And when this country is gone, almost like it's a foregone conclusion. And when this country is gone, what are you talking about, Trump? The world is getting crazier. People are acting more and more insane.
The end of the world is tomorrow, tomorrow. There's only one thing to do when the world is moving hard. Listen to Basil and Gondas, they discuss this. We can't even advance through the lens of Bible prophecy.
We want to listen to the new Grand News Tour. You're listening to Canary Grind News, Doc. Today is August 21st, 2020. This is episode 234, 234.
And today, cyborg locusts. You know me. I'm your best buddy Basil. And this is Gondas.
Welcome back to another episode, trying to livestream, always getting throttled. You know, this is so far so good. And it's hard to speed. How are the speeds looking today?
Uh, it's okay. 3,800 kilobytes per second. Not great. But maybe if I put on this chapstick, it'll speed things up.
There we go. Yeah. All right. Well, any, anything new in the world of Gonz0?
I think I pulled a back muscle getting out of the car and I feel really old. I didn't do anything. No quick movements, nothing. I just turned out of my car and back muscle spazzle or something.
The old, the old man syndrome. Yeah, it's one of those things that made me feel old. And then, you know, I look in the mirror and I start seeing the gray hairs and it's, uh, good times. Yeah, that's a good time.
Yeah. I was, I was helping a buddy, um, replace a roof on an RV a couple days ago and, uh, the blue, the, the, I know, well, yeah, it was a lot more than we expected. Yeah, it was hot. It was smoky.
We were up there in the sun. It was brutal. And, uh, we've, we figured out why a professional RV repair person, you know, charges about five grand more than what, uh, what we put into this one. Um, it was a tough job and I'm still covered in glue.
Uh, I can't get this glue off guns. Yeah, I know. So I have this sort of exoskeleton of glue all over my legs and arms. I couldn't get it off.
I can't wash it off. I can't, I mean, I haven't tried any like industrial solvents or anything, but I, uh, I ended up having to not shave, but to clip some arm and leg hair off to get all this glue off of me. Just get a razor, you know, just go for it. Just go full swim team.
Yep. Yeah. Shave the whole, you can just tell your friends, you know, I was going to go for a, some water records. This is to shave off a hundredth of a second and learned it from Michael Phelps.
No, not yet, but there you go. So I'm just covered in glue, still smoky out here, still hot. And it's just the world we live in now. Awesome.
Excellent. All right. Well, we have a lot of things to get to, not a lot of time. Yeah.
Yeah. It's going to be a little bit shorter of a show. Oh, I do want to give a good reason for that though. We were going to try to get started closer to noon, but there was sort of a personal emergency that came up.
So, uh, we're getting started a little bit later and a little bit shorter of a show, but we're here. We're making it happen. So let's get right into it. Guns with that flippy update.
Sleeping on the day. Do you want to ride with that? Okay. Doki everybody.
So we're talking about flippy. If you don't know, Flippy is the colloquial name for the disembodied robot arms that are taking our jobs, enslaving our children and flirting with our spouses. We use it as a conversation to, uh, you know, talk about robots and AI and how they're taking over the world. And we got to keep a close eye on those little rascals.
Today, I'm coming at you from digitaltrends.com. And this, uh, headline is Facebook's new embodied AI project aims to build a new breed of robots. So great. Yeah.
Oh, Facebook. Before you start, I forgot to add the extra elements to the jingle, which is. Did you ever have the feeling that you were being watched? There we go.
That feels right. Yeah. That feels right. But all right.
And the article reads, Facebook wants to build an army of robot assistants that can wait on us in all kinds of new ways. Well, kind of. In fact, Facebook AI research, the artificial intelligence research wing of the social networking titan is hard at work on developing what it calls embodied AI. That will go way beyond the abilities of present day voice interfaces, like Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant by carrying out tasks that allow them to operate in a physical environment.
While most people think of AI agents as being disembodied chatbots, Facebook AI aims to change this by building systems that can perceive an act in the real world. Quote, we are still far from these capabilities, but you can imagine scenarios like asking a home robot. Can you go check if my laptop is on the desk? If so, bring it to me or the robot hearing a thud coming from somewhere upstairs and going to investigate where it is and what it is, Christine Grouman, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin, who also works as research scientist at Facebook AI research, told Digital Trends.
While Facebook's end goal may be a way off and has already made impressive progress. On Friday, Facebook showed off some new work it had, it has been doing, such as sound spaces, an audio simulation tool that can produce realistic audio rendering based on room geometry, materials, and more. This could be used to help future AI assistants understand how sound works in the physical world. Another tool is an indoor mapping system, great, that could allow robots to better navigate unexplored terrain.
To be clear, this research isn't just about building a physical robot version of AI assistants. The bots Facebook is working on may also be able to sit on smart glasses. Imagine a next, next, next-gen version of Microsoft's Clippy Avatar, but with many more contextual smarts, I almost said farts, many more contextual smarts and understanding than present generation AI assistants. For example, Facebook engineers want users to be able to ask questions like, where did I leave my keys or what was the dessert we had at the restaurant on Friday night and receive accurate responses?
