Author: greenman3610

David Bellamy is an Infrastructure Engineer for agentic training and a Harvard PhD Statistician, that I follow on X.
I hope he doesn’t mind that I quote him verbatim here.

David Bellamy on X:

I must be among an extremely small group of people (n=1?) that have both 1) trained a frontier LLM and 2) designed and synthesized custom viruses in a lab with my own two hands.

And I think that the takes on AI killing us all by creating dangerous viruses is total bogus.
Could an LLM propose a viral genome to synthesize? Sure. Could it be synthesize-able? Sure. Could it be infectious? Sure, it could just be a replica or a slight modification of a viral genome we already know.

This really isn’t the bottleneck to creating dangerous viruses. The bottleneck is in the physical process of synthesizing a virus and the equipment/goods needed to do so.
Designing a virus that can evade all forms of pandemic counterdefense is not something that a ‘genius in a datacenter’ can do. This is something that requires contact with the physical world and iteration.
Let me steelman the fearmongering as much as I can. Imagine a ‘fully automated’ viral synthesis laboratory. I’m talking automated freezers, automated cell culture room, the whole nine yards. This would be an extremely expensive lab – >>$100M. And there is no such thing as 1 lab that can synthesize all conceivable viruses. But let’s put practical constraint aside. Let’s suppose this hypothetical lab is built to synthesize the ‘most dangerous types’ of viruses known.

Continue reading “How Likely is an AI Built Pandemic?”

The Three Laws of Robots, presented to be from the fictional “Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D.” by Isaac Asimov, are:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law

—
Recent events have made the 2004 Will Smith sci-fi thriller “I, Robot” a stealth hit on streaming.

There should probably be a corollary list for Action stars, –

“I will not stride on to the stage and slap the shit out of the MC at an Academy Award show.”

The New Normal is Nothing is Normal anymore.

New York Times:

A half-marathon race on Sunday in Paramus, N.J., nearly turned disastrous, as heavy rainfall flooded parts of the course and forced runners to wade through several feet of water.

No injuries were reported, but several runners posted videos to social media showing them traversing knee-deep waters throughout the course at Saddle River Park. The entire area had been placed under a flash flood warning on Sunday, and the organization behind the race, Racefaster, was criticized for going forward with the event despite those warnings.

Racefaster did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.

The race was supposed to start at 8 a.m., but organizers on Saturday opted to delay the half-marathon by two hours.

Samantha Spitaletta, a Bloomfield, N.J., resident who has run dozens of half-marathons, said it was already raining heavily when the race started. She said an organizer informed the runners to be aware of “ankle-deep water” in an early section of the course.

Continue reading “Runners Face Waist Deep Water”

BBC:

US President Donald Trump has said fears about the safety of artificial intelligence (AI) are a “hoax”, as he criticised calls to have more guardrails in place for the fast-moving technology.

It comes after Jack Clark, co-founder of AI giant Anthropic, told the BBCthat a “kill switch” that can be checked by a third party may need to be mandatory for the industry.

Clark’s comments followed warnings about the risks the technology poses to humanity that have been raised in recent days by several executives and staff at leading AI firms.

Those concerns triggered a selloff in tech firms’ shares as investors weighed the impact of a potential slowdown in the multi-billion dollar development of AI.

In a series of social media posts, the US president compared warnings about AI to the “Global Warming Scam” which, he said, was “being perpetrated by the Radical Left Dumocrats”.

Trump also called himself “the Hoax Buster”, likening concerns about the safety of the technology to what he called “the RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA HOAX”.

Continue reading “Good News! AI Dangers are a Hoax, Like Climate Change!”

Fucking great.
This’ll get your election mojo pumping.

That’s gotta hurt.

Yahoo:

Costco has raised the price of its Kirkland Signature full-synthetic motor oil and begun limiting how much any one member can purchase, as a global lubricant shortage tied to the ongoing Middle East conflict pushes crude oil toward $100 a barrel.

