phoenixvoice
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Dr D:
know HOW, we just won’t do it. And that can be just as simple as going Amish, buying less, choosing companies of your friends and good people. That requires a spiritual change. You can of course tear the country apart, but that’s messy. If you can’t change WITHOUT tearing the country apart,Odd fact: when I was a teen, I studied frugality. I know, kind of weird, but I purchased The Complete Tightwad Gazette from a book club’s introductory deal (then canceled the subscription,) read it cover to cover twice, and made notes in the margins. I still have the 300+ page book.
During the past 11 years my income has never been more than barely above half the federal poverty limit for my family size. There have been months when there was very, very little money to meet our needs and months when there was enough plus a smidgen to spare. I have applied the lessons in frugality that I studied as a teen. During the lean times, periods of “enforced frugality,” I would find myself growing resentful of the extreme measures I took to avoid taking on debt. During the less lean times, I took pleasure in shopping at thrift stores or grabbing items that were useful to me out of bulk trash piles, pleased with my own frugality — acquiring what I needed or wanted while spending as little as possible is like a game against “The System.”
So here is the rub, which the WEFfers don’t seem to understand: when people are pushed against their will into deprivation, they will grow resentful, no matter the cause — whether it be due to natural disaster, war, their own ineptitude, inexplicable policies regarding the use of petroleum products, etc. When people discover that others, who did not suffer deprivation, were the deliberate cause of their deprivation, they are likely to become very, very angry. On the other hand, when people believe in a principle, and then adjust their behavior to accommodate adherence to that principle, the changes do not feel like deprivation.
So, originally the WEFfers seemed to believe that by controlling the masses’ access to information that they could control what the masses believed, and therefore induce the masses to voluntarily reduce their carbon footprint, replace meat with vegetable protein and bugs, and get jabbed. On many fronts this works — especially for the short term. But propaganda, no matter how crafty, is not as genuine as deeply held beliefs and personal values. So, the WEFfers, finding that they have exhausted the carrot, are resorting to the stick — enforced deprivation by sabotaging the systems that provide plenty for the people. I suspect that the WEFfers don’t understand the depth of resentment and hatred that the stick will engender in the people. Or they believe that they can “manage” the resentment of the people. I don’t think that such resentment can be “well-managed” over the long term.
@ afktt Unlike electric jugs, there are no supplies of second-hand smartphones. Not true — at least not here. My last 4 smartphones were second-hand; I get them from eBay or Amazon.
To all who responded to my comment yesterday – thank you. 🙂
Unbeknownst to me until years later, my daughter was befriended by the lgbtqi crowd when she switched schools in 2nd grade. She identifies as “queer” or “lesbian.” I am glad that is the only result, a good female friend of hers from a solid family identifies as male, and I have seen strain in their family relationships subsequently. So far, my daughter has eschewed any sort of romantic entanglements.
@ tboc— she essentially does this already. When she is chatting in person with her male friend and male peers make annoying comments she tells me that she flips them off, yells, “F*** you!” and/or, “I’m a lesbian!” She finds that the third often causes the perps to have very puzzled expressions, which she enjoys.
@ oroboros — The Woketards are experts at public shaming, maybe hire them as consultants<em/> Like that one. I note that your comment essentially is to use non-authoritarian means to stop the verbal harassment. I like that.
And yet I recognize that, in life, sometimes authoritarian means are all that is available — and, that authoritarian means often cut both ways. I was verbally/emotionally abused by my ex for more than a decade. Once I had decided that the relationship was non-salvageable, I wanted him out, but could think of no way to budge him. I could pack the kids in the car and find an apartment, but then what about the hens? The piano? The business paraphernalia? The garden? If I left, there was a good chance that I would never be able to return, and it really made no sense that 4 people should leave and get crammed into a tiny apartment for the bad deeds of one. Then I figured out how “orders of protection” work, realized that his misdeeds had crossed into that territory, especially with regards to the children, and utilized that authoritarian means, including the police, to get him out of the house. Considering how the victims of abuse are often isolated from other supports, authoritarian means are often all that is left to turn to. Of course, the family court is also an authoritarian means, and he turned it on me, upending my life for 18 months a few years ago; I’m still dealing with the financial repercussions.
My daughter and her friend resolved the problem structurally. At her urging, he disabled the ability of others to post to his Snapchat story anonymously. Apparently, he liked the feature because the activity also caused attention to his own posts.
Of course, none of this addresses the question about censorship: at what point is free speech censored? At what point are victims protected from bullying? Speech disassociated with the speaker is often more inflammatory — accountability often results in responsibility. And yet, enforced accountability also results in a lessening of freedom.
We traditionally endeavor to protect children from severely adverse events — and rightly so, their minds are still forming, and deeply disturbing adverse events may cause long-lasting deleterious repercussions. (Who decides what a “deeply disturbing adverse event” is for a child?). My daughter did not want to go to school authorities in this case — apparently schools can obtain access to information about Snapchat accounts of minors who attend the school — she did so in 7th grade when she was sexually harassed by a popular male peer. The entire grade soon knew that she had tattled on the popular boy to the school administration, but did not know about his inappropriate behavior, and she suffered social repercussions for the rest of 7th grade and all of 8th. (Going through proper authorities often “cuts both ways.”)
“The American way of life is not negotiable.” George H.W. Bush
And yet, yesterday while helping my son with his US history assignment he was required to define consumerism. It was noted in the packet that it was the idea of purchasing things for the pleasure and enjoyment of possessing them, and that it expanded from the wealthy to the middle classes in the 1920s. Advertising took off in the same decade.
