Here Thar Be Monsters!

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31.5.21

What's Your Vector, Victor?

There are essentially two ways to move something in any given direction: increase the pressure behind it, or decrease the pressure in front of it.  In physics, the direction (space) and speed of motion (time) combined are known as the "vector".

At it's most basic level, the Universe works on the "suck and blow" method.  You can suck on something to draw it towards you, or blow on it to move it away from you.  In all cases, the vector of  motion is relative to "you".  Away from "me" is towards "you".  The concept of "speed" really has no meaning.  There is only the rate of positional change relative to "you" and "me".  After all, if "you" and "me" are moving at the same speed in the same direction (vector), then we appear stationary to each other.  Think of sitting next to each other in a car.  We are both travelling on the same vector, and so appear to be motionless relative to each other.

Fun, right?

Everything in the Universe is in motion, and it got that way by either being sucked or blown.

Some folks call this the "carrot and the stick" theory of Universe.  The carrot draws you towards itself (reduces pressure in front of you), and the stick pushes you away from it (increases pressure behind you).  Same thing, different analogy.  I prefer "suck and blow," because it's more fun!

So anyway, how does this relate to the global situation and the "vector" of humanity?  And the price of tea in China, for that matter?

Essentially, if something is in motion, then something else is either sucking or blowing to make it move.  Once we figure out who/what is sucking, and who/what is blowing, all we have to do is determine the vector, and the motivation will be clear.  

For instance, if you want to change a political power structure, you create a power vacuum (suck), and increase funding to particular elements (blow).  The motive and goal are the vector, or space and time.  If we know the direction of the vector, the motive will reveal itself, and the suckers and blowers will be obvious.

To really grasp this visualization, go back and read my theory on opinions.  Vectors and ideas exist in three dimensions, just like the entire Universe.  Everyone and everything is trying to lure us or force us onto certain courses (vectors) and into certain mindsets (ideas).  They suck us or blow us in an effort to affect changes in our vectors.

So give us some examples of the Suck-Blow Theory, I hear you ask.  Very well, as you wish.

Advertising sucks,  It attempts to draw you to a product or service to complete a sale.  Marketing, on the other hand, blows.  It models your likes, dislikes and behaviors to find what motivates you and uses it against you to steer you towards a group of products and services, where the advertising can suck you in.

Government sucks.  It attempts to lure us with perceived benefits.  Taxes, on the other hand, blow.  They force us to participate in government whether we want it or not.

Love sucks.  We are drawn to someone by their attributes that we think will make good children.  Hormones blow.  They compel us to find someone to love, whether we want kids or not.

Gravity sucks, rockets blow.  Tornadoes suck, fans blow.  Tides suck and blow, depending on the time of day.  Hamburgers and lotto tickets to lure unsuspecting victims to get vaccinated suck, while mandatory vaccines blow.  Carrots suck, while sticks blow.

The more you think about it, the more you realize the entire Universe is a giant sucking sound, and it really blows.

All the forces around us are either pushing us in particular vectors, or creating a vacuum in front of us to lure us in a particular direction by reducing opposing pressure.  Either way, we are constantly being dragged or shoved one way or another, whether by other humans or Nature herself.  We are all sucked or blown by different things at different times of our lives, but at no time in this materium are we completely free from external forces.  We are constantly being sucked and blown, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it.

It's a rather compelling concept and I'm glad I thought of it.  By writing this all out, I am attempting to suck you into my point of view, and the various social media posts I did linking this article were a gentle blow to get you here to read it.  Perhaps you have more examples of sucking and blowing that you'd like to share with us in the comments.  For that, I will blow you to the bottom of the page and the comment box.  I am also placing my crypto addresses below in an attempt to suck some coin out of your purse and into mine for this amazing and tantalizing insight into the Grand Workings of the Cosmos.

So really, there is no racism, or prejudice, or bigotry.  The world is just full of people who suck us or blow us, and our vector is just the result of our motion through space and time as a result of being sucked and blown by others.  In the end, it's out of our hands.

Love sucks.  Hate blows.

Kind of poetic, don't you think?

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18.5.21

Mentis Imperium

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On 31 October 1938, the Mercury Theater On The Air, directed by 23-year-old Orson Welles, adapted H. G. Wells' outstanding science fiction novel, "War of the Worlds," as a radio play describing the events in the book as if they were an actual newscast.  It was essentially an elaborate April Fool's joke broadcast on Halloween night.

There was no television at the time, so the only sense the audience could rely on was their ears.  The Mercury Theater was well-known, and Orson Wells' voice was easily identifiable, given that he was the voice of "The Shadow," a famous radio show, and one of the most popular radio productions of all time.

