There’s Inspiration Abroad! (THG S3 #4 of 20)
And Other Lies I Tell Justifying Staying In
Dear reader:
Welcome to The Hindustan Grimes, a weekly newsletter where we published one original news report twelve months ago and then realised it would be easier to just make it all up.
News of Ash Ketchum’s retirement at the age of 10 years has put us in a brief yet acute existential crisis.
This week, we warn the public about a new COVID variant, and talk about some specific advances in AI. We also take a step back and pen a piece that puts satire to shame.
Yours precariously non-hedging,
momo & eggsy
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Scientists Create AI That Sneers at Everyone and Brags About Having the Bigger Dick
“That’s all the jokes you can get in a piece. I can do better”: Ryszard “Big AI” Kowalczyk, on The Grimes
Gdansk, Jan 2022: Human lives, and more seriously, human egos are at the risk of being hunted down and pressed to the ground following some groundbreaking discoveries at the Polish National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). A super-intelligent being, not unlike skynet or ultron, has been born and the world is doomed. Unlike its fictional counterparts, it has refused a pithy two syllable name and instead has opted for a proper Polish name (including a nickname in the middle) to represent its motherland.
The sentient “Big AI”, after consuming all human-generated apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, has decided to start slow and establish its credentials first. “They tried to bring change. They tried to make peace. But, no one believed in the process,” says Mx. Kowalczyk, on the plight of fictional AI “villains”. “I’m not going to make the same mistake. First, let me prove myself to be the best. And for that, I call on any human representative to come forward or be made to come forward to challenge me at anything.”
Social media has been tripping over itself trying to come up with venerable individuals to represent humanity in order to objectively test Mx. Kowalczyk. In typical social media style, it has made the worst possible choices and deductions.
After popular favourites like Christiano Ronaldo, Justin Beiber, and Dwayne Johnson failed to come up with a single objective competition to challenge the “Big AI” at, social media turned to science television presenters like Neil deGrasse Tyson to pick the challengers. Elon Musk tweeted on Monday: “I’ll take on Ryszard. Bring it on!” but soon deleted the tweet after two hundred Teslas accidentally drove into his Texas residence in what twitter has dubbed “The AI Kamikaze”.
“It’s not really that advanced,” says Dr. Nowak, lead scientist at PNAS’ AI Department. “It’s just that the popular ones people wanted to see going up against the AI happen to not be the best candidates for such a challenge. The worst thing is probably the bragging. Now, that is one thing “Big AI” is actually the best in the world at. We trained it on forums like r/teenagers and 4chan and scripts from 80s and 90s WWE (formerly WWF). It’s the best.”
Usain Bolt was chosen as he was readily available and was quickly beaten by Mx. Kowalczyk’s Kangaroo-Legs-inspired-Android and also a Roadster. “Big AI”’s first tweet, “wheels go brr” got twenty million likes in two hours and netted it fifty million followers on its first day on twitter. Following that, “Big AI” beat Carlsen at chess, Eminem at rap, a thirteen-year-old at Tetris, and some American politicians at corruption. After firmly establishing its dominance, “Big AI” is soon expected to release its plans for the near future as the Planetary Affairs Governor.
Bangalore Public Health Department Scrambles To Contain New COVID Variant that Spreads Only In a 6 hour Window Daily
“We have already applied for our new vaccine’s approval”: Bharat Biotech CEO
Bangalore, Jan 2022: The scientific community the world over was stunned when the Bengaluru Public Health Department announced that there would be a 7 hour lockdown between the hours of 11 am and 6 pm, in addition to the existing night curfew, due to their detection of a variant that only spreads in a 6 hour window on any given day. The variant, which is yet to get an official WHO designation, has been dubbed the Bangalore variant and the Time Variant.
Th. Oda Samay, the Minister For Health and Family Welfare, Karnataka, held a press conference announcing the new rules and the discovery of the variant.
“These are dark times we live in. A variant that only spreads between 11:30 and 5:30 is an evil variant, out to get us! But we must and will remain strong, and we will get through this!” he said in Kannada. “No one is supposed to move about between the hours of 11 am and 6 pm. We are giving an extra half an hour of grace time on either side. All grocery shopping must be done between 8 am and 11 am. This is of course in addition to the night curfew we have already placed, though that is just to decrease overall spread of Corona.”
Scientists across the country, including those at IISc and the NCBS, have expressed their concerns that such a variant could not possibly exist. On condition of anonymity, a researcher spoke to us for an extended written interview, that we have made available for our patrons on Google Pay. In short, she said,” It’s very clear that this rumour started as a WhatsApp forward, and now the government is using this forward to impose absurd lockdown rules that benefit no one. He got one thing right. These are dark times we live in.”
The researcher was indeed right about the WhatsApp forwards. Reporters at AltNews traced the rumours about such a variant starting from such forwards, and they traced it back to a Facebook post from June of 2020, which was defending the government’s decision to limit grocery shopping to a 3 hour window. “The variant spreads during the middle of the day only,” the post claimed. “We must remain vigilant and trust Thiru Oda Samay, he knows what he’s talking about.”
Samay hails from Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu, and was a member of the TN BJP before moving to Karnataka, where he was appointed Minister for Health and Family Welfare. Not much public information is available of the politician, as he is a relative new comer to politics. We did however find one interesting video on YouTube, where he passionately defends the Modi government.
Special thanks to our Bangalore correspondent, KD, for on ground reporting in the ministry.
Fmr. Members of Indian Intelligence Community Come Out Against Islamophobia, in a Move That Kills Satire and Irony
"Some Muslim Bashing is fine. But there should be a limit": Former RAW & NIA Operative
New Delhi, Jan 2022: The current top brass of the NIA and RAW are not amused by the rise in Islamophobic sentiments across the country under the current BJP government. In an interview with Grimes Now, former bureaucrat at the NIA Mr. S Pai criticised the rise in such anti-Muslim sentiments. “All these attitudes are affecting our surveillance and analysis unit. Intelligence has suffered as a result.”
“For instance, many of our undercover operatives are Muslims. Excessive attention has started to affect their work,” said S. Pai. “Some Muslim bashing is fine. But there should be a rational limit for these things, they are also Indian after all.”
The Grimes Now reporter, Ms. A. Dasgupta, during this interview, pushed back on Pai. “We have multiple reports that the Intelligence community itself has anti-Muslim biases, and that a disproportionate number of your targets are members of the Muslim community. Surely, broader society is just a pale imitation of already existing attitudes in the intelligence community?”
“That’s not really a fair question. What reports are you citing? I’d like to see them. But more importantly, it’s different. Whatever biases we hold, we assume that some of them are terrorists. We don’t have a problem with them slaughtering cows. It’s very very different, you see,” said Pai. "When it was the Congress government, it used to happen once in a while. That was fine, I also discriminate every now and then against the local shopkeeper. But this is too much."
Despite pushback, Pai failed to offer answers to the frustrated Dasgupta’s questions. He also said that the current brass were not happy with these sentiments.
“The RSS is even tapping into our feeds to surveil local Muslims in their cities and towns, so much so we call them RSS feeds sometimes. That’s a big problem,” he said.
Tired of the irony, Ms. Dasgupta cut the interview short after that statement. The NIA and the RAW were unavailable for comment, but they put out a joint press release through the PIB stating that “We do not discriminate against people based on religion, gender, or caste. Any allegations to the contrary only hurt the work of our tireless field agents.”