That 10-quart case — two 5-quart bottles, enough for a typical V6 or V8 oil change — has jumped to $57.99, compared with the roughly $30 price members had grown accustomed to paying, according to The Drive. Stores are capping purchases at two units per customer per week. The retailer has also imposed a five-per-member limit on Mobil 1, with six quarts of that brand running $44.

UPDATE: Mr Global weighs in. Matt Randolph (aka Mr Global) is an experienced founder of Oil and Gas companies, now a YouTuber.

This is bad. https://t.co/6kQC7wl62M

— Michael E. Webber (@MichaelEWebber) September 15, 2026

The Crisis, long warned, is here.
Be patient, we’re killing as fast as we can.

Wall Street Journal:

American oil executives warned for months that the prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz was bound to cause a fuel crisis. Now, they say it is here. 

Commercial fuel stocks around the world have been depleting for more than six months, and strategic crude reserves can’t be tapped much further. Attacks last week shut down a crucial crude pipeline in Saudi Arabia that bypassed the Strait, stranding at least 2.5 million barrels a day from an already tight global oil market, analysts estimate.

“All these mechanisms helped to mitigate the price and supply risk,” Chevron CVX Chief Executive Mike Wirth said Friday at an energy conference in Austin, Texas. “Those have largely now played out, and we don’t have nearly the buffers in the system that we did when it began.”

Continue reading “Oil Execs: Crisis is Here”

Ill considered Iran War continues to reveal how vulnerable global economies are in their dependence on fossil fuels.
A generation of business and political leaders are internalizing this message, and making plans accordingly.

CNBC:

Crude oil prices jumped Monday after Saudi Arabia closed its critical pipeline that bypasses the Strait of Hormuz, a disruption that will constrain global supplies at a time when the market is already tight.

Drones launched from Iraq damaged the East-West pipeline on Thursday, forcing the Saudi government to close the key crude oil artery. Riyadh has not disclosed how badly the pipeline is damaged or how long it will remain shut. 

“The relatively contained price reaction suggests the market still expects Saudi inventories to cushion exports in the near term, but if the disruption extends beyond the five-to-seven-day inventory cushion, that could change quickly,” said Janiv Shah, an oil market analyst at Rystad Energy, in a Monday note.

A pump station appears to have taken serious damage, said Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates. Riyadh may be able to bypass the pump and restart the pipeline with lower output, Lipow said. This is why prices have not surged even higher, he said.

“The longer the shutdown, the higher the price. Judging from the on-line pictures, it will take months to repair,” Lipow said in a note Monday.

Continue reading “Oil Prices Still not Reflecting Reality”

Watch this space.

Toldya. They need a bailout.
They must not get one. https://t.co/aTfrku2tt0

— Jim Stewartson, Decelerationist 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@jimstewartson) September 13, 2026

Continue reading “Listen to this: Corrective to the AI Panic”

The Trump administration’s arbitrary and corrupt “emergency” orders to keep obsolete, polluting coal plants burning is, like the hideous “Ball Room” monstrosity, yet another example of the rampant corruption siphoning money directly from ratepayer and taxpayer pockets to the accounts of banksters, gangsters and the big donor Epstein class.
Finally, a Court has said Hell No.

New York Times:

A federal appeals court on Friday struck down an order from the Trump administration that forced a coal plant in Michigan to stay open past its scheduled retirement date — dealing a blow to President Trump’s efforts to promote the coal industry.

For more than a year, the Energy Department has ordered the J.H. Campbell coal plant in West Olive, Michigan, to keep running despite its plans to close in May 2025, citing an “energy emergency.”

On Friday, a three-judge panel at the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the administration overstepped in its use of emergency powers.

The Michigan plant is one of several coal plants that the Energy Department has forced to stay open using emergency orders under a provision of the Federal Power Act. The provision had been used by previous administrations for only a few days at a time during extreme weather events.

Continue reading “Court Strikes Down Trump’s Beautiful Coal Ball Room”