Futuristic Egypt
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Showing posts with label Millennium. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Millennium. Show all posts
Sunday, June 29, 2025
Friday, July 17, 2020
Pandemic Chats in the Darkness 7: Welcome, Comrade
I have a new Patreon subscriber blog post up, in which I argue that the pandemic reveals how Millennial politics is not about left-versus-right ideologies, even though it is presented in those terms. The opening section here provides a preview to the Patreon post.
Welcome, Comrade
As in the video above, the pandemic is pushing politics past normal left-right divisions into the realm of chaos. There is a lot of confusion about this chaos. It pits red pills against blue pills, but there is little mainstream understanding of what those terms mean as Millennial politics evolves.
Take the red pill 🌹— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 17, 2020
The media - like the New York Times in their ill-conceived response to Elon Musk's red-pilled moment in May 2020, have completely misunderstood red-pilling. The NYT viewed red-pilling in an ahistorical, 20th century light, as a type of racist online conservatism, which attacks mainstream liberalism. This is not what red-pilling is. Red-pilling can be anti-liberal, but it is not fundamentally so. Red-pilling is anti-systemic.
Thursday, July 9, 2020
Revolutionary Automatons, Our New Pandemic Intimates
There are curios called bird boxes, or singing automaton bird cages, which were popular in the late 18th, 19th to mid 20th centuries. These were music boxes, but featured artificial caged birds which would chirp real-sounding bird songs. They are charming, yet disturbing, and were mainly popular among wealthy people in Germany, Switzerland, France, and America.
VINTAGE REUGE CAPODIMONTE SINGING BIRD CAGE AUTOMATON MUSIC BOX (14 October 2015). Video Source: Youtube.
Bird boxes were invented in Geneva in the mid-1780s by Pierre Jaquet-Droz (1721-1790); these mechanical automatons were once the mark of cutting edge technology from the revolutionary era. In late 19th century France, artificial mechanical life forms were an objet d'art of great importance. One of the most 20th century famous bird box makers was a German music box specialist, Karl Griesbaum. Bird boxes sell on eBay for USD $700-$2000. See related Websites, here, here, and here.
A French pre-revolutionary artefact from 1772, restored in 1864: Joueuse de Tympanon - automate (6 October 2006). Video Source: Youtube.
From the late 19th century, Industrial Revolution: Nancy - The Automaton (12 May 2007). Video Source: Youtube.
It is an odd fact that in revolutionary times, people become obsessed with imitating life using mechanized entities - dolls, golems, robots, androids - or in our case, AI consciousnesses. In the video below, note the creepy anthropomorphization of mobile phones and pandemic tagging and tracking apps, referred to as cousins of Hanson Robotics' gnostic fembot Sophia. The interview also suggests that phones, computers and robots are our new intimate friends as we humans are forced to social distance from one another.
Pandemic Revolution? Sophia Life: Interview with AI Researcher Tina White (7 May 2020). Video Source: Youtube.
Sophia the Robot Gives a Glimpse of What's to Come in 2020 #Sophia2020 (14 January 2020). Video Source: Youtube.
In 2018, the film, Bird Box, borrowed the name of revolutionary singing bird automaton collectables to describe people surrounded by deadly paranormal entities. Only caged birds, which provided a warning against approaching monsters, prevented people from committing suicide.
Bird Box | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflix (24 October 2018). Video Source: Youtube.
Sunday, May 24, 2020
Coronavirus Fragments 16: The Highest Point of Beta Male Ambition in Human History
Image Source: The Verge.
On 23-24 May 2020, Celeste Solum's video, featured at the top of my 23 May 2020 post, The Birth of the Totalitarian Technocracy, which criticized the World Economic Forum's plans as a roadmap for totalitarian global governance, was taken off Youtube. The account which hosted it, Willem Felderhof, removed all content.
Assuming that the owner of the Willem Felderhof channel did not have a change of heart overnight for other reasons, this could be interpreted through a blue-pilled view, which trusts authority, or through a red-pilled lens, which does not. Was this a question of censoring harmful, crackpot disinformation? Or was this information suppressed because Solum's anti-establishment heresy was correct?
In alt media circles, there is a consensus that one is only shot down if one is over the target, that is, one's interpretation of establishment misdeeds was correct and therefore had to be silenced. Of course, the mainstream perspective is the opposite - that a particular interpretation of information is beyond the pale of reasonable discourse and must be suppressed.
Tesla owners are grappling with the fact that their cars may carry new connotations after Elon Musk tweeted about taking “the red pill,” a reference to “The Matrix” that has been co-opted by the right and discussed in misogynistic and racist forumshttps://t.co/c8bqmUqpBN— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 19, 2020
On 19 May 2020, the NYT interpreted this distinction as a question of the dangers of being red-pilled, which it defined in terms of a gulf between left- or right-wing political opinions. But red-pilling is not about conservative politics, so much as it is about crashing out of the whole left-right paradigm. Being red-pilled reflects profound disillusionment about establishment narratives, a shattering of world views, and a refusal to accept top-down interpretations of information. The red-pilled experience of extreme alienation, born out of democratized access to information, countered by the control and manipulation of information, describes the new context of 21st century politics.
