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Has Dystopia Arrived?

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POWERFUL TRUTH ! “What the people didn’t see …”💥👇💥 pic.twitter.com/XekfzdvVCE

— VeBee🇺🇸✝️ (@VeBo1991) January 16, 2023

A Few Changes Wrought By COVID-19

(For election-related politics, please scroll down a few posts)

Who knew that Hanna-Barbera's futuristic cartoon The Jetsons (1962), the Space Age counterpart to The Flintstones, would serve as a prophet?

Serious question: Have some of the changes wrought by the China Virus actually been of benefit?

Chilling!

I'd rather be citing a source other than Eric Snowden. On the other hand, he may know exactly what he's talking about (posted at YouTube on April 14, 2020):



Your thoughts on what is stated in the above video?

Autoerotic Asphyxiation, Silicon Valley Style

Silverfiddle Rant!

Big tech doesn’t build anything. It’s not likely to give us vaccines or diagnostic tests. We don’t even seem to know how to make a cotton swab. Those hoping the US could turn its dominant tech industry into a dynamo of innovation against the pandemic will be disappointed.

Source:  Covid-19 has blown apart the myth of Silicon Valley innovation

Silicon Valley represents a textbook example of what economists call Opportunity Costs:  

You can't do everything, so you choose to do this over that, and there are always costs associated with that decision, most commonly, things that don't get built, achievements forgone.

Silicon Valley is a collection of smart, educated entrepreneurial people, but they have wasted their technological talents on toys, when the world needs intellectual firepower aimed at reimagined cities, transportation, infrastructure, preserving biodiversity and habitat, food production, safe drinking water, energy production, and medical technology.

The world is in need, and a vast pool of "American ingenuity" sits in California playing with themselves and making obscene profits off of Chinese slave labor. A few days after writing the previous sentences, I stumbled across this, written by David Rotman in MIT Technology Review

The pandemic has made clear this festering problem: the US is no longer very good at coming up with new ideas and technologies relevant to our most basic needs.

We’re great at devising shiny, mainly software-driven bling that makes our lives more convenient in many ways. But we’re far less accomplished at reinventing health care, rethinking education, making food production and distribution more efficient, and, in general, turning our technical know-how loose on the largest sectors of the economy.
Source:  Covid-19 has blown apart the myth of Silicon Valley innovation

We were in a hole before Covid-19 hit, and its going to take new ideas and smartly-focused efforts to position us for success going forward.  Economics professor John Van Reenen says "technological innovation is the engine of economic growth," and he describes how to do it. 

Can government incentivize industry and brainpower to steer some of its attention away from shiny (and financially lucrative) toys, and turn to more prosaic, practical pursuits?  Can we actually build things again here in America?

No Silver Bullets

Silverfiddle Rant!

It is a paradox: Humankind is resilient--life is fragile.

"Do Something!" is a futile cry against an immutable reality.

The 20th Century, while bringing us horrible tragedies of human slaughter on an industrial scale, was also the century of greatest human achievement in many categories:  Manufacturing, hygiene, science, medicine, economics, work-saving and life-saving technologies.

All this has shielded us from the harsh realities our ancestors faced.  We take for granted the collective Herculean effort to elevate us out of humankind's natural state, a Hobbesean world where...

"...there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short."

So, it is a horrible shock to see friends, family, neighbors and fellow community members die from a virus we are powerless to stop.

21st Century American Ingenuity Wasted

Related to this is a question:  Has this marvelous scientific, technological and practical progress of the 20th Century slowed?  Pre-Covid-19, Derek Thomson made the case that Silicon Valley represents a vast waste of talent, focusing as they do on gee-whiz apps and smarter toys, and it all amounts to little more than diddling themselves and their avid customers for money, but to no great advancement of humankind.

For the past two decades, we’ve funneled treasure and talent into the ethereal world of software and digital optimization. Imagine what could be accomplished if American ingenuity came back down to Earth.

Imagine, indeed.  I'll have more to say about this in my next blog post.  Meanwhile...

What say you?

Humor For These Times — And Musical Interlude

(For politics, please scroll down)

One of my Facebook finds:

Not the case for those accustomed to homeschooling.

