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Showing posts from June, 2024

Unoka borrows again: $2.25 billion from World Bank

Overview In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart , Unoka was the father of Okonkwo, the protagonist of the novel. Unoka was depicted as a lazy and irresponsible man, whose preference for storytelling and music instead of farming and wrestling led to his mammoth debts. Unoka had a ‘wall of debts’ in his room where he drew lines on the wall to indicate his different debts and creditors. He never paid his debts but managed to remember all of them by the marks and lines on his wall. When a creditor asked for their money back, Unoka would refer the person to his ‘wall of debts.’ Eventually, Unoka died in disgrace; owed lots of money to people, had no titles, and no achievements. Nigeria’s situation is not different from Unoka's. The political class, the elites, and their leaders are inured to the people’s plight, suffering, and deaths. Just like Unoka, Nigeria’s mammoth debts mean nothing to them. This writing will follow this outline to describe how the World Bank continually crow

Between Predictive and Generative AI: Analogizing with Naïve Physics and Psychology

Overview Naïve or folk physics and psychology are commonplace in everyday human experience. For the former, it relates to common sense reasoning or theories that help humans understand objects and events in our world. For the latter, it helps in humans' understanding of different mental processes, emotions, and behaviour about oneself and others. This writing will attempt to consider analogically naïve or folk physics and psychology as pedestals of the technological ingenuities of predictive and generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) by following this outline: Halfway-line Goal   Zeno’s Paradox FBI Profiler and the Unabomber Africa’s Political and Economic Archetypes Between Predictive and Generative AI Predictive AI Generative AI Generative Unconscious Copilot Bard ChatGPT The above can be considered from the predictive prowess of David Beckham who scored his famous goal from the halfway line, for naïve physics, and the FBI profilers' ability to capture the Unabomber,

What can bring Peace? Open Grazing: An Invisible Violence in Nigeria

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Audio – What can bring Peace? Open Grazing: An Invisible Violence in Nigeria Overview Open grazing practice is characteristically an invisible violence as well as a visible trigger of violence in Nigeria. It causes harm and violates people’s sense of security, belonging, and emotional postures because of the entrenched behaviours and by power wielding ruling elites. Watching several herds of cattle trooping along your farm is never a good sight. It is a distressing view. Immediately, it generates emotional disturbances, reveals the economic hegemony in the political sphere, engenders distrust, provokes frustration and remonstrate economic injustice in the system. It becomes impossible to exist as a citizen because such an invisible violence is irredeemable, and pervasive on one hand, and appears non-consequential on the other.  Open grazing practice is also a visible trigger for violence. The cattle eat or destroy farmers’ crops, the farmers chase the cattle away. The herde