On this blog, I have maintained that social alienation and economic decline have been compounded by a misunderstanding of the degree to which things have changed over the past two decades. Outdated terms from previous centuries dominate our political, economic, and social discourses. They have not kept pace with enormous leaps in technology. Within that gap, there lie cognitive dissonance, and the potential for totalitarian exploitation as the public cannot distinguish between propaganda, that is, historical terms used to describe reality, and evident, Protean reality.
Tuesday, January 21, 2020
Dead and Alive in Time
THE HAUNTED ABANDONED MANSION (SOMETHING GOT THROWN AND SCREAMS IN THE BASEMENT) (31 December 2019). Video Source: Youtube.
For today, see two videos. One is an urbex exploration of a reputedly haunted French château. The incredible workmanship, tiles, wood carving, wallpaper, lamps, fireplaces, the lead paint, and the marble work are a reminder that material wealth is no protection against the waste of ages. Even in our brief lives, or across a few paltry generations, placing faith in materialism it is like holding up an umbrella against a hurricane of time.
Image Source: Bloomberg.
The irony is that in previous eras, people were generally more religious. However, the apex of their world view was plainly defined by solid, physical expressions of wealth to anchor themselves in time. A glance tells us that this is the tragic, beautiful esthetic of the dead, a set of choices no longer available to most of us and sadly no longer relevant. Material immobility entraps us in a dead past. Those who still cling to materialism in this old sense use it to construct their social personae; they are deceived if they think that this will help them survive.
Noah takes a photo of himself every day for 20 years (11 January 2020). 7263 days. Video Source: Youtube.
By contrast, the second video is the monumental output of Noah Kalina, entitled Everyday. I have covered Kalina's work previously here and here. Kalina has photographed himself daily for the past twenty years. Kalina achieves a dynamic permanence in virtual reality. The two videos show the tremendous jump in values and perspectives between the 20th and 21st centuries. 21st century cameras and computers propelled the 20th century's monumental, immovable, time-anchored objects into the virtual sphere, and rendered everything that was once tied down by wealth and authority into evolving, shifting phenomena.
Kalina started his project on 11 January 2000, before the launch of Youtube, yet the project was tailor-made for a Youtube space. Younger Youtubers were unsettled by the video. Some were born after 2000 and they thought that Kalina looks depressed and old.
I see in his valiant effort a distinction between the fragile person with dark circles under his eyes, who physically ages, and the eternal self. There are glimpses of personal habits which gave Kalina temporary comfort, stability and security - a beard, a favourite shirt, a girlfriend or wife, an apartment - but these inevitably fall away. What gives him real security and permanence is the Everyday project, in which, regardless of what was happening, he repeated the same activity every day to create a vision of a higher purpose.
Image Source: Spirituality and Health.
In the video, Kalina looks like a superhero flying through, and transcending, the decades. He remains the central figure, his work provides a subtle message about the positive implications (and applications) of technology for those who will follow after him. He is planting a seed of understanding and wisdom.
Image Source: pinterest.
It is an unusual and admirable artistic statement, to capture through photographs and the Youtube mirror the unchanging true self, moving in time, which is continually clinging to, and divesting itself of, its transitory ego-masks and all its props and crutches.
Image Source: AZ Quotes.
Image Source: Verywell Mind.
See all my posts on Urban Exploration.
See all my posts on Time Lapses.
Thursday, September 26, 2019
What's Left Over? A Plague on Both Your Houses
"Star cross'd lovers take their life." 'Life' is singular. One life is lost when Romeo and Juliet die, because the two characters form one character in death. Romeo + Juliet (1996) prologue. (1996) © 20th Century Fox Video Source: Youtube.
The New Millennium is synonymous with the future, and if you identify with that future, you may have noticed a trend which enflames polarities, but then oddly reconciles opposites, even between right- and left-wing politics. A Millennial third way seeks the Sun (masculine), Moon (feminine), and Stars (the higher union). Or: Past, Present, and Future.
There are different routes to the third way, and not every path is positive. The future's third way may follow the current course of world politics. After a prologue in conflict, it may destroy polarities through war and conflagration. Or it may erase polarities through technological, social and biological engineering.
Whether we follow the path of war or technocracy, the course will be materialistic. There is an alternative, however, which is anti-materialist. This blog post continues my series, What's Left Over?, which reappraises Millennial politics and political culture in terms of materialism and anti-materialism. I argue that the alternative media are not alt-right so much as alt-material. Their radicalism is not grounded in outdated left-right political paradigms, as much as it is in the political connotations of living in, and with, virtual reality.
Prologue in Conflict
U.S. set to hit China with new wave of tariffs on September 1st (31 August 2019). Video Source: Youtube.
Paradoxically, the institution of higher, unifying principles is preceded today by a deliberate exacerbation and intensification of differences. It could be one way of bringing about the desired union in the long term. Think of a couple fighting, followed by make-up sex. This may be the long game behind mainstream propaganda which has worsened political differences and regional tensions and has left us feeling that there is no chance to negotiate in order to solve problems.
Boris Johnson suggests prorogation will help negotiate Brexit deal with EU (30 August 2019). Video Source: Youtube.