For example, a few weeks in my homeschool literature class online, we read aloud from and discussed Chapters 1-2 of Charles Dickens's novel Hard Times and Robert Frost's poem "Death of the Hired Man." We also went over some writing assignments, those completed and those due in a few weeks.

In other words, class as usual!

Yes, I prefer in-person teaching.  But I am adjusting to using Google Hangouts, FaceTime, Skype, and Zoom — even though I find using these platforms for 1-2 hours quite exhausting, probably because I can't move around much. Nevertheless, I see that I will have to use these platforms well into the future, possibly until there is a vaccine for the Ripley (COVID-19).

Now, for some weekend relaxation....

Claude Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun:

[about the above piece, which is a tone poem]

Bonus video, the goals of which are to evoke tranquility and meditation:

Piano music of Claude Debussy for relaxation, reading and studying, with impressionist paintings of Monet, Manet, Van Gogh... 

 List of compositions:
 0:00-4:50, Arabesque No_. 1
4:53-10:16, Clair de Lune
10:21-13:40, Footprints in the Snow
13:43-16:05, Maid With The Flaxen Hair
16:09-20:33, Reverie 
 20:38- 24:53 La soiree dans Grenade

Recommended Reading

See The USA PATRIOT Act: The Story of an Impulsive Bill that Eviscerated America's Civil Liberties at Ammo.com.

First two paragraphs:

The USA PATRIOT Act provides a textbook example of how the United States federal government expands its power. An emergency happens, legitimate or otherwise. The media, playing its dutiful role as goad for greater government oversight, demands "something must be done." Government power is massively expanded, with little regard for whether or not what is being done is efficacious, to say nothing of the overall impact on our nation's civil liberties.

No goals are posted, because if targets are hit, this would necessitate the ending or scaling back of the program. Instead, the program becomes normalized. There are no questions asked about whether the program is accomplishing what it set out to do. It is now simply a part of American life and there is no going back....

Read the rest HERE.

Weekend Video: 60 Images You Must See...

(For politics, please scroll down)

One of my Facebook finds and worth your time:

Another retro video below the fold.

The Swatting Of A Whistle Blower

[image credit]

If true, big tech thuggery.

From True Pundit (hat tip to Infidel Bloggers Alliance):

San Francisco Police, its bomb squad and the FBI surrounded the residence of Google whistleblower Zach Vorhies, just hours before he was scheduled to provide evidence to the Justice Department detailing how the tech giant has been manipulating its algorithms to promote an anti-Trump agenda and censor Conservatives on Google and YouTube.

Vorhies is a former senior Google software engineer, who on August 5th was in the process of delivering a Google laptop and internal documents to the Justice Department’s Antitrust division. But his whistle blowing efforts were stymied by police who stormed his neighborhood and locked down several blocks in an attempt to lure him from his San Francisco residence, at the request of Google executives.

What was Vorhies’ crime? Google executives told police that Vorhies was suicidal and a potential danger, Vorhies told True Pundit. The tech guru was red flagged by his former employer....

Vorhies, who said he has proof Google created complex algorithms to hide its political bias within artificial intelligence platforms, discussed the details of his allegations and the bogus raid with True Pundit’s Thomas Paine in the video at the top of this story. The video of police detaining Vorhies is included in that video as well....

Much more HERE, including a video interview of Zach Vorhies.

The Daily Beast questions Vorhies's mental stability by proclaiming that he is a conspiracy nut.  On the other hand, swatting really does happen.

Additional reading: Google internal bias leaker Zach Vorhies goes public after “intimidation” from Google.

Planet of the Apps

Silverfiddle Rant!

“I think big data is so powerful that nation states will fight over how much data matters.” He added: “He who has the data can do the analytics and the algorithms at the scale that we talked about will provide huge nation state benefits, in terms of global companies and benefits for their citizens, and so on.” (Eric Schmidt, Google CEO)

WhatsApp--owned by Facebook--is a free app that allows you to have private networks and exchange text, voice, video, pictures, and even make free international phone calls. Yes, Free. The data Facebook gleans from users must be worth billions...