That means researching and developing capabilities for embodied AI agents, such as creating and storing memories, navigating from one place to another, understanding gravity and other reasoning about the world, planning next steps and decoding dynamic human activities. Facebook isn't necessarily the first company you think of when it comes to AI assistants, but it doesn't presently have one as ubiquitous as those made by Apple, Amazon, or Google. But it and its founder have certainly explored this area before. Back in 2016, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that he was building an AI capable of running his home.
It seems those ambitions have rubbed off on the other people at Facebook. If they weren't there before, that is quote, Facebook AI is a leader in many of the subfields that embodied AI encompasses spanning computer vision, language understanding, robotics, reinforcement learning, curiosity and self supervision and more drove Bachelorette professor at the Georgia Tech College of Computing and Research Scientist at Facebook's AI research, told Digital Trends, quote, it's a significant feat to make advances in each of these subfields individually and combining them in innovative ways enables us to push the field of AI even further. Fix, fix, fix books, collaborators on these various projects include the University of Texas at Austin, University of Illinois, Georgia Tech and Oregon State. So there you go, gone soon.
You will have your household assistant robots embodied rolling around your house and just for good measure, we're going to connect it to Facebook so they can gather up all the possible information they can about your life and use it against you in advertising and other spy spying ways. This is like Zuckerberg's million eyes in your home just watching everything and then you're going to yell at it be like, Zuckerberg, get out of here, you evil person and he's going to go, I'm not capable of hatred. The audacity of Mark Zuckerberg and he's done this over and over, but the audacity of like, yes, we collect all of your information and sell it and use it and sell it to Cambridge Analytica and abuse, you know, all of the information that we gather from your life. But don't worry, we're not going to do that with our team, our army of robots inside your home.
It's all going to be fine. Don't ask questions. Is this, okay, so is this supposed to help you? I guess if you're remote, if you're in the office and you forgot your coffee cup at home, it's like, oh, robot AI, Facebook, overlord, did I forget my coffee cup on the counter there?
I mean, these examples are so mundane. Or if it's in the other room, get up and go look, you know what I mean? Like, why do you need AI assistance to go get it for you or to see if you actually left it there? I just, I know.
Because guns, we're going to turn in, we have to turn into, you know, the wall-y, pudgy, squishy humans and floating chairs. We can't be going into the next room to find our own coffee. Getting up and walking around with nonsense is this. This is a little disturbing, Gons.
There's 66 viewers on Twitch. Actually, six, seven. Yes. So, okay, good.
I was going to say we need some more people to head over to the Twitter. Twitch channel to get us off that number that we need to watch out for. But there you go. There's your Flippy Update.
Watch out. Facebook's coming for you in your own home. Excellent. Well, we have a few updates here to get to.
And we'll get through them fairly quickly here. We are here. The first update was a headline I saw this morning. 30-degree completion of the Gregor.
And also, Burn It All, which I should have ready here. But I don't. So, Burn It All. Of course, California is burning.
And the headline here, at least five people have died. And 33 are injured as major wildfires burn through parts of California. Wow. It was just a matter of time before we got that signal.
Yeah. And it's interesting because, of course, every other number mentioned here is surrounded, you know, the five, of course, is the number dead. But then about 175,000 people, very rounded, have been ordered to vacuate from their homes in Northern California after fires burn through more than 350,000 acres according to CAL FIRE. 175 structures, including homes have been destroyed and around 50,000 more are at risk.
The fires come after a heat wave in the mid-COVID-19 pandemic. But yeah, 33 injured. There's no reason to even mention that. But yeah, maybe there is a reason.
With all the fires and the smoke, you know, they are recommending you stay in your home because the air quality is not great. Yeah. You know, there's just another reason to not to comply. Yeah.
Obey. Obey. Obey. Stay in your cage.
Stay inside, Obey. Yeah. Yeah. We also have an update from something we talked about in the last episode.
Yeah. Don't stay alive. Can we shoot them down if over a property drones? Yeah.
And this is DefenseOne.com. And AI just beat a human F-16 pilot in a dogfight again. In five rounds, an artificially intelligent agent showed that it could outshoot other AIs and a human. So what happens next with the AI in air combat?
I thought this was about the whole thing we reported on last time, but maybe it's not. But let's double check your never ending saga of machines outperforming humans has a new chapter. An AI algorithm has again beaten a human fighter pilot in a virtual dogfight. The contest was the finale of the US military's Alpha Dogfight Challenge, an effort to demonstrate the feasibility of developing effective intelligence autonomous agents capable of defeating adversary aircraft in a dogfight.
Last August, DARPA, selected eight teams ranging from large traditional defense contractors like Lockheed Martin to small groups like Heron Systems to compete in a series of trials in November and January. In the final on Thursday, so it is the same one, Heron Systems emerged as a victor against the seven other teams after two days of old school dogfights going after each other using nose aimed guns only. Heron then faced off against a human fighter pilot sitting in a simulator and wearing a virtual reality helmet and won five rounds to zero. Oh, yeah.
The other winner in Thursday's event was deep reinforcement learning where an artificial intelligence algorithms get to try out a task in a virtual environment over and over again, sometimes very quickly until they develop something like understanding, something like understanding. Deep reinforcement plays a key role in Heron Systems' agent as well as Lockheed Martin's the second runner up and it goes on here a little bit more. But so there you go Basil, the AI one and I thought this was happening in real life in the air, but I guess it's just a simulation. I know they try to sneak that in at the very end.
