Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.
Last week’s posting was light due to some minor but rather unpleasant illness. Should return to normal next week.
Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.
Last week’s posting was light due to some minor but rather unpleasant illness. Should return to normal next week.
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Trinity
I don’t hang out on social media, but a lot of people do. Here’s a funny The Daily Show take on social media inciting anger. Nothing really new here, but it’s a funny take, maybe a different perspective, and she makes a couple of good points, with humor.
https://climatecrocks.com/2023/02/18/how-the-internet-feeds-on-your-anger/
And if you need a couple more laughs, this one may do it, “to wit”:
https://climatecrocks.com/2023/02/16/daily-show-tryouts-update-to-wit-sarah-silverman-week/
Curt Kastens
Did you ever wonder why US government officials can not just flat out admit that they carried out the Nordstream Pipeline bombing?
Because an implication of the bombing is that the US does not consider Germany (Europe) any more independent from decisions made by the leadership of the United States than say Minnesota, Iowa, or Wisconsin. European countries have some autonomy but not actual independence from US policy.
Clearly the US wishes to expand its dominance to the Ukriane and Russia. But it publically portrays Putin as Hitler because Putin wishes to put the Ukraine in the same position to Russia that Germany is to the US. Yet, Russia actually has a good and valid reason for doing for making the Ukraine an automous part of Russia. At least in the minds of Russia’s ruling leadership. That reaons is to be able to prevent Russia from becoming an autonomous region of the US, like Germany and Israel.
And to point out that there are actually many historical reasons for Russian leadership to believe that thier nation is a target of western expansionist policies has been taboo to point out in public in NATO nations.
That the context and the war in the Ukraine and the context of the pipeline bombing can not be raised in polite company, as they say, is also an admission that the western nations are no more democratic than Iran. But of course the western gets a great bit of support from its own populations by convincing them that they actually have democracy.
As a matter of fairness in revealing one’s view points. So, that I do not sound to hypocritical. I do not support democracy. To me the idea that everyone who is a resident of somewhere should have a say in what the rules of the place are is really really dumb. One person one vote is a terrible idea.
It was once a good idea. That was during the 18th and 19th centuries. The time that Thomas Paine, bless his soul, was writing his masterpieces. But by the 20th century the world had become to complex a place to give the masses a say on economic policies, let alone international relations. No one can say that democratic societies have not failed because there are CLEARLY no democratic societies left on earth. This has probably been the case since at least November 22nd 1963 if not sooner.
For a democracy to properly function the pool of voters needs to be well educated (well trained in the tasks of citizenship) well informed about the conditions of the world, and about the costs, risks, and benifits, and opportunity costs of different course of action. The voters must also be honest.
It is pretty clear that by the start of the 21st century NONE of these criteria were being met. What is worse is that the politcal campaigning required by a politica system that wishes to portray itself as democratic serves to corrupt the population.
The most obvious example of that is the Regean campiagn slogan of are you better off than you were 4 years ago. This slogan and much of campaiging promising to make people lives better, at a time that the people need to make sacrifices condition people to expect their lives to always get better and to hell with anyone that should expect them to sacrifice. Game theory also demonstrates that those who fight for the common good against special intrests almost always end up not winning. And game theory most importantly shows why special interests always have an advantage over the common good.
The sad siutation is that non democratic systems usually do not work well either. I recognnize that. I do not like the idea of one person one vote reguardless of one’s qualifications. But I do like the ancient republican virtues of freedom of speech, freedom from torture, freedom to assemble and to condemn the government when one has grievences against the government.
But I ask one to consider this question, are such republican virtues protected by one man one vote political systems, or, are such virtues best protected by strong civil institutions.
So while I do not favor elections among the masses as a means of setteling disputes, I do favor a Consitutional form of goverment with instiutional checks and balances against the abuse of power by limited clique of people. I would admit to being an Elieteist and to being an Authoritarian in a philosophical cents. But I think that it would be inaccurate to label me a totalitarian philosopher.