Anyone who tuned in a bit late, and tuned out early, might have missed the announcer introducing the Mercury Theatre on the Air, or Orson offering the broadcast as a Halloween prank for purely entertainment purposes.  Maybe they didn't recognize Orson's voice, or those of his co-stars Joseph Cotton and Agnes Moorehead.  Perhaps they were talking on that new-fangled telephone contraption and overheard (it was a party line) someone talk about the invasion from Mars.  Perhaps they were fans of Perceval Lowell, the popular astronomer, similar to Bill Nye the "Science" Guy, who fancied he saw canals on the surface of Mars at the time (see Edgar Rice Burroughs and other pop fiction of the era).

Whatever the reason, a lot of people believed - for at least one hour of their lives - that Earth was under attack by Martians.  Not everyone, of course.  At the very least, folks in Grovers Mill, New Jersey, were well aware that it was a fiction.

This period was a heady time in mass media.  The very concept of mass media had only recently been invented.  In a short space of time, from the late 1800s until the mid-1950s, things like photography, telegraph,  cinema, radio, and audio recording were a new technology that gave humans access to information from around the planet in relative real time.  And they gave unscrupulous figures a new power never before unleashed on our species.

Until the advent of the 20th century, information could only travel as fast as a human or animal could run.  Though the concept of editing was well-known from print, which was already 400 years old, applying it to the senses of sight and sound were unthinkable until the advent of motion pictures in the first decade of the 20th century.

On the first of November 1938, though, the world changed.

Even now, nearly a century later, the masses are blissfully unaware of the power of mass media.  However, on that fall morning in 1938, a group of people at CBS and in the Mercury Theater on the Air became aware of the power they wielded.

Orson knew.

Just a year and a half earlier, the most dramatic event ever recorded live in human history, up to that point, had occurred.  It went live over the radio in May 1937, and within a week, the newsreels were showing the shocking images to adult audiences all over North America.  People were shocked, dismayed and emotionally damaged by that event.  The Hindenburg was a technological marvel, akin to the Titanic of the air.  It was a powerful propaganda piece, and its demise was as powerful as its existence.

In the space of two years, two events - one real, one imagined - had demonstrated the vast and untapped power of mass media.  Executives were busily calculating the economic value of that power, while the academics were busy analyzing it.  The former were seeking all the possible ways to capitalize on that power, while the latter were pondering the immense implications of it.

These two events launched an entire new industry, that of controlling and manipulating mass audiences.  They launched the careers of people like Walt Disney, and created demi-gods out of performers and shysters.  They weaponized advertising and marketing, and turned something called "news" into an industry, and later a control mechanism of unimaginable power.  Suddenly, things as ephemeral as light and sound waves were exponentially more powerful than stone monuments and the printed page.  These media were cheap and the delivery systems ubiquitous, and more importantly, required almost no effort on the part of the audience.

All of which begs the question, just how good have the techniques for manipulating and controlling humans gotten through the media?  Glad you asked.

Our favorite scientidiots, some of whom dwell in the country of England, have admitted unsing coercive and manipulative media messages to instill fear in the population for the purposes of controlling their behavior. 

Let that sink in for a moment while I go on to say, "I told you so," many times in fact, right here in these 12 years worth of blogs.  It's not often, though, I get to point to actual quotations and admissions by the perpetrators.

The article in the London Telegraph quotes an unnamed participant (I hesitate to use the title of Scientist) talking about the nature of the decision:

One scientist with the SPI-B admits that “In March [2020] the Government was very worried about compliance and they thought people wouldn’t want to be locked down. There were discussions about fear being needed to encourage compliance, and decisions were made about how to ramp up the fear.”

The unnamed scientist adds that “The way we have used fear is dystopian.”

Though this is certainly not the first time this has been done, it is rare that anyone admits to it, since lucrative careers are built on such skills.  There are two primary techniques used, known simply as personal benefit and personal threat, or more colloquially as "the carrot and the stick."

In the personal benefit category, the audience is told how they will gain prestige, wealth, admiration, or other vanity-stroking boost by acquiring a product or service.  In the personal threat category, they are led to believe that they will lose any of those benefits, become a laughing stock, or otherwise be humiliated in the eyes of their peers if they don't acquire the product or service.  

The former category includes luxury products or uniformed service providers emblazoned with the proper logos. For example, buying Nike shoes or a BMW will draw the admiration and envy of anyone who sees you in possession of these products.  Perhaps a particular cologne will attract more desireable mates.  Dining at a particular restaurant might impress others with your taste or sophistication.

In the latter category, you will be ashamed that your whites aren't whiter, or your body odor is offensive, or even repulsive.  Perhaps sweating will reveal your nervousness, or the label on your clothes will reveal that you are a cheap bastard.

These are pretty run-of-the-mill and every single advertisement you have ever or will ever be exposed to uses one or both techniques to motivate you.  For instance, you have bad breath and it offends others (threat), so buy our mouthwash and never worry again (benefit).

However, these techniques can and have been weaponized to control and manipulate entire populations.  During the Cold War, the constant threat of nuclear annihilation kept Americans docile and subservient to government interests.  A few of us remember "duck and cover" and air raid sirens going off every Friday at noon as constant reminders of just how fragile our grip on existence was, and of course voting and supporting government forces were the only viable solution.

