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Anti-Empire >>
Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.
Fraud and mismanagement at University College Cork Thu Aug 28, 2025 18:30 | Calli Morganite
UCC has paid huge sums to a criminal professor
This story is not for republication. I bear responsibility for the things I write. I have read the guidelines and understand that I must not write anything untrue, and I won't.
This is a public interest story about a complete failure of governance and management at UCC.
Deliberate Design Flaw In ChatGPT-5 Sun Aug 17, 2025 08:04 | Mind Agent
Socratic Dialog Between ChatGPT-5 and Mind Agent Reveals Fatal and Deliberate 'Design by Construction' Flaw
This design flaw in ChatGPT-5's default epistemic mode subverts what the much touted ChatGPT-5 can do... so long as the flaw is not tickled, any usage should be fine---The epistemological question is: how would anyone in the public, includes you reading this (since no one is all knowing), in an unfamiliar domain know whether or not the flaw has been tickled when seeking information or understanding of a domain without prior knowledge of that domain???!
This analysis is a pretty unique and significant contribution to the space of empirical evaluation of LLMs that exist in AI public world... at least thus far, as far as I am aware! For what it's worth--as if anyone in the ChatGPT universe cares as they pile up on using the "PhD level scholar in your pocket".
According to GPT-5, and according to my tests, this flaw exists in all LLMs... What is revealing is the deduction GPT-5 made: Why ?design choice? starts looking like ?deliberate flaw?.
People are paying $200 a month to not just ChatGPT, but all major LLMs have similar Pro pricing! I bet they, like the normal user of free ChatGPT, stay in LLM's default mode where the flaw manifests itself. As it did in this evaluation.
AI Reach: Gemini Reasoning Question of God Sat Aug 02, 2025 20:00 | Mind Agent
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I have been evaluating AI Chatbot agents for their epistemic limits over the past two months, and have tested all major AI Agents, ChatGPT, Grok, Claude, Perplexity, and DeepSeek, for their epistemic limits and their negative impact as information gate-keepers.... Today I decided to test for how AI could be the boon for humanity in other positive areas, such as in completely abstract realms, such as metaphysical thought. Meaning, I wanted to test the LLMs for Positives beyond what most researchers benchmark these for, or have expressed in the approx. 2500 Turing tests in Humanity?s Last Exam.. And I chose as my first candidate, Google DeepMind's Gemini as I had not evaluated it before on anything.
Israeli Human Rights Group B'Tselem finally Admits It is Genocide releasing Our Genocide report Fri Aug 01, 2025 23:54 | 1 of indy
We have all known it for over 2 years that it is a genocide in Gaza
Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has finally admitted what everyone else outside Israel has known for two years is that the Israeli state is carrying out a genocide in Gaza
Western governments like the USA are complicit in it as they have been supplying the huge bombs and missiles used by Israel and dropped on innocent civilians in Gaza. One phone call from the USA regime could have ended it at any point. However many other countries are complicity with their tacit approval and neighboring Arab countries have been pretty spinless too in their support
With the release of this report titled: Our Genocide -there is a good chance this will make it okay for more people within Israel itself to speak out and do something about it despite the fact that many there are actually in support of the Gaza
China?s CITY WIDE CASH SEIZURES Begin ? ATMs Frozen, Digital Yuan FORCED Overnight Wed Jul 30, 2025 21:40 | 1 of indy
This story is unverified but it is very instructive of what will happen when cash is removed
THIS STORY IS UNVERIFIED BUT PLEASE WATCH THE VIDEO OR READ THE TRANSCRIPT AS IT GIVES AN VERY GOOD IDEA OF WHAT A CASHLESS SOCIETY WILL LOOK LIKE. And it ain't pretty
A single video report has come out of China claiming China's biggest cities are now cashless, not by choice, but by force. The report goes on to claim ATMs have gone dark, vaults are being emptied. And overnight (July 20 into 21), the digital yuan is the only currency allowed.