Is consumerism the way of life that was seen as non-negotiable?
I am curious what the opinion is of those who comment here regarding a situation my daughter has found herself in. It regards freedom of speech, and when/where it is appropriate to curb it.
My daughter is a freshman in high school. She has a platonic male friend in her grade; they have been friends for 3 years. She recently ran across his “handle” on Snapchat about a week ago, and added it as a “friend” so she can see what he posts and what others post to him publicly. Apparently, via another app, it is possible to post anonymously to someone’s Snapchat profile. She discovered that male peers are inundating her male friend’s Snapchat profile daily with lurid, sexual comments and signing them with my daughter’s first name. This is a clear form of “sexual harassment,” intended towards her male friend, but also intended towards herself, even though prior to a week ago she wasn’t fully aware of it. (It had already spilled over into the real world, she had known for months that he was being teased about being in a secret relationship with her, but she had no idea of the extent of it — the boys doing this say mild things out loud, but post graphically sexual comments online.)
When is it appropriate to stop verbal (spoken or written) harassment? When is it not appropriate? When is it appropriate to be anonymous online? When is anonymity online not appropriate? (Obviously, online anonymity is emboldening these boys to express things that they are not comfortable with being publicly attributable to themselves.) Do we have a different rule for minors than we do for adults?
These are issues as a society that we need to grapple with.
Oroboros You can get a big load of Spike Protein having sex with a vaxed person
Try: “…having sex with a vaxxed male.” The “big” transfer is highly unlikely to occur from a woman.Well said, Dr D.
Those who bothered looking for the footage of J6 from individuals’ cellphones, etc., know that the pre was no “insurrection.” It was a psyop with a lot of Trump supporters milling around. Oops, protesters entered the sacred Capitol. And didn’t do more harm than petty vandalism.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t deploying marines to protect electrical substations in Boise, Idaho illegal unless pre-authorized by Congress? I am glad that it was done — we need to get to the bottom of domestic terrorism by FBI agents, (rogue ones or otherwise) — but, technically, the marine commander who deployed them, and perhaps the marines themselves, should face prosecution. I believe sentencing should be commuted — they did us all a service — but we cannot have “rogue” military units — even super-patriotic ones that want to protect us and our infrastructure, with ideologies that coincide with large swathes of the US public — going around and executing domestic terrorists. That is the job of THE POLICE, not the military — and, ideally, the police should not be executing them either, there should have been an attempt to bring them into custody. Or, at the very least, the two wielding AR-15s could be shot dead, and not the two without weapons. We don’t want our communities turning into war zones.
Kisin interview
Fascinating…
The US’s first experiment with democracy was also a failure. There is very, very little taught in schools about The Articles of Confederation. The first federal government was weak and in debt. Citizens rebelled against its taxes. Record keeping was so poor that we don’t know the names of the first men who were president during that time period. I remember as a teen finding it very disconcerting to discover that George Washington was not, technically, the first president of the United States,rather, he was the first president under the Constitution. I remember asking the teacher who the presidents were under the Articles of Confederation, and being told “we don’t really know” — I found the response bizarre.It has long troubled me that the US feels compelled to try to re-form other countries’ governments in its own image. It seems like a form of conceit. Should not the people of a country be the ones to judge whether or not the form of their country’s government is appropriate?
@ RIM – thanks for the link to the article about the Marines killing FBI agents trying to blow up a substation.
*sigh*
I suppose it is inevitable that with an entrenched oligarchy that we can’t have a completely “velvet revolution.” It will be challenging to ascertain who is for the oligarchy, who is for the “spirit of the American people” as embodied by the Constitution. The deaths of these FBI agents is senseless — no real reason for them to die, except for their own stupidity. Their families will undoubtedly be told that they died while faithfully executing their duties as FBI agents. The dress of the deceased FBI agents and the bumper sticker on the their vehicle suggests that they were either agents provocateurs (and two of the deceased were simply foolhardy Trump fanatics), but I think it more likely that the FBI couldn’t find any foolhardy Trump fanatics to pull this stunt, and simply wanted to blame Trump fans — I suspect that it was a foiled false flag event.The trouble with the country dividing between those who support the oligarchy and those who do not is that there is no simple way to tell the difference. This tends to lead to senseless deaths. Ideally, the perpetrators of the oligarchy are simply deprived of power…but how does one know who they are? The only thing I can think of is the biblical phrase: “By their fruits ye shall know them.” In this case, it was pretty obvious. Random 4 guys in MAGA attire, with AR15s, pull up outside of substation gate, and when told to stand down by armed marines one goes to open fire. The FBI lot could have simply surrendered, refused to say anything, and aborted the false flag mission. Instead, they lost their lives and still failed the mission. Were the FBI guys protecting whoever sent them? I doubt that they were completely rogue…most likely, someone higher up sent them….
The moss on the turtle’s head looks just like the hair algae that I have been regularly clearing from my fish tank the last 3 years or so. I suppose it is nice to know that somewhere, somehow, it has a useful purpose…other than annoying the hell out of me!