In our current situation, the fear messages began as early of January of 2020.  Media showed us images of people dropping in the streets, packed hospital wards and footage of ambulances and emergency services in action.  Few folks noticed that almost all the images shown were stock footage from past crises, like chemical plant explosions, or even just random shots of Saturday night outside the local charity hospital.

We immediately panicked - on cue.  We were told to lock ourselves indoors, buy copious amounts of sanitizer and apprise "authorities" of any signs of illness of any kind anywhere at anytime.  Curiously, Americans also went on a toilet paper-buying rampage.  I've yet to figure out where that came from, but apparently folks figured wiping their butts was far more important than eating and taking vitamins.

The message was very powerful: an invisible enemy was all around us and could kill us in a particularly painful and horrific way if we didn't cower in our homes, avoid all human contact, and (most importantly) trust the people paraded on the evening news to lead us to health and safety.

It was all completely and entirely manufactured.  We were manipulated.  The "experts" we were told to follow were in on the deception, in fact some are even guilty of conceiving and launching the deception for the purposes of their masters.

The fear campaign has intensified in recent months to include vaccines as the savior - the solution - that offers the benefit of freedom from fear.  This is a curious thing, because the intangible and unseeable fear is now remedied by an equally unknown product, and the benefit is only relief from fear, not the return of liberties that were taken in response to the fear.

In other words, the relief from fear is nothing more than being stabbed with a needle (more fear) containing a substance that no one really knows what's in it.  For all we know, it is just salt water with a nifty label on the vial that has the magical spell "vaccine" printed on it.  Of course, that's not the case, since so many people are in fact dropping dead or having life-threatening events because of it.

This is unlike any campaign I have ever seen, though it is operating according to very precise phases that i am familiar with.  Phase I is threat - the who, what, where of the operation.  This was the early reports and images back during January to May of 2020.  Phase II is worry - the audience internalizes the threat and panics , seeking some outside entity to rescue them.  Phase III  is hope - solutions are proffered and focused on the entity that will deliver the remedy.  Phase IV is enlistment - once the remedy is made available, members of the audience who are susceptible to control are enlisted to coerce more resistant members using "carrot and stick".  For instance, a wary husband might be coerced by his wife with promises of intimacy once he is "safe" from the vaccine.

This process is essentially a complex form of the Hegelian Dialectic - thesis, antithesis, synthesis.  There is a problem for which a solution is found and all participants are made whole again by partaking in the solution.  Thesis: there is a deadly virus.  Antithesis: wash hands, stay indoors, avoid contact.  Synthesis: vaccination restores normalcy.

 We have been deceived.

The thesis or threat may or may not be real.  We have no way of knowing from the evidence currently in the public domain.  All we know for certain is that a number of performers in white lab coats have told us there is a "new" virus that causes deadly symptoms and there is no "known" cure for this situation.

The antithesis is that we must lock ourselves in our homes, avoid all contact with other human being and surrender ALL of our basic human rights - assemble, worship. speak, travel, choose, etc.

The synthesis is a substance that has not been tested, uses a completely new technology and may cause unforeseen harm.  You MUST submit to having this substance injected into your body by lab-coated performers before what you used to call rights, but are now just privileges, are partially returned to you...maybe.

To say every part of this scenario is wide open to deception, manipulation and coercion is an understatement.  In fact, the entire Damn-Panic is one massive conspiracy theory, for which there is exactly zero incontrovertible proof.

Ask yourself this: has anyone anywhere at any time in the past year held up a vial labelled "SARS-COV-2 - Live Sample," carefully removed its contents, placed them under a scanning electron microscope, and shown you point by point why this virus is any different from the Common Cold, or why it might be more deadly?  We won't even talk about the alleged "variants" that magically appeared right after the vaccines started rolling out.

You would think that an emergency of this scale involving an object smaller than we can perceive with our eyes would call for extraordinary educational efforts.  In fact, not only have the performers NOT done this, they have constantly changed the story, moved the goal posts, given and rescinded privileges, and essentially told us absolutely nothing of any value concerning this situation.  We are told to respect, trust, submit, and not ask questions.

We have been deceived by masters of the game.  It is a marketing plan that has been weaponized, utilizing psychological tools to manipulate our most basic instincts.

We are at fault.  We surrendered.  We were uncritical and credulous.  We were fearful and weak.  But it's not the end of the world.  It's time to wake up from the spell, realize  we've been had, and take back our agency as free adult humans.

WWOD? (What would Orson do?)

16.5.21

Let Woke Dogs Lie


All political power, no matter who or what exercises it, is based on lies.  The most fundamental of those lies is conning people into thinking one person or group has more power than anyone else.  This is the nature of government.