If industrial civilization does not collapse, which I think is quite likely by 2040. I think that the world would have (had) 3 broad avenues in to the future. One avenue would have been the highly regulated free market model. But not with elections. In this model people would register with a politcal party when they turn 16 or 17 or 18. That registration would be one file in a city hall and in the cloud. Political power would be divied up in a parliment on a porportional representation basis. People could change their party affliation at any time. And the party seats would change just as the exchange rates do. A little bit each day.
I do not actually think this is the best of the 3 possible way forward. But it is the least radical and might have evolved enough to prevent human extinction.
The second avenue would have been Parecon. Parecon sounds good. But it has no record of having been tried anywhere. I think that it is certianly plausible that it could work. Parecon allows people to vote on their economic prefrences. That shows that I am not dogmatic.
The 3rd way would be a centralized state run economy. I would prefer to call it the Cuban way. Opponents of this way would prefer to call it the Stalinist way. I do not really care what people call it. This idea of placing Stalin in the same boat with Hitler is to me either a case of not understanding history or not operating in good faith.
The Cubans have achieved a so much with so little in terms of inputs. Their society should inspire every every human of good will.
But of course in won’t. Why, because the masses have been misindocrinated and the elites are irredimibly corrupt. There is not much room for hope.
Curt Kastens
Point of clarification in the above comment. I recognize that there is not a Constitution that can be written down that can not be corrupted and turned in to a tool of for the benifit of a special intrest group.
There is a problem in all of human society. The problem of ultimate authority. There actually is none. But this lack of ulitmate authority makes things difficult for humans.
So the common answer to the problem has been ot lie and make stuff up about who or what the ultimate authority is so that those making the rules can cloth themselves in legitimacy.
One does not have to be a scientist to understand that there is no God in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. One only needs to be schooled in philosophy. If there is no God then God can not be the source of Government legitimacy. That is the end for theocracy. Then the western replacement for God became the people, daß Volk in Nazi times. Hitler took his legitimacy from Daß Volk. But this idea is clearly just as made up as the idea of divine right of kings and not because Hitler used the idea. There is clearly no way to define who the people are. We can see this everyday in Ireland, Spain, and the Ukraine. And even if by some magic the people were sovierign what would that mean about the rules that were passed in their name. Would it mean that they are valid no matter how stupid or unjust that they are?
That brings us to a common US outlook. It is the Constitution that is the soverign. But that really just means that it is those interpret the constitution who are claiming to be soveriegn. And that has the same problem as assigning soverignty to the people.
The bottom line is that we live naturally in a world of political anarchy. We humans needed to create a world of politcal oversight. There needed to have been a group of people with the power to regulate to overall health of the system. But it would have been a bad idea to create a one world government. Sadly we lacked enough good will to complete such a task.
bruce wilder
@ Kastens
Fundamentally, all systems of social cooperation promise mutual benefits far exceeding what can be achieved by isolated, small groups, but achieving those benefits depends on commitment to sunk-cost investments that make the whole system subject to hijack by rivals and by elites charged with governing the great power generated from successful organization. It is not hard to understand, but poses a political problem that cannot be solved “permanently” by any “automatic” social, institutionalized “mechanism” like a constitution draped with legitimating ritual.
There will always be many individuals and groups seeking power for themselves at the expense of the whole or some vulnerable subset of the whole. There will also be “useful”idiots supporting the subversive self-seekers. Ideologies are there to protect the useful idiots from self-awareness regarding their own evil.
Curt Kastens
Now on to a timely topic. It should be as obvious as hell by now, if not decades before now. That one can never accept anything put out by the US government and the western corrupted press at face value.
The story of shooting down 3 ballons or drones over Alaska, Yulon, and Lake Huron surely sounds fishy. It surely has some fishy aspect to it.
My view for about 20 years now, since the US invasion of Iraq, is that if one does not wildly speculate about what is the story behind the story one will never understand the story. But if one does wildly speculate about what the story was behind the story there is only a very tiny chance that you will ever figure it out. So, why bother? Yes if you are not retired with enough income to ponder these questions there is probably no point in even trying. Even if you are retired and have adequate income unless you have a military background there is probably no point in trying.