Mpsk
first battle we must win is to convince the seemingly unconvincible that we are under attack.Lol, I did some of that today. I was teaching a class on “Android Basics” at the local retirement community today. The last topic for today’s class was how to install an app. I taught them to actually look at the privacy settings and information about the app before touching the big install button! I wasn’t trying to preach to them, but I wanted them to actually look and be aware. They started asking all sorts of question about the data being collected by apps…I brought up Edward Snowden and the Fourth Amendment…and the class went over time by five minutes. After class one gentleman asked why he should care if an app always knew where he was? I pointed out that where he travels could be linked to his “carbon credit score,” shutting off his access to his bank account, donators to last year’s convoy in Canada getting cut off from funds, the social credit score and Covid quarantine app tracking in China, world leaders talking up the way China is run. He was convinced.
Most folks aren’t stupid; they are focused on circuses.
Boilingfrog
accountability is the answer…Hear! Hear!
I wholeheartedly agree!Why is our financial system on life support?
Because we bail out those who are “too big to fail.”
Why do toxic-laden trains derail in Ohio?
Because, ultimately, the owners/operators of the trains and rickety rails are fairly certain that they’ll be able to side-step accountability.
Why did Pfizer and Moderna push forward so quickly?
They were certain that they would be absolved of accountability for any damage from their products.
Why does my daughter’s 15-year-old friend steal the keys to one of the golf carts at their high school and take golf carts left sitting on brief joy rides?
Because he believes that he won’t be caught, and won’t be held accountable. And the rush he gets from doing it is incredible.For the first 3 citations, the adults are probably doing it for the more measured “rush” from generating high profits, but the pattern is identical.
A few days ago I commented that “the people” are not stupid, and when “the masses” realize what has gone on that many will turn to legal apparatus to deal with it, rather than violence. There were some here that suggested that, no, violence was the answer.
I urge you to reconsider.
Although it certainly is technically “violence” to inject someone against their will with a poisonous substance, and although there was a level of coercion involved, for most of us it was not a life-or-death issue, nor an issue of physical pain whether or not to do it. The closest to that was economic pressure – the possibility of loss of livelihood, leading to loss of home, sustenance, etc. This sort of coercion has long been a topic of discussion on the left – they call it “structural violence.” For many of us (me included) the pressure to get vaccinated was purely social.
This is from structuralviolence.org:
Structural violence refers to systematic ways in which social structures harm or otherwise disadvantage individuals. Structural violence is subtle, often invisible, and often has no one specific person who can (or will) be held responsible (in contrast to behavioral violence).It has seemed to me that the term “structural violence” was coined in order to raise the magnitude of concern about the harm that is created when a dominant, empowered group persecutes a less-powerful group. The persecution does not meet the threshold of what we usually term violence, however, it creates actualized hardship.
It is true that violence must often be met with violence, in order to stop the perpetrator. But it depends upon the situation. It is, truly, situational.
One of my sons has various psychological diagnoses. When he was young and became acutely anxious, he would physically lash out at others. It was impossible for his similar-age siblings and peers to handle him. Hitting him did not improve the situation – because anxiety was at the root of the behavior. (Violence is usually used to instill fear, which is expected to inhibit. In this particular son of mine, fear is a catalyst.) Instead, he had to be contained by a power greater than his, until he calmed down, and then, over time, he had to be taught different ways of dealing with his anxiety, taught that lashing out physically was not, ultimately, in his own best interest.
There is an aphorism: “violence begets violence.”
When the problem is “structural violence” – (which isn’t quite violence at all, the vernacular use of the word “violence” being literally “behavioral violence”) – and we “up the ante” by responding to “structural violence” with “behavioral violence” – one of two things tends to occur: (1) a violent cycle ensues, where men (predominantly) go beserk and keep using violent means to enact vengeance upon one another, often in increasing ways, or (2) a greater power squashes the violence (often violently, or with threat of greater violence), containing it, and the original perpetrators of “behavioral” violence are seen as social pariahs.
One of the reasons for the US Constitution is to prevent violent cycles. Jefferson urged revolution – but he urged that it be done by means of the Constitution. I am aware that government, generally, can’t be trusted very far – I grew up in a strongly conservative home; as a teen I was muttering, “Yeah, the money ‘trickles-down,’ but it FLOWS up.” I do not see our current age as so very different in government corruption than prior ages. There was government corruption in the 1800s. I read Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle recently – what an eye-opener were his character’s view of the political machines in 1906 Chicago! (And it was both sides!) Are our politics more corrupt? I am skeptical. Sure, the tactics are a little different; the technology is more advanced.
The US federal government is way too large. I have heard Republicans going to Washington talk about shrinking the size of the federal government since I was a teen. Never happened – it keeps becoming more and more gargantuan! Right now, I think that the answer is economic collapse – that can potentially truly shrink the size of the federal government. Maybe in the current and coming depression in the US we can look to states and local governments and entities to help us get out of it, rather than the federal government, because relying on the federal government during the last go-round (1930s) gave way too much power to the feds.
The framers of the Constitution gave the inheritors and inhabitants of the US a document that we could use to convert anger and frustration into cool-headed democratic compromise rather than into a cycle of violence or the need to rely on a corrupt, self-serving “strong-man” to stop the violence. With the level of division and anger in the US, there is likely to be some level of violence in the future. That isn’t the point. Our goals are potentially achievable in great measure by cool-headed agreements, not by cycles of violence nor by threat of violence. (By “violence” here I mean the behavioral type, not the structural type.)