It's much more exciting to think that it's actually happening. But yeah, there you go. AI's out did the pilots. How do we know that the AI didn't manipulate the physics within the virtual reality to take advantage of it?
You know what? We don't. We don't know that. No, we could know that.
Nobody could know. So there you go. AI fighter pilots just giving more credence to the idea that we don't need to drive our cars, the AI can do it for us and also pick up our keys according to Zuck and AI takeover is real. I'm getting into a new age.
Yeah, new age. I should have that ready to go, the whole Trump new age thing. Do I have it? Do I have it?
No, not ready. Last enough. Next up we have a story here. Did you ever have the feeling that you were being whacked?
This is NDSMCobserver.com. University to launch surveillance testing Friday. Surveillance testing on the Notre Dame student body will begin Friday. And email from the university COVID-19 response unit said Thursday.
Can you imagine all these universities having a COVID-19 response unit? It's pretty ridiculous. Quote, surveillance testing involves testing a random selection of people from across campus to identify asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic individuals and help avert potential outbreaks before they occur. The email said if a student is randomly selected to be tested, they will receive a text message the day prior to their appointment informing them of the date and time they should report to the university testing center once at the UTC students will be directed in a line specifically marked for surveillance.
Afterwards students are to return to their housing unit and await test results. Students who test positive are required to contact the COVID-19 response unit. Faculty and staff will be included in surveillance testing after the program is launched. So there you go.
Anyone going to Notre Dame university there? The Fighting Irish. You guys are all just a bunch of rats, lab rats. I do know somebody who goes there.
I should check in with them. You should. You should put a mouse on the ground report. Yeah.
It was the the apologist that was a professor there. I don't know if he's still a professor there, but I don't know. What was his name? Alvin Plentinga.
I think was his name. I don't know if he's still there, but there you go. A student apologist? Yes.
It's a very good one too. All right. So there you go. Notre Dame.
I'm sure this is just modeling what's to come to most universities out there. One more quick update here. But as the days of nowhere, social also becoming the son of Mandy. Type O.
Uh oh. This is a fun type o alert because it's not a typo within the article per se in gadgets.com. A typo created a 212 story monolith in Microsoft flight simulator. Whoa.
The building saw is like a tower of Babel over a quiet Melbourne suburb. Microsoft's latest flight simulator entry doesn't do anything small. It's a title that comes on 10 DVDs and allows you to explore the world in almost its entirety. It turns out that scale even extends to its accidental inclusions.
Flight simulator users recently found an unusual landmark, a 212 story monolith towering over an otherwise nondescript suburb in Melbourne, Australia. There's a picture here. It looks like it looks pretty ridiculous actually. But it goes on here after some sleuthing the title titles community found.
What it caused the tower to appear in flight simulator when developer Asobo studio built its detailed creation of the globe. They pulled data from the open street map, a free map of the world to which anyone can contribute. About a year ago, a user named Nathan Wright 120 added a tag that said this one building in Melbourne had 212 floors instead of two. Based on their other contribution, it appears the edit was a simple typo, not them trying to mislead anyone.
It was later corrected by another open street map contributor, but not before it made its way into flight simulator. We've reached out to Microsoft to find out if the company plans to remove the building from flight simulator. We've updated this article about Asobo. There you go, but pretty funny how this ginormous tower appeared out of nowhere.
It appeared out of nowhere and that they would call it and gadget would reference it as soaring like a tower of battle in this. That's so funny. You know that we got a little note in the chat there that we had a last minute piece of art coming to the email. You can grab that when you get the chance.
It's funny. Everybody's talking about this Microsoft flight simulator thing. Of course, it's a little disturbing. I don't know a little hesitation there because at least in the official story, the 9-11 hijackers had apparently done some training on the version of Microsoft flight simulator that existed at the time.
I don't know if that was ever redacted or not. This seems like something that they wouldn't want on the books, but that was part of the conversation at the time. But I like to keep an eye on what the young people are doing, what the trends are, the social media memes. And recently, since this Microsoft flight simulator came out, there's been a meme going around that I read this morning about the new way to cyber bully people is you fly a plane.
So basically Microsoft flight simulator, the maps are based on Google maps. So you can actually find your own house on the flight simulator. I guess the new cyber bullying is you fly a plane into somebody's house on the flight simulator and you send them a picture of it. It's just pretty threatening.
But it's all in good fun. I guess we've had enough time between 9-11 and now that you can see the new game. You can actually make jokes about flying planes into people's houses. That's all I had about that.
Fun. So there you go. Super high tower. The kids, man.
Yeah. So that's the one thing that's really interesting about us creating or contributing to the virtual workspace or virtual mirror of the real world. Anything we mistakenly put in there, it's going to replicate and it's going to be in there. And I just think it's kind of funny.
The human error is not eliminated with this process and with the onset of everything going block, block chain. It's going to be even more important that we don't make mistakes because once it's on the block chain, you can't change it. And if you have certain information that's a mistake and it's on there forever, you can amend it, Gons. You can amend it.
51% attack. Your blockchain alarmism has no place here. Yeah. You've got to take over half the computer network.
