Social media, the disease, and we, the diseased
Analysis and Opinion
By Joe America
I wrote the other day that social media is a disease and we are all sick. It is a global pandemic that is so severe that people don’t know they are sick.
In the old days, prior to about 1985, we had three main inputs to our brains. What we saw, what we read, and what we listened too.
Today we have four. What we see, what we read, what we listen to, and all the electronic data shoved into our brain.
The pace and volume of the electronic data, and the maliciousness of a lot of it, messes with both our knowledge and our emotional bearing. Horrifyingly, it can also suppress or dull the other three, what we see, what we read, and what we listen to.
Without question, people today don’t read much. They work their apps. I’m as hooked as anybody, and it has worsened in recent years. I’m angry a lot, short of attention, and short of patience. I speed through everything, or it speeds through me. Tweets, headlines, and advertising careen past as I mash them into bits of relevance, fleeting, then gone.. I suspect we are all leveling down toward a plane that is intellectually so shallow that we are glaze-eyed zombies of no real relevance at all. But we think we are hot shots because, as the data crush our intellectual depth, it embellishes our self confidence.
Filipinos led the world past black dial phones to go directly to cell phones and texting. Fastest thumbs on the planet, verified by science, or at least theories. Phones are computer enough for most and the great debate here at The Society of Honor is, if poor Filipinos got free internet would they learn stuff or go to mindless games and conspiracies, and populism so advanced that they would go directly to dumb without passing awareness of who they are.
I suspect it does not matter because we are all heading down the path of complete meaninglessness as we become obedient to the swarm of electrons that subsume humans on this planet. We are becoming less relevant daily. Elon Musk runs the world and most people will never conjure up the concept that they have been played, and are now either a 1 or a 0 depending on which button he presses.
If poor Filipinos get free wifi, they will imagine they have the world at their fingertips. But they are not the players. They are the played. So it doesn’t matter.
It’s up to us to define our humanity, slow down, do some mental stretching, and follow that great guru Edgar Lores down the path of order, understanding, compassion, and harmony.
Best wishes to you all for a vibrant, aware, 2025.
Joe
__________________________
Cover photo from Variety article “Elon Musk Closes Twitter Deal, Fires CEO, CFO and Other Top Execs“.
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The Society of Honor by Joe America 
I’ve deleted comments that are not relevant to the article topic. I’d request that comments be disciplined and pertinent. Thank you.
Thanks, as LCPL_X is now remiscent of how I was when I came into this blog, thinking I knew all there was to know, getting banned and then stepping back to figure things out. One delusion social media creates is that of KNOWING. Data is not information is not knowledge is not wisdom. We swim in contextually badly sorted information like slum kids swimming in flood waters full of basura, risking mental leptospirosis. I once didn’t respect established authority but we need to return to a bit of that. Printing destroyed the authority of monks, who as manual copiers of books had absolute control of what people got to know. Scientific societies that checked the work of peers came about some centuries after printing was used for witch hunts. Lying like print is still a German adage from the time Catholic and Protestant propaganda leaflets flooded the country and eventually led to the 30 years war. Now I know this is grossly oversimplified. Joey might object to some finer points regarding the Catholic side and you might re Lutherans. But none of you two would keep insisting, we would all listen and learn.
I did learn starting with my ban and writing for myself, then for here how to put information together properly into useful knowledge and maybe a bit of wisdom. Maybe even enough to question the illusion of wisdom that AI exudes. That is an even more dangerous matter. Hoping that LCPL_X learns from applying himself to writing stuff and dealing with discussions like I did. The point however is still that it gets harder to educate and communicate. And unlike printing, social media has algorithms that can brainwash us, designed to sell stuff, originally. Wondering what William of Baskerville would have said about social media, the Jedi master, I mean Franciscan friar from Name of the Rose, who said that spreading knowledge to people who did not know how to deal with it would destroy the world, IIRC. Might we be close to that?
Wonderful characterization of the breakdown of conventional orderly and compassionate thought that cherishes understanding over positioning. The fascinating thing is that both greater nastiness and greater vacuity develop side by side. I don’t know how much knowledge has to do with it. People are wholly disinterested, it seems to me. They are merely running joysticks.
This blog is unusual for having old time real thinkers here. Francis must be about the last of the sentient beings inhabiting the planet.
We are becoming less relevant daily. Elon Musk runs the world and most people will never conjure up the concept that they have been played, and are now either a 1 or a 0 depending on which button he presses.
This to me, is the whole point of the article. Because Trump won, now we have Elon Musk. i read Trump saying he wants Musk’s Starships to land in Mars before 2028, though Trump’s already vying for a 2nd term, since he didn’t have 2 consecutive terms (there was a break) so technically he’s supposed to get another term thus making it consecutive so 2032 could be Trump’s last year in office.
That is in play.
Elon Musk’s guy is now gonna be head of NASA and I think NASA will now align to SpaceX’s mission to Mars. I gotta feeling they’ll just skip the moon now, let China and India have the moon. That whole H1 visa hoopla was also due to Musk’s guy in AI. So you can already see Musk is all over the place and Trump and Musk seem to be vibing. like hard. We need more Elon Musk discussions and the Philippines needs to look more closely into
Elon Musk’s vision and plans.
Francis must be about the last of the sentient beings inhabiting the planet.
His Filipino space program is one aspect that plays into this new Trump/Musk world, Joe. I hope Francis returns and revisit this idea for us. “It’s his enjoyment, to argue, slippery style. He’s not here to build a better Philippines except in conceptual flights of fancy.” I really would want to see UP Los Banyos stand up a space program that would do the opposite of NASA poaching Filipino engineers and mathematicians, meaning those Filipino experts would stay in Philippines. not leave. I admit to my flights of fancy conceptual or not. so Francis’ idea would be great addition, Joe.
But plan on seeing Trump and Elon Musk in power til 2032 (and beyond). Plan around that, for you as individuals and for the Philippines.
TL;DR: Filipino space program.
Thanks for using the Reformation to illustrate of how the interplay between nefarious cabals of powerful men and an emotionally charged populace searching for someone or something to blame primes the situation for runaway situations. In the German Reformation, the nefarious cabals were the warring German princes greedily eyeing monastic property to satisfy debts from their many wars, and the populace were the peasants suffering from the effects of said wars. Order in human society can exist without individual reason, as long as there are trusted groups that can transmit a sense of order to the people. A world without order, and also without reason, is a highly dangerous place. A spark can light an inferno, given enough available fuel on the forest floor. The end result is the common good in the ancient primeval forest is torched. Lumber, game animals, forage vegetables, that figuratively give humans shelter, sustenance, community and a sense of wonder are lost, sometimes forever.
P.S. I have very little quarrel with the Lutherans actually. Most Lutherans are reasonable people. The irony of all the religious wars of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation is that aside from the Calvinists and their often argumentative descendants, Episcopal Protestants are basically 99.5% exactly the same in doctrine as the Catholics. Once the Great Schism between East and West is explored, the situation gets even more silly, where my guess is the doctrine between the Catholic (Latin) and Orthodox (Greek) doctrines are about 99.98% the same. Which is why there has been a huge effort since Vatican II to heal the doctrinal rifts and mistrust derived from minor interpretations, to re-unite the worldwide Episcopal body of the Katholikos.
a sort of modern Jeremiad. a lament to the wide web world a prophesy of doom from somebody who knows basic common sense logic before AI came to town
Fair statement. AI will make it worse. The disease began back in 1985 and has been picking up speed since. Reading most certainly diminished. Listening to as people form emotionally hardened views. We don’t spend much time “seeing” the world either. It is digested and fed to us like baby food.
AI is supposed to make life easy for us humans, doing the mundane and leaving us humans free to go after higher pursuits.
humans can always set AI to go after rogue AI and exposing them as rogues the way netizens go after fake docus, pictures and videos in the internet, and exposing them as fakes and misinformation. though it has been proven that there are people who gain much from misinformation and are paid highly for it. one man’s garbage is twice another man’s gold mine: the misinformer gets paid, the beneficiary gets the benefit, and the innocent target gets discredited.
I would argue that this all started much before 1985. My read puts the start in the 1960s with the rise of modern media. Most observers just haven’t noticed until recently and blamed social media, but just like a serene ocean can belie dangerous undercurrents, the elements that created our current situation have always been there under the surface.
Following the devastation of WWII, the period that followed was one of rapid rebuilding. By the 1960s, the Western economies were stable and abundant enough that two whole generations grew up in relative peace and economic security. This included the Philippine Third Republic, which benefited from the peace and American prosperity of the period. Economic and physical security is a good thing, but security can also cause one to forget the struggle that it took to get there. Security allows for more personal expression. Security allows us to compare ourselves to others who seem to have more, or seem to be poised to “take” what we have. It’s ironic that in times of devastation, societies are flattened, there is more egalitarianism, those from the impoverished rise up, while those at the top are willing to bend down a bit further towards equilibrium. It is in times of excess where in-fighting starts to happen, because inner biases require idle time to contemplate on it.
Boomers as a whole grew up in one of the most economically secure times in history, where the divide between rich and poor was one of the smallest and a single income could achieve a family’s dreams. GenX grew up in still a relatively economically stable environment. Both had large swaths of their cohort turn to a “counter-culture” of hedonism, materialism, nihilism, the pursuit of the self over the good of their neighbors. In those generations’ journey to find themselves, perhaps they had lost their sense of self in the process. They championed individualism, yet many eventually fell to coalescing into groups and cliques that echoed each other mindlessly. It may be no surprise then, that these generations, and the GenZ that followed are the ones who fell headlong for false prophets telling them “here’s the truth,” “this is how you can find yourself” whether those false prophets speak from television sets or computer screens. Funny how those false prophets always seem to be asking for money, or have some scheme to make a buck off of their believers.
In the Old Testament, the Israelites were often warned against false prophets offering revelations. In our modern day, the false prophets are the prosperity gospel preachers, corrupt politicians, media talk show hosts, unscrupulous businessmen, and yes, the “influencer” personalities their money pays for. A thousand voices tugging at us with exactly what we want to hear, making us feel special in confirmation bias. Just like for the Israelites who exorcised their false prophets, the only solution to fight against the devils whispering into our ears is to shut it off completely and disengage from it. I did that long ago, largely leaving Facebook back in the mid-2010s to focus on my writing.
We are probably entering into another Dark Ages despite our high technology era. Historians will tell us that the Dark Ages didn’t mean literally that the world was “dark” or that societies ceased to exist; rather the time period was described as dark because there was no Light of Knowledge. But just like in the various dark ages across world and human history, there were always pockets of people who preserved knowledge for a future time when humanity was ready for the Truth again. Lies are shifting to match our bias in its seductiveness and can turn many people towards falsehood, but the Truth is incorrigible, unchanging. In the end, the Truth always prevailed after people who were drunk on lies had had enough and woke up. What’s often needed is for people to endure the pain and suffering after the initial high of the Lies wears off. Let’s hope that pain and suffering won’t be that bad, or last that long.
advances in medical science make one no longer susceptible to both pain and suffering. we have all sorts of therapy now for both mind and body. almost all body parts can be replaced with titanium and made functional again. same with the mind, there are now powerful psychotropic drugs that are getting better all the time.
and people live up to a hundred years, yay! maybe our president should try sending them birthday cards wishing them many more happy birthdays to come. scary thought. people living so long, almost immortal.
maybe young people ought to be given lassitude. they are not really wasting their lives constantly attached to gizmos, for that is going to be the style in their own future, and they’re already prepped for it. for the time when humans interact more to machines than to other humans. finding better ways to make life more commercially and electronically livable. choosing the outcome where humans will no longer be victims of circumstances, only bad programing. but bad programing can be corrected and made good programing.
in the meantime, there is war in the middle east and troopers are needed.
Perhaps KB, but it will be hard. Many of the software engineers I’ve met over my career are very smart individuals, but are so enclosed within their own world that they are often out of touch with reality. What would help is the inclusion of more women engineers in the field, the input of sociologists, psychologists, perhaps historians. The most innovative work I’ve seen in technology often comes out of Eastern Europe, as they bring a different perspective that shows that the world exists more than a Western White monolith that drives our current virtual spaces. I’m even more eager to await what comes out of the rapidly developing African countries. As for Asia, the PRC is a juggernaut but their perspective is one of control. For a long time I thought the Japanese, then Koreans, would revolutionize technology, but perhaps their populations are too small in light of the whole. So perhaps we will have India, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia lead the Asian tech revolution. I sadly have little hope for the Philippines in this field, where people are very good at consuming, and not so good at creating long term visions.