I enjoy reading Orson Scott Card’s science fiction novels. He has written several in the same world as Ender’s Game, imagining the earth in the aftermath. In one of these novels one of the Battle School grads, a young woman from India, becomes a “goddess” to the people of India. Essentially, she is a populist leader who is beloved by the people for leading them to victory against an enemy that had occupied India. Because of “the nets” all in India are able to hear her words, the people of India follow her voluntarily, of their own free will, with no overt coercion. When the former elected leader of India returns from exile, expecting to return to some level of power in India, this “goddess” takes to the nets and tells the people of India to ignore the former leader that sold out India to the invader. Subsequently, the former leader finds that no one in India will sell him anything, give him anything, give him a place to sleep or anything to eat, no matter what price he is willing to pay. Ultimately, he turns to foreigners present on Indian soil to get something to eat, a change of clothes, a place to sleep, and soon leaves India.
I didn’t like Trump; I don’t like Trump. I don’t like his style. But.
I have come to respect Trump as president. He genuinely tried to do what he promised, accomplished some of it, worked towards much of it. I think he genuinely respects the office of President and respects the country. He loves the support of the people, the pageantry and the mythology behind it. He is lucid. He is not a warmonger. So, while I continue to disagree with much of his platform and messaging, I would consider supporting him as president in the future if I detested the alternatives, figuring that with Trump I would know what we would get and it is palatable.Foreshadowing what is coming…
The local organic chicken feed coop I occasionally purchase feed from is now accepting payment by: personal check, PayPal (buyer must pay merchant fee), Venmo, Cryptocurrency (BTC, ETH, XMR,) silver (must be dropped off in person,) and…ammunition.@ John Day — AZ doesn’t permit “common law marriage,” so what we call each other doesn’t carry significant legal weight. Thank you for the well wishes.
@ John Day
No, didn’t get married…just tired of the 5 syllable phrase “domestic partner” after seven years. It’s long to say, long to type (when I’m on a device, not on a keyboard.) “Partner” is too non-specific. (Business partner? Music partner? LGBTQI partner?) The term “husband” still raises trauma. The term “boyfriend” seems flippant after seven years and going on strong. iF I say/write “DP” no one will know what I’m talking about. Marriage is quite likely…eventually. I need to do a bankruptcy to lose the debt from the family court battle that my ex pursued and I had to meet. I don’t want to marry until after the kids are 18, so that my ex is no longer able to use the family court system to affect me financially. Until then, marriage creates potential legal/financial pitfalls, and “domestic partnership” is advantageous. This past summer my Mormon parents decided that our partnership was enduring enough to honor it with a photo of both of us on the wall of phots of their kids with their married spouses, rather than a photo of me alone.@ oxymoron
I am weary of speaking in this way about good people (masses) entrapped or manipulated by Overlords and Parasites. The people are good but the system is shit. Rentier Fascist level shit.You speak for so many, me included.
My spouse is discovering that those he works with — well-paid banquet servers at fine hotels — tend to have not taken the jab. (It probably helps that they were still largely not employed as banquet servers during the big vax campaign, and since the work is highly seasonal, many have supplementary sources of income, side-businesses, side-hustles, etc.). My spouse has always had fringe ideas, and coworkers often saw his ideas as a little loony. Now, he says, some of them are starting to listen to him as he suggests to invest in precious metals, set aside food, prepare for hard times, etc. One he directed to me to provide advice for container gardening on an apartment balcony.The mass of the people are not evil or even stupid for the most part. The people are deluded — entranced by bread and circuses and glamoury from propaganda campaigns. But but by bit people are waking up. Immiseration causes this…and the ecological disaster in East Palestine will speed up the process in the US. And since the people are not stupid, when they figure out what is going on they will be very, very angry and many of them have the intelligence necessary to realize that the means to address this corruption is not violence, but rather by using the legal apparatus that already exists. (Which is why the elites are trying to remove the access of the people to those legal means as rapidly as they can.)
My spouse keeps telling me, half-jokingly, that if there is mass starvation that I can take the cricket flour that is being handed out by authorities and feed it to my hens. The joke part is that he is correct, and I will likely do that.
Currently, I have hatched a plan to start raising mealworms again, this time not in the house (they smell bad.) It is too hot for them to survive out in the heat in the summer, but it might work if I buried the container that they are being raised in at ground level.Today, an older man picked up a few buckets of landscaping rocks that I was giving away. He started chatting, and mentioned that his girlfriend — of 20 years — had passed away in October. He showed up wearing a mask at my door, and continued to wear it until right at the end when we were chatting — so I figured that he was vaxxed, and probably his girlfriend too.
I couldn’t help but ask: “How did she die?” Bile duct cancer.
“How long was she fighting the cancer?” About a year. (October 2021) She had chemotherapy, but it reacted aggressively and spread rapidly and there was nothing that they could do to save her.
I thought: Killed by the vax
One more tragedy.
The poor man still has his deceased girlfriend’s bedding in the backseat of his SUV…says he doesn’t want to wash it because he doesn’t want it to lose her scent.Dr D
How about this that is much easier to prove: IT WAS ALL AGAINST THE LAW. Laws on bribery. On theft. On registering purchases. On paying taxes. On fraud and misrepresentation. On monopolies, on racketeering.But I thought capitalism works best “laissez-faire,” no regulation, no government interference, only the “invisible hand?”
