Category: Politics

MacRumors: Apple News and Rumors

Justice John Roberts said that “Congress is fine with the expression,” but “not fine with a foreign adversary … gathering all this information about the 170 million people who use TikTok.”

Source: MacRumors: Apple News and Rumors

So you’re trying to tell me that gathering “all this information” is, in fact, dangerous to our republic and our freedoms, but it’s acceptable when every US company and the NSA all do it? Have I got that right? It is a realistic security problem, but it’s not an abridgment of the Fourth Amendment? Really? OK, just checking.

Today, in Mark of the Beast News

The Devil? (I kid, I kid.)

Larry Ellison is the CEO of Oracle, the 19th most valuable company in the world. They make a database. The FBI were Larry and Oracle’s first customer, and the FBI/CIA/NSA all use it for everything. So when Larry Ellison brags that AI is going to enforce “social credit”, it’s because he knows 1) the deep state is going to make another HUGE investment in his software, 2) he’s going to make even more money, and 3) investors stand to make even more money. And of course Business Insider — being a mouth piece for the deep state — makes this news.

The Middle East Problem

When the US invaded Iraq, I read about the history of how the US installed Saddam Hussein to control what was going on in that country, and ostensibly to be a foil to Iran. Then we went in and deposed him, took his gold, and — I’m sure — installed a bunch of sycophantic leaders to make sure we continued to get their oil for a good price. We also armed the brave Mujahideen — popularized in Rambo 3! — to fight against the Russian colonizers in Afghanistan… who went on to hold out against not only the Russians for 20 years, but also the US for another 20.

https://twitter.com/RealSpikeCohen/status/1352388882822795268

(Archived, in case of deletion.)

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if our military industrial complex just… stopped faffing about in the rest of the world. At least for a time, right? Since WW I, we’ve never stopped. I say we try it on for size, and see how it looks in the mirror.

IQ Tests, All Day, Every Day

Certain topics have revealed themselves to be IQ tests on social media. It’s become clear that, as a society, we are being held back by people who can’t understand basic concepts like averages and standard deviations or compound interest. When I’m reading an online conversation these days, I’m starting to see the IQ test behind the point more often and more quickly; the logical pitfall which, if you don’t avoid, will cause you to conclude the wrong things, and land on the opposite side of the solution.

Failing these tests wouldn’t be harmful, except that the people failing them have full access to society through voting and being present when adults are talking, and they fight against rules, regulations, and policies which would help everyone in the long run due to their limitations. Our progress as a country is being thwarted because our politicians cater to their fears and misunderstanding in order to get their votes, and this absolutely happens on both sides. Society can be mapped onto a 2D graph with left/right political leanings on the horizontal axis, and IQ on the vertical, with 100 on the crossing.

The Graph we Need to Understand the World

This is our world. There’s about 25% of the population in each quadrant, and we’re all just trying to “figure it out.” Societally, the people below the line haven’t really had a lot of impact until the invention of the internet. In the early days, the internet felt egalitarian and promising because it took a certain amount of intelligence and resources (working as a proxy for intelligence) to get on and say something, and the results were quick, amazing, and impactful. Now “the internet” has been reduced to a dozen web sites, and everyone is on it. Now they have full access to whatever “news” they want to consume, and they have full access to the town square in various forms of social media. (And, no, for the purposes of this discussion, I’m not going anywhere near the debate about the First Amendment, or political or racial biases.)

So now the people above the line are trying to “figure it out” while the people below — who will never “figure it out” — make it more and more difficult for the rest, as they flail about in their own doomed efforts, confident in their Dunning-Krugerring that their input and understanding is equal to every else’s, and, after all, why shouldn’t they sit on city councils and school boards and be middle managers at large companies, and implement all the dumbest stuff imaginable?

A lot of the IQ tests are failed due to modern liberalism, by which I mean the tendency to ignore facts — or, especially, ignore certain facts in favor of others — while focusing on intents and feelings. You can’t save the Titanic by caring about the feelings of the iceberg, but that’s exactly what a large portion of our society would be concerned with these days. So there’s a concentration of society-sabatoging effort going on in the left half of the quadrant that mixes with the problems in the lower half. Hence the red line. (I really wanted to draw it going up asymptotically on the left side, showing that after a certain amount of liberalism, no amount of IQ can save you, but working Photoshop is not one of my skills, and, ironically, I’m apparently not smart enough to figure it out after 30 years.) It’s the people to the top and right who could help society the best over the longest terms, and they’re being clawed at by the people to the left and below, like crabs in bucket pulling down the ones smart enough climb up and over to escape.

Reddit is a Psyop

I can’t confirm one way or another that this actually happened, and I’m not going to even try. It is instructive that there is no doubt it could be true, and I’ll leave it at that.

This is yet another reminder that Reddit is a corporate-fronted deep-state psyop propaganda machine designed to manipulate a very, very specific demographic.

Election Malfeasance 2024

Here’s a guy who filmed Indiana Department of Transportation workers for a half hour removing Trump signs, and (allegedly) leaving the Harris ones. It’s just one data point among many. Over the past week, my Twitter feed has become FILLED with stories of crazy election problems already. And it’s not just one or two crazy, hard-right, loud-mouthed accounts. It’s many different people, and from all the battleground states.

Strangely, every story seems to only favor one side. Now, maybe that’s just my algorithm’s bias, so if anyone has stories FROM THE LEFT about, oh, I don’t know, a person voting in elections where the person said they never voted, or many dozens of voting “residences” for a single person, I’d actually love to hear about them. These would be headline news in the mainstream media, and I’m not seeing them.

