Today's Must-Reads - 4 April 2023

A selection of the latest news, studies, reports and articles

I spend a lot of time each day gathering together new information and interesting articles. I then pick one or two of the most interesting topics and write about them. However, that leaves a lot of missed out information that I’m not sharing.

Below is a summary of all the latest articles and information that I’ve found. Today, this is a slimmed down version for all subscribers but will be for paid subscribers only a lot of the time in the future.

Please consider taking out a paid subscription because it enables me to spend longer reporting on the news that isn’t, but should be reported.

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Climate Change

• Climate obsessed British politicians are embracing fantasy energy solutions says WattsUpWithThat. The Torys are telling working class people that they will have jobs in nuclear fusion plants by 2040 to get more votes in the general election. The reality is the working class are getting poorer and there will be no operational reactor.

Covid Mandates & Lockdowns

• Jeffrey Tucker looks at how they convinced Trump to Lock Down. He reviews the timeline and offers some well founded speculation to try and solve the enduring mystery about how Tump came to be the president who shut down American society for a manageable respiratory virus.

• Mask mandates in health care settings in Oregon and Washington were lifted yesterday. However, the Oregon Health Authority is encouraging those who feel sick, at high risk, or those who feel more comfortable with them to keep wearing masks by choice.

Economy/Energy/Finance

• McDonald’s is reportedly temporarily shutting its US offices and preparing layoff notices. They’re not lovin’ it.

• Japan breaks with US allies and buys Russian oil at prices above the cap. Citing energy needs, Tokyo won exception to rules binding G-7 nations. Countries are smelling a weakening America and doing what is best for themselves for a change.

• An energy crisis is intensifying with OPEC announcing that they are cutting an additional 1.65 million barrels of oil production per day. This is on top of cuts in 2022 and Russian cuts to Europe.

• March 2023 saw the largest monthly decline in crypto ATMs. More than 3,600 Bitcoin ATMs went offline last month.

• Where are all the deposits in commercial banks going?

  

• Nouriel Roubini (Dr Doom) says “most banks are technically insolvent”. A recent Stamford study suggests the banks have roughly $2 trillion in unrealised losses, compared with $2.2 trillion in equity.

  Peter St Onge, Ph.D. @profstonge

  Dr Doom: “Most banks are technically insolvent”

Health

• Gulf news asks why are more younger people dying of heart attacks in India? The Times of India says some hospitals have witnesses a 10-15% increase in sudden cardiac deaths in healthy people but with a Covid history.

Politics

• EU President Ursula von der Leyen is in the running to be the new head of NATO. This is the same President who still won’t reveal what her secret messages to Pfizer CEO, Albert Bourla said.

• China are still working on extreme animal gene experiments which may lead to super soldiers who survive nuclear fallout. Apparently, military scientists have inserted a gene from the microscopic water bear into human embryonic stem cells and significantly increases the cells’ resistance to radiation.

Science

• The psychedelic DMT causes the brain to become hyperconnected, scans reveal. The Big Think reviews a new study that provides the most detailed look at brains on psychedelics to date.

Technology

• Isaac Asimov is his last interview explains how artificial intelligence and natural intelligence are different and will co-exist to complement each other. And by co-operating they both advance far more rapidly than they would on their own.

  Brian Roemmele @BrianRoemmele

  “For the first time we will be free, humanity will be free”—Issac Asimov, the last interview. Our future is not utopian or dystopian, it is human.

• Nathan Labenz, a Chat GPT-4 team member, thinks that if we create something that is genuinely super-human intelligent we should expect it to bring real danger. We’re not there yet but we are close and we just don’t know how to control it, he says.

  Liron Shapira @liron

  🚨 From @labenz, a GPT-4 red team member: “[GPT-4] is safe to deploy, but really only because it's limited in power.” “The AI still does the bad thing… with the exact same prompt that I used in the red teaming.” “We just don't know how to control it.” youtu.be/N3kvmKfVDwo?t=…

Ukraine

• The IMF is loaning Ukraine $15.6 billion. This is the first loan to a country at war. Is this ponzi scheme also coming to an end?

Vaccines

• According to the Epoch Times, the CDC found Covid-19 vaccines safety signals months earlier than previously known.

• Class Action Covid UK says a green light has been given for a vax injury test case. Whilst making a case against Ministers and their decisions is practically impossible to win, the group is working with their barrister to find loopholes and challenge the dry law.