So you can just accept the US government explination of what has recently happened concerning the shoot down of 3 ballons or drones or you can speculate with me. Of course the first question that a scpetic would ask is why does everything have to be questioned. There has to be a motive to tell a lie. There does not appear to be a motive to lie in this case therefor the accounts must be truthful. But I start from the premise if a story sounds fishy it probably is and that means that there is a motive to be discovered. Sometimes the motive to lie is benign or even noble.
OK the first thing that comes to my head about this case is the symblism of ballons. Early ballons lifted off the ground due to hot air. Now it is usually helium. But I still think hot air might be a theme to consider in relation to this set of 3(4) connected stories. One can clearly see that they are connected by timing. Though to say that is an opinion not a provable scientific fact. Because after all there can be no scientiifc standard for how far apart events have to be to say that they are not connected by timing.
Another theme that I see that connects the 3 incidents is Canada. A 3rd theme is a refusal to label the objects shot down as either balloons or drones.
Ok to say that there is some significance to the number of claimed items that were shot down would put any sceptic up in arms because that is not scientific. But scientists lack something. If you start from the premise that the story is a true story to assign meaning to the number of items shot down would not be valid. But of you start with the premise that the story was a lie with a motive in the first place then then question of why did the story contain 3 drones, or balloons shot down after the chinese whether balloon and not 2 or 4 or 5? You see if the story was manufactured for some motive other than what is being publically stated there would be a reason for that number and not some other number.
The bottom line is science can inform us about the forensics of the case. But it is competely worthless at understanding what those forensics actually point to because the forensics lack a context. But we lack context as well. That is probably why we will come up with the wrong answer, especially on our first try. But if we do not forget about the incident perhaps months or years later we will come across some new context that might have some bearing on the case.
I really get pissed off at highly educated people claiming to be smart encouraging people to stay away from conspiratorial thinking. They are teaching conformity and subservience to to authority. Of course being a maverick does not mean that you are not doing harm either. A maverick that brings up a bad idea that gets traction in the minds of many people can do just as much damage to the world as a bad Premier or Pope or Immam.
There is so little hope much hope. Because so many people, if not most people, are totally unable to distinguish who is telling them the truth and who is not. But I at least encourage people to consider the mavericks.
500 years ago Machavelli wrote about how politics really works. We wished to liberate people from their illusions. But now he is condemned by many who see his work as some sort of barbaric Trieste.
Mark Level
Hi, Curt. Thank you for your posts. I appreciate your insight. Just a quick comment (& I am not known for brevity on this site or others)– being in my early 60s the election of Reagan was frightening to me when I was barely 20; and then we got the Clintons (let’s “not be sexist” and give HRC her fair due, their marriage was more political team than anything else) turning the Dems into New Deal-hating, socially right wing aficionados of M. Friedman & Ayn Rand’s “economics” (pure Cargo Cult shovel the $$$ up to the richest & don’t regulate anything nonsense), full-on NeoLiberal uniparty rule. The 90s were horrible, that’s when the whole system got locked in and unfixable. The whole thing is so openly venal and corrupt now, they barely try to hide it. We are facing the death of the Unipolar US-ruled world & it is getting ugly, I think we all know. Anyway knowing that there are a few sane people on this site, Naked Capitalism, Moon of Alabama, GrayZone and a few other actual “Left” places (coz there is NO effective political Left in the electoral system any more, as we all know) is at least some comfort. I’m not sure our #s are high enough to prevent actual full-on Corporate Fascism (whether under Trumpist knuckle-dragging “Strong Man” R types or “Shit Libs”, fake hypocrites who rule thru friendly fascism. Anyway, as the Chinese proverb (or curse) states, “Interesting times” are here, and escalating.
Trinity
“the world had become too complex a place to give the masses a say on economic policies”
The world, and human society, has always been complex. Heck, the universe is complex. What you are talking about is that it was “easier” to ignore that complexity when there were fewer people. More people just means more of a need to recognize it (larger ecological footprint) both in nature and in human society.