Turn off tracking on your cell phone?  You just turned off the information that is fed back to you.  The technology is still tracking you.  Every non-cash purchase is tracked, catalogued and fed into Big Data.

Are machines conditioning us?

You automatically respond to your phone's noises and vibrations, taking your attention away from a good book, TV, movie, children, social activity, or engaged conversation.

When seeking help, we take instruction from chatbots and computerized voices driven by programmed algorithms.

Two quotes from The Atlantic's How AI Will Rewire Us:

Parents, watching their children bark rude commands at digital assistants such as Alexa or Siri, have begun to worry that this rudeness will leach into the way kids treat people, or that kids’ relationships with artificially intelligent machines will interfere with, or even preempt, human relationships. Children who grow up relating to AI in lieu of people might not acquire “the equipment for empathic connection,” Sherry Turkle, the MIT expert on technology and society, told The Atlantic’s Alexis C. Madrigal

If AI is creating socially-stunted human beings who cannot create empathetic relationships with others, another worry pops up:  Are humans forming emotional bonds with AI?

As digital assistants become ubiquitous, we are becoming accustomed to talking to them as though they were sentient; writing in these pages last year, Judith Shulevitz described how some of us are starting to treat them as confidants, or even as friends and therapists.

Will computerized technology become like eyeglasses or a prosthetic we cannot do without?  We now have a whole generation of motorists who have never had to drive across their city or state without the aid of computerized navigation. Average intelligence is declining across the developed world.

Could humans become so hooked on technology that we would be literally helpless without it?

Is there a darker agenda?

Links:
Evan Horowitz: IQ Rates are Dropping
Daily Mail - Are We Becoming More Stupid?

Creep, Creep, Creep...

Under the surface of all the political roiling, we have this (hat tip to Infidel Bloggers Alliance for the link below):

Google Approves App For Muslims To Report People Who Commit Blasphemy

A new Android app has launched with the focus of allowing Muslims to report individuals who commit blasphemy, or insult Islam.

No, this is not a joke. The app, “Smart Pakem”, which launched in Indonesia last month at the request of the Indonesian government, will allow users and government officials to uphold Sharia law and target and report people who hold “misguided” beliefs in violation of Islamic law, which forbids insults of Islam, insults against the Prophet Mohammed, or the recognition of any other religion besides Islam....

Only in Indonesia or another Islamic nation, right?

Not exactly.  Technology transcends borders, and criticizing Islam can get an American muzzled, too:

On November 29, 2018, investigative journalist Laura Loomer handcuffed herself to Twitter HQ in NYC after she was banned from Twitter for criticizing Sharia law. While handcuffed, Loomer argued “Twitter, Facebook, Apple, Google, Instagram, they are essentially upholding Sharia. Silicon Valley is essentially upholding Sharia when they decide to ban me for posting facts about Islam, when they decide to ban me for posting facts about Sharia law and criticizing an anti-Jewish Muslim Congresswoman.”

Read the rest HERE.

More creep: TIME names Muslim Brotherhood pal of Osama bin Laden their Person of the Year 2018. Brief excerpt:

In high school, Jamal Khashoggi had a good friend. His name was Osama bin Laden.

“We were hoping to establish an Islamic state anywhere,” Khashoggi reminisced about their time together in the Muslim Brotherhood. “We believed that the first one would lead to another, and that would have a domino effect which could reverse the history of mankind.”

Read the rest HERE.

The Skeptic Tradition

By Sam Huntington

Here we are in the 21st Century —an age so advanced in science and technology that most of us can’t get our heads around it. Add to this, again for most of us, the real problem of information overload. These days, there’s simply too much to know; the mass of information that we do have doesn’t allow much room for adding in more. As a result, we’ve become quite selective about what we want to know. The United States of America may host one of the world’s most specialized societies. I can’t say that this is either a good or bad thing ... but I can say that specialization has a fragmenting effect on society overall. Bio-specialists are not known to hang-out with welders. It is no longer adequate to consult with a lawyer; you have to consult with a lawyer that specializes in your particular problem. In the medical profession, all I can say is thank goodness for general practitioners who serve us as our conduit to specialized medicine.