I disagree with “greed is good.” It is good when people shoulder up responsibility for themselves, for their dependents. People need to be responsible for themselves because only they can truly understand what their own needs and wants are. Self-interest does not need to be “enlightened,” it is practical. But “self-interest” exists on a continuum. We are humans; we are social. We need other humans, we need the natural world, we need economies to meet our needs. Individually, we are also parts of larger groups, and our survival also depends upon the survival of these larger groups. We need balance between between meeting our own needs and promoting the well-being of the group. “Self-interest” becomes “greed” when it is championed at the expense of others’ well-being, at the expense of the greater whole. Healthy self-interest also promotes the well-being of the whole. Groups can also trample on the well-being of individuals, urging them to act in ways that do not respect individual needs (like the Covid and subsequent vaccine debacle.)
@ aspnaz
If your banking apps work from an internet browser, you may be able to get them to work from an internet browser on your current smartphone. This especially may work if you are using less common browsers (opera, brave, etc.,) that may not inform the web server that it is a “mobile” browser, but simply that it is *the* opera browser (which may come from many platforms.). Whether or not this works depends upon the particulars of your banking software.Woke rap
Who put it together?
Well, there is JP Sears in the front row, and the teacher in a skirt with blue hair and excessive lipstick are some of the hallmarks he often uses.
And it uses the term “communist”…a term so often used by the Right.
Calling the “wokesters” communist completely misses the boat, since the woke leaders consider themselves capitalists, and the woke leaders have no familiarity with the philosophies of Karl Marx and have no affiliation with any communist parties. (Any affiliation with Chinese communists is due to envy of their economy and totalitarian controls over the Chinese people and not due to frustrations with the capitalist class.)
I wish the Right would substitute “totalitarian” instead, because when totalitarianism is equated with communism it is easy to not catch all of the problems that are occurring because the lens being used to view them is not correct. What leads to totalitarianism is not the philosophy of Karl Marx, but rather when a small cabal gets obsessed with an ideology and then tries to remake the world according to that ideology. Most any idea can be taken too far, and turn into a warped ideology, because a single idea does not explain reality. So, sure, obsession with the philosophies of Karl Marx *can* be turned into an ideology professed by totalitarians, but so can Christian ideologies, and nationalism, and “climate change” and obsession over keeping “everyone safe.”I have heard many right-leaning folks (including my own father) express anger at Russia invading Ukraine because the Russians are “Communist.” No, the Russians have not been communist for a few decades now, and the Russians are trying to fend off totalitarianism. See how calling the wokesters communist causes confusion? The Woke folk are likely to be in collusion with the Chinese government (that is totalitarian and professes communism), but they love the Chinese for their totalitarianism, not their communism, and the woke are opposed to Russia (who, in the minds of many, is still seen as a “communist” threat, even though it is no longer communist, and probably less totalitarian atm than the US). Simultaneously, Russia is allied with the Chinese, not because they share communism, nor totalitarian aims, but due to practical (huge shared border, competition with the US,) and economic reasons. And, the woke are also in competition with the Chinese for world dominance. Calling what we detest in the woke movement “communism” seeds confusion. Call it what it is — totalitarianism. We don’t care whether it is the communist form or the fascist form or the woke form — we don’t want to be under totalitarian rule! We want rule of law and democratic means (Republican or direct, the exact form may differ here and there,) of making those laws.
Roth, Gadde, and Navaroli were considered the “custodians of the internet,” Roth…. “The work of online sanitation is unrelenting and contentious,” Twitter’s former head of “trust and safety” lamented. “In the longer term,” Roth warned, “the moderating influences of advertisers, regulators and, most critically of all, app stores may be welcome for those of us hoping to avoid an escalation in the volume of dangerous speech online.”
“Defending free expression and maintaining the health of the platform required difficult judgment calls,” claimed Gadde…. “Most applications of Twitter rules were fact-intensive, subject to internal debate, and needed to be made very quickly. We recognized that after applying those rules, we might learn that some of them did not work as we had imagined and that we would need to update them. At times, we also reversed course.”This is not similar to totalitarianism, this is totalitarianism as described by Hannah Arendt. Many simply want to believe that the perpetrators of totalitarian movements/regimes are all knowingly, purposefully doing evil. (This is why some denounce Matthias Desmet for daring to describe the Covid policies as a part of a natural process of group psychology rather than denouncing the entire apparatus as “evil.” Although, Desmet certainly did let the notoriety go to his head and made some embellishing statements — like the no-anesthesia heart surgery that he claims to have watched that apparently never took place.). The reality that Arendt uncovered is that the insiders of totalitarian regimes most often are not irredeemably evil, rather, they have fallen under the influence of a pernicious, all-encompassing ideology that has warped the way that they think into antisocial paths. Does this mean that they are innocent, because they did not intend harm? No, it does not. They are adults and bear responsibility for their actions, whether or not their thinking has been hijacked by an evil ideology.
jb-hb
Homeostasis
It is one of the hallmarks of life forms.
A state of equilibrium, as in an organism or cell, maintained by self-regulating processes.
The ability and tendency of certain systems to maintain a relatively constant internal state in spite of changes in external conditions; this ability is achieved by the presence of feedback mechanisms which can adjust the state of the system to compensate for changes in the state caused by the external environment. It is exemplified in homeothermal biological systems, such as animals which maintain relatively constant blood temperature and composition in spite of variations in external temperature or the composition of the food ingested.
The ability of a system or livingorganism to adjust its internalenvironment to maintain a stable equilibrium; such as the ability of warm-blooded animals to maintain a constant temperature.Thank you, Red, for the Medium article. My most recent forays along learning to do with less would be a rocket stove that is sturdy enough for a cast iron pan and setting up the outdoor washing machine to discharge it’s water onto a garden area that I recently put Brussels sprouts seedling into. I find it enjoyable to find simple, low-tech ways to meet my needs.
