Extraordinary C@W blog stats: AI 'training' at work?

We had a short review of the increasingly 'cosmopolitan' nature of C@W readership a while back: I set a little quiz inviting guesses as to the 2024 breakdown of hits, to which the answers were, in descending order -  

1. Hong Kong
2. China
3. USA
4. Singapore
5. UK

Well, guess what: since then, the readership stats have shot up, going stratospheric in the last month.  Here's the plot for the last 3 months:

And the countries?

1. Brazil
2. USA
3. India
4. Japan
5. Bangladesh
6. UK

I have an acquaintance who also runs a blog: he's seen something similar, though the numbers are not so extreme and Vietnam features at the top of his list.  The best explanation he can come up with is that the blogs are being used to train LLMs !

Any other suggestions?

Heaven help the "AI" that results from nearly 20 years of C@W.  I suppose we should be flattered ...

ND 

PS: in the circumstances, I thought about re-engaging with Google 'Adsense' to make a bob or two out of advertising to the increased readership.  But (a) the reader-experience isn't much improved by ads; and (b) the small print is so extensive and restrictive, I'll bet Google would rule that we've somehow been artificially boosting readership with bots, and that we wouldn't qualify.

Aren't you grateful?

Starmer's bizarre pleading

For all those inclined to calibrate their psychological assessments of Starmer, the recent (very sympathetic) Observer interview offers quite a lot of input.  Inter alia, we learn he "deeply regrets" his "island of strangers" speech, thusly: 

Starmer insists ... the speech was simply a mistake. “I wouldn’t have used those words if I had known they were, or even would be interpreted as an echo of Powell,” he says. “I had no idea – and my speechwriters didn’t know either,” he says. “But that particular phrase – no – it wasn’t right. I’ll give you the honest truth: I deeply regret using it”  ... he doesn’t blame his advisers or anyone else except himself for these mistakes ... Starmer says he should have read through the speech properly and “held it up to the light a bit more”. The prime minister also accepts there were “problems with the language” in his foreword to the policy document that said the record high numbers of immigrants entering the UK under the last government had done “incalculable damage” to the country.

Sorry, matey, that won't wash.  For starters, in that speech he also said his immigration policy statement was promoted on the back of it being "right - because it is fair, and because it is what I believe in", Boris Johnson's opening of the immigration floodgates being a "squalid chapter".  Secondly, over the following few days he did the classic Starmer thing of initially doubling down on the first utterence: when quickly challenged on the "island of strangers" language, he emphasised that "well, it is a danger".       

Does anyone, let alone a lawyer-PM, outsource the articulation of "what I believe in, what I think is right" to Spads?  Or, to put the question another way:  what sort of lawyer-PM does this?   

ND

Trump and his solo bomb damage assessment

There's history when it comes to "bomb damage assessment* by top-down diktat" & I'll relate one example closer to home than the Donald's private, untutored convictions about what has happened in Iran.

The UK started WW2 with an outmoded aerial reconnaissance model which (in a different context) we've written about before. 

The original use of aviation in WW1, right from the very first days in 1914, had been for reconnaissance.  The second use was for shooting down the enemy's recce aircraft!  Hence, the received wisdom was that recce results (at first, visual; later, photographic) had to be fought for.  So the RAF's plans before WW2 revolved around a relatively fast armed aircraft - the Blenheim light bomber, operated by Bomber Command, which upon its initial introduction was faster than any biplane then in service with the RAF.  From the very first week of WW2 they started flying Blenheims for recce against German targets, in ones, twos, threes, even in fives and sixes.   Bravely flown as they were, they were shot down in alarming numbers and, sadly, brought back precious few photographs (albeit occasionally of very good quality).  By 1939-40 the Blenheim was no longer up against slower biplanes; and the training of its crews and the cameras it carried were only geared to what would now be regarded as low-level photography.  They were sitting ducks.  

Notwithstanding Bomber Command's legendary willingness to take casualties (and this was even before Bomber Harris took over), the Air Ministry at the top was less sanguine.  These casualties "were not to be borne"... 