I was reading a magazine the other day, an article written by one of the so-called earth scientists, who was complaining about the American skeptic. Why, he moaned, do Americans continue to question the wisdom, authority, or expertise of scientists? He wrote, “We live in an age when all manner of scientific knowledge —from the safety of fluoride and vaccines to the reality of climate change— faces organized and often furious opposition. Empowered by their own sources of information and their own interpretations of research, doubters have declared war on the consensus of experts. There are so many of these controversies these days, you’d think a diabolical agency had put something in the water to make people argumentative. And there’s so much talk about the trend these days —in books, articles, and academic conferences— that science doubt itself has become a pop-culture meme.”

It didn’t take long for the writer to arrive at the conclusion that the problem is really that Americans are foolishly skeptical. Yes, our lives are permeated by science and technology; American society is more complicated and unsettling. And, he continued, “We face risks that we can’t easily analyze.” Well, I think this is true. What does a welder know, or understand, or even care about bio-research (until it affects him or her personally)? It leads me to conclude that American society is far more complicated than we realize and our penchant for classifying people as either wealthy, middle class, or poor is merely a matter of convenience to journalists who actually know less than the welder does about bio-science (unless they’re specialized journalists, of course).

But why are Americans so skeptical? I think that generally, we distrust science and technology because of the way it has been used in the past to confuse us, and then to use that confusion —that lack of knowledge or understanding— to take advantage of society as a whole. I last wrote about climate science; I can use that as my leading example of society’s distrust of the scientific community. There are many other examples. Who were the nimrods in science that gave us the notion of nuclear energy without considering what ought to be done with spent fuel rods? Oh, we found a solution to this, of course, after the mother of necessity resulted in the expenditure of billions of dollars in land requisition and the creation of underground storage facilities. That story, by the way, is far from over. Here are a few more scientific blunders that cause us to question science:

All of Your Internets are belonging to Me!

[Note from AOW: for those who wish to discuss yesterday's mass slaughter in Las Vegas, please see my blog post today at Infidel Bloggers Alliance. At the time of this posting, what happened in Las Vegas does not appear to be Islamic terrorism]

  *** WARNING: Silverfiddle Dispatch ***

In the wake of the latest “New Normal” Islamic terror attack in London, shameless blame-shifter Theresa May issued an ultimatum to social media and blamed them for the spread of Islamic terror. You can go read the article yourself, but I’d like to turn her words back on her and her fellow failed “world leaders” who aided and abetted this crisis by inviting in Islamic extremists, giving them wide latitude, and making apologies for them.

If only We the People could issues such stern threats to the slimy, criminally incompetent fumblers who run our governments...

Western “Leaders,” listen up!

Theresa, Mutti Merkel, Donald, Chuck and Nancy, you have only a month to make progress. If you don’t, the People will sue you and make YOU liable for extremist content on western soil. Delay in eradicating extremists will trigger huge fines that you must personally pay.

We The People call on the Western government “giants” to develop technology to block terrorists before they kill, not arrest them afterwards.

Any extremists detected would have to be imprisoned or removed from Western Civilization within two hours at most.

In the linked article, Mrs May said: ‘We need a fundamental shift in the scale and nature of our response – both from industry and governments – if we are to match the evolving nature of terrorists’ use of the internet.’

Bravo! I agree. 

But blaming the internet is like blaming oxygen for fires... 

Look in the mirror, Theresa old girl. Your feckless, brainless official malfeasance has caused this. Sure, you, Barack, and the other slimeball political operators of your generation didn’t start this fire, but you ignored it and shamed anyone who pointed out the smoke and flames and the Muslims fingering the gas cans and matches.

But anyhoo, back to our statement:

Western “leaders:” This threat is designed to put pressure on the all-powerful governments to use their technological prowess to counter sophisticated efforts by Islamic State and other terror groups to radicalise impressionable youngsters and spread DIY terror.

Your police state spying apparatus can be put in motion to surveille and attempt to destroy a political enemy’s presidential campaign, while exonerating the Establishment candidate. Your brilliant espionage brains can confect kompromat involving chorus lines of urinating hookers, but you cannot protect us and our way of life from invaders attacking us from the inside.