The Saker >>
News Round-Up Thu Oct 02, 2025 00:41 | Richard Eldred
A summary of the most interesting stories in the past 24 hours that challenge the prevailing orthodoxy about the ?climate emergency?, public health ?crises? and the supposed moral defects of Western civilisation.
The post News Round-Up appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Eurostar Unveils Gender-Neutral Uniform for Staff Wed Oct 01, 2025 19:00 | Will Jones
Eurostar has unveiled its first gender-neutral uniform, introducing a collection featuring skirts, trousers and Dr Martens boots designed to be "interchangeable and made to fit all genders".
The post Eurostar Unveils Gender-Neutral Uniform for Staff appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Fact-Checking Starmer?s Claim That Brexit Created the Small Boats Crisis Wed Oct 01, 2025 17:30 | Will Jones
Keir Starmer has claimed that Brexit created the small boats crisis and the migrant boats should be called 'Farage boats'. This is nonsense, says David Barrett, and even Oxford University's Migration Observatory agrees.
The post Fact-Checking Starmer’s Claim That Brexit Created the Small Boats Crisis appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Why is ?Pandemic Preparedness? a Major Theme of the New US Global Health Strategy? Wed Oct 01, 2025 15:43 | Dr David Bell
Why is 'pandemic preparedness' a major theme of the US Government's new 'America First' Global Health Strategy, asks Dr David Bell. There are some sound public health principles in there, but the 'pandemic' con lives on.
The post Why is ‘Pandemic Preparedness’ a Major Theme of the New US Global Health Strategy? appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Ed Miliband Pledges Legislation to Ban Fracking ?Forever? Wed Oct 01, 2025 13:22 | Will Jones
With energy bills heading skywards and renewable energy investment on the ropes, Ed Miliband's conference crowd-pleaser was to pledge a law to ban fracking 'forever' ? and sabotage a future Reform administration.
The post Ed Miliband Pledges Legislation to Ban Fracking ‘Forever’ appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Lockdown Skeptics >>
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Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15how about cutting public servants over 100K and their bloated pension plans?? (and politicians too)
How about cutting pay of top trade unionists??
It seems to me this is all just lip service. The government have a handy arrangement with PS unions as long as they stick with croke park and protect the well paid public service. (I'm talking those over 50k not the rest here) and since their pay is linked to these, they protect themselves too.
The recent report on TD pay was an eye opener.
The budget will again hammer those without a strong voice on social welfare and any community voluntary services.
Meanwhile Greedy TD's will keep their basic pay of 93k plus extras which can nearly double it up to 180k. All for having absolutely no effect on Dail decisions which are essentially just pushed through by the party whip.
And all that money and all those ineffective TDs just to manage a population comparable to that of greater manchester.
In a recession this is complete lunacy and a guarantee to bring us further into recession more quickly.
Our ponzi pension scheme is bust paying the likes of shell traitor bertie and crook Ray Burke 100K p.a.
We need to cut where it is deserved and stop haemmoraging huge amounts of money to unsecured foreign banksters and speculators who we don't owe anything to.
increase tax on foreign tax dodging corporations who set up shop here.
They pay fuck all tax and employ fuck all people to create their tax write off operations here.
And We need to stop talking about GDP because their money laundering operations obscure the real state of our economy shown more clearly by the downward spiralling GNP figures.
And I'll trust union leaders more to have the interests of low paid workers at heart when they aren't taking home 100k themselves.
Lets make this the anti-l'oreal budget. Lets cut those who "aren't really worth it"
Absolutely agree with capping public service pay. Cap ALL public service and union salaries at 100,000 per year. And don't stop there. Go for the real problem. Go after the rich. Go after those who have been the prime cause of this crisis, yet who have, incredibly, managed to spin this economic disaster as a crisis of public spending.
These rich, the truly rich, who make even the top public servants and union officials look like beggars, are getting richer, even during this deepening recession. It is time to reverse this. It is time to end the passive acceptance of great wealth, influence and control alongside massive unemployment, hopelessness and poverty. It is time to bring the issue of the distribution of wealth where it belongs - under the democratic control of the people. Politics is about power. Money is power. If democracy is to mean anything, all power, including money power, must be democratically limited by the people.