Okay. I want to give one quick spare of the moment update here. Okay. I do want to let everybody know in case there's anybody listening who is planning on becoming a producer, the producer list for today is very short.
So if you want to come in last minute and bolster that producer list, become a producer for today's show, now's the time to do it. We've got a couple articles before the break. So if you want to become a, you know, join the short list of producers for today's show, you can head to patreon.com slash CCNT or you can go to canarycraideradio.com slash support. Join up, help support the show.
It's the only way we keep doing what we're doing. But you got a few minutes. If you're thinking about becoming a producer, today is a great day to do it. And we'll pop those links into the chat in case you need a little shortcut there.
Again, that's patreon.com slash CCNT or canarycraideradio.com slash support. Okay, let's jump into our first official story, Gons. Are you ready? I'm ready.
Here we go. I don't think it's a coincidence, Gons, that are wakchine jingle. I always think it's saying blockchain. That's your problem, bro.
There might be something there. Got blockchain on the brain, I guess. All right. This is coming from Fox 10 Phoenix dot com, a local Fox affiliate down there in Phoenix in the article is headlined Pope Francis says rich can't get priority for vaccine.
Poor need help. Okay, let's see what he's got to say about this. Oh, he froze up right as we were. He was about to read.
Are you still there? Oh, oh, oh, I'm going to go ahead and read the article while I figure out vassels to my is on this episode. I don't know if he's going to realize that he's not on until later. Pope Francis on Wednesday warned against any prospect that rich people would get priority for a coronavirus vaccine.
Quote, the pandemic is a crisis. You don't come out of it the same. Either better or worse, Francis said adding improvised remarks in his planned speech for his weekly public audience. You there we go.
Dude, we have got to upgrade your hardware over there or something. I don't know. Yeah, well, yeah, we'll see something something. I know.
Okay. Here we go. All right. So I was going to read the whole thing over again because I was worried.
Where'd you get? I got to the quote where he says we must come out better from the COVID-19 pandemic. The Pope said that's right. After the COVID-19 pandemic, the Pope said the world can't return to normality.
You have normal means social injustice and degradation of the natural environment. Francis said, quote, how sad it would be for the COVID-19 vaccine priority as given to the richest. The quote continues. It would be sad if this vaccine were to become the property of this nation or another rather than universal and for all the pontiff added without indicating any particular country.
He also said it would be scandalous if all the economic assistance in the works. Most of it using public funds ends up reviving industries that don't help the poor or the environment. Quote, the pandemic has laid bare the difficult situation of the poor and the great inequality that rains in this world. The Pope said in his speech and the virus while it doesn't take exceptions among persons has found its path devastating great inequalities and discrimination, Francis said, adding, and it has increased them throughout the pandemic.
Many poor who often have jobs that don't allow them to work from home have found themselves less able to shelter from possible contagion during stay at home strategies enacted by many nations to reduce the contagion rate access to the best health care for the poor is often impossible in many parts of the world. Francis said response to the pandemic must be twofold. On one hand, quote, it's indispensable to find the cure for such a small but tremendous virus that brings the entire world to its knees. On the other hand, quote, we must treat a great virus that of social injustice of inequality, of opportunity, of being marginalized in the lack of protection to the weakest, Francis said.
Francis has dedicated much of his papacy, the highlighting the plight of those living on life's margins, saying societies must put them at the center of their attention, noting how many are eager to return to normality and resume economic activity. Francis voiced caution, quote, sure, but this normality must not include social injustices and degradation of the environment. Quote continues today. We have an occasion to build something different.
For example, we can grow an economy of integral development of the poor and not of welfare, the Pope said. Interesting. So there you go. Pope coming out, of course, there's an issue that we have pointed out for a while, especially giving the situation of the vaccines, efficacy and safety.
Of course, they're going to give the poor the first round of vaccines because you've got to test if it's safe. You're going to test that on the poor before you test it on the rich. So that's kind of a double-edged sword with all the testing right now, mostly being done in places of the world that are economically disadvantaged. And sadly, if the vaccine goes sideways in those situations, the establishment is fine with putting those people at risk.
And then even, of course, in that is the massive testing going on in Africa specifically, even against the wishes of some of those African countries. This is why Gates gets kicked out of countries because he tests untested vaccines on poor people. But anyways, there you go. The Pope says the rich cannot be the first ones getting the vaccine.
I'm sure that plays in well to the whole plan. I do think it's interesting at the end here, his quote saying, today we have an occasion to build something different. Of course, talking about some new world order stuff. For example, we can grow an economy of integral development of the poor and not of welfare, which was an interesting angle to take for the Pope, this Pope being specifically, you know, politically liberal and gaining a lot of, you know, social justice points with the social justice warriors.
But he's talking about, you know, building an economy back that integrates development of the poor and not of welfare, which is, I think, an interesting distinction to make. And also one that I think, you know, of course, the conservative idea being, you know, putting people on welfare doesn't help them in the end. But the Pope talking about here, building some sort of system that integrates development of the poor, whatever exactly that means. I'm not even sure exactly, but leaning away from the welfare idea.
He's going to, he better be careful. He might lose some points with his social justice team. I don't know about that. I mean, he's coming at it from the socialist perspective.