'Boris Johnson, shame on you': thousands protest against prorogation (31 August 2019). Video Source: Youtube.
Brexit. Lebanon. Kashmir. Hong Kong. Egypt. You may abhor or adore the populists and their elitist opponents, or the democratic and anti-democratic factions, or honour the aggressors or victims. But it could be that all are servants of this greater aim, this third way, whether they know it or not. They worsen conflicts which will eventually obliterate the very barriers they are erecting. And perhaps this was the aim all along, to push things so far that finally we begin to break down divisions between different perspectives and ways of living.
Hong Kong riot police seen beating protesters in clash at metro station (31 August 2019). Video Source: Youtube.
A transcendent third way to overcome past and present problems is a very old idea. It is evident in symbols like the Yin and Yang, the Hammer and Sickle, and the Star of David or Shatkona. All could be taken as representations of the act of sex, the union of masculine and feminine energies. Equally important in east and west, as critical for the ancients as for the moderns, the higher union or third way is a code for nothing less than the survival of our species. As such, it is a positive idea.
The Hammer and Sickle symbol goes beyond the Hegelian dialectic. It confirms the occult roots of socialism. The hammer represents masculinity, while the sickle refers to femininity in harvest and death. Both symbols imply creative and destructive aspects of gender symbolism in northern mythological traditions. Image Source: Russia Beyond.
Thursday, July 11, 2019
Bereavement and Responsibility
Angel of Death (1881) by Evelyn De Morgan (1855-1919). Sometimes identified with the angel Azrael, the angel of destruction and renewal. Image Source: Wiki.
To my dear readers, my posts have been thin on the ground since March, when my father went into the hospital for heart surgery. He died on 19 June 2019. I wrote about his thoughts on death in the 2013 post, Zero Scrap Value. Two posts inspired by conversations with my father are A Sad Story and The Banality of Evil. A post with reflections on my father's generation of Angry Young Men is The Silent Generation's Separate Peace. In honour of his love of Bach:
Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. Performed by the Chimei Symphony Orchestra in Taipei, Taiwan in 2005; conducted by Naoki Tokuoka. Video Source: Youtube.
It has been difficult for me to maintain my regular writing schedule, since I visited my father nearly every day in the intensive care unit for four months. My forthcoming non-fiction collection, Inside the Potemkin Village, will include my reflections on this experience and other essays on how we deal with death and inheritances; these pieces will also build on posts I wrote here, such as The Death Rites of the Toraja.
I am deeply grateful to those who knew what was happening and extended their love and support to me and my family. In the blogosphere, I especially want to thank Dia Sobin of Trans-D Digital Art. In the vlogosphere, I was incredibly touched by a message from Luke Slytalker, who covered the Dark Overlord hack in January 2019. Thank you so much to Luke and his followers for prayers and well wishes. He wrote:
"Larissa is a great researcher and one of the hardest working, most dedicated people I have talked to. She is an example of perseverance, passion, and how to soldier the F up and do what needs to be done, even in the hardest of times. I’ve taken notes. I’m very sorry for your loss. Prepare for silver linings and the universe to open up to you in the most miraculous of ways."
Good vibes and prayers for Larissa (19 June 2019). Video Source: Youtube.
Everyone who works in the alt media can confirm that it can be a lonely experience, akin to staring into a distorted mirror. Blogging and vlogging constitute a new civic responsibility to identify and explain how the world is changing and to maintain creative, critical, and constructive voices inside the technocracy. I am so glad to know Luke and share that responsibility with him.
Members of the alt media are easy targets because we saw the writing on the wall early on, and voluntarily abandoned the established architecture that presides over public opinion. We are now being censored, our work arbitrarily erased by Thoughtcrime bots and programs. We are ridiculed and censured by the mainstream media as sources of disinformation and Fake News. Nonetheless, we labour here so that in the future, no one can say that everyone ignored the signs, and sleepwalked into a global tech-totalitarianism. This is a civic responsibility instilled in me by my father, and my work written in that spirit is dedicated to him.
Thursday, January 3, 2019
The People Who Want to Microchip People
Image Source: CBS News.
In an earlier post, I noted how the BBC is promoting human microchipping as well as larger tech-body implants. Their poster boy for this cause, colour blind guy, Neil Harbisson, merits a special 'cyborg' passport status.
Image Source: NYT.
Image Source: Munsell Color.
The subcutaneous chip was first developed by Siemens in the United States. The human microchip implant was invented by Kevin Warwick: "He is known for his studies on direct interfaces between computer systems and the human nervous system, and has also done research concerning robotics." You can read backgrounders on human microchip technology, here and here.
If this practice becomes widely accepted, it will become an automatic, mainstream practice, and children will be microchipped at birth. There are already brain chips which can affect moods and behaviour. Let this go further, and subcutaneous implants will become an organic user interface. They will also constitute an assault on the integrity of the bodies and minds of individuals both as individuals, and as members of society. Soon, it won't be necessary to talk about human rights and freedoms, because the preconditions for them will be medically removed and technically absent. For a disturbing, unconfirmed original sources on this endgame, see here.