~~~~~~~~~~
My dad sometimes sends me WSJ artcles that would usually be behind a paywall. One yesterday is titled “I Tried Microsoft’s New AI-Powered Bing. Search Will Never Be the Same.”
Excerpt:
I asked: “Can you recap the biggest winners of the 2023 Grammys?” The results page gave me the usual answers on the left. But the bigger trick? On the right, Bing’s chatbot typed out the answer, with a bulleted list of winners and a mention of Beyoncé’s most-Grammys-ever record. The answer also contained clickable citations, noting the source of the listed information.The chat feature surfaces clickable citations, so you know where AI got its information.
I followed up: “Do you know if Beyoncé is touring?” Bing’s chatbot told me plainly that the North American leg of the Renaissance Tour starts in July. The information appears to be accurate—at least, according to Google.
I asked Bing if it would buy me a ticket. It apologized and said it didn’t have money. “I’m just a chat mode of Bing search,” it said, “not an assistant.”
Impressive, yes, but also slower than a typical search. It took the AI about a minute to type out the Grammy winners. There is a “Stop Responding” button if you don’t want to wait for the bot to finish. You can adjust your query for brevity, asking it to “limit your answer to 100 words.
The new Bing is based on an improved OpenAI model that’s more accurate and relevant than what’s currently in its ChatGPT software. More important, it now has Bing’s vast knowledge of the world and internet.
How nice — a more intuitive interface. Yes, in some situations this will make the internet more accessible — I think about the elderly people that I help with technology and the elementary age students issued laptops by teachers who barely know how to use the laptops themselves, teachers who have no time to even look at the district’s mandated technology curriculum, let alone teach it.
But more sinister applications abound. This is a wet dream for those hell-bent on controlling the populace through gas-lighting. How often does *anyone* actually check a reference? Chatbots can be so easily programmed to only communicate a narrative preferred by TPTB — and the key is to “dumb people down” so that they do not have access to the information required to understand something on their own. It is the ultimate circus in the “bread and circuses” routine by the elites. During medieval time power resided in the Catholic Church — they were, literally, the “king-makers” of Europe. What spurred on the Reformation, Martin Luther, Calvin, and somewhat later the Enlightenment and withering away of feudalism? Oh, yeah…the Gutenberg press, enabling the Bible to be printed and widely disseminated, leading to more people learning to read, and reading the Bible, and the Catholic Church no longer having a monopoly on God’s word. Today, the “king-makers” are a small group of elites that through corporate control move the power levers of nations and Supra-national entities. And they know that to preserve their power they must distract and dumb the people down with circuses ( — the bread is getting too dear, they are trying to use their circuses to get the populace to substitute bugs. Even Caesar knew *that* wouldn’t work…. ).
WTF…
WHO wants to force all over age 60 to receive Covid shot??
My parents aren’t going to do it. They fore-went a cruise with my father’s brothers and their wives to avoid the jab. They no longer plan international trips to avoid the jab.~~~~~~~~~~
Chatbots….
Do TPTB *really* think that we can all be fooled into believing that we are interacting with live humans rather than some sort of simulacrum?
Some will be fooled.But, thus far, I can’t be fooled in that way very long, any more than I could get lost in London in 1995. I tried. I thought that it would be fun to get completely lost, just walking around, and then use the map book to find my way back. After a half hour or so I finally succeeded in deceiving my sense of direction, truly lost my way…and three minutes later ran into the Thames and sorted out where I was in seconds, without consulting the map book.
I don’t want to “tempt hubris” and declare that I cannot be deceived by a chatbot, but based on my life experiences thus far, especially the Covid media coverage and my reaction to it, I suspect that I would realize that something odd was going on before too long.
One allure of TAE is how jumbled and *real* it is with the comments factored in. (Without the comments, TAE is nicely and neatly organized.)
Yesterday, 2 examples of systems that are stumbling:
(1) I was working on my business’s taxes. The software says that I need to print, sign, and import a document. It gives NO instructions on how to do this. Years ago, software instructions were in an included help file. There was a cumbersome index and rudimentary search function — but, typically, all capabilities of the software were in there. Today there is no built-in help file, only a link to a website. The website has neither a search box nor an index — all it has are a list of about 10 FAQs and a button at the bottom to “load more.” So…I am expected to continually “load more” and hope my question is “frequent” enough? No chat support; no email support. So I call. The phone is answered by an AI. The AI understands when I speak numbers, but struggles to capture numbers when entered in the handset. I ask for “software support.” The AI starts trying to find my account, asking for my phone number. I have a rudimentary account with this company only — from registering the software purchase. When the AI starts asking for my birthdate and last 4 digits of my SSN, I know that it has misunderstood my request, because I have never given the company this information. I hung up and tried again, but the AI sends me to the same place. Eventually, I am brought to a real person, who insists on obtaining the same personal information to “pull up my account.” I balked, “I need support for software,” I explained. But the “real person” insists on behaving just like an AI, so I fork over the data. The “real person” finally wakes up from her employer-mandated AI trance when she realizes that an account in her department doesn’t exist with the data I provided. Suddenly, she really *hears* me when I explain that I want support for business software, and points out to me that I’ve been routed to the wrong department. (No, really!?) She then routed my call to the correct department. A genial man answered that call and was rapidly able to direct me to the correct area of the program to upload the document. I can’t help but wonder….would it not have been more convenient to have just included a comprehensive help file? Or at least have a knowledge base online that was searchable?