I mean, he is our first sort of socialist, openly socialist to the Pope there. But you know, what I found interesting is that, you know, one of the things that you learn as a follower of Jesus is taking care of the church and it's a pretty common thing you are taught and are talked about in churches and even from a young age, you hear about going to the homeless shelters and doing that whole thing, you know, taking care of the marginalized and all that. I just think it's fascinating how that whole premise is kind of hijacked in this vaccine conversation. Oh, did I lose him again?
I think I lost Basil. Check, check. All right. All right, Gons, I think this is it.
We must, we must upgrade you over there. I know I just didn't update on all the stuff and I think it broke my Skype because it's, I think it's my, I think it's a networking issue, but we, it must become a priority. This is becoming untenable. Yeah, I know.
Yeah, it's bad. Okay. All right. Back now.
Yeah. So what I was basically saying was that we, when we're in church, we hear a lot about, you know, helping out the poor and the needy and taking care of them, taking care of the marginalized. And I just think it's interesting that Pope Francis would use that sentiment in this conversation about vaccines to be like, Oh, hey, we have to take care of the poor and the needy. We got to make sure that they have access to this vaccine and all this kind of stuff.
And to me, you know, it just echoes a lot of what we read about in Revelation 13 and you talk about the mark of the beast and how it's something that's issued specifically to anybody. And you know, the second beast required all people small and great rich and poor, free and slave to receive the mark and so on. And it's to buy and sell. You got to have it to buy and sell.
And I'm not saying the vaccine is the mark of the beast or isn't the mark of the beast. We've had this discussion already. And I know some people are just flat out saying it is and that, you know, there's RFID chips in the vaccine plan and all this kind of stuff. I haven't seen hard documentation for that.
We've talked about the quantum dots and the Lucifer East and all that kind of stuff. And certainly it's all of a concern. But it's just interesting to me how the pope, you know, being somebody that doesn't necessarily seem to represent the basics of Christianity, of course, with the papacy sort of moving away from it, I don't know, a long time ago, maybe like from the beginning. But I just think it's interesting how it echoes some of that Revelation 13 mark of the beast type of language.
And I don't know. Do they just not think it's that's what it is? Or like, do they just, you know, does the pope just believe that he's doing this for good? It's just a very strange.
It's crazy. Talk on. I know it's, yeah, I know. It's got some crazy conspiracy talk there.
I will not have it. Well, it is one of those issues where it just seems very convenient that this thing that suddenly took over the world, this flu that shut down the world economy is now being touted with this vaccine that's supposed to solve it is, you know, you got to give it to the poor people. Come on. Yeah.
You know, what's fascinating about this too, is it's really just one big virtue signal because if you think about it, I mean, even just on a logical level. Just logic, take your emotions out of it. Of course you want poor people to get a vaccine in the worldview that the vaccine is, you know, what we need. But like when has there ever been a vaccine that wasn't offered to poor people?
I mean, they're the main group of people to pay for a vaccine. You can't make money selling a vaccine just to rich people. It doesn't make any sense. Well, you know, you're cutting out 99.
I mean, literally if you talk about the 1% thing, I mean, if you're in a Western country, like the UK and America, just being there, even at the lowest level of poverty, you're still in like the top 4% of wealth in the world, you're not going to make money as a vaccine company if you only sell your little vaccine to rich people. You're going to sell like maybe, you know, a million vials when really you're trying to sell, you know, billions of vials. So it doesn't even economically make sense. This is total virtue signaling.
Yeah, but a lot of the, a lot of vaccine companies make their money from, you know, just issuing it and a lot of like the flu vaccine, you know how they hand it out for free, especially like the seasonal one, it's free for everybody and who's making all that cash, who's making all that money. It's the big, you know, it's the big, uh, the five month. And especially since we've prepaid, you know, half a billion dollars for these vaccines, there's no reason to say this. Of course this vaccine is going to be issued, you know, made available to poor people.
This is just a silly thing to say. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it is sort of, uh, it's almost like making sure that those who have invested in the vaccine will, will make their money, you know, make sure the poor people get it, you know, wink, wink to the, the vaccine companies.
Yeah. This is a insider trading. It is the kind of is, but it's no stage. I mean, I don't have the docs right in front of me and, you know, I, I don't have any hard evidence in front of me, in front of me, but it wouldn't take much to discover, you know, what stake the Vatican has in, in big pharma companies, which, you know, just on the basic level of logic.
Certainly they have a big, um, no. Okay. It's definitely my computer because anytime I try to do anything, it's shutting down Basil's call. So either.
Yeah. It's kind of fun. Now I can, uh, you know, when I realize that our Skype is disconnected, I can just tune in and watch the Twitch and see how you handle it. Yeah.
I'm pretty sure it's, it's my side too, because anytime I click on anything internet related, it just shuts down Skype and it's shutting down like it. We need to, we need to get you some bigger pipes over there. If not, I'm still convinced it's your network, but it's okay. We'll figure it out.
All right. Well, should we move on to the next story? Yes. Let's do it.
This is a going to be. Are you ready to become cyber? And the beast system, which I thought I got, I had ready. I'm, I'm really not doing well today on my James.
It's a hard day. This is a futurey.org. Ed line. Cyborg locusts could sniff out bombs.
