', was where British officer's careers went to die in the Boer Unpleasantness.  If you made a bodge of it in the field, you got shunted off to Stellenbosch, to be forgotten about as you ferociously sharpened pencils and counted bulldog clips.

Enough Common Sense!  Bring On The Polish Film Posters!

Don't fret if you're not at all keen on these unsettling and disturbing bits of artwork, we are coming to the end of them and you'll be able to sleep easily at night.  Art!

     This is the art for "Heads And Tails" which means nothing to me.  To judge by the colour palette this may be connected with South Canadian politics, perhaps?  I'd better go check, hadn't I?

     The internet was no help.  It might be a Ruffian black comedy, or it might be a film about women selling Turkish hair to buyers in Tel Aviv.

     Ah!  Nope, it's a native Polish product, about a criminal released from prison in 1954 who tries to go straight.  Wow.  Sounds bleak.

"City In The Sky"

The Doctor and Ace are prowling nervously amongst the shuttered and shattered shops of Tottenham Court Road, utterly alone in an apparently deserted city.

     ‘Still not a sound,’ mused the Doctor.  The unsettling silence wasn’t novel for him.  Six lifetimes ago he’d arrived here with Ian and Barbara and Susan, to a similar solemnity, and again with Sarah when he’d come back from medieval Wessex.  There had even been the city’s evacuation when the Great Intelligence and its Yeti surrogates forced the government’s hand, when he’d been fighting in the London Tube system’s claustrophobic confines.  The question now on his mind was, had something bad happened already or was it still due to happen?

     With a grunt of recognition he saw the Tube Station, bringing back memories of being trapped there a long time ago.  It’s splendidly elaborate Victorian façade hadn’t been altered, and the signage was low-key.  The grilles dragged across to seal the entrance –

     ‘Hmmm.  Let’s look a bit closer at the station, Ace.’

     Up close, the damage he suspected proved to have been a physical assault on the lock by a blunt instrument, an attack that had shattered it and allowed persons unknown to get inside.  That they then bothered to close the grille again meant that they didn’t want to be discovered.

     ‘Prof, I think I heard an engine,’ said Ace, unable to be certain.

     The Time Lord dragged the security gate open and gestured her inside, then closed the grille.  He set off inside, whistling mock-birdsong.  

     Hmmm not a move I'd make, Doc.  Poking about a deserted and dimly-lit Tube station?  No thanks!

Step into my parlour ...

     Actually I think I'm a victim of the march of time, the facade has been updated.  Perhaps by 2045 they'll have reverted to the Victorian version?

     Time to put the oven on, I've got an appointment with a pair of veggieburgers.

Just To Salt The Wound A Little ...

Today is the debut of "Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning", which certain people who detest the latest iteration of Indy are positively gloating about.  They have a point; MI is a consistently successful franchise, a reliable tentpole summer blockbuster.  Now that it's on release, one suspects the box office for Indy V will immediately dry up.

     FYI, the total global take for Indy V now stands at $240 million, evenly split between domestic South Canadian audiences as the rest of the world.  Art!

A serious possibility

     I know what you're thinking: "WOW!  $240 million - that's a lot of money!"

     Not for a film that needs to make three times that amount in order to merely break even.  Well, I know one person who's laughing.  Art!

     I've been getting my box office money figures from "Box Office Mojo" and their totals are usually a couple of days behind, so we'll not get to see Tom's take until later this week.

Finally -

I had a couple of sly items here on the blog recently about some of the lesser satellites that circulate around Citizen Trump and how they'd experienced classic hubris that the ancient Greeks would wisely nod at and say "Yep, well deserved."

     In terms of deserts, one particular Ruffian got a far harsher meting out than either Steve Bannon or Rudy Rudy Rudy.  Art!

     This particular excrescence commanded one of the Black Sea flotilla's missile submarines, used to exclusively bombard civilian Ukrainian targets with Kalibr cruise missiles.  Until today, when he was shot dead whilst out on a jog.  O dear.  How sad.  

    Anyway, time for those veggieburgers!