The BBC promoting microchipping for Humans (29 January 2015). Video Source: Youtube.
The Body, Colonized
China Behavior Rating System V/S Sweden Microchip implants | Must watch technology (18 June 2018). Video Source: Youtube.
Of course, rhetoric which promotes rights and freedoms will remain. The political speeches will continue, but rights and freedoms will be erased in reality. Lip service will be paid to these archaic constructions until it is no longer necessary to do so, and people have forgotten them, or been reprogrammed. Expect whatever slavery that follows to be labeled as a new type of freedom. The Chinese have a saying about manipulation and the acquisition of power: point to a deer, and call it a horse.
Human microchipping is part of a new field called 'biointerfaced nano-engineering.' Another catch-all term is 'wearables,' created by firms like Proteus and MC10. This is not the path to convenience, progress or enlightenment. It is the path to slavery. Although it seems that the human body must become the next technological platform, it is not inevitable. Do not do it. Do not accept it.
This post is not a Luddite screed. It is a plea to save the best potentials of technology and keep them on a course that will not destroy us. We are entering a new stage in the Tech Revolution, in which we have to learn to take responsibility for progress and innovation. Thus far, citizens have been accepting actors on the receiving end of research projects released via big tech companies. These were experimental prototypes, presented as exciting consumer goods. Electronic goods were marketed with various political and socio-economic messages to make them palatable in the capitalist endeavour to build self-identity from the outside in.
Image Source: Go into the Story.
We were entranced in the first decades of the Tech Revolution by the gadgets and rapid software upgrades. Most people believed in the opening act that they acted as consumers inside the pre-existing capitalist model. They did not understand that that old system had already been effectively outdated and internally destroyed; only an illusory shell of that model persists as a form of mass behavioural control.
We can all be forgiven for assuming that consumerism was how tech was introduced into our reality. But it never was.
Although glitzy, futuristic marketing campaigns created the illusion that technology turned people into empowered, connected consumers, each new level of hardware and software between the 1980s and the 2010s blinded technophiles to the fact that they were never consumers at all. They were increasingly-conditioned lab rats, running through monitored environments, inside the biggest human behavioural study ever conducted.
Now, things must change. It is time to wake up. It is time to grow up. We can be forgiven for trusting those big corporations, helmed by intelligence agencies and Promethean research groups, as benevolent guides in the opening act of the Tech Revolution.
Image Source: Film Connection.
But we cannot be forgiven if we sleepwalk into Act Two, and deliver our children into immersive slavery. In transhumanism, the commodity is not the microchip or its successor technologies. The commodity will be a new type of interbody imperialism and colonization, developed under the banner of building safer, more efficient societies. This will be a coercive, predictable, micro-legalized system, based on live feed maps of humankind's biological processes, mass consciousness, and psychological and physical reactions as a collective of living beings.
There has to be a moment when we recognize that the integrity of our bodies and souls is worth more than a few everyday conveniences. We are not meant to become 'the Borg.' Planting a gadget in your body is not a form of self-improvement that is good for the environment. To believe this reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the body as an environment in itself, and of the body as an organism functioning within the larger natural environment.
I suspect that what will happen is that humankind will split into two camps. One group will absorb technology fully into the mind and body with erotic abandon. They will love the quasi-sexual interface, and will mistake the enhanced experience for an authentic upgrade.
Tuesday, December 18, 2018
A Housing Crash by Any Other Name
The Roscommon house eviction in Ireland is going viral on the Internet. *FOOTAGE* OVER 1000 PEOPLE PROTEST ROSCOMMON EVICTION (17 December 2018). Video Source: Youtube.
Make no mistake. Your elected leaders have limited power. The deep state intelligence complex runs the show. They expand their own power at the cost of your rights. Your vote is increasingly meaningless. The deep state owns the secrets of politicians and judges. They own you too.— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) December 15, 2018
It starts with eroding property rights, headlined by a recent incident in Falsk, outside Strokestown, County Roscommon, Ireland on 16 December 2018. When Belgian KBC Bank hired Northern Irish security guards to evict a small family from a foreclosed farmhouse on Tuesday, 11 December, an armed gang of some twenty men assembled by the Sunday after the family had departed. Just after 5 o'clock in the morning, they attacked the bank's eight guards who had taken possession of the house with baseball bats. They burned out the security guards' four cars, injured their attack dog so badly it had to be put down, and left three guards in the hospital. It looks like the owners of the foreclosed house may shortly be reinstalled in their home.
This vigilantism was obviously the product of local and social media buzz building between last Tuesday and last Saturday. The townsfolk felt that the foreclosure was unnecessarily brutal and they also disliked the fact that the eviction was scheduled right before Christmas. It was inhumane. From The Irish Examiner:
"One man said: 'I felt sorry for the family because I knew them for years, I grew up beside them and I suppose like every family they did try their best. They should have been given time and there should be more people out at that gate.'A woman said: 'It is shocking. You wouldn't throw an animal outside the door, they were treated like animals.' ...
