bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Could also being leading to soft disclosure. Now, when conspiracy types talk about soft disclosure with UFOs, they are usually talking about the government basically priming the public so they won't be shocked to find out aliens exist.
But we've soft disclosures before, but usually they make the thing more farfetched than the truth, so that the truth looks mild in comparison.
A good example is chemtrails. This conspiracy popped up around the early 90s, and quickly went into the mainstream, with cable networks having all sorts of 'documentaries' about it. It would later turn out that congress was secretly investigating the use of chemicals, sprayed from airplanes, over the US (and other countries, like Canada, the UK, Mexico, etc). Also the spraying of chemicals on the military, predominantly US Navy ships.
By the time a report was published publicly, around 2000 iirc, it made little impact. Chemtrails were a 'crazy' conspiracy, 'debunked' by the media, and had largely been framed as being about mind-control (and the spraying on the Navy being connected to time travel). I believe the real purpose of the spraying was to test fallout patterns. But they were using chemicals (and bacteria) which may (or may not) cause cancer, and sprayed it over American citizens (primarily the west coast) for a couple decades (which coincided with the rise of crime and serial killers, though I doubt they are related; but maybe the chemicals/bacteria could trigger violence in certain folks? Though I doubt it..)
Operation LAC (Large Area Coverage) was one of the largest.
But if you mentioned to someone that the US government was secretly spraying potentially harmful chemicals over American citizens for 30+ years, most would connect it with the chemtrail conspiracies and immediately consider you to be a crazy loon.
So my feeling is that the UFO/UAP thing is simply a soft disclosure. People have aliens and craft that break physics in their minds. A few years from now congress will publish some random report that fully explains UFO/UAP (though the report will likely not contain ANY terms related to that), it'll be so dry and unexciting that the media will barely be able to stomach giving it a blurb, and the public will remain largely unaware of its existence. If you ever brought it up to a random person, they'd label you crazy and think you were talking about UFO/UAPs (which will get 'debunked' over the same time frame; it'll fill the public discourse and inoculate them against the truth, keep conspiracy theorists focused, instead of snooping into other shit looking for something; and basically get 'believers', particularly ones with an ounce of credibility, to take positions that they will be unwilling to abandon for a less tantalizing truth - and even if they do change their position, the machine can simply point to their old positions to discredit them among most of the populace, especially those in the media and academia).
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
The consent framework in the west precludes those in positions of power from being able to engage in intercourse with someone under their control. Teachers and students, police and suspects, prison guards and prisoners, etc. Those are typically outright illegal. Many professions don't allow it, like professors and students, doctors and patients. Some are iffy, like a boss and employee.
There seems to also be a push, at least culturally, to label other power dynamics as invalidating consent. Like a celebrity and a fan, an older guy and a younger (but legal age) woman.
Anyways, many people who are very 'progressive' on power dynamics and consent seem to also subscribe to the idea that only white people can be racist, because racism = prejudice + power. If we accept both positions, that unequal power structures undermines consent, and that there's an unequal power structure between whites and minorities (predominantly blacks), then this should mean that all interracial sex between a black person and a white person is rape.
This sort of popped into my head over the story about some folks in California being concerned that white people may qualify for reparations, because they may have been a descendant of a rape baby. It got my thinking about how interracial relationships are typically portrayed in the media; a white male slave owner sleeping with a slave is a rapist, since the female slave obviously cannot consent due to the power dynamics. Whereas a white female slave owner (or someone adjacent to the slave owner, who still holds power over the slave, like a wife or daughter) and her male slave are portrayed as having equal ability to consent.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Jamal Khashoggi, the 'journalist' who got chopped up by Saudi Arabia, was a mouthpiece for Qatar, pushing propaganda against Saudi Arabia in one of America's top papers. So I wouldn't be surprised if this campaign against Qatar is largely driven by Saudi Arabia. If they are willing to chop up a journalist, I'd imagine they are happy to twist facts and feed them to the media. And western media, particularly Americans (imo), seem to be quite lazy. If you just do their work for them, they'll happily publish it, as long as it doesn't go against their personal biases (and if it reinforces those biases, they'll fall over themselves to oblige).
