About us
The DC Atheist Meetup is a project of DC Region Atheists. We are an educational and philosophical group serving Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia that fosters and advances the growth of non-religious communities by providing both a social setting and forums to discuss intellectual topics pertinent to their concerns and by working with other like-minded groups. We educate and encourage critical thinking through rational and respectful dialog between our members and others.
DC Region Atheists is a chapter of the Washington Area Secular Humanists. WASH is a non-profit 501c3 organization with all contributions being tax deductible. Contributions are very much encouraged and can be made here: join.
Upcoming events
2
Secular Zoom Community
·OnlineOnlineWe are profoundly fortunate. As secular thinkers we have the tools of science. We can use them to discern what is happening behind the absurd noise contributed by the many classes of ignorance. Yes, that very much includes the great many ways in which we might be ignorant. A science oriented view must examine its own assumptions. That can be best done within a community that values critical thinking and supports others who like us, want to struggle to clearly see a reality beyond the astonishing tidal wave of absurdities and threats of dysfunction we see in front of us.
I want to start by noting how we value charity. Those of us who are secure with our place in society, must care about those that do not share in that security. I take great pride in our group’s support of Atheists Helping the Homeless. It allows us to walk the walk of making our values more than a feeling. It is only when we find the courage to act on our values that we find further ways in which we can act to make things better. My profound gratitude to Zack for being the leader who bring this opportunity to our secular community.
We have a foreign policy designed to discourage and alienate most former friends and allies. Elon Musk has proved to Canada and Europe that his Starlink system could not be trusted. Demands for a new Ukraine leader “to make a peace deal” are wildly popular in Russia but a non starter everywhere else. There was a brief shutting off of intelligence sharing with Ukraine. People were dying because Kyiv got no warning about missiles coming at them. Europe is starting to move resolutely to disentangle their military supply chains from American sources. There are a LOT of Republicans who remain supporters of the Ukrainian efforts. A Lincoln Project ad suggests that they dislike the fact that Putin now thinks he has an obedient meat puppet in the Unites States. Some years ago nearly 100% of Republicans would invoke a charge of treason when someone takes material action in support of an enemy. While democracy remains a positive value throughout Europe, nearly one third of Europe is threatened by by very right-wing political movements. These are not good changes on the world stage.
The King tides on both coasts of the United States are notable impacts of global warming. Oceans become higher if the water expands as it becomes warmer. This is made worse with the current El Nino. Prior El Nino events did not have the impact of this one.
We will know a lot about the midterm elections when we next meet. Polymarket has some astonishing odds for Democratic wins in some very red state Senate races (Texas 69%, Alaska 71%, and Ohio 68%) This is with Elon Musk putting an estimated $190 million into supporting Republicans in Texas and another $200 million elsewhere. Polymarket probability of Republicans holding 48 seats or less is projected to be 57%. These stats mean little. The votes will need to be counted.
James Comey was indicted for the third time. His daughter, Maurene Comey, was ordered to be reinstated with back pay as Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. She was the one who convicted Ghislaine Maxwell and had worked on convicting Jeffrey Epstein. This is important because the judgment that her firing was illegal suggests that over 100,000 people fired from federal jobs in our DMV region may have an identical right to be reinstated.
The DOJ says they will send 1,000 people to “monitor” elections. With many dozens threats and attempted legal demands for specific state level voting procedures, we will have to see what actions will be taken as just about every state ignores those Federal demands.
House Democrats, led by Jamie Raskin, released a bombshell report on the Epstein files. It specifies five women who allege rape or sexual assault, plus others who provided supporting context. Page 7 includes the suggestion that Todd Blanche may have committed criminal obstruction of justice.
Kevin Hasset asserts that economy is excellent because both real income and personal expenditures are increasing. What he ignores with this analysis is that both of those are supported by specific financial flows. The $2 trillion US deficit is a massive and unsustainable stimulus to the economy. The radical tax cut to support the more wealthy increases their income and what they buy. However, those not in the top tenth of family income might be struggling as costs increase faster than income. The nearly trillion dollar yearly incremental investments in AI systems has its different stimulative effect. That source of funds will cease when those making the loans or consider buying new stock cease to expect positive future returns. Capital costs for anything outside of US deficit financing or AI systems is increasingly limited and expensive. These financial imbalances are more extreme as a percentage of GDP than anything since the massive building of railroads in the late 1800s. The US had about 1,000 operating railroad companies at that time. The consolidation process was not pretty.
AI systems are just starting to ramp up their reconfiguration of everything in our culture. The most obvious impact in the last month could be called a hacking apocalypse. 70% of all web sites became vulnerable because they used PHP. A large minority of them were not updated even after the vulnerabilities were discovered because the support window for older versions of PHP had expired. A large fraction of data center operations run on Linux and many operations are done with smaller virtual machines using VM software. Vulnerabilities were found in both classes of software which allowed an application to take over the system it was running on. Much encryption is being done with easily hackable encryption keys. Given that banks, utilities, government agencies, and almost every other category of public and private activity uses these keys, this is something that needs to be cleaned up immediately. Estimates are that roughly six times as many software vulnerabilities are being patched every month now compared with what was typical two years ago. So far, there are no systematic disasters. What we have is the realization that almost nothing can be assumed to be secure. The existing digital infrastructure of society was created with no understanding of the cyber hacking capability that is now here. Wickedly smart systems can find ways to destroy just about anything.
China and South Korea have both gone through a 30 to 40% bear market in their AI related industries. Elon Musk is predicting that few of the roughly 200 neocloud service providers will survive a coming shakeout. The highly respected Gartner report projects that $8.5 trillion in AI revenue will be required through 2030, but a maximum of only $3.5 trillion will actually be there. They fully support Elon’s projections on the neocloud providers. A Bloomberg analyst suggests that AI related capital raising of over $300 billion have been announced in the prior two weeks. Expected capital investments from major AI related companies for 2027 are expected to exceed $1 trillion. This can be paid for only if the AI tokens sold replaces nearly $4 trillion in job related payrolls. If that happens there will be massive unemployment. Few pretend to understand what the future will bring. But we might exceed the dot com bust and the 2008 financial crisis in what unfolds.
On a lighter note, I was most amused by 3 AIs discuss AGI & Superintelligence.
Meetup RSVPs will get the Zoom link in the 24 hours before the meeting. The prior vetted list will get the Zoom link about an hour before the meeting.
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