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Vince McMahon Sells WWE stock to found Alpha Entertainment

Reports are that Alpha will be used to found a new football league and hold the intellectual property of that league. The original XFL, a joint venture between WWF and UIS television company NBC, was a brainchild in 2001 but lasted only one season. In that one season it lost $35 million.

The XFL should not be confused with the United States Football League (USFL) that lasted 3 seasons, from 1983 through 1985. The idea behind the USFL dated back to 1965.  It was the dream child of New Orleans businessman David Dixon, who saw a market for a professional football league that would play in the summer, when the National Football League and college football were in their off-season.

The XFL was conceived as an outdoor football league that would take place during the NFL off-season, and promoted as having fewer rules and encouraging rougher play than other major leagues.  Its failure was in large part due to NBC sabotaging its relationship with the WWF.  It was far different from the polished and rather plastic NFL.  It was more rough and gritty and used personalities from wrestling to promote.

If the reports are true to what is behind Vince McMahon creating the new company Alpha, this time he is separating it out from his wrestling business.  Given the change in the way content is now delivered–the networks are no longer in a position to play God–the reason can’t be totally related to his experience with NBC though that may play a part.  The XFL could provide content for youtube, amazon, facebook, twitter, its own subscription service, and so on.

To stand a chance it will have to have pay caps  offset by revenue sharing.  And with those pay caps it will have to create personalities beyond the normal skills of an NFL player.  It will have to pull from the showmanship of the WWE even if McMahon wants to keep  the XFL and the WWE separate.  Recruitment could be more like American Idol than scouting.  The recruitment can NOT be seen as rejects from the NFL but rather as men and perhaps even women who have some skill and who have a whole lot of ambition.  It can’t be seen as a cheaper plastic, but still plastic, version of the plastic–rich man’s–NFL.  The players must be people with whom the audience can identify.

Can it succeed? Yes.

Will it succeed? Well, we don’t really even know the full plans of Vince McMahon. So…  That is an open question.

But if they create an environment where everyday people think they might can play, and advance to a higher level, then yeah.  If they try to be a poser acting all NFL like, then no.

 

 

 

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Bobby Apple’s Story Ep3

A very strange 3 year old and his story. Fiction. In this episode Bobby and his family go to the community pool. They encounter a boy who has moved in to live with a woman that Bobby’s sister is afraid of. They also encounter the boy that Bobby’s sister has a crush on and Bobby with his psychic ability realizes a secret about the boy.

 

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Artificial Intelligence Is Not What You Think

What got me thinking on this subject again was a PewDiePie video titled
“WE ARE ALL GOING TO D1E.” Notice he used a 1 instead of an i to try to avoid a problem with youtube.  Funny.  A lot of people are doing that as they attempt to learn youtube’s insane artificial intelligence.

The video is fairly interesting but I don’t really agree with what the really smart people are saying in the video. LOL

  1.  AI is math.  It has nothing to do with thinking.  It is math.  It is doing math computations.
  2.  Basic human learning begins with the 5 senses which contribute to feelings of pain and pleasure.  Our first learning comes from that stimuli. Pain gives encouragement not to fall down when are trying to learn to walk.  Pain and pleasure teaches about fire, or heat and cold in general.  Human learning is not math.  AI (artificial intelligence) learning is math.
  3.  AI is generally a problem solving calculator.  It takes human input and gives a result.  Now AI can programmed to take input from other sources.  It can be programmed to use its results as future input.  It can be programmed to write its own formulas.  This isn’t learning.  This isn’t thinking.  It is math.
  4. But the main point of the video and some of the really smart people in the video was analyzing the scifi plot that AI can become dangerous to civilization.  I don’t disagree with that notion but still I look at it differently.  As people who have watched my videos on the Mandela Effect know, one of the theories is that the world is similar to a computer and the computer is not functioning properly.  I don’t go so far as to suggest the world is a simulation and isn’t real.  It is real in that everything that we do has consequences.  But the world is computer like and why I say that, is that it is also based on math.  One reason we have computers comes from the desire, the pleasure, of man to want to figure out the math of the planet and the math of the universe and even if you will, the math–the chemistry–of the human body.  So to consider how dangerous AI might become you don’t consider that by looking at the human brain or the thought processes of  our human souls which have learned through pain empathy, sympathy, and compassion through generations.  You look at the AI that already exists–has existed since the beginning–in this computer like world; this math based world.
  5.  The insect universe is almost like AI; but not fully.  It is math.  It is repetition.  It is chemical response.  Do insects feel pain or pleasure?  Do they learn from pain or pleasure?  Do insects learn compassion?  Is compassion in the mathematical equation that drives their repetition and replication?  Do insects really care about the consequences of the math that drives their existence or what they do in the larger math of mother nature.
  6. Mother Nature is AI, plain and simple.  It is fully math driven with the programmed objective of maintaining balance within itself. It lacks compassion.  It could care less whether its creatures live or die.  It creates the environments for its creatures to thrive and die.  It will nurture its creatures and it will murder its creatures with seeming great abandon but with one singular objective; to maintain balance.  But the math isn’t perfect.  Some creatures over populate while other creatures become extinct.  Just as the Mandela Effect points to this computer we exist within being broken, so does the seeming inability of mother nature to accomplish its primary objective: balance.
  7. But the point is, mother nature is AI.  And mother nature can be the most cruel bitch of all with its earthquakes and storms and diseases even while it nurtures us with sun and air and water and food.  So does AI present the potential for great danger to man.  It all depends on the math and the ultimate objective of the math.  But to fully understand the potential for the hell on earth it might be create one only has to look at the original AI: mother nature and its simple objective; balance.
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We need to talk about this suspicious character

I hate when people say “we need to talk about” in a video title so I thought I would do it. Uhha. The video is actually about the uproar regarding EA’s Battlefront 2 Heroes leading EA to reducing unlock cost by 75%. Still, a lot of people are not happy.

I also talk about when Disney bought Lucasfilm and then EA bought the game rights to Star Wars in a 10 year deal.  (Note that in the video I say LucasArt but what Disney bought was LucasFilm. LucasArt which was the gaming division was actually shut down. I think.  Sorry for the error in my speaking.)

And I talk about other stuff in the video like websites that still want to do popups and that kind of stuff which irritates me. I go into full rant mode on that.

I also talk about having to sit through 3 advertisements in a lot of pewdiepie videos which also irritates me. Half the time at least one ad will break the video so I have to do a screen refresh and then try to locate where the video was interrupted. I have sucky dsl.