Here is the one statement from Madame Prime Minister we can all agree on:

‘When I think of the hundreds of thousands of victims of terrorism in countries across the world, I think of their friends, their families, their communities, devastated by this evil. And I say enough is enough.’

Yes. Enough is enough, so get off your dead ass, stable your high-horse, call this threat what it really is, roll up your sleeves and start eradicating it from the West.

Kinda Related:
Oops! Russia Didn't Hack our Elections
CNN: Russia Hacked Black Lives Matter
False Facebook Meme: National Anthem & NFL 2009

A Warning For Our Ever-Connected Times

Thus opined my good friend Silverfiddle of the now-archived blog Western Hero, in response to this blog post at FreeThinke:

[W]e're pestered on all sides by mass consumers who wouldn't have a thought in their heads were it not for the Infotainment Media Complex.

We are being poisoned.

Let us remember that many of these "mass consumers," who do not have a single original thought in their heads, will vote in future elections. Therefore, we should not expect the onslaught of the "Infotainment Media Complex" to discontinue.

I'm hitting the Off Button more and more frequently.

Moreover, I find that Watership Down, the novel I'm reading right now, is much more interesting than anything on a screen. Another excellent novel by Richard Adams (May 9, 1920-December 24, 2016 ): Traveller.

Recommended Reading

See The AWAN Brothers at Please Clap.

Does that name ring any bells for you? The bells should be pealing — loudly and clearly!

Excerpt from The AWAN Brothers, the first link in this blog post:

Westminster Islamic Compassion

Received by email from Will of MFS - The Other News — in reference to the March 22, 2017 Islamic terrorist attack in London:

Related reading:

1. UK parliament attacker British-born, had been investigated over extremism concerns

2. ISIS claims responsibility for Westminster Attack, says attacker was a "soldier of the Islamic State"

Comey On Capitol Hill

Mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, philosopher Blaise Pascal (1626-1662)

I didn't watch all of FBI Director James Comey's March 20, 2017 testimony on Capitol Hill.  Of course, I've seen snippets of video and the screeching headlines.

Is THIS accurate?

FBI’s Comey Doesn’t Deny the FBI Is Wiretapping Trump: 'I just can’t talk about anything that relates to the FISA process in an open setting’

The FBI is leaving open the possibility it sought -- and perhaps attained -- a wiretap of Donald Trump's communications.

When addressing the controversy over whether the Trump Tower was wiretapped during the Obama Administration, the FBI director, James Comey, tread carefully, acknowledging there is an investigation into Donald Trump's campaign's communications with Russia, but said there is "no evidence" to support Trump's tweets exactly as written.

Comey notably left open the possibility that it had, or still is, monitoring Trump communications.

When asked whether the FBI sought a FISA court warrant to wiretap Trump's team, Comey simply said he cannot comment on anything FISA related.

Here's an excerpt from Comey's question and answer session with Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.):...

Read the rest HERE.

Another question: What facts were presented in Comey's testimony?

Circa News reporter commenting on Comey's testimony:

Art vs. Cell Phones

(For politics, please scroll down)

What are the odds that they're looking at information about Rembrandt's 1642 painting The Night Watch as opposed to checking their Facebook or Twitter status?

Larger version of The Nightwatch below the fold.

Silliness — And Serious Business

Apparently, some people don't have enough to do.

See Trump Tower turns into 'Dump Tower' on Google Maps.

What is not silly is this recount business.

From this essay at Infidel Bloggers Alliance:

Calling for recounts with timing so precise as to deny the states where the (unnecessary) recounts occur, the ability to respond in time to certify the election BEFORE the College of Electors meets is not like a 5 year old playing with a Glock 22.

Hillary Clinton's OBVIOUS involvement in a recount which cannot be completed before the electors meet represents a willingness to begin the complete, and irreversible erosion of American faith in the presidential vote. Exactly, by the way, what the desperate democrats claims the Russian hacked and un-denied wikileaks was trying to do as the agent of IVAN.

[Because of the timing] the day [may arrive] that the electors can certify only 260 of Trump's electoral votes while recounts remain uncompleted...

Read the entire essay HERE.