Underlying all power structures is fear, and this is the goal of all lies.  Convince someone to be afraid of something, then convince them you have a way to protect them, and they will transfer their personal power to you (vote) in order to be delivered from the fear.

Essentially, the nature of power is to create a bogyman - a non-existant threat - to initiate fear, then offer a proprietary solution to the fear, but that solution has a price that inevitably creates more fear.  However, since the masses are choosing the proffered solution, those seeking power cannot be blamed, since the masses have chosen.

Unless, of course, they realize that the original boogyman was itself a lie.

I think of this as the Boots and Coots method and governance.  If you are not familiar with Boots and Coots, then you've never worked in the oil patch (don't tell Mom, she thinks I'm a piano player in a whorehouse).

Boots and Coots is famous for their rather contra-intuitive solution to oil well fires.  They place a "chimney" around the burning well, then set off explosives inside that snuff out the fire by consuming all the oxygen within.  Only Texans would think of blowing up fires.

Anyway, the analogy here is that the presumed leaders create a fearful problem that only they have the solution to fix, but the solution turns out to be worse than the initial problem, and it requires even more draconian solutions in a never-ending cycle.  Meanwhile, each iteration ratchets up the fear levels among the masses, who keep transferring more power to buy safety, based solely on the perception that the group with power was able to solve the previous crisis.

It is essential that the masses never realize the group with power were the creators of the bogeyman, or that the proffered solutions are designed to create more fear and never actually solve anything.  To maintain these illusions requires an ever expanding circle of lies to cover up the tracks of the previous deception.

Eventually, the lies get so outrageous that the masses start to wake up from their dream-state and question what the hell is going on around here.  At this point, the governing power mongers must now turn to utter tyranny to force the masses to believe the lies, or face severe sanctions, which in turn causes more of the masses to wake up.

It's a vicious cycle and the outcome is invariably war and collapse - war because the level of force required to force the masses to believe the lies, and collapse because the entire system is founded on a lie.

The ultimate issue is that when the masses awaken, they are angry and vengeful.  Notice here that I use the present participle gerund "awakening," rather than the simple past "woke".  The gerund implies an ongoing process of discovery that leads to understanding.  The simple past aspect implies a one-time event that is complete and needs no further action.  They are wildly different in their incarnations and outcomes, and highlight the importance of language and grammar in critical thinking processes.

In our current situation, one who is awakening is seeking answers and relationships to fully understand what has been done, and what is being done to them.  One who is woke has already decided they know the answer, and in the extant situation, that answer has been provided to them by the very group that seeks to control them.

The woke individual is convinced that the answer is rectifying the treatment of individuals based on their demographic and superficial characteristics.  It goes something like this: the root of all evil is slavery, and only those with dark skin have ever been slaves, therefore elevating those with dark skin to positions of power will solve the problem.

The fallacy here is manifold.  First, slavery has been visited on all races, creeds and cultures at some point or another.  There is no one group who can claim special status in this regard.  The second problem is promoting some group into the existing power structure simply makes them accessory to the lies, rather than solving any problem.  In other words, it only perpetuates the bogeyman lie, while at the same time placing another layer of blame between the perpetrators and the angry, vengeful masses.

The perceptive reader will see where this is going.  By holding up some group as sacrosanct, the power mongers are in fact creating a strawman to hide the bogeyman, and thus deflect blame and retribution, or to use their terms, turning the awakening into the woke.

Some might say this is the Hegelian Dialectic, but that over-simplifies the subtlety and cunning at work here.  The Dialectic is fairly straightforward and easy to discern, when you know what to look for.  The deception we are suffering from is far more insidious and destructive, and invidious.

Invidious because the power mongers want our wrath and retribution for two specific reasons.  One, they can blame the destruction on the masses, offer a solution, and the entire process starts again with a new bogeyman and fresh set of lies (see the January 6th "insurrection").   Two, they have superior fire-power and having a bogeyman creates the predicate to use it as a solution (witness the pillar of lies used to create this bogeyman).  The bogeyman also creates a false target that deflects attacks as surely as any shield.

This in turn creates fear, and fear leads to surrender of power, and surrender leads to more tyranny and lies.

It's a vicious cycle, one that has repeated for millennia.

An excellent analogy is the unscrupulous mechanic.  You bring your car to him with some problem.  He tinkers and taps his way around the engine, usually while you are in air-conditioned comfort sipping your "free" coffee.  He tells you it will be so much to fix the problem, and you agree, not having taken the time to learn auto mechanics.  A few hours later, you happily drive off, not knowing that the mechanic fixed the easy problem, but created another that will bring you back in a few weeks.  Not only were you fleeced on the initial visit, but you will surely be fleeced again in the near future.

The solution to our current manufactured fear is not diversity, intersectionalism, reparations, or wokeness.  It is taking the time to truly peel away the layers of lies and find the original bogeyman that created the situation - the Primordial Lie, if you will.