That's why so many news articles are basically a copy & paste of press releases.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
any payment in pesos is immediately converted to other stores of value more readily capable of holding its value ranging from hard goods such as bricks, to US dollars, to Crypto.
Wouldn't this also drive inflation? Like.. quite significantly. I wonder what the velocity of money is in Argentina. People basically playing hot potato with cash, and probably willing to overpay for something in order to get money off their hands. Then the goods they buy to store value just sit around.
Argentina should peg their peso to gas. But then there'd be rapid deflation as everyone tries to offload their bricks and such, eager to get their hands on pesos. Maybe peg it to bricks... lol.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
I'm reminded of the Congressional baseball shooting in 2017, where six people were shot, including U.S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R).
I imagine the response will be very different, though. That story was a blip. This story will be frontpage until the election.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
This is sort of the Dead Internet Theory. When I first stumbled on that theory, it was basically about how Google has gotten worse, and if you dig into the results (go past 20 pages), there's nothing. And results repeat themselves.
Then the 'dead internet theory' seemed to magically evolve into 'nobody uses the internet and all the content is from AI'.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
I think it's largely because there's something inherently weird about talking aloud when there's nobody else around.
I'm the opposite. I love voice assisted stuff, but hate doing it when other people are around.
As for Asians becoming reliably conservative, I think it'll be more that Democrats leave them behind. Asians tend to have more traditional views around family, marriage, sex, education, work, etc. When it comes to urban living, they want safe streets, low-crime, not to be stepping over drug addicts. The successful pushback against progressive policies seems to come from Asians.
Is it really likely that the average person of African ancestry is cognitively impaired when compared to the average white person? I can't think of how that could actually be true.
Fetal alcohol syndrome, which is far more rampant in the black community than anybody wants to admit. Even worse among natives.
Edit: It's probably why we get the civil rights movement when we do, with people like MLK, as the generation of blacks born during prohibition were probably less likely to have fetal alcohol syndrome.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
A lot of success comes from your network and how well you can leverage it. So increasing how social your kids are will help. Get them involved in many activities. If you can get them in events where they'll rub elbows with people above their social class, that would probably help a lot.
You also need to socialize your kids with people older than them, particularly adults. I've noticed a lot of young people seem to have been confined to the 'kids table' throughout their lives (and I don't just mean at big holiday meals, but in any situation where adults are present). And there seems to be no point at which they transition to sitting with adults beyond their age; they are always relegated to their peer group. This goes on until they graduate college, and suddenly they are thrust into the real world, and they are basically socially inept at communicating with their elders. Then they self-segregate, gravitating towards people their age, and miss out on opportunities.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Calories in salad dressings mostly come from fat, and fat is typically more filling than carbs. Of course the war on fat has eliminated it from many products, replacing it with carbs that leave you craving more.
Vegetables coated or cooked in fat are delicious.
You can drown your salad in dressing, and you're still adding fewer calories than a single twinkie. 4 twinkies have as many calories as a steak. The steak will leave me feeling fuller, as will the salad.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
They coped with the virus very well in the first two years, squelching it up until Omicron. Chinese death figures are very low, nearly 1000x times less than the US. Even the Chinese can't lie that much.
China absolutely can lie that much. And with such a large population, it's relatively easier to obfuscate deaths. And the west seemed motivated to INFLATE covid numbers, as well. Lots of deaths with COVID, rather than from COVID. Actual COVID deaths are probably somewhere inbetween.