The bank's hiring of Northern Irish mercenaries was the final straw. One Youtuber remarked: "this is a joke we need to have some balls like the French and yellow vest these orange bastards." Another commented:Independent Roscommon TD Michael Fitzmaurice claims up to 40 to 50 people are walking away from their homes because they are afraid of going through the court system. ... 'A lot of people are losing their home or a piece of land. We are dealing with too many cases, we’re trying to deal with the banks and the vulture funds,' he said."
"Eviction has a particular connotation, in Ireland, since famine times, and before. There is a visceral reaction to the concept, in the gut of every Irish person over a certain age. A horror of eviction is buried deep in our [psyche], and in our cultural memory. KBC bank clearly has no grasp of the cultural sensitivities in the matter, or cares less. I can't comment on the case details, because I don't know enough to do so. But there is always a right, and a wrong way, to approach every issue."
The aftermath of the Roscommon attack on the security guards who were hired by the KBC Bank to repossess a family's house. Anti Irish Bankster terror gang burnt out after stealing pensioner's home (16 December 2018). Video Source: Youtube.
Roscommon Eviction Interview (16 December 2018). Video Source: Youtube.
Sunday, October 28, 2018
Hallowe'en Countdown 2018: The Skeleton Key
Olga Neuwirth, Lost Highway opera stills (2003), based on the 1997 film by David Lynch.
In this year's Hallowe'en countdown, I have been describing a malaise that unnerves us. There is a collective sense that things have gone wrong and somewhere, there is an answer why. Somewhere, there is a skeleton key. If you had it, you could unlock all the problems, find their solutions, and blink yourself awake into a better world.
Wednesday, October 10, 2018
Hallowe'en Countdown 2018: Julian Assange, Manchurian Candidate?
The Australian cult, 'The Family,' was certainly connected to Julian Assange in his childhood. But the extent of that connection is not well known. Image Source: The Age.
This week in the Hallowe'en countdown, I am covering arcane secrets which lie in plain sight. It is a common theme now that appearances are deceiving. Famous people and politicians hide behind glittering reputations, concealing sinister private realities, backroom deals, abuses, corruption, and weird spiritual beliefs. Another theme is the opposite idea that these truths aren't hidden. The common people are blind to self-evident facts, sitting right under their noses.
Free information reveals those facts. It blows open circles which, in the past, may have been secret, or may have been merely exclusive. This dynamic is being radicalized and is transforming the political landscape. Socialism is passé. The Red Pill - or the more extreme Black Pill - is the new calling card of the common man or woman.
Among those who have weaponized information against the establishment, none is more prominent than Julian Assange, publisher at WikiLeaks.
Image Source: Aangirfan.
However, whistle-blowing and leaks are no certain testament to credibility. Free information can be suppressed, discredited, or counter-weaponized by the establishment in order to harness its radical power.
Cyber activists are paranoid enough to know that there is a level of Millennial horror beyond Black Pilled disillusionment. See through all the façades, and you will reach a point at which you can trust no one, especially when they come to you bearing gifts of revelations. You cannot rely on those new populist leaders and anti-establishment whistle-blowers, who could be controlled opposition, agents meant in the final analysis to lead the flock back into the fold of a compromised establishment. Seeming reforms will come to naught and online freedom will revert to slavery. In this vein, you can read a scathing alt-attack on Assange and his intelligence connections, here.
This is why, where Assange is concerned, the jury is out among his Red Pilled followers. My last post summarized the work of Sam William, who vlogs about London, UK. When the vlogger visited the city's Ecuadorian embassy, his audience elaborated in the Youtube comments section on Assange's background:
And:"Assange was raised in a cult called 'The family' in Melbourne which was run by a wom[a]n called Anne Hamilton Byrne. The family conducted trauma based mind control on many white haired children. Anne was on the board of the Newhaven private hospital that was found guilty of administering LSD to patients as late as the 1980s. Anne was close fr[ie]nds with Lord Casey, founder of ASIS, Oz Secret intelligence service. Anne was on the run for many years from the FBI, hidden in the USA until they eventually got her. In 1994, she evaded prison and was only fined AUS $5000. These are my observations."
And:"The cult was called The Family and the great leader was an Australian woman Ann Hamilton-Byrne. All of the children had bleached blonde hair and matching bowl cuts, like Children of the Damned- not just for aesthetics, but to take away individually and institute more control. The cult also dealt in child-trafficking and the sameness was useful in transporting them around with passports that may not be their own. The leader's daughter found she was not her biological daughter and was basically stolen as a baby and wrote a book on her upbringing. The children were systematically abused, drugged, sleep-deprived, trauma-based abuse. It was definitely a Tavistock cult, many cults are CIA/Tavistock inventions or they are co-opted when they show up on their radar and are useful grounds for experimentation. Julian got into the cult through his mother's boyfriend but I don't know if he has ever discussed it. All that matters are the actual wikileak documents and their legitimacy, not who he is. He could be a total Tavistock/CIA/shadow govt/reptilian overlord created persona and it doesn't really matter. It is striking that one would keep the culty hair-do after leaving the cult, unless you never really left ...)."