Many of the indigenous peoples managed to recognize it, learn it, and live within it, until they were obliterated by a group of people who refuse to accept any limits, or any boundaries except the ones they conceive. Those exact same people are trying to conquer Russia, China, and us.
capelin
My AI-dar is going off, anyone else?
Curt Kastens
Bruce Wilder,
Thank you. I agree that there never have been any permanent solutions. To address that problem I suggested in the past a type of ad hoc solution. The idea is that when a system has become disfunctional anyone can claim to be a Regent taking action to restore balance to a society that has become disfunctional. Though in theory anyone could don the Mantel of the Regent in practice it would really only be possible for those who were in a position to escape survellience to be able to build a movement and to have a capability to be able to communicate with the movement with out interference from those who wish to maintain the status quo.
No it is really not much. It was mearly an attempt to give people a moral justification for not just continuing to stand and watch the descent in to chaos.
To overcome the problem of international anarchy without imposing one world government the idea that I came up with in the past was Parecon at an international level, and the world being divided up in to 10 Super Nations (Federations or Confederations). These nations would belong to a world UN type organization. Each would have 1 vote with China, India and subsahran Africa also having one extra vote due to their population size. An extra Islamic vote could have also been a possibility because the way that these Super Nations were geographically divided could be seen as jerry meandering in a way that disadvantaged the voice of Muslim countries. That may seem like a world government. But it would actually be more like a world treaty organization. Because if there were 14 possible votes any rules made by this organization would have to pass by 9 or more votes. (or 10 or more votes). The Supernations that lost a vote would then face the choice of implementing it or not implementing it. Implementing it would of course make its leadership unhappy. But not implementing it would mean the collapse of the system and in the long run that might make them even more unhappy. And if the issue was important enough to the winning side in the vote it could mean war to boot. Under this plan all international trade would be government to government trade. What happened to raw material once they reached the importing Supernation would have depended on what type of economic system that area had implemented.
But that plan is not going to be implemented at this late point in the game.
Mark Level,
Thank you for your response. We are facing the death of the entire world due to environmental degredation and resource deplition. I am not sure that we are seeing the death of the US unipolar world, technically speaking. After all if the last people left alive are some US Generals or some Chinese Generals I imagine that will be glad to declare that they conquored the world and won the game of Risk or Go depending on what ever it was that they thought that they were playing.
Once food insecurity starts taking a toll in the US and China I imagine that they will start cannibalizing their military units by withdrawing the part of the military that they can feed in to the the smaller and smaller areas that are left in which agriculture can be conducted and can be defended from hoards of starving people. What can their end game be other than trying to ride things out until the climate stabilizes and their descendents and loyal servents can start the same processes all over again?
A person might be tempted to conclude that the world is not going to end anytime soon otherwise the world’s most powerful people would have been making different choices as they are clearly on the same planet as we are. The head of Citibank or the head of GM might not understand how likely it is that there is complete collapse of industrial society by 2040 because their educations and indoctirnations are to narrowly focused. But I do not believe that the Generals of the world’s militaries are so improperly educated. The behavior of such people could be a clue that us doomers are missing a key piece of information. I do not think that the missing information means that that the collapse of industrial society is not close at hand, if there is any missing information at all.
Trinity,
Yes the world has perhaps always been complex. But economies of the 18th and 19 century were still more local than they were global. There were not as many moving parts to the world economy 200 to 300 years ago.
Anyways it still holds that no one who would run on a platform saying that the sky will fall unless we all live like the Amish or the Hutterites at a minimum would ever win an election. Well they would not win at least until people saw the sky falling and then of course it would be to late.
Curt Kastens
Our relatively large frontal lobes were not designed to help us figure out whether the universe ends in a big freeze or a big cruch in billions of years. Nor to figure out how to fit quantum theory will General Specificity or anything like that. Our frontal lobes evolved, through a process, to help us make sense of other people’s behavior. There are a lot of smart people not using their frontal lobes for what they were designed for. Did their distraction make any difference to humanity’s final outcome. Or would it all have ended this way anyways.
mugu
“Row row row your boat
gently down the stream
merrily merrily
life is but a dream. . .”