(2) I received a card from the AZ Secretary of State that it is time to renew my business’s trade name, which expires in about 2 months. (The card is still labeled for SOS Katie Hobbs.). I proceeded to the correct website — it has been possible to do this online for several years now. The website has messages to please excuse them as they transition to the new SOS. There is a new procedure. An account with the new “eAZ” is required. I began the process of creating an account, discovering that I must fork over my AZ drivers license number, last 4 of SSN, verify my email address with a texted code, and verify my phone number via text or robocall. (I was surprised that they weren’t insisting that I upload a photo of my DL….). I think about my retired-age friends, and how they would struggle mightily to complete these tasks, and think about the message on the main AZSOS site that states that no filings on paper are accepted, and in-person services are only available for Apostilles. (That was a new word for me – I had to look it up.). I arrived in the account. There are six buttons of possible activities. One is labeled for “registering new trade names only.” There is nothing for renewal. I can’t look up my current trade name, claiming it, and renewing it. I accessed chat (not that I expected a live response on a Saturday) and plugged in “renew trade name.” I can tell from the response of the chatbot that it has absolutely no programming with the word “renew” — it was at a complete loss. I noticed that the account has a “message center” and I clicked the link. The message center has an empty inbox only — with no way to *send* a message. There was no point in calling in on a Saturday. I made my way back to the main AZSOS page, found a contact form, and filled it out. So, let’s get this straight: my trade name expires in 60 days, the ONLY way to renew it is online, and the online account has no means of accomplishing this task. I guess the state no longer cares whether or not I dot my i’s and cross my t’s in this manner? My business’s financial institution won’t check to see whether or not the trade name is active with the state, but an expired trade name would prevent me from opening an account with a new financial institution. It used to be that new systems were tested out before they were foisted on the public…I suppose that has become so passe’.
Re aspnaz
the pleasure of teaching your body how to do something, combined with the sheer joy of a hands-on relationship with the energy of nature, the waves the wind the complexities that the climate psychos pretend to understand. The pleasure results in huge bursts of hormones – maybe something else, but that is what I will call them – but most people do not teach their bodies any skills – and typing does not qualify. You are missing out on the reward system your body provides, you are ignorant of life.Beautifully articulated. One of the things I’ve noticed with the advent of technology is that so many skills are neglected and no longer taught. Children are not taught cursive — nor are they taught to type! (School doesn’t even bother teaching them how to enter a web address in the browser address bar, leaving them instead to flounder with search results.). Why bother learning to play a musical instrument when you can easily play recorded music? Yes, recorded music can be amazing…but creating music skillfully, especially in concert with others, affects the mind and body in ways that listening alone cannot begin to approach.
Hunh. So it looks like TPTB have gotten their feather’s ruffled from the complaints of the proles raising their own hens about lack of egg production from hens fed Producer’s Pride chicken feed. There are suddenly similar articles multiplying on the ‘net about how raising hens is SO COSTLY that ya’ll are better off financially buying eggs from the supermarket. Here is your cup of Joe with your daily dose of propaganda.
Who’s feeding their chickens bag feed? That’s not very economical.
It may depend upon where one lives. There is a local co-op where I could get feed, organic, milled to specifications of the co-op, but it is inconvenient (pickup is over 3 days once per quarter), and costs at least 50% more than commercial feed. (I last checked this out about 5 years ago.). Recently, I did an experiment with making my own feed — buying bulk popcorn and split peas from WinCo, etc., and the cost is more than double commercial feed. (I was experimenting with a manual mill — if I were to do this routinely I would have to have an electric mill. Or, I could cook the corn and peas/beans daily to soften it — who am I fooling? I won’t get this done.). Also, the hens are messy and tend to spill the more fine bits onto the ground, wasting a fair amount. With commercial pelletized food, the hens still spill it on the ground, but then they eat the pellets off of the ground. Both my hand ground feed and the feed from the local co-op have this problem. (It seems the way around it would be to make up a mash for the hens daily.)
I purchase high-protein feed for the hens, and supplement it liberally with kitchen scraps, and pulled weeds and they forage a bit in their yard, (I witnessed a hen finding a big, juicy grub in their yard a couple days ago, gleefully gobbling it up,) and around the backyard when they hop out of their designated area.
The WEFfers want us eating insects. So they vilify meat as contributing to climate change. Then, they cull so many chickens that there is a shortage of eggs. They also need to explain the blood clots, so they pin the blame on eggs to try to mask the egg shortage. Or, because eating eggs isn’t good enough, they want us eating insects. This is comical. Why can’t everyone see through this? Why couldn’t the people in the Emerald City understand that it was emerald due to the requirement of green-tinted glasses?
Antivaxxers flipped a coin and got lucky.
Is this to assuage the feelings of otherwise-intelligent humans who drank the koolaid and got the jab, and can’t stomach the idea that they missed something that was there all along?~~~~~
@Dr D
In reference to yesterday’s comment: Next, that people, of friends and family, husbands and wives, trusted circles thought NOTHING of my judgment.What has been remarkable to me was two elderly friends (one a client of over 15 years, the other my musical mentor,) who routinely value my input and judgement in many other areas, could not fathom how or why my opinions on Covid jabs could be so divergent from the status quo. They urged me to get vaccinated for about 18 months. So, for me, it has not been an issue of being ignored generally. Rather, it has been an issue of these close friends having closed off minds regarding one specific topic.