Don’t continue to be turkeys voting for Christmas. Don’t buy the nonsense from the rich and their hangers-on about high incomes being necessary to attract “talent”, the lie that “If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys”. We paid fortunes, and continue to pay fortunes, and we still got monkeys. Overpaid incompetents are continuing to cause crisis after crisis, while ordinary people’s lives are destroyed.
!00,000 euro (for example) per year should be more than enough for anyone. It should provide more than enough incentive to set up a business. It allows for the fact that some people work harder, or smarter, or more effectively than others. Thousands of successful co-operatives, large and small, the world over, use such a system. A maximum income was used in Japan after WWII. President Roosevelt in the US proposed such a system during WWII. A maximum income could be a temporary or a permanent measure. It could be modified/ revised/fine-tuned/ or repealed every five or ten years. The important thing is that ordinary people are finally given the freedom to vote on an issue of the most crucial importance to them and to society. Many democracies already have a minimum income. It is time to evolve further, towards real democracy, where the really important decisions are taken by the people, rather than by elitist political/bureaucratic cabals in cahoots with unelected business or financial sharks.
One can understand elites and their useful idiots frowning and shaking their heads and giving fifty reasons why it could never work, but for those on low or middle income to not even consider trying the idea is truly like turkeys continuing to vote for Christmas. As George Bush tried to say "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." But to be fooled continually, again and again, year after year, all your life, to continue sucking up to the rich and authority, to continue, out of cynicism or naivete or apathy or despair, to do nothing, even when possible alternatives are proposed, is sheer lunacy.
Freud thought that the obsession with money was rooted in inadequate potty-training, Likewise, the famous economist Keynes said that "The love of money as a possession as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease". Even a rich stooge like Winston Churchill could acknowledge that (the people) "will not tolerate the existing system by which wealth is acquired, shared and employed. . . . They will set their faces like flint against the money power, heir of all other powers and tyrannies overthrown, and its obvious injustices."
FIGHT THE MONEY POWER. SUPPORT FULL DEMOCRACY NOW.
There must be figures somewhere perhaps with the CSO, Dept of Finance or Revenue with a breakdown of the number of people in the Civil Service by salary. If we could get hold of those figures then we could cut through some of the rubbish rants around this and focus in those that are earning the big money and figure out how much can be saved.
this is not a matter of saving huge amounts of money, it's a matter of fair play and everyone being treated fairly.
This is currently not the case. That's why highly paid people both in and out of the public service need to be seen to be taking pain proportionately to how the weakest in society are having to.
Taking 100 euro flat tax off a person earning 50k is equivalent to taking 0.2% of their earnings
wheras for a social welfare recipient making 186 a week, it's a full 1% of their earnings.
Every flat tax hits a welfare recipient proportionally 5 times harder than a person earning 50k
The situation is twice as bad when compared to someone on 100k.
Plus that 1% is a greater proportion of their earnings.
If I take away 1% of the earnings of someone on 50k they are left with 49,500
If I take away 1% of the earnings of someone on 9672 they are left with 9575
Its not the same thing qualitatively at all.
The fact is higher paid people are much more insulated against what is going on than the poor who have hardly any insulation and feel the effects immediately. And it's these poor people that are being targetted while some sectors remain protected.
Of course the problem is really bailing out banks for absolutely no apparent gain (they are not really loaning money into the economy) and paying off foreign gambling debts that are not ours to begin with.
But since remedying that has been put off the table despite us being "special", we have to share out the problem in a fairer manner. It's not happening.
We need to see fairness or there will be problems. It's not about huge savings, it's about fairness.
Organised by
Dublin Council of Trade Unions
Communities Campaign Against Cuts
Campaign Against the Household and Water Taxes
Spectacle of Defiance
1 pm 24th November 2012
Parnell Square
Dublin 1