Ooh. Yeah. It says here in a new study, they found locusts can quickly discriminate between different explosives smells. Oh, wait, I think I could have written that better.
If you want to enhance a locust to be used as a bomb sniffing bug, however, there are a few technical, technical challenges that need solving before sending it into the field. Is there some way to direct to the locust to tell it where to go to do it sniffing? And because the locusts can't speak yet, it actually says that in parentheses yet. Is there a way to read the brain of these cyborg bugs to know what they're smelling?
For that matter, can locusts even smell explosives? Yes, and yes, to the first two questions. This research has demonstrated both the ability to control the locusts and the ability to read their brains, so to speak, to discern what it is they are smelling. And now thanks to new research, the third question has been settled.
The answer again is yes. In a pre-proof paper in the journal BioSensors and Bioelectronics X, researchers showed how they were able to hijack locusts all factory systems to both detect and discriminate between different explosive scents, all within a few hundred milliseconds of exposure. They were also able to optimize a previously developed biopbiotic sensing system that could detect the locusts firing neurons and convey that information in a way that told researchers about the smells the locusts were censoring. Quote, we didn't know if they'd be able to smell or pinpoint the explosives because they don't have any meaningful ecological significance, said Barani Raman, professor of biomedical engineering at Washington University in St.
Louis. Quote, it was possible that they didn't care about any of the cues that were meaningful to us in this particular case. Previous work in Raman's lab led to the discovery that the locusts all factory system could be decoded as in or off ends or or of ends logical operation. This allowed researchers to determine what a locust was smelling in different contexts.
With this knowledge, the researchers were able to look for similar patterns when they exposed locusts to vapors from TNT, DNT, RXD, PETN, and ammonium nitrate, chemically diverse set of explosives, the one that was allegedly involved in that huge explosion a few weeks ago. But most surprisingly, Raman said quote, we could clearly see the neurons responded differently to TNT and DNT as well as these other explosive chemical vapors. With that crucial piece of data, Raman said, we were ready to get to work. We were optimized.
Oh, I don't want to hear that ever for human. I'm going to optimize you. Now, they knew that locusts could detect and discriminate between different explosives, but in order to seek out a bomb, a locust would have to know from which direction the odor emanated. Enter the quote, odor box, and locust mobile quote, you know, when you're close to the coffee shop, the coffee smells stronger.
And when you're further away, you smell it less. That's what we're looking at, Raman said. The explosive vapors were injected via a hole in the box where the locust sat in a tiny vehicle as the locust was driven around and sniffed different concentrations of vapors. Researchers studied its odor-related brain activity.
The signals in the bugs' brains reflected those differences in vapor concentration. The next step was to optimize the system for transmitting the locusts' brain activity, the team which included Shen Tanu, Shakra Barti, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering, and Srikanth Singamani, professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Material Science, focused the breadth of their expertise on the tiny locust. In order to do the least harm to these locusts and to keep them stable in order to accurately record their neural activity, the team came up with a new surgical procedure to attach electrodes that didn't hinder the locusts' movements. With their new instrumentation in place, the neuronal activity of a locust exposed to an explosive smell was resolved into a discernible odor-specific pattern within 500 milliseconds.
Now we can implant the electrodes, seal the locust, and transport them to mobile environments. Raman said, one day the environment might be one in which homeland security is searching for explosives. The idea isn't as strange as it might first sound. Raman said, quote, this is not that different from in the old days when coal miners used canaries.
He said, people use pigs for finding truffles. It's a similar approach. Using a biological organism, this is just a bit more sophisticated. So there you go, cyborg locusts could sniff out bombs.
It's interesting how they kind of just quickly went over the air. We figured out a real easy way to set up a neural implant on these locusts without harming them too much and just move on. Next part of the experiment, let them search out the smells of explosives just like canaries in the coal mine. Yeah, that's pretty crazy.
Wow, a whole swarm of those little buggers. They certainly have enough locust to experiment on. I mean, I haven't gotten an update in a few weeks about the swarm of locusts. Where was it in the Middle East?
Yeah. Or it was Africa. I forget where it was. I think we've reported on both over the last year.
And they were good. China was raising like a million ducks to go eat the locusts. I think they were talking about eating the locusts themselves too. Oh, yeah.
Delicious. Also. And of course, this brings up the Revelation 9 conversations where in Revelation 9 starting in verse 3 and out of the smoke locusts descended on the earth when they were given power like that of the scorpions of the earth. But you know what's interesting?
They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only those who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. And so again, this is one of those issues where God sort of told these locusts aren't locust army thing, which is mentioned again in Joel chapter 2. You can only harm certain people. You can't harm those with the seal of God on their foreheads.
And this is like kind of the opposite in a sense, you know, like, hey, we're going to control the locusts to do our bidding. And so it's very fascinating to see how mankind is stepping on the building blocks of life as God had intended. And even perhaps using some of these methodologies and technologies to play God. And that's basically what this is with all those bio robotics and everything.
The conversation has really moved on from that. We, you know, when I first started looking at this 2010 ish, the sentiment among believers was that this type of thing is man trying to play God. And that was brought up a lot and mentioned a lot. And now it's just kind of like we kind of moved on from that idea.