The Primordial Lie is never spoken of or acknowledged by the power mongers and their minions.  It is far older than the current laundry list of issues put before us.  It is so ingrained into our social and cultural trappings that most people assume it is tautological.  It is the very energy source on which the matrix operates.  When the awakened individual finds it, they realize both how simple and how devious it is.

Ending the cycle is amazingly easy.  Don't be afraid, or in the immortal words of Douglas Adams, "Don't panic!"

We must realize that the object of our fear, the bogeyman, is manufactured to create fear.  We must also realize that we have been trained (schooled) to hand over our personal power to "authorities" and "experts," who in reality have no more clue how to solve anything than we do, but are adept at creating the conditions that cause us to react in a way that is beneficial to them.  It's a simple dominance game that bypasses our rational faculties and feeds on our instincts.

Basic awareness of the motive is the most powerful weapon we have.  Just knowing what is being done leads to how it's being done.  At that point, the spell is broken and the rest is the hard part.

Once the spell is broken, we must think for ourselves and be responsible for our own safety.  That is the part for which our society is built to subvert.  Games, sports, movies and the rest are nothing more than glittering distractions to prevent us from thinking.

And that is THEIR greatest fear..

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7.5.21

Some Thoughts On Thinking

 


This may sound like a strange question, but do you think about thinking?

Believe it or not, it's a real thing.  It's called cognitive science, and it employs a lot of people covered in sheep skins sitting around thinking about thinking.  They ask the really tough questions, like how do we think?  Why do we think?  What do we think about?  And most importantly, why do we think what we think?

Philosophers since ancient times have killed a lot of goats and pulverized a lot of trees pondering these questions.  They have proposed reams of hypotheses, outlined scads of analyses, and probably smoked a lot of opium trying to figure out how and why people think.

Personally, I think the answer for the most part is, "They don't."

In any event, to get my degree as a professional communicator, I had to take a full year of cognitive science classes and write a bunch of papers about the use of role-playing, gate-keeping, linking, and remembering.

While this may all seem a bit tedious, even pointless, it plays a major part in your life.  Thought modelling is the basis for algorithms, which more or less control every aspect of our lives these days.  Behavioral responses are linked to cognitive processes that determine your suseptibility to advertising, marketing and other forms of mass stimuli.  Like it or not, folks who think about thinking can predict almost without fail how you will react to certain input by collecting your online data.

Now I could go on for hours about this topic, but I want to focus on a model I made that offers insight into personal opinions.

The illustration at the top is a visualization tool for how I think about opinions.  While much of the world is told to think of opinions in two dimensions - left/right, red/blue, etc. - I think of opinions in three dimensions with six aspects.  I have found that every opinion I've ever had or encountered falls somewhere within this matrix.  It doesn't matter what the topic is, and doesn't care what your political or ideological beliefs are.  In fact, the belief structure is the box in which the matrix is contained.

Take something as mundane as pork bacon.  The box would be your religious ideology.  Those with religious strictures against eating pork would fall somewhere in the -X/+Y range, and may actively try to keep others from eating pork bacon (+Z) or not care what you do (-Z).  I personally think pork bacon is God's gift to Mankind (+X), but I won't force anyone else to eat it (-Y), but I will actively seek sources to purchase it despite living in a predominantly Muslim country (+Z).

Now take something as contentious as abortion rights.  You might feel strongly that it is an individual choice (+X/+Y), but you would not participate in rallys or take political action (-Z).  On the other hand, you might believe it is murder and an offence against humanity (-X), you are very passionate about that belief (+Y) and you would join in a protest to block a clinic (+Z).  The box is most likely a religious belief system.

If we assign a set of values to the aspect, say 1 through 5 moving out from the intersection, we can plot a whole range of opinions and even begin to see which ones are contradictory.

More importantly, at least from a commercial point of view, we can find a pattern that can be matched with your behavioral pattern, and suddenly we have a predictive model of you, and we can use it to target your weak spots.

The box can be any set of overarching beliefs that affect our opinions.  It could be as large as a weltanschauung, or as small as a personal taste.  It could be an Aristotelian Materialist box that colors everything you think, or a salty foods box that affects your opinion on various cuisines.  It really gets fun when you place a whole lot of small boxes inside a weltanschauung box, and start producing a set of sets model for any given individual.

The latter is essentially what is happening this very moment as you and I post on social media and make purchases with credit cards and search for items on Amazon.  Each collecting organization sells its data on us to other organizations, then they overlap the data by name, location and demographic information, and POOF!  They've made a little digital you inside a supercomputer somewhere in Silly-Con Valley.

Your thought and behavior matrix is as unique as a fingerprint, but it is also predictive.  For instance, if you are +X/+Y/+Z about bacon, I can predict some of your shopping habits.  Additionally, based on other data in your personal matrix, I can create a table of probabilities that predict how you will react to certain stimuli.  If your box is Materialist, then you are receptive to ads for luxury items, entertainment and day spas.  If your box shows a strong interest in self-sufficiency and practicality, you are receptive to ads for DIY products and urban real estate.

