Rex
2mo ago
My opinion of Scott Alexander continues to crater. I don’t know how much of this story is his or the collaborators, but there is a shocking level of naïveté about everything other than AI technical progress. Even there, I don’t know enough about AI to comment.
My favorite part is the end where Chinese AI sells out China, assists a grassroots Chinese pro-democracy group affect a coup, democratic elections are carried out and everyone lives happily after.
Rex
10mo ago
I'm not sure how this got in my feed, but I've seen a lot of videos on X of police radically escalating situations beyond what's necessary. It often includes legal commentary on citizen rights and self-defense. Things like a police PITing a pregant woman and flipping her car for not pulling over fast enough during a stop. Police harassing a guy working on his car in a auto-shop late at night because its "suspicious". Cops bodyslamming a dad who's taking his autistic son for a walk at 6am and not carrying his ID. Surely there is a sampling bias here, but I do get the general sense that this closer to the norm than not.
I'm not sure exactly why people on right in the USA are till on the "thin blue line" team. Perhaps its because the median cop is more conservative. Perhaps its being more comfortable with authority and generally being more conscientious - leading to less altercations. Either way, I think theyre in for a rude awakening in the coming years. This doesn't strike me a stable equilibrium. The state pays the police. There is a chain of command. The state has a lot of tools. They can make the job miserable so the right leaning cops leave. They can implement vaccine requirements. Look at the UK police system for an example of where I think we're going. It seems like a total historical accident that this hasent happened already. The UK practically has political commissars enforcing western liberalism on anyone who sticks their head up. I have no doubt that TPTB want that for the USA. The only reason it hasnt happened already is that theyre dealing with thousands of individual police departments as opposed to like 10.
Rex
26d ago
Has the USG directly confirmed the use of MOP? I’m asking seriously. I only see reports where it’s implied based on the context of us having spent the last week talking about them. The X community seems to doubt they were used. There is a lot of speculation that this was another telegraphed strike that allows US and Iran to save face and deescalate.
I have zero confidence in my ability to know what actually happened here and make any predictions about the future.
I decided to check in on plebbit over at /moderatepolitics/. What a total embarrassment. There’s 1000 comments there all basically saying that Iran has been denuclearized, defanged, and is is either about to collapse or lash out with mass casualty events against the USA. As I said, I suppose that’s possible. Perhaps we did fully destroy Fardow with 6 MOP and it was a perfect op. But the lack of even entertaining other possibilities is sad, but not surprising.
Rex
1mo ago
On one had, I did not expect this fight to actually happen and I was profoundly disinterested in the media that seemed to be egging it on and trying to make it happen for the last few months. On the other hand, does anyone else get the sense that this is a staged fight? It seems so ridiculous and performative that it maps closer to WWF wrestling or Biggie/Tupac feuds that were purely stage managed events. Jon Stewart suggested as much this morning before all the big fireworks went off this afternoon. I cant help but think that he's got it right here, even though I'm sure people will say this afternoons attacks make that less likely.
Rex
24d ago
I previously expressed some skepticism about the details of the US strike. And I noted that many on X were questioning it as well.
One narrative was that Trump executed some clearly telegraphed strikes on Fardow that didn’t accomplish a whole lot other than be a highly visible strike on the Iranian nuclear program. The 5d chess speculation was that this was a clearly telegraphed move that didn’t in fact cross any Iranian red lines as a way to appease the Iran hawks.
Now it appears that this Iranian attack on the Qatar military base did no damage, cost no lives, and, if Trump is to be taken literally, the Iranians called them up and told them it was coming.
And now we have a ceasefire.
Was this just all theater? If it were, what would look different?
Obviously it’s a good outcome. The only downside it see is that it makes the US look incredibly weak to be led around by Israel. But then again, that’s par for the course.
What a puzzling thing. Another downside would be further emboldening Israel, the Israel US lobby, and the pro war faction of our leaders.
Rex
5mo ago
I was going to reply with OP on similar lines but you nailed it.
Europe, plus Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, are a bigger threat to me than China or Russia, and have been for a long time. The EU Digital Security Act was meant to be an end around of the US bill of rights by handcuffing multinational tech companies. It’s still a threat and I hope/suspect that Trump will apply maximum leverage on this issue. If not for Trump winning, we would be screwed. By our “allies”.
The list of offenses is too long even for an effort post. Good riddance.
Rex
4mo ago
- If the rumours are true that Musk is sending these e-mails from a jury-rigged server rather than an official secure US government system, then the e-mail would show up as external in Outlook, and my actual immediate response would be to report it to IT security as a possible phishing attack.