Eric Anderson
Capelin,
No. AI follows pretty simple logical rules.
Ché Pasa
Heh. Could be. If so, we’re in a heap of hoo-hah. Ie: capelin’s query.
Z
Russia! Russia! Russia!
https://twitter.com/WarMonitors/status/1626942869754847232
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Billy Browder, who Putin booted from Russia and is the odds on favorite to have been the primary person behind the Magnitsky murder that he later exploited, is being given a platform in the statestream media to spread his fibs again …
https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1627258419999838208
–
I think our rulers are going to run into a lot more resistance amongst the populace in Taiwan to their plans of using them as fodder for a proxy war than they had in Ukraine. They’ll face plant on this one so I hope they continue pushing it.
Z
Mark Level
Hi again, Curt, & thanks for the response. So coincidentally not long ago I finished Derrick Jensen’s book Endgame: Vol. I: The Problem of Civilization. It was publ. in 2006, I probably bought it in ’08, finally plowed thru it in a # of weeks, finished it in January. Yes, I agree, widespread environmental collapse is coming. Your scenario is certainly possible, I can’t give odds but there are other possibilities as well– perhaps isolated surviving communities without “Alpha Male” MIC domination will survive in empty areas? Recently I read a wonderful peace in the Anarchist magazine 5th Estate (started in 1965 as an anti-war weekly, distributed in GI coffeehouses, switched to Anarchist/ Anti-authoritarian 3 times annually in the late 70s or early 80s) about the Japanese fighting the locals, who were a mix of mostly Koreans, also Russian, Philippines , Chinese and Japanese lefties who had organized an anti-landlord, anti-Capitalist, basically anarcho-primitive communist area of Manchuria which at its height “encompassed 13,500 square miles and was home to some 2,000,000 people”! It grew between 1920-29, mainly Korean (the majority group) led, but everyone had local councils, shared labor and educational resources etc. Administrative name in 1929 was KPAM “Korean People in Manchuria” entity. . . of course the Japanese destroyed it eventually . . . Yes, we could end up the way you predict but I do like to think that there could be isolated options elsewhere where people don’t let the Apex Predators run the society. That thinking may be naive, but none of us can tell the future with 100% accuracy. Link at https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/francesco-dalessandro-the-forgotten-anarchist-commune-in-manchuria
Curt Kastens
A note about Seymour Hersh. Because he broke the My Lai Massacre story he will always be looked upon by many people as an upatriotic demon who spreads lies to discredit noble US institutions. I myself have to wonder how he does his job. More specifically I have to wonder how does he find his sources? Or, do his sources find him?
I also have to wonder how he seperates facts from fictions in his own mind. The reason that I wonder about that is because he is such a well known figure, and he is well respected in some circles it would seem to me that the deep state would be keeping very close track of him. In addition to that it would seem to me that they would love to set him up to report a story that the deep state could then point out was off base to discredit his professionalism. These thoughts then lead me to wonder if the sources that he finds or that find him are actually ordered by their supiriors to give Hersh ( or other comparible figures) the stories that he gets.
In my mind it appears that there could be a motive behind Seymour Hersh getting the stories that he does. I am not suggesting that he is a willing tool of the deepstate. What I am suggesting is that in his reports the deep state somehow benifits from some ideas that are planted in the publics minds when they read his articles, in which anonomous sources provide important details of the articles.
Stan Goff said, the best bullshit stories are the ones that are 99% true. He was not the first person that I heard say such a thing. But he was the last.
Trinity
“no one who would run on a platform saying that the sky will fall unless we all live like the Amish or the Hutterites at a minimum would ever win an election.”