There is a lot to consider here, not least that the daughter mentioned above, Sarah Moore, died in May 2016 at the age of 46. Beyond the possibility that Julian Assange may have been partly raised in a cult, there is a question - as the commenters imply - of whether the cult was connected to a much larger picture. If so, we must ask whether that larger picture had any bearing from the start on Julian Assange's integrity, and on WikiLeaks's founding and agenda."After I left this comment, I checked out what the daughter is up to, she is a doctor now- and I saw a comment she made, maybe on twitter, about how Julian couldn't have grown up in this cult and have been a teenage hacker when they didn't even have electricity. So he either did not grow up in the cult or was never a teen hacker. He is a constructed persona, used as a front for politically motivated leaks. The cult of personality built around him is pretty impressive though."
Friday, October 5, 2018
Hallowe'en Countdown 2018: They Live ... Don't They?
Still from They Live (1988). Note the book behind the hero: On ESP by Edgar Cayce, which you can read for free online here. All stills and film © Universal Pictures. Reproduced under Fair Use. Image Source: IMDB.
On this blog, I have written about poverty and homelessness, the destruction of the middle classes, and how conspiracy theories provide dramatic and supernatural explanations for growing social inequality.
In 1988, horror film director John Carpenter made a film which tackled all these ideas. It was entitled They Live. Carpenter intended his film to be an attack on the Reagan era and 1980s' conspicuous consumption. The film suggests something prevalent in Millennial conspiracists' circles, namely, that the establishment élites are pawns of alien overlords who conceal their true appearance and feed off the energy of the impoverished common people. This is a metaphor for social alienation, racism, and socio-economic distress. But the film raises an additional question as to why They Live presented a story which many netizens now believe to be literally true.
Thursday, September 6, 2018
Fascism at a Hairpin Turn
The undercut was an Edwardian haircut which remained popular through the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. It became the iconic male haircut of Nazi fascism. It did not become widely popular again until the 2010s. Today, it is sported in different variations by hipster urbanites on the left and the right, with only some individuals aware of the hairstyle's political message. Image Source: The Bold Italic.
Social control. Censorship. Totalitarianism. They won't arrive in the 20th century varieties we expect. Nouveau Nazis have appeared in dozens of movies, including Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984); V for Vendetta (2005); The Man in the High Castle (2015-present); The Handmaid's Tale (2017-present), and Fahrenheit 451 (2018).
Greater Germanic Reich | Man in the High Castle (5 March 2018). Video Source: Youtube.
An alt-historical adaptation of Philip K. Dick's Man in the High Castle (1962), produced by Ridley Scott, considers what America would be like if the Axis Powers won World War II. The new adaptation of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985) depicts fascists as rigid, hypocritical, psycho-Christians, who impose a violent, patriarchal and puritanical monoculture, viciously suppress women's rights, and divide American society into uniformed, hierarchical, militaristic-gender castes.
The Handmaid’s Tale Trailer (Official) (26 April 2017). Video Source: Youtube.
Elisabeth Moss Describes A 'Fictional' Totalitarian, Right-Wing Regime (21 April 2017). Video Source: Youtube.
Because of these cultural representations, we expect totalitarianism to dress itself in brownshirts and jack boots. The subtext in liberal adaptations is that Donald Trump's America is an alt-right neo-Nazi régime.
Neo-Nazis have certainly reemerged during Trump's administration more boldly than they have in the previous sixty years. Yet fascism is also exploding into the mainstream from other political quarters. It must be combated at all costs, but to do that, you have to understand what fascism is and how it works. That requires recognizing the menace you can't see coming, as much as the threat you're sure you know.
Sunday, May 20, 2018
Lessons from Building the Outer Brain
The NYT reported that smart assistants can be (re-)programmed by ultrasonic signals, which are inaudible to their owners. Image Source: NYT / Lynn Scurfield.
There have been several headlines about AI and robots in recent weeks. All of them involve a gap between what we want to see in technology (and in ourselves) and what we don't want to see.
Friday, May 11, 2018
The Artificial Intelligence Nemesis
Image Source: thebodhitrees.
The creation of AI is a story of humanity. It will end where it begins, with a nemesis that will test humankind. This is because human beings grapple with inner knowing on ever more profound levels, driven by self-engineered crises.
Artificial Intelligence: The Nemesis in the Mirror
Anonymous - This Shocking Footage Should Worry You! (2018-2019) (13 January 2018). Video Source: Youtube.
AI is a big mirror. As Google's Cloud Lead Dr. Fei-Fei Li stated, AI began with the question, "Can machines think?" Engineers began building machines to mimic human thinking, to reason, see, hear, think, move around, manipulate. That was AI's foundational dream. In the 1980s, machine learning was born, followed by deep learning, which is rooted in neuroscience. This young discipline is set to explode, due to the exploitation of big data, harvested from around the globe. Thus, no matter how the machines end up evolving, it is worth asking now what we are doing with AI and why we doing it. There are unconscious human impulses that are informing AI design.
Find your museum Doppelgänger: some people have found themselves in paintings at art museums. Image Source: Kottke / My Modern Met / Davidurbon.
This mirror will test a psychological mode which human beings have used to build, change, create: the obsession with the nemesis, the other, the twin, the Doppelgänger.
