My New Podcast: Millennial Sagas and the Historical Agency of Artificial Intelligence

 

I have a new podcast about my fictional writing, which is a magical realist saga about life during the turn of the Millennium. I will be posting podcasts in a new series: A New Mythology for a New Millennium. The first video was generated by five AI tools, including the machine voices of the podcasters themselves. On my blogs, I will explore the oddness of this experience.

 AI may intrude on the world of human action with an increasingly loud, alien, and inescapable range of capabilities. It has already left its mark on history. For example, one hypothesis I have seen discussed online is that Blackrock's AI, Aladdin, has been trained since the 1980s by trades on Wall Street. In other words, the New York stock market was used as a data source to build a machine which now is rumoured to control that market.

It is also possible that AI played a role in the covid pandemic. I speculated about this in 2020:

"On 17 April 2020, Yuan Zhiming, Researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Director of the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, conducted an interview with CCP-approved CGTN. He stated that a 'man-made virus was beyond human intelligence.' He said: 'I have never believed that we humans would have the capability at this time to create such a virus.'

Then it struck me, how magnificently one can lie to the world, while one still technically is telling the truth. A man-made virus may be beyond human intelligence. But perhaps it was not beyond artificial intelligence."

Not only is it possible that AI played a role in the design of the virus, consider the global data gathered during the covid pandemic. This body of information was undoubtedly used to build even more powerful models which rampaged through a succession of human disciplines: politics, medicine, education, society, and economics. No wonder that post-covid culture is AI's next target.

See all my posts on Artificial Intelligence.

Everything Must Change So That Everything Can Stay the Same

Today's post for Patreon patrons takes its title from the famous line spoken by the dashing aristocratic character Tancredi Falconeri in The Leopard (novel (1958); film (1963)). In the post, I recognize that the prevalence of revolution in the past three centuries made it synonymous with modernity. But what does revolution really mean if its real outcomes have led the modern era into technocratic surveillance and servitude? 

The Paris 2024 Olympics opened with reference to the French Revolution. You can see my related posts here, here and here. I ask again in today's post - what does modernity really mean if it was launched with a mass beheading event?

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A Butterfly of Doom

Prompt: "A wooden bench in a grassy field."

 

This month on Patreon:

This month, for regular paid subscribers, the main article on Patreon will speculate on the mysteries of sapphire mines in Elahera, Sri Lanka. In 1976, a mine in this location sourced the gem in a very famous British royal engagement ring. For upper tier subscribers, there are sneak peeks at my lastest literary offerings. I'll provide an overview soon on my literary blog, The Dragonfly. Join us!

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In addition for paid subscribers, I cover the crypto bull run markets, with a comprehensive airdrop discussion. Free offerings include my newsletter (sign up here, bottom of page), discord (go here), and telegram (here). Come on by!

At the free and paid levels, we discuss the implications as artificial intelligence converges with blockchain technology, amid the decline and fall of TradFi - and perhaps - of the whole traditional order! As we can see above, an AI-generated image is worth a thousand words. 

While the disappearance of Kate Middleton from the public eye may not seem as important as wars in the Ukraine and Gaza, everything is connected. This is the oldest story in the book. Is Kate a Butterfly of Doom? A victim of Dragons Prefer Princesses? Or will she be, when all is said and done, an Apocalypse Maiden? Prophecies are Always Right - and whatever has been done to contradict them, You Can't Fight Fate. 

A larger story materializes, as we gaze at a bench that was never occupied. Related archetypes are baked into our consciousness, and into our reality. Any betrayal carries with it a trick of the tail, because intentional ills, once inflicted, are always undone by the events which a willing sacrifice unlocks or catalyzes. From TV Tropes:

• Martyrdom Culture
  
• Town with a Dark Secret
  
• Secret Circle of Secrets
• Barrier Maiden
  
• Twins are Special
• Chained to a Rock
  
• Deal with the Devil
  
• Lottery of Doom
  
• A Fête Worse than Death
• Heroic Sacrifice 
• Self-Sacrifice Scheme
  
• Headscratchers / Dusk Maiden of Amnesia
  
• Total Eclipse of the Plot 
• Convenient Eclipse 
• Bad Moon Rising
• Comet of Doom
• Broken Age
• Vengeful Ghost
  
• Laser-Guided Karma 
• You Killed My Father
  

From Shakespeare Online, Shakespeare's Omens and Prophecies:

As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star
Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse:
And even the like precurse of fierce events,
As harbingers preceding still the fates
And prologue to the omen coming on,
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
Unto our climatures and countrymen.
(Hamlet, 1.1)

At my nativity
The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,
Of burning cressets; and at my birth
The frame and huge foundation of the earth
Shaked like a coward.
(1 Henry IV, 3.1)

Move in that obedient orb again
Where you did give a fair and natural light,
And be no more an exhaled meteor,
A prodigy of fear and a portent
Of broached mischief to the unborn times?
(1 Henry IV, 5.1)

Beware the ides of March.
(Julius Caesar, 1.2)

No natural exhalation in the sky,
No scope of nature, no distemper'd day,
No common wind, no customed event,
But they will pluck away his natural cause
And call them meteors, prodigies and signs,
Abortives, presages and tongues of heaven.
(King John, 3.4)

Calpurnia here, my wife, stays me at home:
She dreamt to-night she saw my statua,
Which, like a fountain with an hundred spouts,
Did run pure blood: and many lusty Romans
Came smiling, and did bathe their hands in it:
And these does she apply for warnings, and portents,
And evils imminent; and on her knee
Hath begg'd that I will stay at home to-day.
(Julius Caesar, 2.2)

These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us.
(King Lear, 1.2) 

 

 

Blog Posts Continue on Patreon: Ice Age Consciousness

Image Source: Waters End.

I commend my fellow blogger Dia Sobin at Once Upon a Transdimensional Day (formerly Trans-D Digital Art) for her Phi in Aphrodite posts! I miss the days of the Creative Commons and the pre-Covid camaraderie of the blogosphere. Dia and I agree that blogging on this platform is not what it used to be! At the back end of this Website, Blogger used to offer a fantastically easy platform for writing. Since around 2019, it has changed a lot and has become counter-intuitive and difficult to use.

I am still blogging at my Patreon page here. Posts are e-mailed directly to subscribers.

Free: Old and new readers are cordially invited to read - and to contribute to - daily posts for free at my Discord and Telegram groups.

For Basic Subscribers ($1 per month): my latest blog post for Patreon patrons is entitled Ice Age Consciousness; it relates to our need to awaken deep memory across many ice ages and floods. In February 2024, I am also launching AI-supported reports on the current cryptocurrency bull run.

Mid-Tier Subscribers ($5 per month) get access to my private forum here. $10 per month subscribers: get sneak-peeks at my fictional and non-fictional writing projects. Video meet-ups are available on request at these tiers to discuss news and economic issues, particularly politics, cryptos, and AI.

Upper-Tier Subscribers ($15 per month) get monthly Tarot readings and Zoom calls on request. $20 per month subscribers: get mysteries blog posts and/or Zoom calls on deeper issues on request.

I will soon update my fictional and non-fictional projects at my personal website, The Dragonfly and my Facebook Author's page.

Also, in 2021, I launched a clothing line: Taratantara. 

Image Source: Google Maps.