Eastern Europeans create the best stuff at midnight with full moon and thunder. Seriously, their culture of STEM was preserved throughout Communism and it was, for instance, known that the best math textbooks were East German. Some of the best Romanian software engineers are from Cluj in Transylvania, where there is a great university for math and science. You mentioned never having heard of Filipino hacker crews, but Eastern European, especially Romanian and Bulgarian crews, were known to exist during the Cold War. I have heard that Romania has the best national cybersecurity and cyberdefense teams in NATO nowadays. Roton was a pioneer of electronic music in the noughties, way ahead of everyone else. There are also interesting startups in places like North Macedonia. Skype, of course, was Estonian..
As for Filipinos, it has indeed been my lament that the culture is one of employment and consumption, not innovation and very seldom business. Even as the time when Filipino software people, for instance in New York, looked down on Indians wasn’t too long ago. Cognizant was founded in New York in those days by Indians, while the Filipino outfit that hired Pinoys out to UN agencies is no more. The chairman of that firm also said, “Eastern Europeans don’t understand business applications.” The long-term always shows who has substance..
I was told by more than a few Eastern Europeans who lived under the Iron Curtain that in those Soviet days, the only safe academic fields were medicine, mathematics or engineering. Unless that engineering field happened to be related to war-making, where brilliant engineers like Korolev who failed to make breakthroughs on the leader’s timeline were routinely persecuted. And so Soviet academia placed a heavy emphasis on mathematics and related fields. I’m told that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, many mathematicians headed west to take up jobs in Western Europe.
Mentioning Cognizant brings back memories of the early 2000s when I made my first forays into the “formal” corporate world while I was still attending university. Cognizant at that point didn’t yet exist for 10 years, and their resources were barely fit to the QA role. My older coworkers pejoratively called Indians “button pushers” because that’s what they were. They kind of sucked at even pushing buttons, even when we provided them with extensive and detailed test plans (a plan that QA should’ve come up themselves). In many cases, in my frustration as project lead (wasn’t a PM yet), I would just go ahead and write the test scripts myself and ran the tests independently, even though that wasn’t my role. The Indians would then “push the button” and generate the same results I had already verified. But look at Cognizant now. Cognizant, Infosys, and Tata dominate SLA-based IT consulting due to the knowledge gap I mentioned previously when Millennial interns were not recruited from colleges because companies were driven to cut costs. GenX workers have stagnated, not updating their skills to new technologies, protected by “lifer” employee status, while independent consultants like myself have to further maintain multiple specializations in order to survive by being better.
Paul and I were pulling on a particular thread in the last discussion on how Filipinos abroad seem to do so well, while those back home flounder directionless. There is not an absence of mental potential, rather I think it is the environment Filipinos back home grow up and continue to be immersed in. Overseas, seriousness at work is expected, mistakes are to be rectified, growth potential is identified and encouraged. Back home, mediocrity reigns, the bystander effect of waiting for someone else to make the first move is a very real thing, malpractice is shrugged off and forgiven as “I didn’t mean to do that” if there is sufficient groveling in penance. Instead of elevating competence and rewarding leadership big or small, there is a worship of the position itself where the title becomes more important than the responsibility that the title requires. People think they have “diskarte” and worship it, taking shortcuts then end up effing up so badly they might as well had done it correctly in the first place. Of course they won’t take responsibility either, because baring ones’ teeth in defiance at the accusation of incompetence is “diskarte.” The likes of Mary Jane Veloso, Flor Contemplacion are celebrated as folk heroes. Con-man preachers like Quiboloy and others are only nabbed after they have become politically inconvenient. A whole fake history had been invented about supposed Filipino greatness, which most of the population believes in, while the real Filipino heroes who sacrificed on behalf of the Philippines like Abad Santos, Vicente Lim and Josefa Escoda are disregarded. I guess they were “suckers” for their sacrifice, because they didn’t have “diskarte.” To be quite honest, on some days I don’t really know what can be done to make things better.
If you go back to electronic media, then you could say radio was the first non-natural electronic medium. But it was a tool that we used, as was television, rather than a tool that has increasingly come to use us. The internet opens us up to addictions and emotional engagements unlike before. So that’s my rough accounting as to when we became diseased. But as this is opinion, not science, you you can define the incubation earlier.
Yes it’s true that radio was the first non-natural electronic medium, but radio existed for years as a form of entertainment that societies could gather around with things like radio productions of plays, musicals and serials. It was only later that news reels shown in theaters and radio programs started providing information in the form of news in a format outside of printed newspapers, broadsheets and tabloids. If one tracks the evolution of electronic media, even as late as the early 1980s, at least in the US, households would gather to watch the nightly news broadcast on the family’s singular shared TV. In the US that was only 3 major stations at the time, in addition to PBS. People more or less consumed the same information and came to varying shades of agreement on the same truth. The cracking of societal unity started in the upper middle classes with the advent of what was then “new media,” aka paid cable broadcasters. With a profit motive to ensure operating costs and profits, the new media switched to pushing more engagement which in the span of a short 10 years resulted in the rancor of mid-1990s political debates in the US and Europe that previewed what we face today.
But the reason why I think this stretches back to the 1960s is that although there were only 3 major news sources at the time (PBS did not yet exist until 1969), the 3 major American broadcast news organizations had already started chasing outrage under the guise of muckraking way back then when the Vietnam War was reported on with baited breath, often with incorrect stories from which the journalists simply moved on from to the next story. A presage to to the further crumbling of public unity that has worsened in our modern times. In fact one of the reasons why PBS was created was to provide a more neutral, factual news source funded by the public interest rather than corporate interests. All these things together drove in my view, an increased sense of entitlement and “demanding one’s due” without putting out any effort to give back to society. A sense of entitlement seems to arise when a society has gained sufficient decadence and comfort, while losing its sense of self. I don’t agree with many Cold War critiques of the West by the Soviet Union, but one part they were absolutely right on was regarding capitalistic decadence (though maybe to hide the decadence of their own Soviet elites).
On President Carter’s recent passing yesterday, I re-listened to his famous “Crisis of Confidence” speech, which the media and Reagan derisively renamed the “Malaise” speech. In 1979 when the speech was delivered, the greed of unrestrained capitalism and society’s expectations were like two trains going in opposite directions about to pass each other on opposite tracks. In the speech, which was in response to the oil crisis caused by the OPEC embargoes of the 1970s, President Carte speaks about how in our seeking of individualism and the worship of materialism, we have forgotten that to hold society together each individual must also do their small part in sacrificing for their fellow citizens. By then, the 20-ish years of surplus and hedonism was like a drug-induced fervor about to come crashing down to reality. Of course, the reaction of the American people was one of indignation; “I pulled myself up from my bootstraps so I deserve all I want! No one helped me!” A sentiment that was repeated in Europe, and soon would help cause the collapse of Marcos Sr.’s regime in the Philippines. President Carter’s words that day were poignant, yet rejected. President Carter, a sincere and honest man would be soon defeated by a showman selling fantasies that everything is great, no need to worry at all because it’s someone else’s fault. I believe President Carter’s words still apply today to our modern crisis of confidence.
“The solution of our [energy] crisis can also help us to conquer the crisis of the spirit in our country. It can rekindle our sense of unity, our confidence in the future, and give our nation and all of us individually a new sense of purpose.”
— Jimmy Carter; July 15, 1979
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/carter-crisis/
Yes, that could rightfully have been the beginning.
Sorry, I should’ve clarified that I think the seeds were sown in the 1960s, though the breakdown in information spaces, common truths that bind society, and public decency didn’t become apparent until the cusp of the 1980s. So what you identified in 1985 still applies as that was when the rot became more obvious. The internet, which early idealists thought would re-connect society only accelerated the problem. It’s much easier to be rude and dismissive online when one cannot see the reaction and facial expressions of discomfort of a human in front of us. The degradation of human connection has tribalized us and numbed the natural human sense of empathy for others’ suffering.
Yes, for sure.
Humility is missing in our modern day hyper-individualism. Obtaining knowledge requires a humbleness to open the mind to learning. I know a lot more than most others because I’m humble, but I do not know all. I did not start off as a humble nor a patient person. Certain shocks and personal traumas long ago caused me to practice humility and patience everyday by reminding myself that there are always those who know more than me. One cannot grow without learning, and one cannot learn without humility opening our minds. Funnily enough, I once observed out loud to a few old Big Four friends over dinner near EDSA that Filipinos and Americans might as well be sister cultures, as both are highly emotional and not always very rational cultures.
For those who are not grounded in either reality or books written by those who provide a lens into reality, search engines provide a feeling of truth at our fingertips. And in a way, it’s true that the “truth is out there,” if we want to learn. Algorithms tailor content feeds to activate our brain receptors just like drugs do towards exactly what we already believe, false or not. This can be easily tested by anyone by creating two accounts and consuming differing content. The algorithm soon starts to learn to offer only what we want to know, reinforcing confirmation bias. All in the pursuit of corporate profits and selling things. The “truth” makes whose who are not truth-seekers but are confirmation bias seekers drunk with power, feeling like they contain some advantageous knowledge over others. For that very reason, conspiracy peddlers and social agitators invariably always offer to share some “hidden knowledge,” for a price… they always seeming to be selling something.
Personal rage and obstinacy seem to be often fueled by resentment and a sense of entitlement. “Those people got something, why can’t I have it?” This can apply to many resentments like not being able to be “rich,” not having a high position in life, perhaps not being able to capture the woman of one’s ideals. Yet many of these people, I’ve noticed, won’t lift a finger to try to work towards what it is they want. In their self-entitlement they want others to give those things to them. They’re afraid of failure, when without failure humans can’t learn or grow. After all, most grew up in comfort and continue to lead relatively comfortable lives. They had never experienced hardship, or the shock of losing everything they have. Even a little stress cracking the glass of their reality causes them to lash out in an extreme way.
I’ve observed that those who live in the most entitlement are the most mentally hardened in their views. A fantasist requires idle time for their wild imaginations. Idleness requires others to do the hard work. For those who have never “done the hard work,” everything seems easy when it remains in theory. Yet they don’t want to prove their own theories as it would require both hard work and risk failure shattering their constructed worldview. It’s everyone else’s fault but their own. Then there is the proposed horseshoe theory. And so whether they are on the extreme radical left or the extreme reactionary right, they become no more than professional agitators and trolls, nonsense spouting anarchists and idiots who think that pranks are a revolution.
What a world we live in. There seems to be no more humility, no more introspection, reality is no longer based on a common shared truth but a set of individualized “alternative facts.” Missing is the truth that is all around us. The beauty of the sunrise heralding rebirth, the warm glow of the sunset whispering sweet goodnight. The birds chirping around us and the bees’ quiet industriousness. The satisfaction of sitting on a quiet beach in a lover’s arms, hearts beating loudly in the still of the humid night. The stars dancing across the night sky to the engrossment of our ancestors. The truth is still there. The truth is unchanging. We only need to open our eyes, open our ears, open our hearts and be still, if just for a moment.
Yet they don’t want to prove their own theories as it would require both hard work and risk failure shattering their constructed worldview. It’s everyone else’s fault but their own. Then there is the proposed horseshoe theory.
I have a theory on the UFO disclosure which I think connects to the Filipino space program proposed by Francis in my Starlink for ALL blog, Joey. Which I’m in no way shape or form needing to prove really, just to consider it amidst current events and technological trajectories unfolding now.
First I do agree with horse shoe theory and I gotta feeling AOC will birth literally birth Elon Musk’s next twins or triplets. at least thats my conception of the horse shoe theory w/ recent developments. i think i’ve already drawn up a horse shoe schematic before which I shared with you, in which I placed my self directly below it almost like that Star Gate symbol. but with horse shoe on top, hinting at deep deeper and deepest state (dunno if you remember that).
I think you’re wrong with most of your psychologizing, but here’s my theory on why UFO disclosure is coming to fore. part of it is real UFO stuff like the recent Oregon sighting (beyond current physics as described). but not necessarily all the “drones” stuff in the news, I believe recently there were “drones” sighting in northern San Diego county and in the Santa Ana mtns (which would be your neck of the woods). but descriptions are not UFO like, zipping to and fro , or up and down even to space or to the water. but more like static hovering.