This is such a non-issue in my opinion. The correct analogy would be that you receive a phone call directly from the CEO's deputy, where he verifies his identity, and tells you "you're about to receive an email saying...". In such a situation, I imagine the calculus would be different. Reporting it as a phishing attack would be malicious compliance or outright disruptive and you should expect to be on the CEO/deputy's shit list.
I'm sure there are a lots of things DOGE intends to do with this special project. Identifying the most disruptive federal employees is hopefully at the top of this list. The best strategy for any fed employee is to keep their head down and get lost in the hundreds of thousands of other low level fed workers. The email is brilliant because this stuff is like catnip to the most ideological of trump's enemies. They literally cant resist fighting back and "Resisting". It's truly a brilliant move.
Rex
1mo ago
Do you have any intuition as to why there are so my psychotic cyclists? It seems to select for aggressive narcissists, despite the fact that their phenotype is more of a skinny soy boy or scenester. It’s obviously not all of them, but it could easily be 50% of the cyclists on the road. Does a bicycle imbue some sort of power fantasy where otherwise meek people can easily flee if they run into the wrong type of person?
I was familiar with Ian from X and I actually bought into smears on him and muted him. Then he pops up on Rogan, I listen to the whole thing, and it turns out he’s completely reasonable. He makes the appropriate caveats that he’s not taking about all Jews, just the documented facts about some Mega group of influential Jews working together to advance Jewish interests. He makes the point that it’s completely reasonable for them to do this, assuming they’re not doing anything illegal. He also makes the distinction that when he talks about Israel or CIA or other groups doing something, he’s not saying that literally all people in the org are doing it. Rather it’s groups within those orgs. Again. Sounds reasonable.
I’d also add, that I think everyone should listen to that episode to get a broad tour of what a reasonable “conspiracy theorist” take is in 2025.
Rex
4mo ago
Doubting Bucha when we have so much confirmed evidence is pointless. It is what before we used to call FUD at the start of internet. I am that old.
As a sidebar, I started in the internet around 1999, in the forum era. So I missed usenet and bbs. FUD is from that era? What corner of the internet was this? Asking sincerely, was it the anti-war crowd?
As I’m sure you know, FUD has now been taken up by pro-establishment types online. I’m curious about the lineage of the groups that use this term.
Rex
6mo ago
What’s amazing about musk is his perhaps pathological need to double down at every opportunity.
He supported trump at great risk to himself in the event of a loss. Having won he’s now ratcheting things up further. He clearly thinks trump and the state department will give him cover (as they should) with European regulatory issues. He’s playing an all or nothing game. To what end. I don’t know.
Rex
4mo ago
I’d recommend listening yourself. Many people are getting a read out second and third hand. He really didn’t criticize Israel at all. He was fairly pro Israel and Zionist actually. He just notices that Epstein likely was working for elements within Israel - and that’s why we’ll never get the full story.
Rex
6mo ago
There is a fan overhaul mod called Vox Populi, that for my money, makes Civ5 the best in the series. I started with Civ way back in Civ 2 and have played them all, including Civ6. I highly recommend it. Its main focus is improved AI play and i think they accomplished their goal and made it much more replay friendly. Once you "solve" civ on Diety the game gets quite boring.
Rex
7mo ago
There are lots of people jumping into the conversation who have not looked into it. People will say: why waste my time? Simple answer: its fun. Its a mystery and clearly people get a lot of enjoyment from participating in the whole thing. Its trivial to go on X and watch some videos, read some threads, and come up with an opinion.
Here are few thoughts I've had from watching this for the past week:
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a narrative started to form over the weekend that the drones were military WMD sniffing drones doing a grid search of NJ. It originated with some DOD drone manufacturer speculating on tictoc and then went viral. It seems plausible, if not more likely than not, that this story was the psyop. If the cover story is a lost nuclear warhead coming to the USA, it makes you wonder what crazy shit is actually going on.
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It seems like there are at least 3 categories of phenomenon. 1) misidentified airplanes, helicoperts, and lens flares, 2) unmanned drones (the size of a car or a SUV) flying very low over populated areas using traditional aerodynamics and 3) orbs, lights, or other true UAPs that are hovering or exhibiting flight maneuvers that do not correspond to known physics. I am not convinced that the things in category 3 are easily explained. The debunkers are just as invested as the pro-UAP crowd and they generally always assume the person who filmed the object is a liar or an idiot. There are pilots, air traffic controllers, and professional photographers that are posting some interesting evidence. Air traffic control reports of objects at 50k ft elevation. Military air traffic control shutting down a base due to extreme UAP activity. The ABC video of the "orb" is professionally shot. I would imagine the camera man knows how to operate his camera and is not showing venus out of focus.