Blenheims, "... even in fives and sixes"
Photo, © IWM CH 2992

So of course quite shortly there-after, the suicidally slow and low-flying Blenheims were replaced by Spitfires, flying fast and high, with much better cameras.  But there was another problem, which became apparent after the very first RAF bombing raid of the war, on a German seaplane base on the Baltic coast.  Based on the pilots' accounts, Bomber Command claimed a major success with key buildings having been destroyed.  However, careful analysis of recce flown the next day showed that not a single piece of damage could be identified, and that it seemed the bombs landed harmlessly in adjacent sand dunes.  Continuing the story:  

Such is the bizarre nature of service politics that Bomber Command was allowed to [insist] that only its own people carried out Bomb Damage Assessment - they were determined to mark their own homework.  Eventually they were called up on this too, much to their disgust - as it was proved conclusively that their bombing was not even remotely as accurate as they claimed.  Though his Command's relations with [the newly-established specialist air recce interpretation unit] were often strained, to his credit Bomber Harris personally came to value its accurate output.   

Private BDA conducted by a deeply ignorant politician with a transparent agenda?  The very worst things happen when a powerful leader is grovellingly indulged in all circumstances, whatever he does: and we now have two of them - Trump and Netanyahu.  Not even obliged to exercise normal political caution (not something I'd say of Putin, for example, or Xi).  What will Trump not do in pursuit of his personal gratification?  Aside from the likes of Starmer, Rutte, and the Trump Cabinet, with their demeaning performative "tactical sycophancy", is there anyone left who can offer a defence of Trump and his bellicose, juvenile narcissism?

ND 

______________

**That's what 'BDA' traditionally stood for.  More recently, the 'B' is being rendered as 'battlefield'.

Advising Starmer on Iran & the legal stuff

An interesting challenge for the Attorney General, one Richard, Baron Hermer - a controversial figure, one-time mate of Starmer's, but rumoured to be for the chop in the first Cabinet reshuffle.  But maybe not just yet ...

UPDATE:  see this, from Guido today.  But you read it here first.

Poor Starmer: so desperate to remain in the kneeling position with Trump, but, oh, the legalities of supporting unilateral bunker-busting.  As we know, Kier is so-o wedded to the international rules-based order of things.  Him a lawyer and all.

And if Trump never really wanted to have his second term characterised by US involvement in Middle Eastern 'forever wars', well, Starmer can hardly be ecstatic about following Blair into the politico-historical dustbin of history by rash association with the wild man of the White House.

So what will Hermer advise, and how "flexible" will he turn out to be.  Remember Blair & Goldsmith?   And the Blairite legacy.  That Iraq thing, eh?   And the big inquiry afterwards.  Wow, that seems a long time ago.   But then again, history rhymes ... (with the usual apologies to G&S)

When I was a lad I made it big
As fixer-in-chief in an Attorney's wig
I cleaned up scandals and I swept up sleaze
And I pandered to the wishes of the Big Big Cheese
(He pandered to the wishes of the Big Big Cheese)
I pandered to the wishes of the Power in the Land
And now I’m sitting here with his balls in my hand

As Attorney General I made such a mark
That he asked me to change my advice on Iraq
I quickly saw the error of my ways
And gave him what he wanted without delay
(He changed his advice without delay)
I told him he could do whatever he planned
So now I’m sitting here with his balls in my hand

Now lackeys all, whoever you may be,
If you want to rise to the top of the tree,
If your conscience isn't fettered by scruple or qualm,
Be guided by this rule and you’ll meet no harm.
(He is guided by this rule and he’s met no harm)
Keep your own head down during Custer’s Last Stand
And you may come away with his balls in your hand

ND

Caption compo: Starmer abases himself

To preempt the official Private Eye front-cover pronouncement next week is obviously lèse-majesté and we should wait patiently - but, come on, this is begging for a caption gag,  just as Starmer is gagging for crumbs from Trump's table.

Have at it!

ND