But my point, Thiel, Palmer Luckey and Elon Musk are attempting to unseat the legacy gov’t contractors and aerospace companies that do work with DARPA and such. And remember President Carter (RIP) was instrumental in UFO disclosure having seen one himself He wrote, “[it was] about the same as moon, maybe a little smaller. [The object] varied from brighter/larger than [a] planet to [the] apparent size of [the] moon.” The UFO was self-luminous. In the president’s own words, “[The object] seemed to move toward us from a distance, stopped-moved partially away-returned, then departed. Bluish at first, then reddish, luminous, not solid.” After nearly 15 minutes, the president said the object “moved to a distance, then disappeared.”
So I think its the Paypal mafia thats driving much of this UFO Disclosure happening, on one hand its to unseat legacy programs, cuz they’re effectively the new Sheriffs in town now, on another hand they’re trying to uncover tech that’s hidden if any that they can use for Mars and beyond. So theres a tug and pull and push in the aerospace industry here, that the Philippines can totally leverage over there.
We shouldn’t be crying about how people aren’t smart anymore, but see instead where trajectories are headed and attempt to get on them, like riding whose big worms in Dune. or like Bohdi from Point Break in Australia. that’s all possible because information is so free. yeah sure there will be bad bets, but keep mining information and mixing and matching theories and see what you can gain. determine whats actionable from there.
Like what Peter Thiel said,
“In a world that’s changing so quickly, the biggest risk you can take is not taking any risk“.
I’m not gonna risk anything cuz I’m Luddite, I just want a quiet life and live a relaxing life. that requires zero, zero, risk taking. but for the Philippines, leverage this new Elon Musk world. watch more videos of Peter Thiel, and Palmer Luckey and Elon Musk. that’s how you get a head of the curve. Shai Hulud and Bodhi’s storm:
“So twice a century the ocean lets us know just how small we really are… a storm comes out of Antarctica, tearing up the Pacific, and it sends a huge swell north 2,000 miles. And when it hits Bells Beach, it’ll turn into the biggest surf this planet has ever seen. And I will be there.”. — Point Break
I don’t know how I did that yellow highlight there, but I like it. Was that AI. who knows…
I agree with this. Hero to Villain and constantly swinging between. Humility has a good attribute that it forces you to slow down, humility forces you to think and consider, was there a point to what that person was saying? Am I not understanding the context or am I missing nuance?
This is something we all have to relearn or remember at the very least. Assume that the person you are talking to is not an idiot.
I believe you are referring to what other people call surplus beliefs or even beliefs with no skin in the game ala Nassim Taleb.
Have to find a way to mark things to reality.
This is a good use of LLMs TBH. Use AI to steelman the other side with out losing face.
Yes, that’s the point I was alluding to. I have mentioned before that there is nothing wrong with ignorance, as we are all born in ignorance between we are able to consume and analyze our experiences. Even better, we are given chances to learn from the experience of others thus saving ourselves time and energy.
I believe surplus beliefs to arise when in our modern world, we are bombarded with many, often conflicting pieces of information, and some people are not well equipped to parse through all the data and discard the less useful ones. The human mind contains a fraction of the data that can be stored in a modern data storage device, and I read a new study that suggested the brain operates at a speed of about 10 bits per second. Yet humans are routinely more innovative than any other animal, and certainly any machine. We can do that, as I understand, because our organic computer is really good at finding patterns and substituting the completed idea. Most of the time our brains get it right, but like any generative model a single mistake can cascade. So people afflicted with surplus beliefs may actually be deep empaths that consider every information source they discover, without being equipped with the requisite tools to separate value. In their deep empathy, the internalization turns into a meld between reality and unreality. But just like water and oil cannot mix, the conflicting ideas that never seem to fit correctly create a mental chaos in itself. Humans require reference point to refer to, to recalibrate mentally in a sense, just like our ancestors would place markers along well-used trails to remind themselves of the right path that the jungle overgrowth obscures.
Just like humans cannot surpass God (if one believes in a God), the suggestion that a machine made by man can surpass humanity is absurd to me. Various sci-fi works that depict such scenarios are often taken literally at face value, when the authors’ intention was often an allegory to illustrate very human tendencies.
Excellent point. Humility is the recognition that we do not, in fact, know better than others do what they have to deal with. And it has gone missing on social media, and on mainstream media. And person to person when more than one person greets to form the arrogance of self empowered by others.
Without humility our minds are closed and we cannot take in new, possibly conflicting information, much less parse information streams to determine what is true or false. Being able to determine the truth is the essence of learning.
I akin social media is like a mother who tells her son he’s very handsome and very smart, when he’s not. Coddled children are fed exactly what they want to hear, so it’s no surprise they usually don’t adjust well when their doting mother isn’t around and they must face reality alone.
There was a time when Google focused on providing the best search results, or when Facebook existed just to build human connection virtually. The profit motive unrestrained by lax regulation has changed all that into personalized feeds telling each and every one of us exactly what we want to hear. As us Millennials used to say around the time Millennial grew skeptical of the online world, “go out and touch grass.” There’s a beautiful world out there awaiting, full of life. It’s our choice whether we will further withdraw into self-delusion or join reality, even if it is uncomfortable at times.
Google has a report that internet content is now 10 percent AI generated. Probably higher as these are just the confirmed AI generated content. AI agents or someone pretending to be an AI litter most Crypto Twitter discussion.
We are social beings and a lot of stuff we do is backed by social proof. We are going on uncharted territory, and it is an evolve or die moment.
Ben Jiangin (Beijing)
https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3292507/chinese-start-deepseek-launches-ai-model-outperforms-meta-openai-products
Published: 27 Dec 2024
Chinese start-up DeepSeek’s release of a new large language model (LLM) has made waves in the global artificial intelligence (AI) industry, as benchmark tests showed that it outperformed rival models from the likes of Meta Platforms and ChatGPT creator OpenAI.
The Hangzhou-based company said in a WeChat post on Thursday that its namesake LLM, DeepSeek V3, comes with 671 billion parameters and trained in around two months at a cost of US$5.58 million, using significantly fewer computing resources than models developed by bigger tech firms.
LLM refers to the technology underpinning generative AI services such as ChatGPT. In AI, a high number of parameters is pivotal in enabling an LLM to adapt to more complex data patterns and make precise predictions.
======
Are you keeping up with Chinese AI, gian?
Trying. Deep seek is amazing. Great example of work with what you’ve got.
That figure can only increase, and you are right. Are we going to be in charge, or is the machine and power players willing to use it to control us. We may have already lost, but it’s just warm water in a pot right now, and we are the frog.
I think, filipinos will be more likely of a frog when free wifi or public wifi becomes widely available as there is high possibility hackers can place themselves between points and connections. my friends told me to avoid using public or free wifi for online banking, paying for purchases using plastic cards, and accessing sensitive info, it’s risky apparently.
I haven’t heard of any major Filipino hacker group, but one could arise. Most Filipino “hackers” are what we used to call in the cryptography community “script kiddies,” using publicly available hack tools or social engineering methods to steal one-time passcodes in order to hijack accounts. The former can be protected against by being discerning with what networks one connects to per your friends, the latter can be thwarted entirely by setting up two-factor authentication with the authorizing device being one that only the user controls.
Personally my data hygiene is quite high. Even when I connected to semi-trusted networks (ex: one I do not control but have some trust in), I VPN tunnel back to a trusted network I control. In most cases that’s my home network, which is protected by firewalls and a bastion host to provide only a single point of connection for everything behind the firewall. The fewer gaps, the fewer policemen that need to be employed. This is above the technical know-how of most people, so generally I just recommend always using encrypted technology if possible: SSL enabled on any critical app/web app and two-factor authentication. SHA-128 encryption is extremely hard to beat with existing technology, but most properly secured services or apps use SHA-256 which is nearly impossible to crack. If the threat level rises, it’s a simple matter to raise the encryption level.
thanks joey, expecting the worse ako and cannot hope for the best! hackers are evolving, if they can hack banks they can hack anyone. not all filipinos have your expertise, and those that have are summat busy running pogo hubs partnering with foreigners. and now that pogos are made to vamoosh out of our dearest republic, methink free or public wifi prodigiously comes to their rescue, hackers and scammers potential manna from heaven; one door closes another door opens. these mutts must really be super lucky, or so damn well connected they have another jobs line up already.
I was told by a cybersecurity expert friend who works with the FBI that most of the Chinese “pig butchering” romance crypto scams have agents who are Filipino. Whether those Filipino agents who are posing as beautiful, successful young Chinese women who take interest in random strangers are willing accomplices or held against their will I don’t know. I think it’s the latter where the Filipino was tricked into “employment.” Most of these scam hubs operate in Cambodia or Bhutan, in pockets of lawlessness. Apparently some scam hubs ran out of the POGOs too.
Well thankfully at this moment it seems the most common type of cyber crime in the Philippines is just stealing nude pictures or hijacking GCash wallets to drain. Let’s hope Filipino cybercriminals continue to think small, because if they started thinking like Eastern European and Russian cyber criminals we might be in big trouble.
True. Filipinos don’t have enough good choices. So they pick the bad ones available. That is where I sift out on all of this.
it may well be that filipinos dont have the necessary tools needed to make good choices and ended up picking bad choices coz them bad choices are so low hanging fruits, clearly in abundance and so easy to reach. though there are filipinos who are summat restrained. holding out for better choices and better outcomes.
and more power to you, joeam, more sifting power for the year 2025!
Thank you, k. Best for the new year and thanks for being our main contact here with the real world.
Yuval Noah Harari, in his recent book Nexus, proposed either labeling AI content – or not according AI the same free speech rights as they are machines.
With all this, we are already in Blade Runner territory. Am I maybe just an AI?
Well, the use of bots and trolls to create a bandwagon effect already is old hat. The issue as per Harari is that of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice (originally by Goethe, also shown in Disney Fantasia), meaning runaway stuff we humans no longer can control not even the powerful.
There have already been observations that on public networks AI bots controlled by differing and often opposing groups are already engaging with each other inadvertently. It’s not too hard to spot with minimal training. This is especially prevalent on Twitter after the Musk takeover, which is one major reason why the quality of engagement has dropped significantly. People have already developed tools to identify AI bots with some decent degree of positive recognition, before Musk took away the Twitter API. Well perhaps soon most social media feeds will be driven by AI bots fighting with each other, with the leftover humans who haven’t bailed yet sitting with eyes twitching at their screens in enthrallment. But just like the Matrix, we can choose to “unplug” if we want. The question then is if people want to unplug or not.
I saw a note today that FB intends to populate its user base with AI driven accounts that will engage uses and increase their likes and positive feedback, thus keeping them on line longer to sell more advertising. Truly a fake living space for people. I wonder if the Philippines can ban such deceptive practices.
FB hasn’t created any innovation ever since the first iteration, which was really a way for awkward Zuckerberg and friends to virtually peep on female classmates. Every growth metric was from buying successful fledgeling services, which eventually ran into the ground too because the leadership doesn’t understand what it is to form human connections. This is repeated across the tech space, from Musk’s enterprises really being a way to scam his way into living out the sci-fi movies he misunderstands, to Altman of OpenAI who just really wants a perfect anodyne girlfriend.
What makes me worry much more are the legions of social scientists and psychologists these companies employ to figure out ways to hack the human mind in pursuit of profit. Really points to the corruption of the sciences, or perhaps the commodification and trivialization of formerly serious studies.
I hate to say it, but the current course of the Philippines is more commercialization, more consumption, more emotional thinking. Filipinos are the perfect victims for brain hacking, just like we Americans are. To have a change would require a big shock that resets society’s beliefs and expectations, and these tech overlords have gotten very good at staying just at the edge where the pain would be too much causing humans to wake up. And so the self-flagellation will continue, while humans think we are serving a higher god through mutilating our brains.
Brain hacking. Perfect characterization.
One thing I have immersed myself lately and have spent more than I spend on Apple TV and Netflix would be Chinese short dramas. I am trying to understand and I would say it is like the tiktok iteration of telenovelas or teleseryes of the Philippines.
The community in places like Metro Manila is composed of Country Clubs, Hobby Clubs, School, and Church. MLQ3 has written extensively on this but the evolution of social media, short videos, live selling, and stuff like that is either self limiting or transformative. Tiktok is addictive but you sometimes have moments when you can stop cold turkey. I am on the fence but actively observing.
One thing I have immersed myself lately and have spent more than I spend on Apple TV and Netflix would be Chinese short dramas. Got any recommendations, gian?
went through most of the chinese short drama on DramaBox. just finishing my subscription Jan 25 2025 and will move on to the next app.
