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No nuclear war expected

I've been keeping a close eye on news reports now that the USA has allowed Ukraine to launch ATACMS at targets within Russia.

Almost without exception, the mainstream media has warned that this could represent a dangerous escalation of tensions that bring us closer to the use of nuclear weapons and WW3.

However, whenever "experts" on the subject are interviewed, their opinion is unanimously opposed to such fearmongering.

In fact I watched a segment on DW News which was headlined as suggesting we were on the brink of things going "nuclear" where one such expert was interviewed. Even though that expert said he'd stake his own reputation on the fact that things would not go nuclear as a result of the ATACMS situation, the bulletin continued to propose this as a likely outcome.

To my mind, this highlights just why we ought not take too much notice of mainstream news sources.

Every time we see a headline or a report that seeks to sensationalise events we ought to remember that these are usually commercial organisations whose primary goal is to make money. Even in the case of state-funded news organisations, they have an imperative to justify their existance and that generally comes in the form of high viewer/reader numbers which are generally driven by clickbait headlines.

State-funded broadcasters may also be driven by political ideologies when they "shape" the information they deliver via their news bulletins.

I really can't understand why news outlets even bother interviewing these "experts" if they seemingly discount what they are told by them.

To have multiple experts all claim "a nuclear escalation is very unlikely" and then present a bulletin where you hype up the chances to an unrealistic level is ludicrous.

While on the subject of news, the Stuff website once again told me this morning that if I want to continue enjoying their "journalism" I must create an account and log in.

[clears cookies for stuff.co.nz]

Yeah, right! Sorted that!

Although I take anything Stuff says with a grain of salt, I still like to see what press releases and rumour (all presented as "news") they're publishing on any given day but I refuse to be blackmailed by a bunch of interns and advertorial writers into creating an account.

In the wake of all this dross, and the way all this sub-standard news reporting keeps trying to lure me back into the industry, I think I'll conduct a few exercises over the summer. I'll put my toes back in the water and see if some of my more radical approaches to news gathering and reporting might not pay dividends.

Time to learn a little more about harnessing the power of LLM AI systems me thinks.

Meantime, I'm chasing a memory leak in a Python program.

I thought Python was supposed to be memory-safe and had a garbage collector to round up all unreferenced memory. Apparently not -- because a program I've written consumes about 1MB per hour and in the process becomes ever slower. Eventually it reaches the point where it becomes so unresponsive that it's unusable, despite consuming just 1 percent of CPU time.

To behonest, I'm not the greatest fan of Python -- maybe it's just too "new" for this old-school guy. If I can't nail a solution today I'll just rewrite the whole damned thing in C and then, if it leaks memory, I'll know it's my fault.

Finally for today, I have to say I'm still feeling kinda ropey after my dice with death a few weeks back (overstated for dramatic effect -- hey, I COULD be a modern journalist!).

I've finally been able to get back into walking which has helped a lot but I'm down on energy and my muscles are still aching somewhat. On the plus side, I feel a little better every day so if I extrapolate that, I should be fine... eventually.

Sorry if today's column was a bit rambly, I promise next time will be better.

Carpe Diem folks!

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