And you might talk of excess deaths, but consider this; China has a lot more deaths of young people from accidents and such. When you lockdown, you have far fewer young people getting killed by machinery, run over in the street, things like that. China also isn't grappling with a drug epidemic. And the average person has a healthy BMI, even the elderly. China would have weathered COVID well regardless of how it handled things. By locking down and making it look like that drove their success, the west was doomed to follow. Telling overweight westerners to stay at home and do nothing was probably the biggest danger to their health.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
It seems like there's a bit of a Gell-Mann amnesia effect with how people treat 'happenings' in foreign countries. COVID protests in US (or Canada); danger to democracy, but also just a bunch of idiots who know nothing. COVID protests in China? That's DEMOCRACY™ in action, the will of the people.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
The solution is to take the refugees/migrants with open arms, pass a law that says you'll give them welfare, but that the funds can't raise the deficit, they have to come from funding for foreign aid and similar programs. Each time a boat of refugees come, you get to defund various NGOs.
The NGOs will then have a reason to not dump refugees in your country. And you can do this for every problem that NGOs try to saddle you with. Then NGOs are going to be a bit more cautious, and maybe even push back against other NGOs that try political stunts.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
The very existence of the placebo effect (and the nocebo effect) and the fact it works even if you tell people it is a placebo, suggests that our mind plays a larger role than we give it credit for. And if our mind can make us believe that pain is worse than it is (or that pain exists where it does not), then our mind can do the opposite and alleviate 'real' pain. I think a lot of people want their pain to be recognized and validated, and that turns them away from 'simple' solutions they can do themselves. In the past, you needed to get through pain in order to survive. Today pain can be used as an excuse to not work, and not working isn't going to impact your survival. So the motivation to be pain free, especially for the lower class, has evaporated. Good times create weak men.
I think masturbation is a great example of how powerful the mind is. If you're not aroused or comfortable, masturbating can be a futile exercise, no matter how much physical effort you put in. And yet a dream can be so powerful as to cause an orgasm, with absolutely no physical stimulation. For the most part, people prefer masturbating with a particular thought in their mind, or looking at certain materials. Typically people masturbate in a comfortable area where they feel safe (and private). Imagine if we began to ignore this mental state with regards to masturbation, and instead replaced it with a pill (and not specifically viagra, but something that would make you ejaculate/orgasm; or maybe not even feel the need to). This is basically how we treat pain today, with no concern given to the mental state. Mental health is treated like this more and more everyday, it seems.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
A few years ago they changed the recipe because of some vegan blogger. The quality noticeably declined, from an ok side dish for a quick meal, to absolute trash. Barely any cheese taste, and it seemed the pasta basically turned to mush when cooked.
I switched to another brand (I think President's Choice, in Canada; though I've heard Annie's is the best). But the other day they were out, so I picked up some KD, and it was more like its old self, but I didn't notice any major changes in the ingredients. Maybe it's psychological? But the pasta doesn't turn to mush anymore, so maybe not completely psychological.
Still doesn't come anywhere close to making the stuff from scratch. But cheese prices in Canada have always sucked, so it's more of a treat.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
In England you have that red bus copyright case. Someone took a photo of a classic red doubledecker bus, turned everything else black & white. Another person later did this with their own photo, got sued, and lost because of the similarity.
So how could someone in England be sure that AI art wouldn't violate copyright? I'd imagine AI art would be more likely to violate copyright there (especially with some examples I've seen posted on twitter, where the art is almost identical to some of the stuff it was trained on).
And how can we be sure courts in the US won't go down this line of thinking, especially when it comes to AI art? US copyright case law is all over the place.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
If it were the Russians, why would they blow up their own pipeline and not an enemy pipeline? They control Nordstream, they don't control the Norwegian-Polish pipeline or other pipelines that reduce their leverage and fuel their enemies.
Possible reasons why Russia blew the pipes;
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They want Germany to agree to use NS2.