I watched the 3 body problem available in youtube, the Chinese one, as well as the Wandering Earth on Netflix also Chinese, they tend to have story over characters feel to them, reminded me of Japanese animes. but not a lot of family centric theme like Japanese animes.
these are special low budget movies watched vertically using a mobile phone.
DramaBox – movies and drama
China is already the juggernaut of the manufacturing world. trying my best to understand but seems the best way is to learn mandarin and just live there for a few years.
The Philippines should get scholarships to Chinese Universities for its people.
I read theres a bunch of Africans already in China attending schools there, are there Filipino-Chinese exchange programs like from UP? I remember meeting an old dude there betted on rooster fights was his vice, he was son to a Chinese business Filipina mom, wayward in youth so his dad who’s from China sent him to school there, and he returned speaking fluent Chinese this was in the 1930s. came back after WWII to the Philippines. but in Cebu City I did notice a bunch of Chinese (mostly if not all ) Christian schools.
Googled this: https://chinaglobalsouth.com/analysis/the-young-filipinos-studying-clean-energy-in-china/
But yeah more Filipinos getting into Chinese schools just sounds like a good idea all around, gian. approve without thinking!!!
relevant tweet: https://x.com/PJaccetturo/status/1874145634066063434
seems short form is the modern media form that is fit for our ADHD minds
A couple of years ago I recognized that Twitter was influential in the Philippines. Notables use the medium. So I’ve been polishing my craft at writing short-form messages and can frequently get a whole blog article down to a tweet or two. I seldom use multiple tweets in a thread, just one. They have much better impact than the labor that goes into this blog, but the blog has other meanings and values.
Haha, I got chastised by Sonny Trillanes a while back on Twitter. He’d said Risa Hontiveros would make a better president than Leni Robredo and I tweeted something to the effect that he’d lost his mind for making it a contest. Ho ho. He used to read here regularly, and that was the occasion of my getting to meet him personally a few years ago. But I’m pretty sure he has gone short-form, too.
I like his interviews with Heyderian, Joe, informationally speaking but I think he needs to let his hair down more. he’s too stiff. dunno if karl can say if he’s got more personality off camera.
gian, I’m not on TikTok but I was told this is basically what TikTok is, and similar to Vine awhile back. Grok i don’t think does videos yet. will keep an eye out. thanks, as this tracks with my looksy into flash fiction/short prose poetry too.
https://www.thepinkhydra.com ezines I’m told are also making a come back, gian. don’t know where that fits in. https://www.mirrorball.org
In person, he is low-key, sharp (sees things), and both direct and reserved. He plays his hand close and emotionless. But he is looser these days than before. More outspoken. Willing to push boundaries.
I’ve listened to all his interviews with Heyderian. they are very good.
He is smart, principled, and goal driven. I wouldn’t expect otherwise.
I remember that comment by distantobserver about how we give up too much if we use LLMs, at first my leaning was disagreement but now as see that it makes perfect sense.
As to socmed, my psychiatrist told me that she left socmed because it is all smokes and mirrors, I just said I see,but I had more questions of “how so?” in my mind. Again as time went by, I made sense of things, slowly but surely.
We can’t escape the dirtstreams, but we can be aware of them, as you have become. If enough do that, it will erode the power of the manipulators. How you get Filipinos broadly to awaken to how they are manipulated is out of reach. So I just focus on 2028 as a chance to reset things at the top.
how to awaken filipinos they are being manipulated is so out of reach now, 1st we have mary jane veloso made drug mule and currently waiting the president’s pardon. and now, we have 13 pregnant filipino women trafficked and involved in babies for sale scheme, recently repatriated from cambodia and being looked after by dswd.
how to waken filipinos from the fugue should start at ground level, too much job secrecy only serve as boon to manipulators. dole should really be active in fighting vs traffickers and illegal recruiters, and provide service to those contracted to work overseas, make sure the offer of work is legit and not dubious.
Tough job. It all starts with need, too many Filipinos with too much need, and the taxpayers money being shuffled off to the entitled. It’s infuriating.
oh, I like shuffling money! not taxpayers’ money though.
yeah, you’re right about too many filipinos with too much need, too much in a hurry to get to their destination, their dreams fulfilled soonest, and ended up being rerouted and on the scrapheap. it is sad, but I do hope they learned their lesson and temper their expectations.
speaking of infuriating, bucor officials are trying to bail out fake filipino tony yang on the sly, tony is older brother of michael yang who is digong’s dubious chinese economic adviser and plunderer extraordinaire. tony yang may have been greasing palms at bucor, alleged home sweet home of fellow smugglers and connivers inc. bucor apparently assured risa hontiveros who has misgiving of the bail that raising bail for tony yang is no assurance of yang’s freedom. their betrayal plain for blind rat to see. must have been raining millions from heaven!
Gangland here includes the police now, and much of justice. That does not surprise me, but it does dismay me.
Happy New Year Joe!
https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/scitech/technology/931124/fancy-chatting-with-dr-jose-rizal-a-veteran-voice-artist-develops-an-ai-rizal-for-that/story/
whadda you know! it’s probly more than smoke and mirrors now as anyone can talk to our national hero dr jose rizal in any language like maybe klingon, haha. I bet the good hero also does sign language.
I am supposing many would also want to use AI and talk to makoy, the the president’s late father, and personally ask him if he sees his son displaying the good muscle coordination he had once foreseen.
KB, I just spit out a bit of my coffee! 🤣
haha, had it been me, I would have asked the number one hero of our country who had once won lottery’s much coveted first prize, the winning lotto numbers!
I should’ve thought about this before playing the lottery here recently. Under my own powers, I did win, but it was $11 😂 not bad for a $2 ticket. I should pray to Saint Rizal next time!
buenas swerte!
Happy New Year KB!
ganun din po sa ‘yo, karlG! happy, happy new year! I am a snake and this year I’m gonna be s-s-s-s-slytherin. this is my year! apparently, money is going to be big in the snake’s horizon, good lord! I think, I’ll pass. I already have enough nightmares.
happy new year to all you guys, legumes, nuts and bolts.
Greeting & wishing every one & all the best of 2025!! (Thanks to Karl & ksmbahay, for hitching my greetings onto their comment line. 🙂 )
Happy year of the snake
Machine learning has existed for decades before the current AI fad. Computer language models are integral in machine learning. I see the current civilian AI fad as just that, a fad. LM’s are only as good as the data it is trained on, and when the data is the mostly useless drivel of billions of humans giving their opinion online, the output is just a rehash of that drivel. SLM or even TLM that have been trained in a much smaller subset of good data have been shown recently to be almost as good as LLMs, at a fraction of the energy and resources expended in ML to generate the output. I do not trust the current AI evangelists. One does not need to dig that deep to realize their actual goals, that have nothing to do with bringing a revolutionary benefit to humanity.
Machine learning has existed for decades before the current AI fad.
I don’t think it’s a fad, Joey. We’ve already talked about Google and Amazon vs. Tesla in driverless AI, which looks to me like Tesla is winning since FSD is so ubiquitous now, granted you’re right about accidents but seems like since theres a driver “driving” present accidents are not reported as driverless accidents. thus skirt around legally. but if you watch Tesla’s FSD v13 all over youtube these things are zipping around just fine it seems.
OpenAI is effectively Bill Gates now. and i don’t know if you’re following that Indian dude that committed “suicide”, cuz he’s all over local news, was some sort of whistleblower saying no to For Profit OpenAI, saying like Hey I signed up for Non-profit OpenAI! (which I still don’t get the difference by the way NGOs and NPOs both non profits both mean to supplant or augment government functions, but this OpenAI non-profit scheme seems to be just like foundation funding, allows for hidden donations and what not, chempo told me about foundations, eg. donations etc.).
Its not clear if that Indian dude is H1 visa or he was born and raised here thus Indian-American, but his family is saying he wasn’t the type to commit suicide he was just against OpenAI going or switching to for-Profit. which does seem fishy. And bill Gates did go all in with Kamala Harris, so it looks like OpenAI is his means to counter what the Paypal mafia is about to do to him soon (theyre cleaning house). cuz supposedly OpenAI already has the first iteration of actual thinking machine status. which you’ll have to counter somehow, Joey.
With that said, let’s say OpenAI does have this first thinking machine according to whatever metrics they are using. Well I’m prompting Grok this and that. Gemini pales in comparison. I just realize I can log in via Gmail to access ChatGPT. so here’s what I asked it. I don’t know if youve seen Michael Clayton and that murder/suicide scene. cuz the family is really adamant , but here’s what ChatGPT said, and then I told it to do a comic strip.
So that’s the Bill Gates vs. Elon Musk A.I. battle, not unlike Google/Amazon vs. Tesla A.I.s what I found different compared to when Grok does comics is that ChatGPT seems to be mixing print and copy when it draws but when it actually tries to write, as you can see its all jumbled. Where as Grok can actually write albeit with either spelling error but still legible or letters are all different meaning its not using text but actually “handwriting” your prompts. for example “NO EVIDENCE ABOUT FOUL PLAY” that’s text just superimposed onto its drawing.
Though I’m no A.I. expert, I’m thinking Grok just based on its ability to do art, poetry draw be funny etc. etc. is already winning. Maybe Elon Musk is totally winning here too. like dominating amidst competition in the field. Which I do hope Bill Gates goes down, just what he did to his nice wife was really messed up. so too I want Bezos to go down for similar reason. though I was a fan of Lauren Sanchez when she was news broadcasting locally. she’s suppose to be dyslexic i think. but Bezos wife who he did dirty for Lauren Sanchez that was wrong. so for this reason alone i’m pro Elon Musk when it comes to the A.I. fight.
Cuz there is a big A.I. fight involving Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates and Elon Musk, as well as Google but that seems like a legit company so I can’t hate on ’em though Google in the 2000s vs. now , you can’t hardly search things up anymore, just wants you to buy this and that. so I’m also hating on Google too due to that, Joey. Though that Chinese A.I. seems like a contender but its made in China so I’m suspicious.
When asked what payload he’ll offload on Mars first, Elon Musk said the Cyber Truck and his Optimus humanoid robots. which makes sense. So Grok stays home reading humanity. thats the division of labor it seems.
TL;DR: I think Grok will win this A.I. war, Joey.
(sorry for the media above, Joe, just wanted to compare it to Grok. and I promise thats the only post from me about A.I. today. am sitting on my hands today only letting one hand go to scroll.)
Not sure how being super invested in imaginary battles between people who couldn’t give a damn about the rest of us really matters to this blog. Maybe it’s sort of like a fandom? Sometimes I feel like you’re living vicariously through the manufactured images of these seemingly larger-than-life figures. If you’re searching for hidden knowledge, you’d sooner find it in your local public library than on a Google search, my friend.
P.S. Using natural language in Google is the surest way to get an unclear result. There is an art to Google-fu. “Key” in keywords are the key to knowledge.
Thanks for that Joey!
Happy New Year Joey!
Happy New Year to you and your family too Karl!
THANKS, Joe America! YES, “the path of order, understanding, compassion and harmony”! — G. H. Abad
Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone
Happy New Year, Gemino. Thanks for your encouragements. Have a great 2025.
Joe: “Humility is the recognition that we do not, in fact, know better than others do what they have to deal with.”
Joey: “Just like humans cannot surpass God (if one believes in a God), the suggestion that a machine made by man can surpass humanity is absurd to me.”
and
Joey: “Maybe it’s sort of like a fandom? Sometimes I feel like you’re living vicariously through the manufactured images of these seemingly larger-than-life figures.”
=====
Joe, Joey, et al. so I’ll approach these two related (three actually) thoughts culturally and from the perspective of analysis.
Humility if we’re to address DE Filipinos is not the way to go. You have a society and culture that’s been predisposed to be quiet and to be humble and to shut up and to just sit down while others talk expertly about stuff they’re experts in. or like that movie Conclave, where humility is wielded like vanity. thus DE Filipinos will see thru the hypocrisy. So I say bah humbug to Humility, I say its all boodle fight like what karl had in his kitchen growing up but open to DE Filipinos. If it evolves into a food fight even better. but don’t tell them humility is better than speaking up. Speak up! should be our battle cry here, not humility!
As to God’s mind, same thing. Don’t assume what’s in God’s mind, his mission on Earth could just probably for humans to create AI and that’s our purpose. Then its back to dust with us.