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There have been a number of high profile military pilots that have been reporting their experiences of seeing objects, orbs, and other unexplained phenomenon. Most people do not think these military pilots are lying. Theyre clearly seeing something. If there has been a large uptick of these UAPs over NJ over the past few months, it would not surprise me if the government were to fly the drones from category 2 in order to muddy the waters. Then you get the mass hysteria and most people start writing off the story.
The answer does not have to be extra-terrestrial. Mark Andresen recounted a story on the Bari Weiss podcast where he was in a meeting with the white house and he is representing that the WH claimed to "have classified whole branches of physics during the cold war". If you take that language plainly, they are not talking about specific nuclear weapons engineering. "Whole branches of physics". It seems fairly reasonable to me that the USG, after realizing how powerful nuclear physics was in WW2, decided to move all fundamental physics out of the public domain. It would not be the least bit surprising for me to learn that there are groups within the government that have spent the last 70 years progressing their tech into something that would look totally alien to us. Such a group, with no oversight, would essentially be a rouge element of our federal government.
There is really no way to know or prove any of this and its mostly speculation. That being said, there is a lot of circumstantial evidence out in the public domain for those who are interested. Eric Weinstein has speculated about this in public. There's a few good youtube channels out there that talk about this stuff.
ET are often part of the story that gets told, but they are not necessary. It could be as simple as "the US Government took all fundamental physics in house after the Manhattan project and the group that controls that tech is doing some sort of power play with feds".
Rex
1mo ago
I watched him on Tucker and it was very hard to take him seriously after seeing/hearing about the video.
The hypocrisy was at the end when he talking to Tucker about human connection being the most importsnt thing in life. Impossible to reconcile that with interracial gay findom meth sex.
This is a great post and very informative. I'll add a bit of my own experience.
You do a great job pointing out some of the absurdities of some masses, but that's certainly not the norm. I say this because i find the normie suburban XP mass to be even more oppressive. I reckon that most Catholics go to a normal diocesan church, they sing awful liturgical music from the OCP Gather book, they have a lay deacon give a homily that was emailed to them from the archdiocese. There is absolutely no energy.
To your point on lay people changing the mass. I find the music to be just the worst aspect of this. And i dont think any of this was done with ill intent. Its just a bunch of ex-hippie boomers singing modern catholic music in a folk rock style. I'll never forget the women who lead our music ministry when i was a kid. She sung kyrie elaison with hippie guitar riff every week. There's another problem - this style has been the normie suburban mass standard for a LONG time. At least 40 years as far as I can tell. These awful songs are now "classics" to the current crop of old people who are involved in the church. As i said, I dont want to be too hard on these folks because they are giving their time and energy to the church, but they are so misguided its a sin.
A few years ago I found a new parish that was run by a religious order in a major metropolitan city. I actually got coffee with the pastor before joining just to see who he was. He was a brand new pastor, so young. He had one other priest under him, also young, and a number of brothers to help out.
My church is the opposite of whatever the normie catholic mass is, but still fits within the vatican II / novus ordo framework. The priests have wide latitude to have a much more traditional mass if they choose. We dont use the OCP mafia hymm books. We have young cantors rather than some old lady choir.
Easter mass this year was the possibly the best easter sunday mass I've ever seen, surpassed only by Easter Vigial mass at this same church. Full on 1hr 45 min Solemn Mass (I remember as a kid at my normie suburban church that easter mass was pretty much just a normal sunday mass. the extra long mass was for palm sunday only). The church was more packed than usual as well, even for easter. Its a big church that probably fits close to 800 people comfortably, we rarely get 150 on a normal sunday and id reckon 400-500. I think the word is getting out. Attendance is surely rising at my parish.
All of this is to say that I believe @OracleOutlook when he says that the new generation of priests will demolish the spirit of Vatican II. I see it every week. I just hope that its crushed in time for me to enjoy it when im older. Its pretty much impossible to have something like this local to you right now except if your lucky or moving somewhere specifically because of a church.
Its also good to remind people that while Vatican II may have been a mistake, it does allow for a really beautiful and traditional mass. If only the normie parishes would learn this. I suspect it will be a while before that happens.
Rex
3mo ago
Just a suggestion for a post 2015 game: xenoblade 2. I’d consider it the peak of aaa jrpgs. The art, music, story, themes are all 10/10 for me. Don’t believe the haters. And you could easily play it on an emulator. I play it every 2 years.
Rex
4mo ago
I thought his attire was no big deal at first. Then I read that trumps aids informed him that Trump would prefer he wear a suit. This is basically a slap in the face. And Trump seemed to even take it in stride joking “all dressed up today?” I’m guessing it didn’t help him though when he continued to be an asshole by continually bringing up security grantees in front of the press - when he clearly had been told that’s not on the table.