Turns out that there are many, many ways to cheat our elections. It’s not just about hacking the voting machines, though, as a “computer guy,” this is the biggest issue of all, and it’s already been proven times! No, the “beauty” of this situation is that you can hide cheating at many different levels, in many different ways, and in many different regions, as needed.

Because of the issues last time — I mean, boarding up windows so observers couldn’t see!? — finding thousands of votes all for one person in the dead of the night!? — people are watching very carefully this time around, and it’s becoming more and more clear every day that our elections are susceptible to all sorts of shenanigans, and are in danger of being a disgraceful joke.

UPDATE: I sent this to a friend who works for INDOT. He sent it up the chain, and was told, yes, it was real, and that the Commissioner was already involved. Although crews are supposed to remove such temporary signs in easements to work — and whether or not they were, in fact, being selective about it — the optics from this are apparently bad enough that they have been told to leave all political signs alone until after the election.

Musk’s X blocked links to JD Vance dossier after hearing from Trump campaign – Ars Technica

According to Klippenstein, Musk sent a message in which he said, “I’ve asked X Safety to unsuspend him, even though I think he is an awful human being… Important to stay true to free speech principles.”

Source: Musk’s X blocked links to JD Vance dossier after hearing from Trump campaign – Ars Technica

Klippenstein revealed Vance’s social security number in an opposition “dossier” he posted to Twitter. He was suspended. He redacted the personal information, and was reinstated.

Saved you a click, and talk about burying the lede!

Boo, Ars. Boo!

Societal Reprogramming

You Are Being Warned

People are starting to wake up. This notice needs to be expanded to include all printed media, broadcast, movies, streaming, video gaming, and even tabletop role playing. The billionaires in question are at the top of companies like Blackrock, State Street, and Vanguard, which collectively own a controlling stake in almost every single company in the US. Larry Fink has become the poster child of this effort, because he literally said the quiet part out loud.

The next time you wonder why your favorite entertainment started being terrible all of a sudden, realize that these investment companies directed that to happen, and they’ve got more money than God to lose on spreading their messaging. It has become a complete top-down reprogramming of society. The only major platform/channel standing apart from this is Twitter, and that’s why they hate Elon Musk.

Hurricane Hyperventilation

PSA: THE GOVERNMENT CANNOT CREATE OR INFLUENCE HURRICANES

The right-wing of America is having a real “moment” about this topic all over social media, and I’m going to point out the obvious problem with this idea. You can take it or leave it. After several days of making this argument on Twitter, I find a lot of people are leaving it. Still, I do what I can.

Let’s get a couple things out of the way up front. Yes, we can “seed” clouds to cause precipitation. That’s been around for a long time. That’s just chemistry and thermodynamics, and it only works in ALREADY-FORMED weather patterns.

And, yes, there are patents for inventions that would seek to control the weather. So what? There are also patents for teleporters, anti-gravity, telekinesis, ESP, and contacting the spirit world. Getting a patent just means you’re the first to seek legal protection for an idea, not that the invention works now, or that it will EVER work in the future. Even if you think that a patent proves an idea not only works in theory, but is evidence of a working invention, do you think the government would put a weather control device’s method of operation in the public view for others to understand and copy? Do you think other countries would respect that copyright under threat of a patent infringement lawsuit?

This isn’t a question of technology. Well, it IS, but that’s secondary. This is primarily a question of ENERGY.

Hurricanes are caused by the air in the northern and southern hemispheres moving in opposite directions. (If you study mechanics, you can see the reason why this happens in the equations.) These opposing bodies of air move past each other and get mixed, making planet-sized eddy currents. That’s why they only happen on the equator. If you are going to create a hurricane — or direct it, or intensify it, or diminish it — you will need to influence the way the air is moving in BOTH hemispheres, and redirect it to your liking. And then, if could manage THAT, and no matter what sort of machine you think might do that job, you’re going to need to POWER it.

Meteorologists have done the math, and the amount of energy in a hurricane is roughly equivalent to the total output of all of mankind right now. EVEN IF you could produce this much energy for the job, you’d still have to APPLY it to the atmosphere of the entire globe, within HUNDREDS of miles north AND south of the equator. You can’t just stop the air moving in some area to put it somewhere else, and create a void. You’re going to have to control basically the whole thing.

Weather patterns are the movement of a literal astronomical amount of air and water, and are produced by 1) the rotation and orbit of the planet (moving the air mechanically), 2) the heat from the planet’s core and the sun (causing expansion and contraction of air with the temperature over nights and days), and 2) the interaction with the gravity of the moon (causing rising and falling tides, increasing and decreasing pressure on the air above). These forces are MAGNITUDES larger than anything mankind can control.

Lastly, yes, the government has always been DECADES ahead of the private sector in any sort of technology that could be used as a weapon. But let’s be clear: they are only ahead in the PRACTICAL APPLICATION of the technology. They are not BREAKING THE LAWS OF PHYSICS or inventing new ones. Even if you believe the government has created some secret satellite-based raygun to produce these kinds of pressure and heat differentials to influence the atmosphere over most of the globe, there’s no way they could power it. This would be WELL beyond all known or even theorized physics. It’s simply not possible.

Global Emissions

I work in a company within an industry that is figuratively being strangled to death over emissions standards, and I have to sit here and look at this.

Effluence
Comparison

The increases from the East have dwarfed the decreases from the West. I suspect it’s just “off-shoring” the pollution through outsourcing production, while being able to make political hay, and not an actual organic increase.