Which brings us to Joey’s ‘fandom’ (related to humility and God). I think we need to study the dudes who are going to birth these super intelligences on us. and really figure out their motivations and dramas. In the end, once the AIs are birthed they really won’t matter, but for now we can attempt to determine the trajectories of these things based on the personalities involved. So instead of unnecessarily putting blinders on, which is essentially what this talk of humility and God’s mind and fandom effectively does— they’re forms of censorship really— how ’bout we take off these blinders and actually look at this thing from all angles, to include personalities involved.
I think this guy is the most stable. I remember from AlphaGo documentary around the time i was playing Go on the insistence of NH.
“What a difference a year makes. Twelve months ago, the artificial intelligence (AI) company DeepMind stunned many scientists with the release of predicted structures for some 350,000 proteins, part of the work recognized as Science’s 2021 Breakthrough of the Year. Yesterday, DeepMind and its partners went much, much further. The company unveiled the likely structures of nearly all known proteins, more than 200 million from bacteria to humans, a striking achievement for AI and a potential treasure trove for drug development and evolutionary studies.
“We’re releasing now the structures for the whole protein universe,” said Demis Hassabis, founder and CEO of DeepMind, joint winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024, shared insights on AI at a press conference in London.
The structural bounty comes from AlphaFold, one of the new AI programs that have cracked the protein-folding problem, the long-standing challenge of accurately deriving the 3D shapes of proteins from their amino acid sequences.”
“Among the most important aspects of this story is AlphaFold, the artificial intelligence and foundation model platform developed by Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs, both Alphabet companies. Specifically, it was built to help alleviate key challenges that researchers have in the scientific process; one such issue of paramount importance is the ability to determine the structure and sequence of proteins— the building blocks of living organisms. Although all 300,000,000 proteins on Earth are just a combination of ~20 basic amino acids, the sequence and folding of these elements are the keys to life’s essential functions. Therefore, the inspiration and creation of AlphaFold was to boldly unravel the mystery of protein folding, and thereby, unlock new potential breakthroughs in science.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/saibala/2024/09/10/googles-ai-research-arm-deepmind-is-making-rapid-progress-in-biology-and-drug-discovery/
TL;DR: Screw humility, but be humble enough to recognize you’ll never gonna know God’s mind… so stop pretending, and explore the personalities involved in this AI “fad”.
(Joe, I promise that wasn’t about A.I. per se, but about how we look at stuff culturally and analytically.)
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2025.
(sorry, for the media again, Joe. but it’s just such a great story. Digital biology.)
I don’t read your stuff much anymore. It is an example of the disease, off point, speculative, disrespectful at times. I think all of us need filters to keep the crazies from nabbing us, the crazies being manipulative or confusing data spewed out relentlessly on social media and even blogs.
I guess that’s fair, Joe. Chaos vs. order. Entropy and what not. then preferences thereof. Happy New Year, either way. I’ll continue to read every single word you guys write— though not necessarily agree with all of it. Most I actually throw in my We’ll see… box.
It’s the only way to make your comment relevant to the topic at hand. I’d suggest we all work on our defenses against conspiracy theories, beliefs as facts, distractions, and dirt.
As I broached in a previous comment, the human brain is a (organic) computer that due to limitation in memory retention and processing power has evolved the capability to do amazing feats of predictive shortcuts. Most of the time the predictive nature of human cognition is correct, especially if we are informed by learned information and prior experience that raise the level of confidence in the prediction. However as the mental shortcut process that has ensured our species’ evolutionary success is still working off of incomplete datasets, the process is susceptible to “brain hacking.”
These are the two of the main methods by which people are being attacked mentally on a daily basis by corporate greed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight_bias
No surprise then that most large corporations that depend on revenue from advertisements or sales employ departments of sociologists and psychologists that find new ways to attack this human weakness. Putin has figured this out as well as a tool of hybrid warfare and the PRC is catching on. There’s no need to lie to someone when they lie to themselves. There’s no need to convince someone if they’ve already convinced themselves. Brain hacking only requires sowing the seeds of self-delusion.
The solution is more information, not less, Joey. But again it all depends on individual preferences , like Joe says. He likes order. But for those that want more information, we shouldn’t be gatekeepers, setting up our own blinders (cuz believe you me gov’ts and companies have more secrets, stuff we don’t know). So no blinders is the best way forward.
DE Filipinos want more info, give it to them. don’t say They’re not ready yet or make excuses for not letting them have more information.
For example, this video. I don’t get it at all. but maybe a DE Filipino can scroll thru youtube (thanks to Starlink or microwave or whatever), happen upon Salvatore Pais and start listening to what he has to say. More information, not less. eventually that entropy will come to a stop. but it’ll be our fault if we don’t imbibe in it now during entropy. cuz order will be more dangerous if we don’t participate in the entropy portion.
(its a click bait title, but the interviewer and Pais both really know physics and math, which I don’t get but I can see them vibing over it, but my point, a DE Filipino might take something from this interaction. thus more info , not less should be our mantra, short form, long form, whatevs just more more more…)
Information does not equal truth. Truth must be parsed out.
Just like a plumbing job requires certain tools, to parse out truth, one needs to be equipped with the right tools in order to quantify and sort the information into degrees of confidence.
Most people don’t have the tools necessary to find the truth. That’s why we have trusted people to guide us. Teachers, professors, educated professionals in their field.
It’s not necessary for everyone to know everything. Most things are nice to know the gist of, but constitutes superfluous information that isn’t needed for our daily lives. That’s why we have specialization that started in the earliest human societies. We do what we are good at, let others do what they are good at, and then services or value is exchanged.
Trying to take in everything causes mental overload. Continuing without the right tools or knowledge is like ignoring the leaky pipe getting worse. Pretty soon there will be shit water flooding everywhere. Should’ve just called the plumber in the first place.
I disagree that somehow more dirt can somehow cure that we receive so much dirt. And it is not order that I am after, but sense. I will be working up an article that recommends we develop defensive strategies and filters to keep our information as clean as possible and judgments within the bounds of reason.
I disagree that somehow more dirt can somehow cure that we receive so much dirt.
Pretty soon there will be shit water flooding everywhere.
Your brain is already a pretty good tool, to sift thru unwanted stuffs. The problem is you guys are making a judgement before even letting your brains weigh if its unwanted or not. Like what gian said about AI short films, theres potential there just like youtube videos.
but you have to wade into it to let your brain see what it likes or doesn’t. i don’t like everything i watch or read, but in order to fairly make my brain make a determination on its own i gotta wade thru it.
The taste of the pudding is in the tasting. where you guys are already saying it s dirt or shit, when in fact you have not waded into it yet. go thru it. that’s where we differ. sense vs. chaos. where chaos is in the tasting. and eating.
your brain will know. and different brains like different things. don’t gate keep.
I’ve been in the well for 20 years here, tasted the water, and your hearty appetite for excrement will not lead me to drink the stuff.
A common problem my Filipino friends have is they seem to constantly be affected by bouts of diarrhea. They were shocked when I said I never had an instance of loose bowels while in the Philippines. I pointed out that they were contaminating well water with potable water, stepping in CRs infected with splashed diarrhea and haphazardly cleaned with bleach, not properly washing hands before meal preparation or eating, constantly sticking their fingers in their noses. Of course what I said just goes “whoosh” over heads. Just like actual diarrhea, if the information we consume is not first sanitized by proper information hygiene, we would just keep infecting ourselves and wondering what causes our affliction of mental diarrhea. A little cognizance and informed precaution goes a long way from causing bellyaches.
Good advice, Doc. I aim to follow it.
Workers in the Munich sewer system, constructed in the late 19th century under the supervision of hygiene pioneer Dr. Pettenkofer to combat the rampant cholera of then, always close their mouths if ever they stumble and fall into the waters. For those who don’t manage to, there is the routine of being sent straight to the hospital, getting pumped with antibiotics and spending I think two days under observation there. The mass urbanization of the 19th century was a major cause of cholera, so practices that were somehow manageable in more rural times had to be changed. Emptying one’s chamber pots unto the streets or slaughtering animals in the back alleys, for instance. Dr. Pettenkofer as a rival of Dr. Koch, who discovered bacteria, didn’t fully believe only they cause the disease and actually drank (clean) water with cholera bacteria introduced, celebrated his not getting sick as a victory. Pettenkofer also was a Bavarian and might not have liked Koch as a “smart-ass Northerner” from Berlin, who knows. Still, his legacy stands, and IIRC the US copied him, starting with doctors in Baltimore. That anticolonial discourse in the Philippines hates on the early 1900s preoccupation with hygiene in the light of cholera epidemics there is a given, of course. Possibly the nursery rhyme “I have two hands the left and the right.. clean little hands are good to see” came from Thomasites..
If I look at my father (history professor) and grandfather (judge) they certainly have and had their flaws just like Dr. Pettenkofer or the Thomasites, but when it comes to information and truth, the methods of their respective professions are worth comparing:
1. Historians check the motives of someone when judging a source. For instance, the Catholic account of how a Bavarian prince killed and cut into pieces the bishop Emmeram for allegedly getting his sister pregnant can be seen in the context of the power struggle between the Church and and a late 7th or early 8th century political family that was violent like those in Game of Thrones, fighting both church and old tribal clans. Wait, why is the time not definite?
2. The account of St. Emmeram was published a generation later and could thus be propaganda created later. A judge like my grandfather might have asked a witness whether his knowledge is personal, aka whether he or she is an eyewitness. Also, a testimony made just after something happened or at least written down by the witness just after is usually considered more reliable. Of course, a judge will also check for motives as in 1. “That affidavit is self-serving” is the term Filipino lawyers use IIRC.
3. There might really have been a bishop Emmeram and a prince who killed him but even the church and dynastic records of what was really the Dark Ages are sparse, so even when someone was Bavarian Duke back then is unclear as dynasties often repeated favorite names. Meaning that is like a court case with just a secondary witness repeating hearsay, the lawyer of the Bavarian Agilolfingian dynasty, appointed by their Frankish Merovingian overlords would in an American law drama call out an objection and no one could overrule it. Maybe Calida..
Now, in today’s social media, so much information comes to us that we barely have the time to go through this exercise always. Thus, I at least try to see which aggregators of information are more or less reliable.
4. Even in this blog. It is like with food, when it came to food places in UP or even in Ermita (when my father worked on Marcos’ Tadhana book), my father usually knew the owners of carinderia style places and advised me against eating fish balls from just anyone on the street out there. I did actually eat at one on the way home. I also once had typhoid fever, which is cholera-like, don’t know from what, long before I ever at fishballs. So just like restaurants have Google ratings one can read, I have my instinctive rating for known sources. Of course Rashomon teaches us that everyone has a POV, but some are more reliable.
5. Another shortcut I use aside from Occam’s razor, tried and true, is my father’s adage that not everything that is possible is actually probable. He did scoff at my believing Velikovsky and his crazy theories out of Reader’s Digest as a kid, mocking him as an autodidact (self-taught), me calling my father an academic snob and he responding “you are name-calling”. But eventually he taught me to check what is possible and probable, so I took von Däniken as improbable. So when LCPL_X writes about aliens, I think “MAYBE, may bigote,” as in a Pinoy 1970s razor ad.
I still skim over LCPL_X’s stuff, but don’t read deeper if it smells bad. Otherwise, I would be like the drunk in that infamous joke who tastes the stuff the other drunk smelled on the floor, saying “damn, it is shit, good we didn’t step on it”. That was LCPL_X and me years ago.
As for food, I know that what Joey “cooks” might be a little strongly spiced if it is against the Far Left, but I know it is eatable. With LCPL_X, I might smell it first to make sure the mustard on the side of the meat is not dog shit. I also rely on secondary judgement where I am not expert. When it came to a near accident and road rage between an ex-cop driver and a cyclist in QC some years ago, I did analyze the videos in the GC with Gian and Karl and give my analysis as I know how it is to be a driver or a cyclist. I DON’T do the same for the Jeju plane crash, I respect what different experts are saying and try to form a picture even as I SUSPEND JUDGEMENT. Some might be biased against Boeing, some might be shading South Korean airports. Took me time to get to a conclusion on the late 1990s Überlingen air crash. Stuff isn’t always simple.
Very good disciplines. Skepticism, always, and a search for motives.
“you have to wade into it to let your brain see what it likes or doesn’t”
————-
Exactly ! Dr. Seuss “Green Eggs and Ham” book is a testament to it.