Setting aside the fact that you are accusing me of saying something I didn’t say, or even imply, I’m not sure you grasp where we are headed. The sky is falling. You said so yourself: “We are facing the death of the entire world.” And I’m not entirely sure how “living like the Amish” equates to understanding and living with complexity, as the Indigenous people managed to do and have been teaching us.
It is entirely possible at this moment in time to live within our means without resorting to the Amish way of life. It is entirely possible to manage economic contraction/resource depletion/climate change in a way that would ensure a better future than the one currently on the table, even if that future won’t look exactly like it did around 2005 or so. Either way it goes, good contraction or bad, the future isn’t going to look like the past no matter what.
“There are a lot of smart people not using their frontal lobes for what they were designed for.”
They aren’t smart, and they aren’t really people (they don’t have a conscience, and aren’t capable of empathy). If they actually were smart and/or people, we wouldn’t be in this situation.
Z
Not one story today in the online front page of the NYZ Times, the Grey Jezebel, our rulers’ paper of propaganda, about the spill and “controlled” burn of the chemicals that resulted from the train derailment in eastern Ohio earlier this month.
Our rulers can have their statestream media ignore this story, but it’s starting to look like they’ll be unable to contain it.
This incident is also fraught with political peril for the Lead Stiff of Weekend at Biden’s since he ordered RR workers back to work after they threatened to strike partly over RR safety.
Z
different clue
@capelin,
Is AI noted for generating numerous random mispellings?
Z
What we’re experiencing is a society that is increasingly run by amphetamine addicts*. It may have always been the case to some extent but is more pronounced now as these people have gained more and more power since we are ensconced in a digital world and folks on amphetamines are better equipped to run it since they can process amoral 1s and 0s faster than non-amphetamine users can so they therefore have the jump on running us around with the digital systems they’ve created per their benefit.
The thing about the digital world is that amplitudes do not play a part of it as it does in the analog and natural world so these drugged up assh*les chasing dopamine pings carry on without any thought or respect to the laws of nature and these highly capable idiots will run us off right off a cliff with their greed.
Though they can process faster as a result of being juiced, they are unable think that deep as a consequence (shortened process times = more of their decisions being based upon their perceived self-interests because the first person in almost decision we make happens to be ourselves) so they don’t consider the larger ramifications of what they’re doing … in effect, how it effects others … and they’re primarily driven by dopamine pings. If it feels “good” to them, then it must be good in their mind and the folks that don’t “get that” are stupid and behind.
*This doesn’t mean that every person who is on amphetamines is evil or part of the problem just that nearly all the people who are running the world are on it. If you don’t believe it, look into the eyes of almost every politician (most of them damn near in their 80s and moving around like they could be a contestant in next year’s Dancing with the Stars) and CEO in this world. It’s right there sparkling in their irises.
Z
Mark Level
Hi again, Curt. I largely agree with you about Hersh. Using Occam’s razor, my sense is that Hersh is “used” by different factions in the competing MIC bureaucracies during internecine struggles! However, Hersh is nothing if not anti-bullshit, and he shares in the interview with R. Brand (see my review in the weekend political rap thread for Sunday) that he publishes nothing until he gets a 2nd, outside source, so he will not look the fool. And in closing, 99% accurate is far better than the 3–8% accurate rate we get (in my humble estimations) from bad actor Establishment sources like NYT, National Propaganda Radio, & WaPo (intell-run since Ben Bradlee’s days, even Woodward & Bernstein arguably were there to push Nixon out on behalf of an angry CIA that were tired of RMN’s and Henry the K’s sloppy excesses). Deity bless Hersh for hanging on until age 85 to release stories like this one.
Curt Kastens
Trinity,
Sorry if I offended you. But your statement that indigenous people learned to live with in the limits that nature imposed upon them did seem to me that you were implying that we have to accept that we have to live at much lower standards of living if we are going to survive. That is what you meant correct?
That is why I said no one running for office who insists that we must have lower standards of living would get elected and therefore it is unlikely that anyone would make that part of his/her platform. The default setting is be positive spin bullshit about up comming new technology that will save the world with out our needing to make huge sacrifices. This trend is an exact trend of the Nazis asking the Germans to hold out in 1944 and 1945 until miracle weapons could change the course of the war.