I think people still think that, but we don't say it as much. You know, we're just kind of like, what's the next thing they're doing with the bio robot mechanical, whatever. And but really when it comes down to it, that's exactly what they're doing. They're basically trying to play God controlling nature means controlling everything.
Right. Yeah. And you know, it's interesting too, this whole concept of harnessing animals in order to, you know, help out with human objectives. Yeah.
Yeah. Of course you've got things like dog, you know, drug or bomb sniffing dogs, you know, you've been working alongside animals for a while. But this is a, I'll take it to a whole new level. You know, messing with the biology, turning these locusts into cyborgs in order to do our bidding is kind of a whole.
I'm trying to figure out how a swarm of explosive sniffing locusts is more effective than whatever current ways we have of doing this. How exactly does it help to have a swarm of locusts doing this job? Yeah. That's a good question, especially since, well maybe it's just because there's a little more of a, it's piggybacking on the biological aspects of animals or insects.
Right. Because then you don't have to build from the ground up. You don't have to build every layer of the biological stack. You can just kind of piggyback on what these animals already have and just sort of figure out what little things we need to know from it.
And what is this? You just kind of set them free in an area and they just kind of automatically go about their lives. But then when they smell the explosives, we get a, I guess it's kind of like a broad net, you know, you're casting a broad net and letting the swarm of these little suckers go out and do the job for you. Are they controllable to the effect of like, okay, you're done with your job.
Come back into your locust cage. Well, that's what I was saying. I don't think they're controllable. You know, I don't think they can control the locusts per se.
They can just tell, you know, they get the signal if the locust is smelling in explosive. So it really is just, you know, making a bunch of cyborg locusts and then setting them free. And then if they just happen to sniff some explosives during their daily life, then you get to kind of it. Yeah, you're kind of eavesdropping on what the locust is already doing.
Oh, another drop and I didn't even do anything. I didn't hit anything this time. So all right. Okay, let me close that.
Yeah, though. Check one, check two. Oh, there you are. We come back.
Oh, nice. Okay. Nice and hot. I think we got the locusts.
Yep, we got the locusts. We got it. Um, guns, uh, when I was, oh, there we go. Now it's suddenly working so strange.
The whole internet is strange today. All right. Well, sounds good. So for time's sake, do we want to, uh, thank some producers?
Let's do it. We got a couple more stories and we'll be out of here. That's right. Okay.
So don't go anywhere, anybody. We are going to take a quick break. Thanks and producers. And then, uh, we got some more stories after the break that you are not going to want to miss.
We got a crisper update. Talking about bugs, man. We've got a bunch of mosquitoes getting released. I know.
I'm going to be using these guys and then, uh, just one more little Q and on update, but I think it's going to be interesting. Um, so there you go. Stick around after the break, but, uh, until then, time to thank some producers. Come on.
Take a break. Okay. Doki. Well, I do got to say I'm glad I mentioned something at the top of the show.
Uh, we had a very short list of producers for today, but, uh, many of you heated the calls. We have a little bit, bit longer of a producer list today, which we are very happy about. Now, if you don't know what we're talking about, here's the thing. We work on the value for value model, which means we create the show.
We put it out there. As good of a job as we can and we do it as consistently as we possibly can. And if you guys get any value out of the show whatsoever, you have the opportunity to put value back in. It's a nice little, uh, nice little ecosystem keeping the show going and, uh, you know, really, it's like a, it's like we're a nice little tribe of people who are seeking out the truth.
And the reason we do it this way is because, uh, a lot of media producers, content producers, whatever you want to do, the holy grail of podcasting, especially used to be advertising. And if you could advertise on your show, you know, you really made it. But here's the problem. The advertising model is responsible for a lot of the nastiness that we see in the world of sensationalism, alarmism, fake news, I mean, even down to the mainstream media, they got to sell ads, you know, they got big pharma companies to keep happy.
And the problem is when you're a podcaster and you start taking advertising dollars, you are then pressured to become brand safe, which means not talking about certain things, focusing on other, you know, things that might not be as important and, you know, trying to keep the advertisers happy because they sign your paychecks. And so that takes away a little bit of the integrity, it makes sustaining integrity a little difficult, but it also encourages podcasters like us to see our listeners, our audience as a commodity, to be sold to advertisers for our own personal game. And that's just not cool. I don't think we've just decided a long time ago, we don't want to think of you, dear listeners as dollar signs that we get to, you know, to sell your, your trust and your attention for our own personal gain.
So we do the value for value model, which means you get the opportunity to come in, support the show financially as well as a bunch of other ways. And because of that, this is the real world. If you help pay for a piece of media, you are now a producer, not just a donor. So we appreciate that very much.
And we are here to thank some producers. First of all, patreon.com slash CCNT for Canary Crown News Talk. It's the easiest way to go ahead and support us. And, uh, Gons, we've got one new producer over here on patreon.com slash CCNT.
And they are I question everything 97. So thank you very much. Thank you very much. I question everything 97.
You are in the right place. Now let me hop over to patreon.com slash Canary Cry Radio, an alternate Patreon account for us here. Um, and yes, we've got one producer over there, patreon.com slash Canary Cry Radio. And that is David.