That “shimenet” stuff of VP Sara became viral but not a good one, I believe, hence needs to be discarded. 😮
they don’t know what they’re missing, isk. which means more for us. HAPPY NEW YEAR, isk.
ps— i’m looking at the pollings for VP Sara looks like it went down but amidst what happened all in all i think not too bad. still in the game.
Given that brain-hacking cannot be removed from the dirtstreams, the question arises as to how we can best protect ourselves. I think democracy has come close to its end date because dirt is more prevalent than sense, or more weighty based on the flaws in our organic computers. It is hard to work offensively, so we need to focus on defensive strategies. Form sane groups and build them. Avoid manipulators. That kind of thing.
Starting in the age of globalization, I think there were two forces in motion: one being the liberal idealists who wanted to raise up humanity, the other being neoliberal (in a economic sense, just to emphasize) corporate interests no longer restrained by the regulations of any one country. While the idealistic liberals continued dreaming of a better world, the neoliberal economic interests started doing the hard work. The result is that business interests eventually learned that though at first they undermined education and social safety nets to redirect profits to themselves, it quickly became apparent that by dumbing down the populace into base instincts people can be controlled. In the Philippines there seems to be a slightly different series of events driven by laziness and greed, but the end result was the same in creating easily controlled people.
As the hoi polloi are currently largely at a low level of information awareness, that’s where we who want democracy and progress also need to work at. Building defensive bulwarks is a good thing, but ultimately is a temporary measure as just like intricate Medieval defenses, siege engineers eventually figured out how to undermine expensive constructions often with less equipment. If anything a sieging army simply needs to starve out the defenders, until there is mutiny and a collapse of the defense.
I take inspiration from the martial history of humanity. The most successful fighting forces often were lightly equipped and moved quickly. And besides, when humans are degraded to a certain level where base concerns take over, the masses expect fighters not defenders. Maybe because I originated politically on the right, I retain the fighting spirit I’ve noticed in other former right-wing politically engaged individuals. It is a war, a war of the greater good versus the good for the few. And in war, namby pandy platitudes expressed by liberals up until now looks weak in the face of assault, even if the assaulters of democracy are in fact lashing out wildly. The attacker usually looks strong, even if the defenses hold a little while longer.
So yes, I agree sane groups need to be formed, and manipulators need to be pushed back on, mocked for their actual weakness even. But the war right now also requires warrior leaders, political pugilists, as well as a new monastic class of truth-sayers who can work to raise the baseline of understanding. We have gotten to this point due to neglect over 2 generations, and we can get ourselves out of it by reconquering “lost territory” then rebuilding on regained minds.
Sonny once wrote that recently Christianized heathens were important in the spread of Christianity. I noticed how I was able to talk at a certain level with DDS in 2015, having been extremely trollish just a bit before while many yellows were clueless and helpless.
The yellows and Pinks of today remind me of the Anglo-Saxons in Netflix Vikings initially, already too civilized to deal with the Vikings who killed their bishops. Being just a few generations removed from being like that as well, they managed to mobilize resistance.
Heydarian showing off his I think taekwondo skills in a video somewhere in BGC after IIRC a DDS threatened online to beat him up was of course, slightly ridiculous, reminding me of Anglo-Saxon prince Edmund thinking he could fight Vikings and shown he was not up to it.
Actually, I myself got tired of dealing with trolls alone while yellows I showed what was going on in 2015-2016 just looked on and just prayed for all I know. That must be how the tiradores felt during the Philippine-American war, as there is the Filipino “ikaw ang mauna” mindset.
I feel not wanting to be used up that way by Pinks with the “ikaw mauna” mindset is why VP Leni didn’t press her case after losing in 2022. It is more useful for the country for her to keep doing Angat Buhay instead of her being left alone in front and maybe getting a statue later.
Thus, I am now more monk than warrior in the present Philippine struggle. Heydarian BTW may know taekwondo, but I know that martial arts in the dojo and a street fight are very different. Even a German Federal cop with an MMA background acknowledged that with respect to the kind of people they had to deal with during the 2015/2016 New Year’s Eve incident at the Cologne main station – that feral people can be dangerous even to those highly trained.
Well, this is where we are all at now in 2025. Hope we push back the Vikings. LCPL_X does admire the Vikings but by now reminds me of the one in Fight Club. Wait, maybe I am him just like in Fight Club? I better stop for now and go offline, talk a walk.
Sonny once wrote that recently Christianized heathens were important in the spread of Christianity.
Greeks are supposed to have been responsible for spreading Buddhism in the east, Ireneo. stumbled onto this writing that Monastery blog. then towards the west, they birthed skepticism/stoicism, thus monasticism. still Buddhism just another name.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pyrrho/
I think sonny meant the Christianization of Western Europe in the Dark Ages.
Re the Christianization of Northeastern Mindanao, I have read sources that suggest the monks of that period impressed the tribes by being fearless, thus showing they were “men of prowess” which is an important thing to be in a lot of Southeast Asia.
Re the Greeks, there definitely was contact with the East thanks to Alexander The Great, but that was a different matter altogether.
Joey is right. The Liberal side has to appear less lame as we are in a fighting situation. Using the jargon of the Dutch anthropologist Wolters, those in the Philippines need to show they are men and women of prowess.
The monks he mentioned are more like the thinkers behind the fighters, similar to the alliance between clergy and the Franks that would mean the end of the Dark Ages in Western Europe.
The liberal side is opposed by the right. I understand liberal values which center on inclusion and caretaking a community. I don’t understand the right’s agenda that seems to be to oppose that. For whose benefit, I am inclined to ask. The right to me is the bullies, the liars, the thieves, like China. They have no community values, only uses of others. It’s incredible to me that human nature grants bullies a higher moral standing than libs.
Joey is right. The Liberal side has to appear less lame as we are in a fighting situation.
I support his rebellion 100%. as to shit eating, you guys don’t have to do this. theres predictive AI which is more promising than generative AI. they’ll be your shit eaters. But this notion that there should be gate keepers I vehemently disagree. there will be consolidation eventually, maybe Joey will be our Dear Leader but Benevolent who knows, but for now no censorship no gatekeeping should be the principle here. sure fight, fight is good. debate is good. friction is good. but no gatekeeping, Ireneo. let other brains decide what’s good for them, not you guys or experts deciding this. entropy will consolidate eventually. dogma. right now is the best time for people who like information.
I am reminded of the Italian study that found out children who are in contact with dirt have better immune systems. But that doesn’t mean exposing oneself to shit all the time.
There also were studies IIRC that wearing masks made a lot of people more susceptible to flu and colds, so there was an increase of both after Covid. That doesn’t necessarily make masks during the height of Covid the wrong policy. It’s always the right balance.
Re 2022, I kept saying Abangan during the election period. I was actively involved in a FB page supporting VP Leni and felt that it might be a close call or not go to well. Of course, I didn’t do a Comical Ali over here saying she would clearly win, but I can’t demoralize everyone either.
The polls were pretty accurate after all. And I didn’t support the cheating allegations.
Re Joey, I can see that he his street smarts are real, and his stories about DE are plausible. The disjoint I had in 2022 is resolved. We are only as good as the information sources we have.
That his ground view matches that of pablonasid, who first commented here in 2020, makes things much clearer. Not to say the view of others was wrong. Maybe I just didn’t ask enough questions before 2022 – BTW, Prof. Vicente Rafael and author Ninotchka Rosca made their trips home to get a grip of what had changed and led to the Philippines we have today. I checked out the popular culture to not look to close at politics. Sometimes, being too close to stuff can also cause attentional blindness. Zooming out may sometimes be necessary. See the whole forest. This isn’t about gatekeeping. This is about curating for oneself. This is also about separating the irrelevant from the relevant. Damn had I seen the Robin Padilla ad about the Philippines in 2016, supporting Duterte, I might have known THAT is the issue. But hindsight is always 20/20.
This isn’t about gatekeeping. This is about curating for oneself.
Then I agree with personal choice. but I think Joey’s talking about more imposing as policy. which is weird, cuz when your side wins (‘your’ being general here) then theres no problem, but when your side loses then the problem has to be in other people’s intake of information. like DU30 2016, too much blaming of fb, you subtract fb out of the equation, I bet it woulda still been the same outcome, but here’s all the blaming of social media. so theres the US vs. THEM aspect of this that has to be accounted for, meaning censorship like how it was in the olden days thus Vietnam thus GWOT just one side manufacturing sense. lot harder now to go to war with so much information, and that to me is good. dirty info clean info, just let it circulate. brains are predictive machines this is anthropology. let brains do what they are made to do. especially DE brains. cuz the main push back for Starlink for ALL was this, oh no DE brains won’t be able to handle this. I say bs to this, Ireneo.
PEOPLE in general have issues handling NEW media they aren’t used to yet. Discernment and competence in utilizing them is learned with time.
People believed the Catholic or Protestant pamphlets (depending on their echo chambers and existing biases, also in part there was a cultural divide between Germans closer to Latin influences and those that weren’t like Luther’s Saxons) PRINTED during the Reformation in Germany and the 30 years war resulted. Modern newspapers and people who knew how to utilize them properly changed the landscape, but that was after former medieval Germany had been turned into the 17th century equivalent of Syria, a country broken for a long time.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(1938_radio_drama) had some people thinking there was a real alien invasion. People originally shown movies with approaching trains in them reacted scared. And so on..
Sure, Filipinos will adjust to social media and might in fact become some of the best users of it in the coming future – BUT AT WHAT COST TO THE PHILIPPINES?
There are YT channels like the one below that are promising, BTW. I can imagine DE people who are really curious devouring them. But possibly barangay libraries with free Internet would keep people from just jerking off to nudes. Or maybe they might catch more kids screwing there?
Sure, Filipinos will adjust to social media and might in fact become some of the best users of it in the coming future – BUT AT WHAT COST TO THE PHILIPPINES?
This is an unknown. I agree. and a good question going forward.
Of course, I didn’t do a Comical Ali over here saying she would clearly win, but I can’t demoralize everyone either.
this is why I’m against, Joey’s brand of humility, Ireneo. see something, say something. And in fairness to you and Joe, you guys gave me support in that PBBM must Fall blog against the Pinks. so I know you knew and already saw the writing on the wall. but a big part of all this, is that you have to participate. fuck demoralizing everyone, if their too much into their lotus flower koolaid juice then they deserve to be shook and wooken up. re Haiti I agree, but maybe like Papua New Guinea, island wide consolidation is in order as solution is in order those two straight lines as border i think is the main problem. all the negritos on that island New Guinea together as one. which might lead Filipinos to take an interest in negritos in their islands. I watched DW (german news) comes on tv here, and they featured Gabon Congo kids playing chess it was so cool cuz the NGO who sets this up just places chess mat on the ground with pieces then all the black kids with snot running down their noses all ran to play chess like it was the best part of their day. I tend to prefer Go for kids but too many pieces. or playing in general like pablo, but in lieu of that, digital games are good too. i was telling pablo Counter Strike was prevalent everywhere, woulda been cool if they were able to track all the kids who played it, cuz i think they didn’t turn into zombies like Joey said. but its all cup half full, cup half empty stuff. we can differ in whether more info than less is better. that’s mere quibble really. but we should agree all that censorship in any form sucks. and should be avoided at all costs.
Censorship is the battle cry of the self-sorry victims of a superior power, that being the government or the editor in most cases. It starts when a self-involved numbnuts decides to go against the rules and calls it a value like freedom. Governments and editors have goals, the former, order, the latter, making money or advancing a cause. I represent editors with the “cause” of creating a discussion forum for education and the betterment of the Philippines. Censorship is a tool available to me to do my best to achieve that objective, even as trolls, malcontents, rebels, and ego-meisters seek to undermine the effort.
As it pertains to social media, government has the responsibility to make sure crimes are not committed against citizens. Application vendors such as Google, Facebook, Tick Tack, and Instagram share that responsibility and interest. And users also share that responsibility and interest, which is the whole purpose of privacy laws and usage agreements, block buttons, moderation powers, and the like. All three can choose to expel people from their venues, and do, because there are scoundrels on this planet who choose to abuse people. To say “no censorship” is to give scoundrels power that they ought not have, because their aim is harmful.
My contention in this article is that governments, app vendors, and users cannot control the harms being dispensed, and so users must decide for themselves how to keep the manipulators from abusing them. They are not engaging in censorship when they elect to leave X or block trolls. Or when they decide not to read a blog because it doesn’t help them. They are engaging in sensible choice.
