Parky60 Loc: People's Republic of Illinois

After reading this article, the question came to mind wondering if some of the l*****ts on this site are “bots.” But then again, what does it matter. Either way they or their programmers demonstrate their stupidity with every lie they perpetrate. Parky60

Bump in the Night
• Imagine you and your family are in a California motel or Airbnb.
• Pr********ns for tomorrow’s visit to Disneyland are complete.
• Excited kids have finally settled down to sleep.
• You’re able to relax a minute before doing the same.
• Then you feel it.
• The floor begins to rumble and roll.
• The room sways.
• A nearby lamp rattles.
• It takes about two seconds to realize you are experiencing a California earthquake.
• In the seconds that follow, you ask yourself:
• Could this be the big one?
• What are the safety procedures?
• What do I do to protect my family?
• In a few more seconds, all goes quiet.
• The quake ends.
• It turns out to have been small.
• At least for you.
• But how far are you from the epicenter?
• How bad was it there?
• Has there been any damage?
• Are the freeways intact?
• Will the airport be operating when it’s time for you to go home?
• Is Space Mountain okay?
• What about the rest of Disneyland?
• You go on the internet in search of information.
• In a matter of minutes, an article appears giving preliminary information on the quake.
• Where it was centered.
• And how strong it was.
• You learn that it wasn’t the big one.
• And it won’t disrupt your plans.
• Then, at the end of the brief article, you see that it was written entirely by machines.
• A computer at the US Geological survey received and evaluated data from seismic sensors across the region.
• And it sent an alert to various news media containing basic information and preliminary statistics.
• A computer at the newspaper where you found the article then spit out the preliminary story.
• Such use of technology is useful and, in an emergency, could be crucial.
• But where is it leading?
• More than half of all internet traffic is now automated, mostly by what are referred to as “bots.”
• That’s short for “web robot.”
• These are not manlike machines sitting at keyboards and reading computer monitors.
• They are software applications.
• They do automated tasks, following scripts written for them.
• By some estimates, during the 2016 e******n cycle, one-fifth of online debates were between machines with no human beings involved at all.
• Bots can be programmed to generate political stories or get into political arguments.
• Why pay people to do this when you can automate the process with Artificial Intelligence?
• The next time you get into an online debate with a stranger, that stranger may not even be human.
• Bots follow scripts given by their human masters.
• Those scripts reflect the beliefs, biases, prejudices, and purposes of those humans.
• By automating the process, bots turn the work of a single human into something that looks like the work of thousands, maybe millions.
• They invade social networks.
• They generate posts and lay out stories meant to persuade people of a certain point of view.
• Or sometimes to paralyze the political opposition with confusion.
• And then there are the real people.
• In 2016, a group of people in Veles, Macedonia — most of them teenagers — made their city famous as the “F**e News Capital of the World.”
• They discovered that the American e******ns were a gold mine.
• All they had to do was make up stories that people wanted to believe.
• Every click on one of their stories meant money in their pockets.
• Whether or not the stories were true, made no difference.
• If people clicked on the story, it made money.
• So, they wrote outrageous things.
• The more outrageous the better.
• As long as it felt like something that could be true.
• It’s no accident that when His disciples asked Jesus about the end times, His first words were a warning.
• In Matthew 24:4, He said, “Take heed that no one deceives you.”
• We live in the era of deception.
• Today, there is little consensus on reality.
• They used to say that pictures don’t lie.
• But they do now.
• Film of someone doing something or saying something once served as irrefutable evidence that the person did or said what was depicted.
• Not anymore.
• So, what do we believe?
• Who do you trust in an era when liars have been given such powerful technological tools?
• Two thousand years ago, Pontius Pilate asked, “What is t***h?”
• In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am… the t***h.”
• In John 8:32, He said, “The t***h shall make you free.”
• As the world struggles to understand what is true and what is real.
• Those who know Jesus can rest in the most fundamental t***h of all.
• Him.

Hal Lindsey

jeff smith

HIM . yes sery in deed .

Lt. Rob Polans ret.

I think some are bots. I was in an earthquake. No big deal, right? To a Brooklyn boy whose worst brush with nature that far was a hellish blizzard. All that really happened was the couch jumped up a few feet. My cousin freaked out and her dogs ran to the kitchen (safest place they knew). I tried to calm her down.