Rex
6mo ago
I can understand your POV, but perhaps consider that there is more to this than a 300 word half a post that was written a bit tongue-in-cheek.
To your last point, some spec ops whistleblower contacting various military/spec ops independent journalists before putting on an impossible-to-ignore fireworks show sounds reasonable to me. How else would it go?
Rex
1mo ago
Is your neighborhood in urban or suburban area. I should have clarified that I'm talking urban locations, even small cities.
Rex
1mo ago
What was the nature of the conspiracies? Asking so I can have a rubric for my own views.
Rex
1mo ago
I have not had covid as far as I know. I did get antibody tests early on which were all negative. My wife had it twice and i slept in the same room with her. No issues.
I also know no one that died from COVID, other than a coworker who's very old mother allegedly died from it. This person is known for his tall tales so I cant know for certain.
I find this to be a reasonable heuristic for how much I should worry about something. I know many people who passed from cancer. Many from heart attacks. More than one from getting hit by a car when cycling. I reckon most people have a similar experience.
Its impossible for me to believe that 1.2 million people died from covid in 3-4 years and reconcile that with my experience.
Rex
4mo ago
I suppose it’s just my bias that the media and elements of our government would bury anything that makes Israel look bad.
Rex
6mo ago
I won’t pretend to have any technical background. But I’d speculate that decades of black physics carried out by the USG would have dangerous implications along the lines of thermonuclear weapons or worse. If only for the fact that small drones with no heat/em/noise emissions would make conventional weapons even more dangerous. That’s the profile of many of the drone sightings.
Thanks for engaging. I’m always fascinated with the intensely negative reaction certain groups of people have with this topic.
It seems clear at this point that there is some phenomenon that the UAP people are observing and documenting, be it the nj drones, tic tac, gofast/gimble, pilots, whistleblowers, or any of the other stories we’ve heard for quite a while now. Government developed weapons or surveillance platforms seem like a fairly reasonable assumption here.
Vegas VBIED and NJ Drone Crossover Event
https://youtube.com/watch?v=xglaXVtQcis?si=ysIxFOPjPZdtHVOG
Nothing is better than a good crossover episode and it appears that the latest twist in the Las Vegas Trump Hotel bombing continues from last years cliffhanger NJ Drones episode.
The Shawn Ryan Show (B list independent media podcast) released an episode today that was an interview with Sam Shoemate (D List Instagram account that highlights military corruption and malfeasance). Between Jan 29-30, Sam was contacted by someone alleging to be Matt Berg with an urgent request to pass along his info to Shawn Ryan, Pete Hegseth, and Fox News. Sam was in contact with the alleged Mr. Berg on signal and ultimately received an email claiming that Mr Berg was on the run, escaping to Mexico, and that the USG was hot on his trail and potentially trying to kill him. Fortunately for Mr Berg, he had a Vehicle Bourne Improvised Explosive Device (VBIED) which apparently had held them off. This email also made at least two explosive claims.
Its unclear to me which of the two claims were the bigger deal to Mr Berg. He’s obviously distressed about the China drones, but he spends a lot of time on the war crimes as well.
Back to the story – Sam, the recipient of the email, writes this off as an unverifiable crackpot and sits on it. Until the news breaks on Jan 2 that Mr Berg blew himself up under very strange circumstances at a Trump Hotel in Las Vegas. It appears from what I am seeing right now that the mainstream media and Las Vegas sheriff has confirmed that email that Shawn Ryan published is from Matt Livelsberger. Even if they didn’t, there are plenty of details that made this seem to be extremely likely.
I think we can table the war crimes issues for the moment and just focus on the China drones.
This email, in an of itself, certainly doesn’t prove anything about the origins of the drones, but it certainly is a curious claim. Mr Bergs military MOS would potentially put him in a position to be read in on advanced US drone programs. There are a number of people in the independent media world who have made the case that the USG has been running black physics programs and cracked gravity 70 years ago. People usually respond to this with ridicule and note that something like this could never be kept secret. Personally, I just add this to the growing list of leakers and dot connectors that indicate that the UAP phenomenon is at least in part, terrestrial black projects that have access to what we would otherwise call science fiction technology.
If gravity has been cracked, it potentially means that other wild stuff like zero point energy is also on the table. What other energy sources would be able to explain UAPs the size of small cars that fly with anti-gravity drives. Tech like this would be extremely dangerous for obvious reasons. Reasons that would explain the secrecy. This would also explain why the USG changed their stance on this topic in the last 5-10 years. China has caught up with whatever we’ve been doing for a long time.
What do you all think of this? Hoax? Crazy person? Legit whistleblower? There are ton of threads to pull here. Is Mr Berg even dead? Did he fake his death in order to get a big spotlight on this?
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