I agree with you joeam.com is yours thus we follow the rules, i get kicked out regularly because i’m saying more info not less all the time. entertain all angles. but i’ve never been disrespectful, probably polemics in the arguments that thats all. so too X etc. they should be able to kick anyone out, and Musk did so with MAGA recently. and thats fine. but I’m also very pro- 1st and 2nd amendments as the two are connected. and you and I know that (and Joey, et al) that part of being Americans is a distrust of anything that even hints a bit like censorship, so theres that too. but I completely agree re editorship not being censorship. My point is Joey seems to be going towards screw the 1st amendment territory. which is unAmerican.
They have no community values, only uses of others. It’s incredible to me that human nature grants bullies a higher moral standing than libs.
They do, Joe. the right is the brakes. the left is the accelerator. their purpose is to slow things down for humanity. Hegelian process.
But I submit, the right is actually losing not winning. have been for awhile now. and Trump and Elon represent the left (libs) not the right, and we’re seeing it real time with the Steve Bannon MAGA crowd vs. Elon Musk. anything that say HEY we need to slow down here, is the right. anything that says let’s just go go go… is the left. the Martian expedition with SpaceX and Musk’s anti-Woke Mind represents the two sides to this coin. so like Ireneo says its a balancing act. Joey’s anti-Elon Musk and his being Catholic I would label that as being right. my being Luddite too and Pepe Mujica values less is more is right too. so I’m sure you’ll have right tendencies too. all the same coin. human brain is interesting.
I’m definitely right wing being pro-business, as it is conventionally defined, and in the middle on states rights vs fed govt. The US right is busy banning books so I’m not that part of the right. As for how to manage dirtstreams, I’d observe that “freedom” is doing a lousy job when output is crooks and malcontents being elected as leaders. Propaganda is a form of censorship, of course. It censors intelligence and honesty out of the dialogue. There are new issues raised by abuses of social media, so there must be new solutions.
some people thinking there was a real alien invasion. People originally shown movies with approaching trains in them reacted scared. And so on..
In my readings watchings on Tesla FSD, Ireneo, I did come across this pheonomenon of FSD seeing “ghosts”. especially when you drive your Tesla in the cemetery. maybe sensors acting up, but like Joey said Tesla FSD uses less. but if you watch US military podcasts, that’s also what you’re seeing with next gen night vision or scopes with fancy optics. so theres corroboration of this. people are reporting seeing more supernatural stuff. so i guess opposite of what you’re saying about alien invasion and approaching trains on screen. where people are actually seeing things that aren’t or shouldn’t be real. this is more about going beyond your 5 senses. thought it was interesting. 2025 is supposed to be when Tesla Optimu robots will be rolled out. My fear is that machines can also be possessed. I’m sure Joey as Catholic would share this fear with me. as will others here. I’m sure.
“And besides, when humans are degraded to a certain level where base concerns take over, the masses expect fighters not defenders. Maybe because I originated politically on the right, I retain the fighting spirit I’ve noticed in other former right-wing politically engaged individuals. It is a war, a war of the greater good versus the good for the few. And in war, namby pandy platitudes expressed by liberals up until now looks weak in the face of assault, even if the assaulters of democracy are in fact lashing out wildly. The attacker usually looks strong, even if the defenses hold a little while longer.”
“Well, this is where we are all at now in 2025. Hope we push back the Vikings. LCPL_X does admire the Vikings but by now reminds me of the one in Fight Club. Wait, maybe I am him just like in Fight Club? I better stop for now and go offline, talk a walk.”
LOL! perfect metaphor, Ireneo.
Joey, in this hypothetical I can give you advice.
one, you have to have a good manifesto nailed to the wall for all to see. something inspirational. whatever your list entails at the end of it, you have to ensure that humans don’t leave Earth ever, only drones robots, etc. cuz that seems to be the main push here. Bezos plans is even crazier than Musk, something akin to Elysium don’t know if you saw that movie.
two, you need a Henry V and or Joan of Arc personality that people can rally around. I have one just perfect. two in one in a manner of speaking. I advice not making this mascot be you. it would be counter productive, see Jolani.
three, but I like your name already so use that. like Alex Boncayao Brigade of the NPA. just change your surname to add anonymity , so maybe Joey Wynn Brigade, or something. that Wynn is eponymous homophones of win like winning. thats important cuz,
four, your enemy enemy is your friend. meaning you’ll have allies with the Steve Bannon MAGA crowd right now use it to your advantage, mask your ethnicity to leverage this. ANTIFA types too pro environment anti corporations. but your closest allies are the Bernie/Yang/AOC before the rebrand crowd. these are my peeps, but I’m like John Lennon now not so much Imagine but Don’t you know its gonna be alright John Lennon, so you can count me out. But you have to grow your ranks, inner circles to outer circles.
“The most successful fighting forces often were lightly equipped and moved quickly.”
If we look at current trends this is all wrong, Joey. its like the Drone wars now. you wanna multiply as quickly as possible. so lots of psyops, your biggest win is to win over Walter Isaacson (biographer), cuz with all the Musk hate in socmedia all their rhetoric falls flat, cuz of FSD, or Starship, or Starlink… just too many wins to count, on top of Isaacson saying he’s a genius, the Musk is an idiot meme doesn’t work. it just doesn’t am sorry. so you need Walter Isaacson, as your fifth column.
remember after Musk, you have Bezos, then so on and so forth, but theres more dirt on those dudes. aside from OSHA stuff, you can’t really find much on Musk. but you have Isaacson.
five, is the most important, I don’t mean any disrespect but you, Ireneo, Joe et al have very bad predictive analysis routines, not job work specific am sure you guys are good in your respective fields, but over all in seeing trends where people in general are concerned not too good. for example had you been with us here in 2022 you’d also been saying VP Leni’s gonna win!!! rah rah rah… cuz predictive analysis requires you to actually not just smell or taste but to actually eat it. for example Koalas feed their young shit, its part of the process.
Trust the process.
sure you’ll have diarrhea now and then, but if you act like the Japanese in Cebu and be too sanitary people will look at you funny. when in Rome… and all that. I’m imagining you now with sanitary wipes living with DE Filipinos, Joey. LOL.
My point, predictive analysis requires input. not judgement , that comes at the end. don’t put the carriage in front.
But I support your rebellion, Joey. as Luddite, as a Bernie/Yang guy, as a Pepe Mujica fan, you have my blessings. 😉 Go forth and conquer.
Thanks for the advice, but no thanks.
Here’s more intel on how SpaceX persevered from Martian society dinner to now, Joey. more intel for your rebellion. looks like a cult ngl. so hard to infiltrate.
The Mars colonizaton proponents are a cult. They espouse making a techno-utopia on Mars where only the chosen are allowed to immigrate because they have given up on Earth. Many of their hardcore believers already bought into their own lie that they themselves have transcended humanity and are a new, superior species. Total delusion. Seems convenient when the techbros who believe in this future are funded largely by public subsidies. I choose Earth and humanity.
My digest of the article.
Chapter 2025 identifies Musk as a tech genius citing Starlinks, Tesla, GROK, Neurallink, and Dogecoin, and foresees Filipinos reaching the Metaverse on a perpetual high, because VP Sara offers Starlinks for all. Filipinos go to Mars in droves making up about half the population. Skeptics on earth rebel, execute Musk, and chase Sara off to Mars.
Chapter 2035 sees earth returning to labor and pollution as Mars develops as a tech wonderland with super AI, spaceships, tunnels, and a population that is half Filipino and half Musk, as the sons of Musk procreate. The people worship Musk’s head waiting for the technology that unfreezes his brain. They all work fast because there are a billion Martians spreading out to other orbs. Earth is considered to be a province of Mars.
Chapter 2045 has Musk’s brain revived and interfaced with GROK to form a metaverse of computer/human unity and the wondrous new being open to all.
What can we learn from this? Technology won’t be stopped and efforts to hold it in check, if successful, will relegate humans to struggle and Martians to a computer powered drug-like ecstasy. Filipinos will anchor the new world by obediently following the directives of their leader, and go off to serve, as they do so well.
Well, another interpretation is that Joey got under LCX’s skin by dissing Musk and LCX is returning the favor.
I can’t extract much from the article to benefit Filipinos except perhaps that free internet would be a game changer for good or bad depending on the content. As LCX elsewhere cites that he is against censorship I figure that bad would win out, and technology would likely produce a world of subservience and suffering for all but the entitled.
Finally, I became the villain of the story. A villain that espouses democracy, equality, purpose granting productivity. A villain nefariously preaching independence of thought against the illustrious hero as his followers nod their heads in detached prayer.
Happy New Year to everyone.
New Jaren. I remember year but not new. And happy is way beyond my recollections from decades ago. At any rate, have a great 2025, Irineo, now that we’re done kicking 2024 like a dead horse. Happy New Year to the all the members of our TSOH dilapidated literary dynasty.
Happy 2025 TSOH!
Year of the Snake, here we go, karl!!!
There is this movie just out, by Paramount, but directed by a German director, September 5. It is about the role of the media around the terrorist hostage taking during the 1972 Munich Olympics.
https://variety.com/2025/film/awards/september-5-director-tim-fehlbaum-1236271226/
Reminds me of what Joey wrote about the deterioration of media already starting in the 1960s, though the preview video below shows there were debates in the newsroom. Stuff I read about the movie are interesting, like how they used a lot of original 1970s studio equipment.
Fast forward to 2016 when the Pinoy twitterverse was interested in real-time in a shooter incident happening near the Olympic mall in Munich and partly played out on the parking lot of the Olympic village. It was Friday, and I lost a lot of sleep tweeting and trying to make sense of what was happening on the fly. Just an example of how OA social media can make people (in this case, me) who think they can be their own reporters. Of course, I also tweeted whenever I heard the police copters above, feeling LA, maybe? Of course, it was jarring so close to home, but I also saw how crazy half-information can make us all. I did wait for the presscon of the Munich police chief and researched the rumors. One was the rumor of three shooters caused by people who had been OA, mistaken plainclothes cops (wearing shorts as it was summer) for shooters, and shared it on social media. Another was panic in Munich city center with people breaking ground floor windows and jumping out as social media made them think the shooter was nearby. Germany, with its gun bans, rarely has shooters, so the panic was not surprising.
Now, what is the point? If ABC in 1972 at least had pros considering what they should show or not, 2016 had everybody, including me, tweeting and sharing stuff. If 1972 had Munich police telling ABC (allegedly) to stop showing footage of the actual apartment, 2016 had the very professional social media manager (Portuguese origin) of the Munich police asking people to not engage in speculation and I as an obedient citizen kept to that, suspending judgment when I was not sure and in fact not tweeting anymore after I had slept over until Saturday afternoon. BTW, the police socmed manager was moved to the Bavarian Health Ministry when Covid came. Though I was a bit OA in the summer of 2016, I am proud of myself that I didn’t totally go off the rocker and start spreading speculations. BUT I did see how dangerous social media is.
Now I am sure the Americans here might disagree, but I believe social media is to the First Amendment what assault rifles are to the Second Amendment. Joey can take care of his guns, I am sure, but not everyone can be trusted to own what he has. Not everybody is responsible in using social media. The Founding Fathers of the USA couldn’t foresee today’s world, not even that it might not really need an Electoral College, something out of a time before modern communications technologies. The major issue I think that Munich police had with ABC in 1972 is that they showed SWAT live on the roof of the building the terrorists were in with their athlete hostages and these were watching TV and saw it. So information per se is not always good.
I think Pres. Obama pulled the short stick here and ended up having to sit with Trump. now social media is going gaga over it. I have no idea what they were talking about. but at one point, VP Harris thought Obama was talking to her, so she turned around only to see both Trump and Obama chopping it up.
With the fires in LA going on, and more Santa Ana winds (winds blowing towards the coast) the new lesbian Fire Chief is on the frying pan right cuz there was no water in the hydrants. And Gov. Newsom now is launching an investigation over this which he shared on Twitter. I can tell you with convidence that the Fire Chief is not popular among the rank and file,
she’s spen more time on sick leave and other issue like workers comp leave, light duty etc. which got her to work at HQ where she made her bones and rose up the ranks. she’s not a fireman’s fireman (not even the women like her). My point all this info is available on social media, not the news. same with prognostication of what Obama and Trump were laughing about.
“Joey can take care of his guns, I am sure, but not everyone can be trusted to own what he has. Not everybody is responsible in using social media.”