No eggs
On the upside…my old hens started laying again a few days ago. The days are slowly lengthening. 😉Why is McCarthy wearing a cheap, purple silicone bracelet that matches the color of his tie? It says Team something-er-other. What is that? Why is a man of his stature sporting such a thing?
Wealth tax for those who leave a state…
From what I understand, the rationale behind such a tax is that the state often gave tax breaks, incentives, grants, services, discounts, etc., to businesses within the state. If said business suddenly leaves, it has benefitted from the “perks” granted by the state, but is leaving before the state and its residents can fully recoup the investment.However…a blanket tax on wealth leaving the state is bound to create angst and distrust. If there are going to be “strings attached” to state sourced tax breaks, etc., then those strings should be disclosed up front. General incentives granted by the state to all businesses should be practical so that the state and its residents recoup value from the program in the short-term — say, over the course of a year — so that no one is unknowingly coerced, neither “left holding the bag.”
Russia proceeds from the understanding that it is still possible to resume and develop a dialogue with the United States on future arms control
Um. The US government couldn’t follow its own ban on gain-of-function (bioweapon) research.RIM: The idea has become popular that Russia doesn’t care about losing its soldiers.
Sounds like projection to me…Re The Markster #127001
I, too, when I read the top-image, intended headline felt indignant, and started going on the defense…but I have experience with this particular sort of tactic…
I was married to a…very difficult individual for 12 years. He often accused me of thoughts or actions that were ludicrous to me, that I had never considered or done. I would suddenly be defending myself against these accusations, and he would discount every defense I put up, claiming that he somehow *knew* his accusation was accurate. These sessions would gradually deteriorate into detente. One day, I realized that I had evidence that he had done something that he had accused me of. It was something small — I don’t remember what it was. I kept this knowledge to myself and thought it over. What if, I mused, the things he accuses me of are thoughts and actions that he, himself, is guilty of? And the reason he claims that he *knows* I’m guilty is because he assumes everyone else thinks and acts just like him? I decided to be on the lookout for this. Every time he accused me of something I would simply deflect, instead of defend, and then observe and see whether or not he was guilty of it himself. After a few months, I realized that every time he made an accusation of me, I had a window into his mind — he was revealing his true, hidden self. What I saw wasn’t pretty. (Some time after that I discovered the terms “borderline personality disorder” and “narcissistic personality disorder” and realized that there are psychological terms and profiles that aptly describe the behaviors of my ex.)
This article and its headline are examples of the behavior followed by my ex. The “anti-vaxxers” didn’t know in December 2020 – summer 2021 or so that the jabs were harmful — rather, we were highly suspicious and distrustful of the vaccines, the people promulgating them, the companies producing them, the process used to develop them, the science behind the biotechnology, etc. We didn’t know. We “smelled a rat.”
The article headline is a form of gas-lighting. In the face of gas-lighting it is helpful to remind ourselves of the narrative of our personal experience, in order to reject the false narrative. Defending against gas-lighting can give strength to a lie.
My elderly friends living in retirement communities were getting injected before I had thoroughly researched my opinion. My friends from church were posting pics of themselves getting jabbed on Facebook — and since there had been no in-person church meetings since March ‘20, there was never any chance to voice my suspicions face-to-face. The first people I warned were my parents — who forewent a cruise to remain unjabbed. Then I warned my closest elderly friends against the booster — they pooh-poohed my concerns and tut-tutted me for my perfidy in remaining Covid-vaccine free. Then I sent an email to my out-of-state siblings, begging them not to vaccinate their young children, citing some scientific studies, emphasizing how no long-term research has been done. From my sister I received no response. From my sister-in-law (and brother) I received an uncomfortable email indicating that they saw this as a decision internal to their family and saw my plea as inappropriate. What my out-of-state siblings may not have realized was that my plea was not just from me, it was from our parents and youngest sister as well – but the in-state family felt too uncomfortable to bring up the issue – so I risked social censure and sent the email on my own. I knew that I would feel worse if years later the out-of-state family came to me and said: You knew that this was harmful to our young children, and said nothing? So…I warned them. Earlier than that I hadn’t *known* it was so harmful, I just had suspicions.
https://news.yahoo.com/arizona-faces-existential-dilemma-import-160949296.html
Personally, I believe that desalinization water piped to AZ is stupid. There are cases to be made for desalinization for areas located on the coasts…but AZ is land-locked. I think that the companies that might be involved in desalinization and a pipeline are salivating at the idea of the money to be made by building it and running it.
Water from the Mississippi River is less stupid — pipeline only, no desalinization…but let’s think this through…including all of the toxic agricultural runoff that is already in that water, the engineering and pumping involved, the fact that it passes through multiple states which means they and the feds will be involved.
The only truly practical idea I’ve seen floated thus far is connecting the various AZ canal systems — some canal systems have plenty of water while others don’t. Connecting the internal canal systems creates local resiliency within the state.
As far as no “easy rides” for residential developers…that was the purpose behind the law that developments with over 6 homes have to have a 100 year water supply in the first place! The developers want to create the development, sell the homes, and sic the unwitting homeowners with a home that has no guaranteed access to water. At some point, the rubber hits the road — we make tough decisions or start brainstorming new ways to deal with the problem — and splitting homes into 5-home developments is not the type of creativity that I’m writing about. That is merely a loophole in the law that violates the law’s intent — homeowners with no access to fresh water.