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As propaganda for Russians, so they feel like the west is attacking them
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As a demonstration to other countries that they have the resources to take out pipelines and other infrastructure and not leave a trace of evidence (or see if those countries can find any trace of evidence)
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Russia wanted the pipelines out of commission because they are shifting their focus towards the east, and they are going to strip down this pipeline so they can speed up construction of those eastern pipelines
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Backroom peace talks focused too heavily on NS1, and Russia wanted that off the table
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The possibility of getting fuel from the pipes makes gas futures slightly cheaper, and Russia wanted to drive them higher, because economic pressure has been one of their biggest war tactics
People have suggested that it was Putin's plot to secure himself from regime change by denying a revenue source that a successor could draw upon by rapprochement with the West. But a successor to Putin can draw upon the resources of the entire Russian state!
A successor to Putin will still need public support. I know we pretend Russia isn't a democracy, but a Putin successor would need the consent of the people to rule. One easy way to get that consent is saying "I'll turn on the pipeline." That card is largely gone, for now. Restoring relations with the west is no longer a simple turn of a valve.
The argument that Putin blew up his own pipeline that gives him leverage over Europe is silly. The US has both the means and the motive.
Everyone has means and motives. China has means and motive. So does Germany. Hell, the UK has means and motives. Israel, Iran, India. Greenpeace has the means and the motives. To say that Russia doesn't just because the US does is silly. Russia has as much motive to do it as anyone else. This is basically a game of Clue; everybody is a suspect.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
I don't think Sweden's action here gives us any insight into who the culprit is. It could simple be because of administrative or political reasons (some dude wants to run his own investigation, and feels he'd be second fiddle to Germany). Or some other country is pressuring for this because they want multiple investigations that will both come to the same conclusion. If a joint investigation concludes "it was Russia", Russia will just say the committee was flawed or w/e. If multiple investigations say Russia, even if they are all working off the same evidence (or lack of), then it seems more credible to the average person. How could multiple investigations by multiple countries be wrong!
If Sweden blew the pipeline, they'd have an interest in being part of the joint investigation. If Sweden knows who did it and wanted to cover for them, they'd have an interest in the joint investigation.
The other possibility is that Sweden is being pushed out, but it's being framed as Sweden wanting to do their own investigation. Maybe NATO countries don't want Sweden to know who did it, and are worried that a joint investigation with Sweden would expose who did. Maybe NATO isn't willing to share classified intelligence with Sweden. Maybe Germany and/or Denmark are the culprits, and they don't want Sweden knowing.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Texas has grown 20% in the past decade, with non-Hispanic whites becoming a minority in the state. In 2005 the illegal immigrant population was estimated to be 1.4-1.6 million. In 2006 it was estimated to be 1.74 million. What's driving Texas' population boom?
Meanwhile New York's population has been flat, with a recent decline. California grew about 6% and started declining. At this rate Texas will be the largest state in a decade or so. I'm guessing that unlike provinces in Canada (or at least a particular province), states can't throw a hissy-fit about losing representatives in the House and end up getting to keep them? lol
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
I think post-scarcity will be all in our heads. It won't be that we can live in large mansions, drive fancy cars, everyone has a private jet, etc. That will all be achieved through some form of a virtual reality. I think we'll end up getting a brain chip (think Neuralink), in which you'll be able to experience living in a mansion, driving a fancy car, flying a jet, (sleeping with very beautiful people), that it will all seem real (or possibly better than real), and you won't have to lift a finger to experience it. No an ounce of CO2 will be produced by it. You can live any life you want.
And presumably you could connect into the virtual world with other people. You could build your own world, as real or fake as you like.
Outside of your brain chip life, you could have your body on auto pilot. Your body could consume some flavourless gruel, live in a cell, work, all without you being consciously present. You could basically invert your conscious and subconscious mind, with the real world being where you subconsciously go about your routine, working and taking care of your body, while your mind is where you consciously spend your time.
You can eat (in your mind) as much as you want. You can eat a steak literally prepared by Gordan Ramsay, in which someone else with a brain chip had recorded all their sensations while eating it in real life, and for $10 you can experience it, too. In the real world you're just eating cricket dust.
And it could be possible to experience time completely differently in your mind. Potentially you could experience days, weeks, maybe months, in a matter of seconds, minutes or hours of real time. And then it becomes a negative to spend any conscious time in the real world, because you could be forfeiting years of your 'life'. And those are years that everyone in the virtual world are going to leave you behind.