The question i think that needs to be asked when these shootings happen that USA is so known for now is why it doesn’t happen more with eveyone having guns. Joey thinks more people have pistols and not rifles. Rifles i think are more common. there was a time early 2010s around the time Walking Dead was really popular and people were building their own ARs that it was so easy to get them, legally and under the table.
School shooting and other crazy incidents aren’t in the news, Ireneo. But ARs are common enough with street gangs either sniping or shooting during vehicle pursuit, in which snipers never get found and vehicle pursuits are ended due to higher firepower. cops just say fuck that i’m out. thus never get on the news. but the criminal use seems to not seep out of the civilian world. so i guess not really prioritized. but school and work mass shootings are.
But my point 1st and 2nd Amendments work hand in hand.
Social media is 1st amendment, I’m seeing on twitter how in Canada and England (I’m sure Western EU too) cops arrest people over tweets. similar to cyber libel laws in the Philippines. facebook just aligned with Twitter on getting rid of Feds backdoor into their platforms. Censorship is the norm i think. just saw a movie last week titled The Frontrunner with Hugh Jackman of the 1988 presidential election cycle and the press covering adultery of Senator Gary Hart and the press debate of whether or not to cover such things. essentially the press was all like We cannot self censor anymore this information will get out regardless.
Same with 2nd amendment, one of the water dumping plane in the fires was rendered damaged due to a drone being flown in the area. so guns isn’t the only weapon anymore covered within the 2nd amendment. drones, robots and AI thanks to Ukrainian war has shown us the efficacy of these things as weapons. I know it was just an accident but it could’ve just been a drone attack. My point, guns are obsolete crazier weapons are coming online thats not even covered by the 2nd amendment. I just saw a youtube video of a guy with a water gun that shoots ice bullets.
aren’t = *always
Yes, you are right about drones, though here the approach is also control.
No camera drones in residential areas, because especially in housing projects they tend to be used to.. peek at women. No drones allowed anymore over the Oktoberfest, security risk.
There were not too many drones yet in civilian use in 2016, so there were no dronecams of the incident, just videos like this one from an Olympic village balcony (TW: gunshots)
One probably gets used to some things, but it is more like there is too much irrelevant information than really useful information.
I have seen the scene shown in the above video from several perspectives. This one is from that of possibly Eastern European migrants who duck as the man opens fire with his pistol.
The one yelling at him (and there are other videos where one can see and hear how he throws a beer bottle at the shooter) is IIRC a jobless German man who was drinking on the balcony.
I don’t have answers to all these developments, just that things are out of hand. Imagine a situation like that one with kids flying their drones and not just people from balconies all filming, is that good or bad, that will depend on the situation.
Sokor BTW is more extreme than Germany when it comes to gun control, so much that use of guns is usually something North Koreans do in Kdramas. Pass on guns I know almost zero of.
I don’t really know about drones, but I think authorities can track owners if they recover a drone or its control. but I gotta feeling the authorities can compel the company to divulge info if theres a crime involved, cuz of internet of things. for example if no drones were recovered that struck the air water drop plane, then say DJI would know whose drones were flying then and there. like Cybertruck incident in Vegas. but to say you can’t buy this or buy that, that would be unAmerican. lol.
“Just an example of how OA social media can make people (in this case, me) who think they can be their own reporters. Of course, I also tweeted whenever I heard the police copters above, feeling LA, maybe?”
For me if I was inside such situation, I’d prefer more information than less. now I still sport a flip phone so I’ll never have that issue of having too much info during an active shooter situation. But if I was holed up with someone with a smart phone, I’d tell them to get as much info they can, as quietly as possible of course. so we can decide on a best course of action. Cuz we’re saving ourselves and not relying on authorities in that kinda situation that’s for sure, Ireneo. am just skeptical when it comes to authorities and my life. though prognosticating outside of a situation is another thing entirely. but hey if it helps people inside the situation a lay of the land in a manner of speaking then its all good i think. good info bad info, just any info is useful. IMHO.
I was at home on the other side of town on the third floor, second floor is what they call it over here, tweeting to Filipinos, so it was completely useless. Munich had implemented full lockdown. People were not allowed on the streets until it was over. There was a colleague who happened to still be in the office when that came out who was pissed as he had to stay there, and I think the green light was given at 2 a.m. Saturday morning after the police presscon.
I recall something about people in Rio de Janeiro having an app that tells them where drug war shootouts are happening. Like I mentioned, in some places in Munich, people panicked and broke down windows even if they were miles away from what happened, see video below. Not everybody is equipped to deal with emotional stress they aren’t used to. BTW some hospital employees I know privately told me days later that they got their emergency alert that evening, having to text back in how many minutes they could be on duty, with “0” for “out of range”.
I did work for a pharmaceutical company once as a consultant, and the US FDA rules they had to comply with were quite strict. Same thing with firms that are on American stock exchanges and have to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley rules.
IIRC, the reason why the US has mostly artificial Christmas trees with electric lights is fire ordnances due to a lot of the houses there being made of wood. Germans usually feel Christmas isn’t complete without a real tree cut from the forest and lighted candles. Though you have to have a pail near the tree, theoretically. Presently, a lot of German towns are discussing banning New Year’s Eve fireworks as it gets crazier every year. But what is nearly as holy over here as the 2nd Amendment is there is NO SPEED LIMIT ON THE AUTOBAHN. Where there is no local speed limit, you can drive through. Though driving 200 km/h doesn’t feel safe unless you have the car for it, and IIRC German manufacturers have a built-in limit of 250 km/h. Freedom means different things to different people, I guess.
With the wildfires at Southern California,I guess that artificial christmas trees may have backfired a bit mostly due to the electrical component.
But what is nearly as holy over here as the 2nd Amendment is there is NO SPEED LIMIT ON THE AUTOBAHN.
I got stopped for speeding by Chips awhile back. for the stupidest sort of stop. I was going 80mph (on freeway) but going with the flow of traffic, meaning everyone else was going the same speed. very boring traffic pattern, no one’s passing anyone just ho hum drive. but I guess I didn’t see the Chippy was tracking me 2 lanes over and then lights and sirens. I assume he had just entered at some point and then got me for the violation. just some cop trying to get his quota filled. which is understandable, but as a whole makes Chips look bad. they’re known for this, too letter of the law. give no breaks. I’d love for No speedlimit here.
I imagine Chips play inny meeny minie moe as to who to stop in that sort of situation.
There was a colleague who happened to still be in the office when that came out who was pissed as he had to stay there, and I think the green light was given at 2 a.m. Saturday morning after the police presscon.
Once they’ve localized and contained the situation, they should let people go about their business though. These whole city shut downs i’ve seen in that Boston marathon bombing (which was just cops panicking unnecessarily) and then when an LAPD detective got shot here assassination style awhile back (that’s more like a dragnet situation shutdown the area). both unprofessional IMHO, suspects already on the loose. not active situation any longer. its a search situation or in the case of the LAPD detective investigative from active. so how quickly police wrap up also tells you how adept they are.
If you’d hired an attorney you would have won. The law in California says you must go the speed of traffic.
I’ve seen this defense before , Joe. and its 50/50 depends on the judge. for the most part they’ll side with cops. same team and all. but you’re right though re flow of traffic, mostly its for minimum speed enforcement. going too slow thus impeding traffic.
All the amusement parks in Southern California are training for getting on the freeways. Those on ramps into 80 mph traffic are nothing after a few blasts on Montezuma’s Revenge.
I think the reason Americans use plastic trees is that wood ones are expensive. I once burned a used up wood tree in our fireplace and nearly burned the housed down. They explode, much like the oil-loaded brush in LA’s mountains.
They have a lot of resin, which means one gets sticky carrying them home. Germans usually don’t have fireplaces anymore, so they are garbage carried away by the municipalities in early January, so I guess they know what to do.
IKEA has a humorous commercial for early January sales showing the humorous but certainly fake Swedish tradition of throwing Christmas trees out of the window and people on the sidewalk dodging them.
Haha, well, better trees than the contents of the slop pot.
Correct
Though there is already over reporting of military secrets in the guise of spoilers and freedom of information, drones should not be near any military base.
Drones aren’t even allowed near civilian airports over here or anywhere.
Yes and you should not name your dog gun and call him or her in the airport.
try naming your dog drone and nothing will happen even if you yell drone, when you call your dog in the airport.
This particular American agrees with your comparison of social media to guns, both of which have a purpose under laws, both of which are used for opposite purposes, to dirty speach or put laws at risk.
The Swiss have a lot of guns as well, more or less one assault rifle per grown man who has gone through military service. They are obliged to keep the rifle locked at home and know their unit and meeting place if national defense requires it.
The Swiss idea of guns is closer to the second half of the Second Amendment about a militia, because the origin of the Swiss military was pikemen standing in formation to defend the village, usually against the knights of the Habsburg dynasty riding on horses.
Town militia did survive for a long time in the Alpine regions but were disbanded where nobles stayed powerful. Probably one of the reasons the USA saw the right to bear arms as important was that in many places, being armed had become a nobleman’s privilege.
They certainly didn’t have the legal right samurai IIRC had to cut down any peasant who stared at them or did not bow to them, but in an era where defending personal honor still was settled by duels, it probably made a difference. Cowboys and high noon pistol duels come to mind.
The NRA and the Swiss do go by the Oscar Wilde statement that patriotism is the virtue of the vicious. Even as the Swiss went unarmed when they went to the town square to vote on common matters, and are known for their extreme courtesy. Both traditions of self-control.
The idea of personal honor as something one has the right to defend is still in the libel laws of many countries. Philippine libel laws are extreme in that any insult even if proven true is libel. Germany distinguishes slander (proven untruth) from insult = not provable allegations.
Probably in the very old USA, whether in Gangs of New York or the Wild West, the “remedy” for slander or insult was to have to fight it out. Before social media, you had to say things to people’s faces or at least put your name out on paper. More skin in the game, so to speak.
Assault rifles and social media make it easier to attack without risking one’s reputation or life, meaning they are very dangerous in the hands of less responsible and/or frustrated people. Joey going to the shooting range after Trump won freaked me out a bit, I must admit. Though IT support in one company I knew had a punching bag in the middle of the office, and gloves for the techies to let out their frustration when end users had made them feel angry..
“Joey going to the shooting range after Trump won freaked me out a bit, I must admit. Though IT support in one company I knew had a punching bag in the middle of the office, and gloves for the techies to let out their frustration when end users had made them feel angry..”
It freaked me out too but for I think totally different reasons than you, Ireneo.
so this is more about gun culture in America I’m addressing here. and Joey just happens to be example here (not really about Joey per se). so its been awhile since ive shot around Camp Pendleton area , Orange, Riverside and San Diego counties. but if am not mistaken (and Joey can correct me if am wrong). the closest place to shoot rifles would be in Corona for him. most outdoor ranges close at dark because they just don’t have flood lights or arena lighting to accommodate night shooting. And that time he said he was going shooting it was windy.
Dark and windy are times I tend to stay away from the range cuz not optimal conditions. I also go when they open to avoid crowds. But I stay away from the range as principle.
Which brings us to the reason why one would go to the range. Most people I know go (including myself) to get stuff done at the range. so theres a purpose , you’re sighting in a new gun, or you have new optics, or testing rounds etc. etc. It s not like going fishing or bowling. You also don’t wanna stay there too long cuz you wanna protect your lungs, damp dew levels are optimal. why I would never go when its windy. Too much carbon in the air when kicked up.
Which brings us to target shooting as a means to let out steam. Now I know theres people that do this. which is completely foreign to me. There are gun clubs that have contests, competition shooting etc., i know nothing about this world. But in the realm of people who own and shoot guns, Ireneo, thats a very small subset I think of people who shoot to let off steam. its a weird concept tome. Because target shooting is just means to see if your gun or ammo is accurate. precise. Much of the stuff that is important to upkeeping your skills in firearms you can actually do at home, like failure drills or room clearing how to manipulate your firearms, drawing from holster, etc. etc. Free is fun.
Airsoft and paintball is fun too but too expensive.
So i guess the difference is firearms as tool, and firearms as power. Firearms is not power. if you want firearms as meditative, then theres ranges in the desert for sniper type shooting, lots more math in that art and science i’m told. its more like a driving range really the set up unlike regular ranges, more comfy you’re not expose to all that dust as you’re shooting from a sheltered environment. I’ve only heard of those. The last i’ve been to a range was pre-COVID. weird vibes at ranges now, nothing dangerous i don’t think just more crowded overall. types of people who bring home their targets to show their “groupings”. Different gun cultures, Ireneo.