And that's just the beginning.

This type of model is used by social media giants to decide who gets cancelled.  It's not just what you say or believe, but the effect you have on others.  The giants are strongly -X/-Y/+Z, and they are hunting folks who are +X/+Y/+Z.  As the list shrinks, their quantitative criteria will move closer and closer to the null point, or intersection of the axes.  Even better, they can influence you to edit your thoughts and behaviors to move yourself closer to the null point, a process known as herding.

Think you can't be herded?  How many cash transactions have you made in the past month?  There was a time when people got really upset at the idea of a cashless society.  Now, most folks hardly use cash at all, not because of some rule or law, but because we have been herded there with online shopping, cards of every conceivable type, and the use of online credits to buy services, like ride-hailing and game tokens.

Your online behavior has allowed a group of corporations to create a set of carrots to lead you in directions that make them happy, so they don't have to pull out the stick and spook the rest of the herd.  Even more thought-provoking, they have convinced you that it makes you happy, as well.

This behavior modifiaction stuff is fun and profitable!

The moral of this story is that we should all spend a bit more time thinking about thinking.  How do you think?  Why do you think what you think?  What do you think?  How does your thinking affect your behavior?

Try making your own opinion matrix.  Think of random opinions you have, plot them out in the matrix.  After a short time, you'll start seeing patterns in your thinking.  When you find the pattern, think about what belief system (box) is skewing your thinking.  Become cognitive of your own cognition.

The benefit, other than self-awareness, is that you can use this tool to create artificial creatures that are absoltely consistent in what they say and how they behave online.  This might be a useful skill in the near future.

Think about it.

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6.5.21

Premium Price For Carbon

 


UPDATE 30 May 2021: Man convicted in Missouri for selling fake "organic" meat.  This case only proves that they are protecting the logo and brand, not the perceived quality of "organics".

Back in the late 1970s, I had a "day" job as a produce buyer for the most famous grocery store ever in the history of the world.

I'm not kidding.

I say "day" job, because being a produce buyer meant getting up at 2am, and driving a truck out to the farmer's market to buy veggies as they came off the trucks from the fields.  It is because of this job that I became an aficionado of raw vegetables, legumes, tubers, and fungi.  All my wives have appreciated my talent for selecting produce for flavor, freshness and the exact moment it will ripen.

I also hung around the top restaurants in Houston, and possibly the world, acquiring a taste for fine dining and learning tricks of the trade from top chefs.

One of those top chefs was my mother.  Though never tested, I imagine she could take dog meat and dress it up so fine, James Beard couldn't tell the difference.

I even dated a chef for a time.  She was trained at the CIA (not THAT one) and taught me one of the neatest tricks I've ever learned - how to de-bone a chicken from the inside out.  Makes great stuffed chicken and turducken.

All of this is by way of saying I know a bit about food, and specifically produce (food plants, fruit, legumes, tubers, and fungi to be clear), and also to say that I know for a fact that people have been paying premium prices of "organic" foods since at least the 1970s, and likely long before that.

When folks think of organic foods, they ofter imagine the wagyu beef of the veggie world - daily massages, listening to Mozart, people paid to sit around and talk kindly to the plants, that sort of thing.  They might imagine strict oversight by government organization, ensuring your "orginic" food has no chemical fertilizers or insecticides.  Perhaps folks might go so far as to think "organic" means no mucking about with a plant's genome, a.k.a. GMO seeds.

If you are one of those folks, you should get prepared, 'cause here it comes.

There is no legal definition of "organic," nor is there any government enforcement of the term "organic".  In the USA, which has some of the strictest "ideas" about what "organic" means, the entire labelling system is a voluntary process, and acquiring the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) "organic" label means a farmer's produce is at least 95% "organic".  Note, however, that the whole thing comes down to a label, and little else.

In 1990, the US Congress mandated the USDA create a set of standards for "organic" foods.  Note here that it is a set of standards, not laws, rules nor any kind of enforcement structure.  In 2000, the USDA formed a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) which created the National Organic Program (NOP), whose sole job it is to hand out and protect the "integrity" of the USDA Organic label.  You will note carefully that their job is to protect the label, not the food.

Yes folks, "organic" is a marketing program, backed up by a PPP that enforces a set of  practices, and your local farmer can voluntarily join the program, fill out a bunch of forms, get inspected once a year and follow 95% of the guidelines to earn the right to use a label.

That's it.

If you don't follow the guidelines, you get your wrist slapped and you can no longer put the little sticker on your produce and you're not invited to the annual conference in Las Vegas, but you can still call it "organic," and there's not a damn thing anyone can do about it.

And that extra cost for "organic" food?  That's to pay for all the bureaucracy  and the dancing girls at the Vegas hoe-down.