Thank you very much, David. You guys are the best. Now, remember, uh, Patreon is a great way to support us. But if you don't like Patreon, a lot of people don't, that's okay.
They've had some problems in the past. We also have canarycryradio.com slash support. That's right. Canarycryradio.com slash support.
We've got PayPal options over there. You can do a monthly recurring, uh, producer ship or if commitment is not your thing, you can go ahead and do a one time, uh, support in any amount. There's also cryptocurrency and all sorts of fun ways to support the show. Gons, uh, I know we had a couple of people come in over the show, but, uh, who do we got support and over at canarycryradio.com slash support?
Uh, well, I have a couple written down, but I'm, I'm refreshing the PayPal here. And it is not coming in quite. Yup, there it is. Okay.
So we have, uh, coming in from the top of the show here, we have Justin. Coming in. Thank you, Justin. Thank you.
Justin. And we also have Charlene coming in at $33. Producer Charlene. Thank you very much.
Claim 33. Uh, and also we have a new recurring supporter, Mitch. So thank you, Mitch. Thank you, Mitch.
And we also have John coming in. Thank you to another $33 producer, producer, producer support. So thank you for the budget. Charlene, producer Charlene was when that came in during the show.
Yeah. Charlene and Justin both came in during the show. So. And just, oh, yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Beautiful. Well, thank you guys so much.
Believe that concludes our list of producers for today's show. 234. Uh, we'll keep an eye on that. If anybody else comes in during the show, we'll give you a shout out by the end there.
But thank you guys very much. We can only keep doing the show with the support of our producers. It's really a team effort. You know, this is not a passive, uh, show, not just a passive podcast to to tune in on.
You know, it really takes a whole village to keep this thing going. And we appreciate the support of our producers very much. If you're in the chat, make sure to think, uh, your producers, because they are the ones keeping the show going. Charlene, Justin, uh, Mitch, John, uh, who am I forgetting?
David, I questioned everything 97. Mm. I think that's everybody. Yeah.
Okay. Well, thank you so much. Now, remember, you can also become a producer of the show by, you know, creating content and the content is, uh, we've got many talented artists who create show themed art, uh, that we'll show here in a second. Also, jingles, we play a lot of jingles on the show and many of them are created by producers of the show, um, and songs at the end of the show.
We have the Canary Cry mixtape with a lot of great, uh, show related songs that you can hear at the end of the show. Gons, do we have any new creative works coming in for producers? Uh, no jingles coming in, but we do have one from Ali. One art, please.
You know, what do you got? And today, this came in right during the show. So when you were talking about, and, uh, it's a, I forgot the name of it here. It was labeled in the email from, you can pull that up.
Everything is slow on my computer. So yeah, I'll pull it up here and let's see technical difficulties this morning. Duh, du, du, du, du, du, du, du, uh, predictive programming. This one's called, uh, there we go.
Yes. And it's got, uh, Oh God. It's happening. Uh, two people.
All right. The romance, the romance, the romance going on. You have a, I presume Basil with the googly eyes wearing shirt. I do like how Ali makes me so muscular.
I'm appreciating, uh, with a cat with, I think that's, uh, uh, uh, a Monte on top. Yes. There's your head. Yes.
Two cats. There one with extremely sharp long claws that look very painful and the other Monte wear and a virtual headset there. And oh yeah. And I like this, uh, Mary, Mary, me basil has hashtag Mary, me basil on their shirt.
I have hashtag I did. Okay. We're living in a, in a fantasy here. That in my folks.
Um, but Basil is saying he is scratching my arm very badly and true to life that cat does scratch my arm very badly. Thank you very much. Ali, great artwork as usual. And what is, I think Mary, me basil is holding a can of cat food there.
Yeah. Okay. Gotta, gotta keep those suckers. All the details in.
Yes. All sorts of important details. But there you go. Thank you very much, Ali.
She's gazelle and bonds in the chat. Uh, we appreciate that very much. We will post this art along with the show notes at canarygrindnewstalk.com. Make sure to check it out.
Um, okay. Anything else gone for this break? Uh, I think we were going to do a couple of reviews that people were reading up and what's names either today. Oh, you're right.
Wow. We did just jump right into producers. Okay. One, another great way to support the show.
And, you know, it's hard for me to explain just how important this is. Um, there are algorithms that suggest our show to people who have never heard it before. And those algorithms are almost exclusively based off of ratings and reviews by you, dear listeners. So we ask that as often as possible, you, the listeners can leave ratings and reviews, uh, most helpful on Apple podcasts or Stitcher or, you know, any of those podcast platforms, uh, you know, rate it.
That's the number of stars and reviews, leaving a little, uh, little paragraph there. And we got one from joyful one who says two thumbs up canaries were used in minds to detect when high levels of toxic gases were present. This was a warning to all and saved many humans, human lives at the cost of the canaries, bazzling dawns are two friends willing to put aside their chance at being bazillionaires. That's true.
So we fellow canaryons can live fat and sassy. There you go. Well, thank you very much, joyful one. We also had a another one coming from, oh, there's a, that was not finished live fat and sassy.
Thank you to the dynamic duo of podcasting. Keep up the good work soon. You will be hearing, quote, well done, good and faithful servant. Well, thank you very much, joy.