Category: Comment

Note: I’m a very casual gamer.

Since being in early access, Starfield has been in the sights of some gamers for reported woke elements to the game. While the Babylon Bee skewered the leftie content, TheGamer pilloried these gamers as “weirdos,” just confirming a non-argument. While yes, it’s “only a game,” there’s also nothing wrong with players who are sick of being preached to and having their gaming time infested with virtue-signaling politics. And yes, people may choose not to play the game or to play nonetheless, both their right to do so. But the question of “why?” the need to embed politics into every bit of our media remains.

Was reading this: https://www.wired.com/story/doug-rushkoff-survival-of-the-richest/

The writer’s comment that “In October 2011, when the rapidly spreading Occupy Wall Street protests were under scrutiny from establishment media, Rushkoff published some of the first words of support for the movement in the mainstream press. ‘Anyone who says he has no idea what these folks are protesting is not being truthful,’ he wrote in a column for CNN. ‘Whether we agree with them or not, we all know what they are upset about, and we all know that there are investment bankers working on Wall Street getting richer while things for most of the rest of us are getting tougher.’
” rings true. These people have good intentions, but good intentions do not guarantee good outcomes.

I’ve long been a capitalist and I am not optimistic about this movement that uses violence and intimidation to make its points. Some say, it’s pablum to criticize the movement in this way. Some reflection on the past is key.

I am just celebrating in my mind that the Trump era may theoretically be over. He has to go to jail/prison for at least a little while with so many counts.

There’s a certain amount of peace regarding this. I hope we stop rationalizing things.

This legal explanation is thorough. I will admit that I have erred on the side of the Trumpies, but this pretty much seals the cases.

On the other hand, I think the Biden crime family should also be investigated. It’s clear that they manipulated the voters through the hiding of the laptop story, the collaboration with social media in crushing opposition speech, and the Russia investigation. Trump is right in his anger over these and other factors that could have swayed the election. Unfortunately, he thought that gave him a good excuse to break the law numerous times. His supporters are willingly forgiving him for his actions before they know the whole story.

Both sides are blind. There should be equal prosecution. Prediction: this will devolve into tit for tat. I just want what most citizens want: new options.

This project is important:

“Today, most poor renting families spend at least half of their income on housing costs, with one in four of those families spending over 70 percent of their income just on rent and utilities. Incomes for Americans of modest means have flatlined while housing costs have soared. Only one in four families who qualifies for affordable housing programs gets any kind of help. Under those conditions, it has become harder for low-income families to keep up with rent and utility costs, and a growing number are living one misstep or emergency away from eviction.”

So I was in a situation of near-homelessness where my family had to come help. It was, however, a situation for which I was responsible.

When I was growing up, my family lived in HUD housing. I truly believed that most of the people there could have paid their own way, while some were not at fault. My family made it out of there miraculously–or rather through my mother’s determination to not stay on the dole. One-by-one we left that town and all became college and graduate school grads.

But I do have to keep aware that some people just cannot get out of a situation where they cannot afford the rent. The homeless many times are subject to things beyond their control, like mental illness and related substance control–but not all of them. I think the Eviction Lab’s point about the need for a “living wage” is important.

It’s just the mandating of that wage and denying the rights of landlords that are forgotten here. I have looked through the site (Google search “site:evictionlab.com landlord”) for any mention of help for landlords and business owners. I would like to see more on helping business owners pay their employees that wage and the landlords receiving the rent they need.

This piece by Ayaan Hirsi Ali comes from her unique perspective of being a Somali, under a socialist government system. Under that type of system, there is no bankruptcy to cull the poorly performing companies and organizations. This also leads to the public good suffering. Benefiting from the work of one’s hands and profiting from private property promotes progress.

The internet, for example, gives entrepreneurs more opportunities by “getting out of their way.” If a society has a functioning rule of law, a free press and expression, and an informed public, abuses can be mitigated.

I consider the topic of Scandinavian-style medicine a worthy topic to discuss. (Unfortunately, today’s youth envisions a socialism that “works,” not the actual versions in Venezuela and Cuba.) Along this line of critique, Ali mentions that there is no denying that our healthcare system is “messy.” Even though American healthcare leads in quality, innovation, and advancements, there is inefficiency and inequality.

But the woke mob destroys this exercise of American self-criticism in the name of “antifascism” and “antiracism.” We cannot improve or even function under the constant barrage of oppressed and oppressors. We were built on constant trial and error that recognizes our “human foibles.” The question should be, “How can we improve ourselves?”

“Democratic capitalism, in the framework of the rule of law and respect for individual rights, has benefited billions of human beings. It allows for gradual, incremental progress to remedy legitimate grievances as they arise. Until a better alternative can credibly be proposed, these are the institutions that we should celebrate–and defend.”