A big part of the problem here is that "orgainc" has a specific definition:

or•gan•ic ôr-găn′Ä­k

  • adj.
    Of, relating to, or derived from living organisms.
  • adj.
    Of, relating to, or affecting a bodily organ.

 If your produce falls under the qualification of "life as we know it," meaning carbon is its primary constituent, then it is by definition "organic".  Everything else is marketing.  And one of the great deceptions of marketing is that it's not what you claim, but how you word it.

Remeber that little detail about 95%?  You can drive a whole lotta sins through that remaining 5%.  For instance, if less than 5% of the genome is artificial, "organic".  If less than 5% of the farmer's weed killer is glyphosate, "organic".  If the farmer uses less than 5% ammonium nitrate, "organic."  If the irrigation system only receives 5% of its water from the local nuclear plant, "organic".

Essentially, paying top dollar for the "organic" label is a marketing ploy backed up by the watchful eye of a PPP that follows the guidelines of the USDA.  Your food is no more safe, fresh or natural than any other apple on the cart.

There's a fun little test you can do right in the socially distance comfort of your home.  Next time you brave the prutid and infected world to run to the store and buy some high-priced "organic" veggies, be sure to save the seeds.  Rinse them off and dry them thoroughly, then plant them in some nice "organic" soil, throw a little water on them every day, and be sure not to use ammonium nitrate or glyphosate.  In about 5-8 weeks, let us know what came of your little experiment.

I'll bet you decide to save a few bucks and stop shopping at Whole Foods by end of summer.

By the way, putting a couple free-range chickens in your back yard is a fantastic, "organic" pest control system, and all those bugs make the yolks dark yellow and full of flavor!

 

3.5.21

60 Cycles

 


In preparing to write this exciting installment, I did what any brilliant writer does: I went outside on the porch for a smoke to procrastinate.  For those who are not writers, it is difficult to understand just how painful this process is, and to what lengths we will go to in avoiding it.

Anyway, I got out on the porch and realized I had finished my last pack, so I went back in to fetch a fresh one out of my office.  When I got to my desk, I thought I'd kill two stones with one bird, and plugged in my cell phone and went back outside.

When I got there, I realized that I hadn't fetched a new pack, cursed loudly, and went back inside.  On the way, I stopped by the kitchen to tell my wife the story thus far, and laugh at my obvious descent into senility.

Then I went back outside.

I cursed again, choosing more colorful terms to express myself.  I even made up a couple of new bad words, which I need to write down before I forget them.

I went back to my office and finally remembered to grab a pack of distraction.

As I stood on the porch, fumes circling me like ghostly vultures, I tried to drown out the obscene racket coming from the local mosque.  The cantor is nine years older than God, and sounds like a rutting bullfrog with strep throat fighting larynial cancer, while sticking a finger down his throat trying to scrape nodules off his vocal chords.

And he keeps the amp cranked to 11, while swallowing the mic.  Ugh!

And that's on a good day.

I was trying to drown out the racket by thinking of my impending 60th birthday.  I took a long, sullen pull from my cigarette, as I had done nearly every day for the past 55 years.  I looked up at the Moon, now well above the horizon, as I had done nearly every night for the past 58 years.

I wondered if I had gained any insight, a nugget of wisdom distilled from nearly 2/3rds of a century.

Nope.  Not really.  The cupboard was bare.

So I procrastinated some more, lit another fag, and released a fog of blue-gray phantoms.  Life, it seems, is a long, slow process of forgetting everything I was absolutely certain about 40 or so years ago.  It's a degredation of vision from pure blacks and whites, into infinite shades of gray.

One positive aspect of growing old is losing debilitating empathy.  I am nearly to the point where I no longer give a shit what anyone else thinks or feels.  Not entirely.  I guess I've narrowed it down to a highly selectinve group of folks.  The rest of the world can piss off.

It's very liberating.

Another positive aspect of aging is that, sometime in the past couple of years...not really sure when...testosterone released its death grip on my mind.  I can finally think clearly without the need to tailor everything into attracting potential mates that has consumed virtually every waking moment, and most sleeping moments too, for the past 48 years.  This is likely related to the not giving a shit mentioned previously.

Other than these weirdly random pains in weirdly random parts of my body at weirdly random times, I'm reasonably healthy for all the wear and tear.  Despite my wife's constant worry, my blood pressure and cholesterol are nearly textbook perfect.  I don't generally get sick, though the occasions that I do are doozies.

The last episode was about seven years ago.  I managed to contract typhus, amoebic dysentery and dengue fever all at the same time.  I spent 20 days in the hospital alternately freezing, roasting and oozing blood from every pore.  It was very exciting.  

People I hardly knew were stopping by to bid farewell and my wife's church group formed regular prayer circles around my death bed.  To this day, I maintain that it was cheeseburgers that pulled me through.  Had I stuck to the bland, pale food substitutes the hospital forced on me, I would be worm meat by now.

