Friday, July 24, 2020
Online Group Discussion and AMA Bookchat Today: Property Rights over the Body
Image Source: AP.
Do we have rights over our bodies, or do corporations, or does the state? Vaccinations, the economy, the environment, identity politics, and slavery in past, present, and future: all involve authority over physicality and how we relate to the physical world.
The Histories of Things to Come blog community is questioning materialism and anti-materialism as the human body, animals, and the environment are about to become wetware, the operating system of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Weekly AMA Bookchat today on the blog's Discord group (invite code: Zy9XVad or https://discord.com/invite/Zy9XVad). I will be online to discuss my book-in-progress, Inside the Potemkin Village, a red-pilled history: Friday, 24 July 2020 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern (22:00 to 01:00 UTC).
Go to the room marked hashtag #bookchat. The blog's Discord was established as a free, mutually-supporting community.
Friday, July 17, 2020
Online Group Discussion and AMA Bookchat Today: Look through the Looking Glass
A reminder, there is an AMA Bookchat today on the blog's Discord group (invite code: Zy9XVad or https://discord.com/invite/Zy9XVad). This is a weekly text chat where I talk with readers about technology's legacy in the early 21st century, in the form of red-pilled history. My definition of red-pilling is here. The bookchat is part of my work while I write my book-in-progress, Inside the Potemkin Village.
Everyone is invited to join the discussion. Friday, 17 July 2020. 6-9 pm Eastern (10 pm-1 am UTC).
Theme: Shadow Banking, AI, and Cryptos
- Swap lines and the shadow banking system.
- AI's pandemic applications.
- Twitter hack and Bitcoin's bad reputation.
Go to the room marked hashtag #bookchat. The blog's Discord was established as a free, mutually-supporting community.
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.
Wednesday, July 15, 2020
A Lockdown Poem
Image Source © LC Douglass (2020) / Instagram.
Recent discussions on this blog's Discord group have focused on alchemical colour symbolism used in relation to artificial intelligence and the pandemic. For example, at the start of a great transformation necessary to produce a magnum opus, black must be pitted against white. Does this sound familiar?
I have a new poem about the lockdown which explores alchemical colours, just published on Vocal Media. It is an ode to unpacking all my mum's artworks.
Friday, July 10, 2020
Online Group Discussion and AMA Bookchat Today: Banks in the Potemkin Village
Image Source: 4chan.
Everyone is invited to join the discussion. Friday, 10 July 2020. 6-9 pm Eastern (10 pm-1 am UTC).
Theme: Banks in the Potemkin Village
- Assessing current economic challenges.
- How individuals can pivot into the new system.
- Summary of past four bookchats, 12 June, 19 June, 26 June, 3 July 2020.
Go to the room marked hashtag #bookchat. The blog's Discord was established as a free, mutually-supporting community.
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.
Friday, July 3, 2020
Online Group Discussion and AMA Bookchat Today
Image Source: Raconteur.
A reminder, there is an AMA Bookchat today on the blog's Discord group (https://discord.com/invite/Zy9XVad). This is a weekly text chat where I talk with readers about technology's legacy in the early 21st century, in the form of red-pilled history. My definition of red-pilling is here. The bookchat is part of my work while I write my book-in-progress, Inside the Potemkin Village.
Everyone is invited to join the discussion. Friday, 3 July 2020. 6-9 pm Eastern (10 pm-1 am UTC).
Theme: New Roots of Domination
- More Information: Does it really give us more control?
- The Maxwell arrest. Can the current plutocracy still dominate in a paradigm shift? Are plutocrats relevant in a crashing economic system?
- Bill Gates promises something worse for Pandemic Two.
- Decoupling politics from the economy.
- Astrologers promise: The second half of 2020 will be harder. Get ready.
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