The nemesis psychological complex works by externalizing something we cannot manage inside our own natures. Once the thing is externalized, we interact with it to create new ways of understanding and operating in the world. One of my posts, I Will Teach You Infinities, described how the nemesis complex informed the structure of language, because language progressively builds away from the starting point of selfhood, or 'I.'
Wednesday, May 2, 2018
Defend the Right to Repair
Image Source: LA Times (Hat tip: The Outer Light).
The tech giants have moved one step closer toward criminalizing anyone who refurbishes or recycles old electronics. The hypocrisy of Silicon Valley companies came into sharp relief as a US federal appeals court in Miami ruled to imprison a tech waste e-cycler on 11 April 2018.
Electronics-recycling innovator is going to prison for trying to extend computers' lives. An example of the use of force architecture that copyright industries depend on. Material goods are protected by cost of reproduction. Immaterial, only by coercion. https://t.co/7d1oEZivlZ— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 30, 2018
HLN LIVE Recycler Eric Lundgren - Stands Up For Repair and Recycling! (2 May 2018). Video Source: Youtube.
Monday, April 9, 2018
Losing Our Addiction
Mark Zuckerberg in 2009: Facebook privacy is central - BBC News (21 March 2018). Video Source: Youtube.
The endgame of social media is becoming clear. The exciting 2000s and early 2010s were the heyday of the Creative Commons. A beautiful ideal established in 2001, the Creative Commons refers to the free-sharing of information, the democratization of data.
The Commons made way for cyber-variants of political ideologies, which attempted to describe and defend new virtual freedoms. Social media seemed to offer soapboxes and development venues for tech-savvy individuals. Some of these individuals became hacktivists and citizen journalists, who used search engines and video platforms like Youtube to expose the power structures of the world. They fell for the tempting promise that the little person could finally be empowered, independent, and free. Having identified themselves in the system as potential leaders, they are now being censored. Each new liberty in this testing ground has led social media users ever deeper into a matrix of control.
It is evident that early Millennial spaces of free discussion, sexual libertinism, and politically liberated behaviour, alongside honeypot offers of cheap hardware and open source toolkits, were always controlled environments. Think of Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Google and even the chans! - as Petri dishes and you start to get a better idea of what has been happening. As I stated in an earlier post about the Dark Web, anonymity is a myth. These free spaces were merely opportunities to gather vast amounts of human data for future AI systems, dedicated to social control and surveillance.
"Sean Parker, 38, claims social media sites like Facebook are 'exploiting vulnerabilities in human psychology' and said social media pioneers like himself 'understood this consciously and we did it anyway.'": Facebook founder warns of social media addiction (10 November 2017). Video Source: Youtube/ABC News.
Last year, VICE talked to Google ex-designer and ethicist Tristan Harris. Harris confirmed that social media platforms were deliberately designed to addict their users and employed tricks used in casinos, such as intermittent variable rewards. Social media platforms use social reciprocity, social approval, fear of missing out, and fear of social exclusion to trick users into sharing their personal data and their emotional sensibilities around that data. It's all done in a climate of fake positivity, driven by an undercurrent of addiction, social threat, and fear.
Social media platforms also employ principles of deception because they only offer users certain courses of behaviour, with few considering the choices which were not made available. You can read Harris's essays on this topic here.
Dopamine, an "AI platform" to engineer addictiveness. Saddest thing I've read about today. If you work in AI, you have de facto some power over others, so remember to always exercise this power responsibly. https://t.co/tcT7t1QETc— François Chollet (@fchollet) November 8, 2017
Facebook's ex-president Sean Parker confirmed the founding principles of the platform in a series of interviews last year; from Slate:
Parker's revelations mean that in the 2009 interview at the top of this post, Mark Zuckerberg was outright lying to the BBC about Facebook's endgame. Today's Silicon Valley marketing is reminiscent of cigarette ads from the 1950s through the 1980s, which deliberately misled consumers about the terrible health effects of smoking."The thought process was all about, 'How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?', he said. 'And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever, and that’s going to get you to contribute more content, and that’s going to get you more likes and comments. It’s a social validation feedback loop. … You’re exploiting a vulnerabilty in human psychology.'"
Tuesday, March 13, 2018
Tweet of the Day: Recession Anniversary
Ten years ago this week, Bear Stearns collapsed and a full-on financial crisis followed https://t.co/AEwsCvfB81 pic.twitter.com/9egSguGpxw
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) March 13, 2018
Sunday, March 4, 2018
I Love My Microchip
The new slavery: employers are now microchipping employees the way a veterinarian would microchip the family pet. Image Source: Mark Gasson/BBC.
I Love My Microchip: Employers are now micro-chipping their employees and the BBC thinks this is a good idea.
Predicting the biometric future of 2017 in 2007: NBC Prediction That We Will All Have an RFID Chip Under Our Skin by 2017 (28 May 2010). Video Source: Youtube.
