Stargate Tweets, Mysteries and Rumours

A Stargate? Image Source: Twitter / iReport/CNN.

At present, there is a very strange dis/information eruption on Twitter, coming from a single account, KibBitzLaw. Whoever is running this account is mingling a giant conspiracy theory with current affairs at breakneck pace (hat tip: The Outer Light). This person is threatening top level officials with information leaks of the most outlandish kind. WikiLeaks is mentioned, as is Chelsea / Bradley Manning. The Tweeter also apparently visited 4chan today, archived here, and stated: "This is not a joke." Tonight's tweets were dedicated to Seth Rich, the murdered Democratic National Committee staffer.

Alright, who is ready for #STARGATE truth?

— victoryofthelight (@KibBitzLaw) May 15, 2017

There are weirdos all over the Internet, so one more ranting conspiracy theorist should not matter. The only problem is that this account - which was created in March, 2009 - for some time had, as its first and only follower, former president Barack Obama. The account was previously followed by members of the mainstream media and Democrats running for Congress. It lay quiet for some time, with some tweets during the US election in 2016, and suddenly exploded with activity this month. The account was mentioned today (14 May 2017) on Reddit, here.

Nuclear Leaks 37: Citizen Journalists, Plutonium, and the Hanford Tunnel Collapse

Hanford:a site crucial to the secret Manhattan Project. Plutonium for weapons produced there for 4 decades. NOT nuclear power plant. pic.twitter.com/Uq2Pce0QX4

— Susannah Frame (@SFrameK5) May 11, 2017

On 9 May 2017, a 20-foot-long section of a nuclear waste storage tunnel collapsed at the Hanford Site in Washington State, USA. The collapse occurred at the 20-foot-wide join of two tunnels, possibly exposing the contents to the open air, although Hanford denied this. Hanford is famous for producing plutonium for nuclear weapons during the Cold War. It is also famous for its contamination and leaking tanks of waste, making it one of the most toxic sites in the United States.

Memes in the Chaos: The Plastic Landscape of Reality Journalism

"Cernovich didn’t own a car, much less a satellite truck or a video-editing suite. But he did have sources." https://t.co/CdAkbuO9nV

— Mike Cernovich 🇺🇸 (@Cernovich) April 6, 2017

One of the hotbeds where a new technological ideology is forming is alt-journalism. Alt-journalists operate with a post-tabloid, kinetic style which exploits that consciousness and assaults the senses. This blowhard style - exemplified by pro-Trump Periscoper and Youtuber Mike Cernovich - wins alt-journalists popularity among their Youtube, Reddit, Twitter, Gab, and 4chan fans. Cernovich sure doesn't have any fans at liberal outlet Media Matters! You can read their coverage of his work here; and similar hatred for him is here and here. When attacked, Cernovich gives as good as he gets.

In a 2 April article and 3 April 2017 video, Cernovich asserted that Susan Rice was at the centre of the Russian-Trump wire-tapping intelligence scandal. It was Cernovich's scoop, not because others did not also have the information, but because others in the MSM chose not to report it.

In appealing to his youthful audience, Cernovich made much of both points. His message: watch him to get the lowdown first on what is happening; and watch him because he has the guts to tell you what others won't. He also builds his brand through bragging, bluster, and brawling with other social media personalities in ways that wear down resistance to him as an unknown quantity:

"I'm starting to like this mythos created about me. The media has turned me into this James Bond villain who has connections to Russian hackers and foreign governments, and can lead hacking campaigns across the world and influence elections. I'm not even going to argue with that shit. I'm going to be like, 'Yeah, you caught me. You're right. I'm a fucking James Bond villain, you know? Thank God.'" 

He introduces his audience to his wife and daughter, and discusses random topics on Friday evening Youtube cigar nights from his patio. Compare this to Anderson Cooper at CNN or Stephen Sackur at the BBC, and you see Mike Cernovich - a late Gen Xer - operates in a Brave New World.

A caveat: my discussion of controversial symbols and ideas in this post in no way indicates my personal belief in, or endorsement of, those symbols and themes. This is an apolitical blog, and my intent in the current series of posts is to uncover the nature of an emerging technological ideology, not to take sides in political debates or support offensive content.

The Rush to Colonize Cyberspace

It would be a mistake in this environment to assume that leaders of the anti-establishment or underground are alienated from the old establishment. This is Julian Assange on the cover of Forbes, for a 29 November 2010 interview with Andy Greenberg. Surprise! He's flashing a Masonic hand sign. This is the sign of a Mark Master Mason (examples here, see Hillary in the same pose - information on the degree and oath is here). Image Source: Forbes.

Technology is not neutral and neither are the people striving to wield it to greatest effect. It is hard for liberals and non-liberals to understand that technology, not liberalism, is the real driver of globalization.

The liberals are not the only ones with a vision of internationalism. Technocrats and crypto-anarchists have visions too; and they are very different. As for non-liberals, nationalist and populist talking points against immigration and refugees fail to recognize that communications and travel capabilities have improved so much over the past 100 years that for the first time in history, millions of people can move all over the globe. They can do this; therefore they will do this, no matter what crises or policies are or are not driving them.

Of course, wars and disasters provoke migrations; and policy-makers will involve themselves in that process. But despite their efforts over the past generation, they are not in control of the evolution of internationalism.

In the long term, any ideology of internationalism will align with the ideology of the Internet and of technology. So far, that ideology is undetermined. Silicon Valley may be liberal, but in the virtual spaces tech giants provide, there are a lot of competing political and post-political groups from many cultures. Some few people in Silicon Valley are conservative or libertarian. Hacker and open-source cultures are more politically adventurous.