Sadly humanity has missed the boat. It has missed the boat by more than a mile.
In public the talk is still about being carbon neutral by 2050. More Senisble people say that humans need to be carbon neutral by 2030. But the trundas are already thawing out. The Arctic sea ice is rapidly thinning. And these trends are not going to reverse themselves even if humans were to become carbon neutral tomorrow. If we were to become carbon neutral tommorrow the permafrost might thaw out a bit slower.
But we are not going to become carbon neutral by 2050 let alone tommorrow. Ok, I take that back. If there are still humans around by 2050 they still will not be carbon neutral. Humanity has stage 5 cancer. Some humans say that when you have stage 5 cancer you should do everything possible to beat the cancer even if the chances of success are less than 1%. Others say that you should accept the fact that you are going to die soon. I say that at this point we have to accept the truth that humanity has failed to meet the challenges to survival that it was faced with. What we can do now is be nice to each other, create some works of art, and tell some jokes before we sign off. One form of telling a joke is to create a funny mist spelling. Not all of my misspellings are deliberate. This computer used to belong to my daughter. It has a German language spell checker on it. I am technologically illiterate so this computer does not have an english language spell checker.
Now where am I? In front of a typewritter with a screen. Oh right I remember now what I am doing here. Pointing out that the left in the west made a mistake by making democracy a core of its sales pitch. Democracy is an evolutionary dead end. One can understand in theory why democracy does not work. And on the one planet where sentient beings lived, that we know about, all indications are that despite having elections that were called fair in many parts of the world the sentient beings are soon to be extinct. The theory matches the observed result.
But the theory goes further. Non democratic systems do not work either. Chose your poison. So my gripping about this issue may seem irrelevent.
The reason that I think that it is not irreverent is because Charlie Chaplin said one sign of insanity is always doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. The left wing in the United States has not been close to being happy with any national election results since 1964. And even that is only good in relative compairison to all of the other elections. After all if one has a long memory one can remember when many Democrats were supporters of George Wallace.
Therefore, in hind sight at least, the rulers of the US should have been confronted with a different kind of opposition. Exactly what that should have been I can not say for sure. But what I can say is to me at this point the Unibomber looks a hell of a lot smarter than the entire Congress of the United States. But at this point I would not encourage anyone to do anything unconventional to try to save the United States or the world because it is to late. There is nothing to do but wate.
And continue on in most places as if everything is OK because children under the age of 12 should not have to deal with the knowledge that everything is not OK.
Mark Level,
Thank you for your comment(s).
DMC
I dunno. Curt’s prosedy doesn’t seem natural, though you would expect chat bots to at least have spell check.
capelin
@different clue
@capelin,
Is AI noted for generating numerous random mispellings?
–
So, so easy to program in. First level of camo, like a fig leaf in front of a tank.
What are the most common keystroke errors, Siri? Thank you, make that occur about every x characters, but randomized, and at least once per post. Next.
Seriously, this is where we are at.
Zoom out and look at the thread.
Z
Tulsi Gabbard, who I’ve sometimes wrote in support of, on closer examination comes off as too polished and not having enough fire to her; essentially, a manufactured product. Given her background in the U. S. Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command it would hardly be a surprise if she is a Deep State asset and another installed fire break by our rulers, like The Head PR Man for the Point Zero One Percent Obama and AOC (who I also once supported), to create a barrier to meaningful change in the U.S..
Z
anon y'mouse
a rather crazy concatenation of possibly good result (we’ll just make more here, is likely) for bad reasons (vinyl floors =Uygher slavery!).
goofy. can’t we just ban vinyl without dressing up the reasons? of course not, someone might make less money and NOT feel self-righteous about it.
granted, no one will be making less money.
Curt Kastens
https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2022/06/23/ticking-off-the-checklist-for-mass-extinction/comment-page-3/#comment-74401
I was addressing the subject of determinism today on this blog. Comment somewhere between 725 and 730, I think.