So what does one do when one faces 60?  I tried to make a bucket list, but I've done pratty much everything I ever thought would be fun to do, except go to Antarctica - and yes, I've already shopped boat rides out of Tazmania for when the jerk-offs who think they run the planet let us get back to ignoring them.

I wouldn't mind going into orbit, too.  When I was a kid watching the Mercury astronauts letting themselves get shot into the Great Beyond atop ballistic missiles, I thought we'd all be vacationing on Mars by now.  The jerk-offs screwed that up, too.

I've stepped on six continents and lived in six countries.  I've had at least four distinct careers and left some small mark on all of them.  I've launched off the deck of an aircraft carrier in an A-10 fighter jet.  I was allowed 30 minutes in the actual trainer for the astronauts who landed on the Moon.  I've met dozens of people whose names are burned into history - for better or worse.  I've been as deep as 100 meters into the ocean by various means.  I've been a part of one of the largest peaceful crowds ever, and I've been profoundly and incredibly alone for various lengths of time.

I've been a Benedictine and Buddhist monk.  I've midwifed calves, colts, lambs, kittens, and puppies, and I've eaten them.

I really can't complain.  Too much.

So what do I know for sure after 60 years of exploration down here in the materium?

I know that I'm not finished yet.  And I know I don't want to live forever.  Nothing seems more terrifying than living forever.

I hate figs and beets.  I love pate du foie gras on liver biscuits with capers and red onions, but I hate even the thought of fried liver and onions.  I hate crowds and love the desert and mountains.  I hate deadlines and schedules, but I thrive when they are short and the pressure is on.  I hate losing, but winning never seems worth the effort to attain it.  I love learning, but I hate studying.

I'd much rather hear one person I respect tell me "good job," than the empty adulation of throngs.

In the end, I have more beads of sweat than pearls of wisdom.  I suppose that's the way it should be, though.  As any true artist knows, no creation is ever finished.

So I guess I'll just have another smoke and procrastinate some more.  Who knows?  Maybe I'll come up with the perfect line to end this screed.

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2.5.21

Moondust Daydreams

 


From B. D. Grover's "Devil's Dictionary," 2nd Edition: A "conspiracy theory" is a truth that is widely discredited and officially denied. Once exposed, it is widely acknowledged as self-evident and officially discussed in the passive voice.

 Imagine you are a Spanish conquistador in the 1500s.

You are sent to the so-called New World to initiate trade with the natives, who aren't really there, because it's a "new world," right?  Anyway, they this stuff called tobacco and something called chocolate, which will likely find a huge market in the Old World.

You've got sacks full of gold pieces of eight, with which to buy these amazing new products.  But the natives don't want gold.  Turns out they have piles of the stuff, and while it makes some pretty art, it's not all that useful to these "new" folks.  How do you find a convenient currency that both sides find valuable, and with which you can buy all those nifty "new" products?

If you're a conquistador, the solution is easy.  You hack and slay the locals and just take the goodies, and while you're at you, you squat on their land and take over the place.

Now let's say two wildly different cultures, say Earthlings and Orionids, want to trade with each other.  Both sides have goodies the other wants, but other than hauling ships full of commodities back and forth, there's no mutually agreeable currency that both sides can use...They have no use for our paper when they trade with the Pleidians, and the Pleidians are allergic to paper.  Conversely, whatever the Orionids and Pleidians use for currency, we have no interest in it.  Besides, one Orionid Flurb is worth one trillion US dollars, due to hypergalactic inflation.

So how do we trade if there's nothing they have that we want, and nothing we have that they want?

Except energy.

Turns out everyone uses electricity in some form or another, generated by some means or another.  So the Orionids suggest we create a currency out of electrical Watts, since they have a measurement very similar to that.  They suggest we call it Blips, since that means "wealth" in Orionian.

So industrious little humans (the Orionids are HUGE, you see) set about writing code that turns raw electricity into Blips, based on a certain amount of physical work (Watts) that each unit will perform.  Earhlings, being used to physical currencies, decide to call these units Blip coins, even though they don't have any physical structure.  As it happens, not have physical structure makes them idea for moving around the galaxy, too, because there is no mass to accelerate or decelerate.   Just little packets of Watts zipping hither and yon.

At first, the Earthlings are dubious.  How can little packets of Watts have any value?  You can't hold one or put it in your pocket.  In fact, you can't even see a Blip unless it's registered by another bit of code they all decided to call wallets, because that's how they used to store paper.

Quickly, the Earthlings realized that these Blipcoins made trading with the off-planet colonies simple and easy.  Instead of converting amounts into and out of Moonbux or Marsbux, they just zapped Blipcoins to each other across the interplanetary exonet.  Suddenly, business boomed and cargo ships could add more cargo in the space that was once consumed by paper.  And just like the old paper, when things got really rotten, you could burn the Blipcoins for lighting and heat

The moral of this story is: have you checked the price of Blipcoins lately?

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