The addiction to the left-right paradigm to understand these problems is misleading. This blog is apolitical. I want to understand what is happening and how it works, regardless of ideology. In several posts over the remainder of the year, I will explore how ideologies of the Internet are evolving and which ones may or may not come to dominate the virtual nexus with real reality.

Emmanuel Macron's New Campaign Trail

Click to enlarge. Image Source: 4chan via Twitter.

Hackers have opened the e-mail account or accounts of the favoured French electoral candidate, Emmanuel Macron, and dumped 9 gigabytes of the contents online, current up to 24 April 2017. BBC:

"The campaign said that genuine files were mixed up with fake ones in order to confuse people. ...

About nine gigabytes of data were posted online by an anonymous user.

The details are unclear so far, but Mr Macron's En Marche movement said internal campaign documents, including emails and financial data, had been taken in an 'act of massive, co-ordinated hacking'.

'The leaked files were obtained several weeks ago by hacking personal and professional email accounts of several officials of the movement,' it said in a statement.

The campaign said the documents showed only legitimate campaign activities.

France's election authorities have warned media outlets against reporting on the contents of the leaked documents because of the restrictions now in place. ...

That too remains unclear. The Macron camp has not blamed any specific party but said the hack clearly aimed to damage it and undermine French democracy[.]

It compared it to the leak of Democratic Party emails in last year's US presidential election that was blamed on Russian hackers.

Wikileaks, which published those emails, posted a link to the Macron documents on Twitter but implied it was not responsible."

The NYT, which is firmly anti-Le Pen, reported that Le Pen's campaign also faced regular (unsuccessful) hacks during the campaign. Some people on Twitter think the hack is Russian; some think the hackers were American. Some think the hack is fake. Liberals think it is anti-democratic and Russian or neo-Nazi-sourced.

Exoplanets In Kepler's Eye

Click to enlarge. Image Source: Stellarium.

I have the free program Stellarium on my computer and set it to show the night sky on my computer while I am reading. I turned on the 'exoplanets' option and jumped! What are those alien green blobs? In the screenshot above, the green circular grid near Vega in the night sky shot for 4 May 2017 shows where the Kepler space telescope has focussed, with corresponding discoveries of exoplanets. They are marked as bright green dots. There is another cluster of exoplanets in the bottom corner in the constellation of Sagittarius, by the star Alnasl and the planet Saturn.

April 17, 2014. NASA's Kepler Telescope Discovers First Earth-Size Planet in 'Habitable Zone' pic.twitter.com/iE2k8LgVSy

— History (@HistoryTime_) April 17, 2017

EVE Online crowdsources the search for distant planets using Kepler space telescope https://t.co/3ph1AcP7vb pic.twitter.com/mVpksOuwtQ

— Neowin (@NeowinFeed) April 10, 2017

Launched in 2009, the Kepler space telescope trails Earth in a heliocentric orbit. NASA's Kepler and K2 projects have yielded several thousand exoplanets, of which 21 are almost habitable like Earth. A list of the projects' news releases is here. On 20 April 2017, the lead Kepler scientists were included among Time's 100 most influential individuals in the world:

"Three extraordinary planet-hunters have been recognized by TIME Magazine as this year’s top 100 most influential people: Natalie Batalha from NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley; Michael Gillon from the University of Liège in Belgium; and Guillem Anglada-Escudé from the Queen Mary University in London.

'It is truly exciting to see these planet-hunters among the other movers and the shakers of the world,' said Paul Hertz, Astrophysics division director at Headquarters in Washington. 'These scientists have transformed the world’s understanding of our place in the universe, and NASA congratulates them for their well-deserved recognition.'"

Later in 2017, players of the MMPORG game, EVE Online, are participating in the crowd-sourced scientific discoveries of Kepler exoplanets. Raw Kepler data will be added to the game.

Your Cyber Smile for Today: Curing Deafness

I never get tired of watching this. A deaf baby hears his parents for the first time. pic.twitter.com/2NJ1c1knSj

— Daniel Hannan (@DanielJHannan) April 28, 2017

Some readers cannot see the embedded video. This is the same video on Youtube. Video Source: Youtube.

Google's Infogate

Google was initially listed on 4 September 1998, hosted by Stanford.edu, having been developed by a couple of Gen X PhD students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Image Source: Business Insider.

This post is the first of several on decentralized information dynamics and real-fake, mainstream-alt news. I will start with the beast behind it all. On 4 September 1998, the search engine Google first appeared online. It is hard to believe, because it feels like a short time ago, but it was a pivotal moment between the way the world was and what it is now.

It used to be that if you wanted to find information you had to amass a personal book collection, and visit libraries and archives. You built a professional or amateur reputation as researcher. You had to get to know people - contacts, translators - who knew things, and travel around the world to see sequestered books, diaries and sealed files. Everything had to be taken down in pen and paper notes.

Orson Welles's sarcastic scene from Citizen Kane (1941), in which a journalist is granted permission to read in a private library which holds the unpublished memoirs of a deceased banker. Video Source: Youtube.

Once photocopiers existed, if the archivist was inclined, you would be permitted to photocopy small amounts of material at exorbitant rates. An average person might find one or two books at the bookstore or library, or have saved newspaper or magazine articles in a personal, physical, metal filing cabinet. That was it.

Before the Internet, information was hard won, and knowledge, wisdom and judgement about information even more so. The latter required time, contemplation, and reflection in total silence. It also demanded discussions with others who had done the same. It was a fundamentally different way of thinking.