@ggersh

First there was the people who monitor the border telling their superiors that Hamas was seen many times at the border doing nefarious things only to be told to shut up.

Then Israel moving lots of its troops out of the area and into the West Bank and not responding for hours.

The Israeli helicopters killing their own civilians and many, many cars were destroyed by bombs.

And why did Bibi finally get to see Biden just weeks before this happened? And why did he hold up a map that had no Palestine on it?

Then there’s the history of Bibi helping to fund Hamas for years and they live in luxury in Qatar and have visits with the CIA and Mossad. Qatar is in control of giving Hamas the money. Must have been a lot of money to get ready for the surprise attack don’t you think?

I will take off my tinfoil hat now.

I'm sorry for posting this but someone had to. How the Zionists
can do this and the fascists in DC help them in this is beyond
my comprehension

WOW, this might be THE most important piece of journalism on the war on Gaza since it began, by Israeli newspaper @972mag :https://t.co/ORhMha76B5

Essentially they confirm, with unimpeachable sourcing, that the killing of civilians was all calculated and intentional.

Their…

— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) November 30, 2023

@Lookout I followed some of computer v. human players Go (baduk) competitions when they were in the news. Wikipedia has a fair summary of the developments.

In October 2015, Google DeepMind's program AlphaGo beat Fan Hui, the European Go champion and a 2 dan (out of 9 dan possible) professional, five times out of five with no handicap on a full size 19×19 board.[135] AlphaGo used a fundamentally different paradigm than earlier Go programs; it included very little direct instruction, and mostly used deep learning where AlphaGo played itself in hundreds of millions of games such that it could measure positions more intuitively. In March 2016, Google next challenged Lee Sedol, a 9 dan considered the top player in the world in the early 21st century,[149] to a five-game match. Leading up to the game, Lee Sedol and other top professionals were confident that he would win;[150] however, AlphaGo defeated Lee in four of the five games.[151][152] After having already lost the series by the third game, Lee won the fourth game, describing his win as "invaluable".[153] In May 2017, AlphaGo beat Ke Jie, who at the time continuously held the world No. 1 ranking for two years,[154][155] winning each game in a three-game match during the Future of Go Summit.[156][157] In October 2017, DeepMind announced a significantly stronger version called AlphaGo Zero which beat the previous version by 100 games to 0.[158]

In February 2023, Kellin Pelrine, an amateur American Go player, won 14 out of 15 games against a top-ranked AI system in a significant victory over artificial intelligence. Pelrine took advantage of a previously unknown flaw in the Go computer program, which had been identified by another computer. He exploited this weakness by slowly encircling the opponent's stones and distracting the AI with moves in other parts of the board. The tactics used by Pelrine have highlighted a fundamental flaw in the deep learning systems that underpin many of today's advanced AI. Although the AI systems can "understand" specific situations, they lack the ability to generalize in a way that humans find easy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(game)#Computers_and_Go

I wasn't aware of the Kellin Pelrine story. Although I "intuited" that this flaw existed. But after the one champion was shut out in 2017 I lost interest.

Ancient games are interesting. Many are still played. Two that come to mind are Go and Mancala

China's most famous board game is Go, which is now played around the world. It's thought to have been developed in China between 2,500 and 4,000 years ago, and may be one of the oldest games still played in its original form.

One story says the game was invented by the legendary Emperor Yao, said to rule from 2356 to 2255 B.C., to teach discipline to his son; another theory suggests that the game developed from a type of magical divination, with the black and white pieces representing the spiritual concepts of Yin and Yang.

Go was introduced to Japan in the eighth century A.D. and became the favorite game of aristocrats, who sponsored top players against other noble clans. Professional Go players in Japan today compete in tournaments for prizes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In July 2018, archaeologists announced they had found a "games room" in their excavations of a Roman-era pottery workshop from the second century A.D. near the town of Gedera in central Israel.

Among the finds were several boards for the ancient game of mancala, consisting of rows of pits carved into stone benches, and a larger mancala game board carved into a separate stone.

The room seems to have served as a relaxation center for the pottery workers — a "spa" of 20 baths and a set of glass cups and bowls for drinking and eating were also found at the site.

Mancala is still a popular game today, especially in parts of Africa and Asia. It's played by moving counters, marbles or seeds among the pits of the game board, capturing an opponent's pieces, and moving pieces off the board to win the game.

Many I never hear of are in this Smithsonian article. It includes Ludus Latrunculorum.

The toast of the Roman Empire, Ludus Latrunculorum or Latrunculi was a two-player strategy game designed to test participants’ military prowess. Played on grids of varying sizes—the largest known example measures 17-by-18 squares—the so-called “Game of Mercenaries” was likely a variant of the ancient Greek game Petteia. (Aristotle sheds some light on Petteia’s rules, likening a “man without a city-state” to an “isolated piece in Petteia” left vulnerable to capture by an opponent.)

The first documented mention of Ludus Latrunculorum dates to the first century B.C., when Roman writer Varro described its colored glass or precious stone playing pieces. Two hundred or so years later, the anonymously authored Laus Pisonis painted a vivid picture of gameplay, explaining, “[T]he enemy ranks are split, and you victoriously emerge with ranks unbroken, or with the loss of one or two men, and both your hands rattle with the horde of captives.” The poets Ovid and Martial also referenced the game in their works.

Despite its recurrence in both written and archaeological evidence, Ludus Latrunculorum’s exact rules remain unclear. Various scholars have proposed potential reconstructions of the game over the past 130 years, according to Ancient Games. Perhaps the most comprehensive of these is Ulrich Schädler’s 1994 essay, translated into English in 2001, which suggests players moved pieces forward, backward and sideways in hopes of surrounding an isolated enemy piece with two of their own. Captured tokens were then removed from the board, leaving victorious players’ hands “rattl[ing] with the crowd of pieces,” as Laus Pisonis put it.

Thanks for the introduction. It was new to me.

We're due a rain tonight and through the weekend and it is much needed. Today's new map has taken us out of the exceptional drought category.

@enhydra lutris . And yes, 'Fairytale of New York' is a very good song, I'll listen now and again on the 25th.

who also wrote "Fairytale of New York" died. He was born December 25th, and to celebrate that, I included Fairytale of New York in my 12/25 OT which I loaded up just the other day, and now he's gone. He also used to sing with the Dubliners now and then

be well and have a good one