The LA Times reports on BD EpiCenter software, which "provides advanced data management for all BD Microbiology systems" and confirms that the Internet of Things will incorporate biological entities:
On 2 August 2017, Dave Williams, a Mozilla systems engineer in the UK, explained the benefits to the BBC:"'The biggest benefit, I think, is convenience,' said Patrick Mesterton, co-founder and chief executive of Epicenter. As a demonstration, he unlocks a door merely by waving near it. 'It basically replaces a lot of things you have, other communication devices, whether it be credit cards or keys.' ... 'I mean, people have been implanting things into their body, like pacemakers and stuff to control your heart,' he said. 'That's a way, way more serious thing than having a small chip that can actually communicate with devices.'"
"'I have the world's worst memory,' says Williams. The fact that he now has a gadget on him at all times that opens doors and unlocks his computer — one that he can’t leave at home or forget — is a huge advantage. 'It's also fun to give someone my number and email address by touching their phone to my hand.'"
Microchipping is recommended for commuters so they don't have to buy transit tickets. Image Source: Independent.
Swedish rail operator accepts microchip tickets (16 June 2017). Video Source: Youtube.
The claims that microchips will be used to monitor public health, improve workplace efficiency, and enhance tech users' convenience distract target audiences from the fact that microchips are the foundational element of a new slavery. Soon, being microchipped will be a prerequisite for being employed. Not only is it possible that you won't get hired without a microchip, you may not even be able to travel to work without a chip in your hand.
In past centuries, slaves were branded like livestock to show ownership. For centuries, serfs and slaves fought to become free citizens, demanding constitutions, democratic elections, and civil rights. The resolution to that journey is to be microchipped, live in a faux-democracy, and await World War III in a 5G supercity.
Tuesday, December 26, 2017
Christmas Coups
#MerryChristmas! 🎄 Did you know several big #military events have happened on #Christmas? Find out which ones: https://t.co/ytuil3BBFL pic.twitter.com/KD5SLQuDsp— U.S. Dept of Defense (@DeptofDefense) December 25, 2017
Since October, the Internet has been gripped by fevered speculation boiling up from 4chan and 8chan. A mysterious leaker going by the handle 'QAnon' has been releasing cryptic messages about American political drama behind the scenes. The tweet above, and another from the US Navy, resemble Q's posts on 8chan made before Christmas, hinting that Q is connected to the military or intelligence. Even Trump himself appears to have made tweets which connect to Q's posts. This implies that the military supports Trump's administration and current consolidation of power. If you are curious, all of Q's messages have been archived here.
Screenshot Source: The Daily Rabbit Hole.
Among other things, the speculation around Q refers to: American domestic politics; photos taken from Air Force One; Julian Assange and a break-in at the WikiLeaks' lawyers' offices Baltasar Garzon in Madrid on 18 December 2017; UFO rumours (for mainstream coverage, go here, here and here); and the Koreas.
An alt-media summary: Who is Q Anon An overview (24 December 2017). Video Source: Youtube.
The discussion about QAnon is a huge interactive experience, largely ignored Trump's critics, who would not search for, or watch, this information. But they should pay attention: this covert underground extravaganza is a lesson on how Trump dominates the Internet and derives his support from it, no matter how much the tech giants censor his supporters. Q prompts netizens to embark on a crowd-sourced information treasure hunt to decode his or her posts. Some of them have tabulated their answers to Q's hints and questions here. You can see the impact of the campaign on Twitter here and Reddit here. For example, the tweet below asks whether the CIA is arming North Korea in response to Q's Matrix prompt, Follow the White Rabbit.
— DeplorableMidwestGal🇺🇸 (@gal_deplorable) December 24, 2017
One Youtube commenter felt that Q's posts are not leaks so much as the next generation of mass manipulation. That is, leaks carry an aura of legitimacy and righteousness, a scourge on the corrupt den of politics. But really, that righteousness is a smokescreen for what is effectively a military coup. Or so the chatter maintains:
Whatever Q is or is not, his or her underground posts show a superb grasp of Internet dynamics and underground mass media communication - and of managing an intended outcome from that communication. That intended outcome is not yet determined."Consider that Q is a psy op. Yes, it does seem to be coming from high up. But we should be questioning the narrative that says lay down and let the police state (martial law?) drain the swamp. How long will it take before we realize the horror of what this rollout really is? (Speculating. A possibility. Think Standing Rock) OR, when Trump's term is up and the swamp hasn't been drained anywhere near the extent that this narrative claims is currently happening, will we start to question the validity of Q (as well as the whole Trump savior narrative)? Notice how Hillary supporters wait with baited breath at Trumps demise the same as Trump's supporters wait for Hillary/Obama/etc. demise. How long will we wait and keep buying the bs that justice is currently underway so we should be patient. There are multiple narratives. Some are partly true. So, irresistible. What's the endgame Q? Or Tyler, or whoever the fuck you are."
Some people think QAnon is NSA whistle-blower Thomas Drake because Drake often wears a 'Q' pin on his suit jacket lapel in interviews. Image Source: Open Canada.
(Hat tip: Jordan Sather, whom I have previously mentioned here; his Christmas video on this subject reached #42 in trending videos on Youtube today.)
ADDENDUM: For a 27 December 2017 discussion with the 8chan board owners on the significance of QAnon and the meaning of Leutze's painting of Washington crossing the Delaware, circulated in this context first by Q, then by the US Department of Defense, go here. Warning: some people may find the discussion to be questionable and offensive.
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