Elon Musk has purchased Twitter, exposing its censorship activities in collusion with the government. But he has other ideas, some strange, in addition to his free speech beliefs.

During Covid: “I will be on the [Tesla assembly] line with everyone else.”

About the Democrats: The Democrats are the “party of division & hate.”

About voting: “Democracy is probably unworkable long term without limiting suffrage to parents.”

About population control: “Population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming.”

I watched the recent Tucker Carlson interview with Musk and am heartened that he opposes unrestricted AI. But that begs the question, doesn’t he have a robot in the works? (A robot needs some sort of operating system.)

He’s obviously very intelligent, but make no mistake, he’s a businessman and big business is amoral.

My Brasilian grandmother always said she loved the national anthem. She would cry in fact.

My parents became citizens in 1975. My father moved us to the U.S. (back and forth to/from the U.K.) to make a way where it was difficult in England. (Why the number of moves is another story.) My mother moved here with her mother as a kid.

I don’t want to give a mushy and overly effusive lecture on Independence Day–but it’s such an important day. The Star Spangled Banner is not the military cadence or French-style revolutionary anthem. It has a freshness even to this day. It makes immigrants cry. If only it did for all our compatriots. Gratitude.

Yes, the U.S. has to return to its roots: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; e pluribus unum; and In God We Trust. I don’t want to preach, but those are really available, really possible, and truly trustworthy.

Peace and grace this 4th.

Daniel Miessler wrote recently about backing up self to a machine. For the most accurate recording he suggested we could do/add the following:

– Write Extraordinarily Deep Descriptions of You

– It’ll Import from Everything You’ve Done Online

– Journals, Texts, and Other Private Data

– Extensive Interviews and Scenario Exercises

– Interviews With Loved Ones, Friends, Coworkers, and Associates

– Your full Genome

If you performed all these steps/methods, is what results a human-type consciousness? (Forgive me, Daniel.) Continue reading “Recording memories”

During my life, I have seen various financial crises that seemed to resolve into the “rich getting richer”:
When I was young, the savings and loan crisis.
During college, the first real estate boom during my life and resultant crash.
During grad school, the dotcom crash.
During 08-09, the second real estate crash.
Since 2020, the slowing recession.

I can be cynical that this will happen every generation, but I have seen all these and not benefited in the least–though my ex and I were strapped during the dotcom and 08. One could become disillusioned as well as cynical.

But the billionaires seem to get more billions. Musk has the money to say what he wants, lose money, and yet prosper. (I am not one to laud him for his free speech successes as he is not out for the right.)

I had an inside view of the dotcom and 08 crash. I saw the foolishness that was Christianity.com and saw the hubris partly responsible there. I worked at the SDUT during the 08 crash and the demise of newspapers. Now, I have written cyber blogs and seen the increase in scams, but also this period where government-colluding social media rule.

I cannot become an anti-capitalist. There’s nowhere else to go.

https://www.wired.com/story/odni-commercially-available-information-report

This data gathering goes with the hiring of more IRS employees, targeting Christian believers preaching in the street or demonstrating at abortion clinics, and social media colluding with government agencies. My aunt and uncle were audited twice and they are not wealthy.

The power of the data brokers demands action.

No matter what you think of the Jan. 6 defendants, it’s unconscionable that the ones in custody now have been held for over two years in some cases without a court date. The quicker they get the opportunity to defend themselves, the better for the constitutionality of this.

The route to civilizing big data will help us to gain more instead of only lose. I think we must bring old methods of interacting with the data overlords of past times (banks, credit) to bear on the new ones. Make a human connection. Like when you make physical trips to your account holders, hold them accountable. Visit their sites, talk to their reps, READ their privacy and legal statements.

Similarly, we make unspoken agreements with media and advertising. We give them our data, and just like we can’t function without a bank account, we can’t interact without one of the media monoliths. It comes down to which monolith you want to pay (serve). That’s obvious and depressing.

I am afraid though of what kind of subserviency will be prevalent later this decade. I understand the handwringing; without AGI, we can’t reason with AI. AGI will be the pivotal step to the singularity. Don’t be distracted when people say here is AI, and there is AI–but the time is not yet.

Developing…

Write a constitution, and you generally have a more stable government.

Once you have it, defy it, and your actions are evident. The constitution is a witness against you. It looms large. The nation’s citizens are its citizens.

Its footprint shadows you. Now that the government is intended secure, culture and society thrive.

Those protected under the constitution can prosper, in wealth, mind, spirit. The pursuit of happiness is given to them to work out.

Poverty emerges in those countries without such a support. The weak have no place to rest. They are subject to violence and theft.

And so here: we hold these truths to be self-evident.