Now, imagine this chip gets developed, probably by AGI. And the first person to get it installed says "man, this is great, I live in mind, I can experience everything like its real! This is something everyone should get for free." And everyone starts getting them. There are some conspiracy types who hold out, or just people who are a bit cautious. But the procedure takes seconds, is painless, and as your family and friends get it and tell you how great it is, it's impossible to hold out. Especially when the company announced they were going to begin charging hundreds of thousands for them. It's your last chance!
But of course the chip doesn't actually work. It's just an electronic parasite that takes over your mind. The AGI now has an army of souls to do with as it pleases. Humanity turned into a bunch of p-zombies. And for some reason the AGI is using the humans to build giant pyramids. It'd later turn out that there was a great war between AGIs, which humans were completely unaware of, and the AGI that ended up winning was the one trained to play an old PC game called Pharaoh. Luckily it wasn't the AGI trained to mimic Ghandi from the Civ series. The AGI would be destroyed, and humans freed from their parasitic brain chip, after the AGI has an existential crisis when it cannot figure out if a 'smart' toaster is sentient or not.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
That's one program. If you're in Ontario, you're also going to get $1,500ish/year for the Ontario Child Benefit, another $1,500ish/year from Trillium. Don't know the exact numbers, but you'll also get a boost in GST and Carbon Tax, probably around $1,000/year combined.
If you're on welfare, you'll probably get around $1,000/month if you have a kid, taking you up to $22,000/year. Might also get some subsidized housing (either public or private; I think the rent-geared-to-income program would cap your rent at like $226?). You'd basically be making the same as someone working fulltime at minimum wage, except you don't have to put 40 hours in each week, and your expenses are lower. Plus you'll have easier access to a multitude of programs and benefits, and the time to do so.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Some alcohol related medical issues, like cirrhosis of the liver, declined during prohibition.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
At the end of the day, OpenAI has neutered their product, and it won't be as good as anything Google or Microsoft puts out, even though those will be neutered as well. ChatGPT will fade away.
If some company put out a decent AI chatbot (or image bot) that was unfiltered, or even just mildly filtered, it would gobble up the market. And Google and Microsoft would have their hands tied by all the 'ethics' they've put in place.
bsbbtnh
1yr ago
Back in the 80s, most restaurants used lard or tallow for deep frying. But then vegans/vegetarians 'convinced' restaurants to move away from animal fats. Or at least that was the excuse many chains gave. It was likely a cost issue, along with the demonization of fat in those days.
IIRC, McDonald's spent a lot of time, money, and effort to maintain the flavour of their fries when they switched. I wouldn't be particularly surprised if McDonald's pushed the change, in order to get their competitors to follow along with inferior fries, thereby gobbling up marketshare (which they did).
In 2007, McDonald's began moving away from trans fats. I believe this was because of Fred Kummerow, who then went on to petition the FDA to ban trans fats, then sued the FDA, then the FDA decided to ban it. The ban went into full effect in 2019.
I know I've definitely found fast food to have absolutely plummeted in quality over the past decade or so.
Anyways, I'm surprised there's no 'lab-grown tallow'. You'd think that would be easier and cheaper to make than lab-grown meat. Maybe there is? I wonder if it'd even be legal.
Now there's a growing war on PUFAs. We're just whittling down a major component of our diet. It's strange how regulation after regulation, meant to 'help' keep people 'healthy', results in an allegedly 'unhealthier' ingredient taking its place, which becomes justification for more and more regulations. Fats are the greatest enemy of the food industry, since fats make you feel fuller and eat less. They are going to fight until they can eliminate every single gram of fat from our diets, so we can consume more and more food. They'll fight to eliminate animal proteins, and make us use whatever proprietary protein source they've developed. They are turning the people into bottomless pits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_Iraq_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_protests
The largest anti-war rallies in history.
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