I Don't Know If Calling It Trypophobia Is Accurate Or Not

But I do agree that current social media are doing great harm to real social interaction, as well as the formulation of a more real, and integrated kind of social consensus building.

I mean it's bad enough we already have Capitalism's factory mentality of segmentation, specialization, and narrow linearity to deal with. Now we add to it with this electrically bastardized version of supposed discourse. All in the name of attention grabbing for the sole purpose of capturing eyes and minds for ever more pervasive marketing, and obscene profits.

To say that it has to stop, though, without also recognizing that it is the larger system that is the real culprit is just to continue whistling in the dark.

Until we recognize that the larger, toxic, and horribly destructive economic operating system, that makes these kinds of mutations possible, is long passed needing to be replaced, we're just going to be finding ourselves confronting new versions of the same kinds of poison.

Social media is giving us trypophobia

VASIMR May Well Be The Workhorse Engine For Intra Solar System Transport

Things like tugs, and shuttles, working from near earth orbit, to the moon and back, as well as from the moon to the (relatively) nearby planets, and LaGrange points for solar orbit. These could be the miracle workers to put chemical rockets to shame.

I hasten to add, however, that in my opinion, to put the final nail into the chemical rocket coffin (for all but a few, specialized, niche application areas, in any case) , we will need what I like to call "Accelerate In Place" systems; which is of course what mass drivers are. This is why I have called for the building of an underwater, suspended mass driver tunnel system to be designed and built; starting from deep ocean trenches near the equator in the Pacific ocean, and extending up at a gradual angle for some three hundred miles or so, before exiting out into the atmosphere (say at about another thousand feet or so).

Only with a system like that can we ever hope to achieve the kinds of truly industrial throughput capacities to make large lunar installations -- like the Gateway City project to accommodate the entire world's participation -- possible.

Once we get a big lunar installation in place though, I further envision a much bigger exploitation of "Accelerate In Place." And that is with building truly immense mass drivers; taking advantage of the sun's abundant power through vast arrays of solar collectors; something we'd be able to do with the kind of robotic manufacture infrastructure a "Gateway City" size habitat would allow for. And in this, of course, my favorite is very large, dual accelerator wheel and spoke stations that would be many tens, or even hundreds, of kilometers in diameter.

With something like that, and some new materials engineering, we could get deep space probes accelerated before launch to significant factions of the speed of light; transferring the need for fuel to the exclusive problem of deceleration (along with imaginative uses of solar sails, as well as aero braking through hopefully available gas giants).

Just some more speculative stuff for the dreamers in all of us to think on.

'DO WE WANT TO GET TO MARS OR NOT?'

The Astronaut Who Might Actually Get Us To Mars

9 diggs Texas Monthly Long Reads

The improbable journey of Franklin Chang Díaz, who immigrated to the U.S. at eighteen, became an astronaut, tied the record for most spaceflights, and now might hold the key to deep space travel.

She Will Be Remembered, Even As She Is Missed

Ursula K. Le Guin


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[Post Note: This production from PBS had the most profound effect on me. All I can say now is, what a wonderful story. J.V.]

ONE OF THE GREATEST TINY SCI-FI FILMS EVER

'The Lathe Of Heaven,' One Of Ursula K Le Guin's Most Mind-Bending Tales, Was Made Into This Terrific PBS Movie

11 diggs Movies

In spite of its tiny budget, this 1980 adaptation starring Bruce Davison, Kevin Conway and Margaret Avery artfully translates Le Guin's novel about a man whose dreams reshape reality — think "the Mandela effect" but scarier.

Like I Said, The Idea Is To Seek The Balance Between Mind And Elemental Embrace

And in that we must live the tension of finding that ever shifting fulcrum.

THERE ARE ANSWERS IN FEAR

The Dangers Of Thinking Too Much And Thinking Too Little

11 diggs Philosophy

"The trick is to use our minds to access our most sincere, authentic and original thoughts."

We Have To Imagine, Think, and Feel, Big, If We Are To Save Ourselves, And The Planet

The thing is, we will never be able to do any of these things if money, and the corrupt economic system that supports it is involved.

The problem, you see, is that, selling out tends to destroy a good part of all of those good behaviors. And commoditized addiction insures that whoever is left feeling, or thinking at all is focused on a completely different kind of fix for what ails.

A TITANIC EFFORT

A Radical New Scheme To Engineer The World's Glaciers

8 diggs The Atlantic Science

A Princeton glaciologist says a set of mega-engineering projects may be able to avert cataclysmic sea-level rise.

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DEAD BODIES

We're Killing Our Lakes And Oceans. The Consequences Are Real.

15 diggs undark.org Nature

We only need to look to the Mediterranean Sea and the North American Great Lakes for dramatic illustrations of what lies in store if we don’t act now.

GREEN PIECE

Britain's Next Megaproject: A Coast-To-Coast Forest

8 diggs Wired Nature

Northern England is set to get a whole lot greener. If fully realized along the lines announced this week, the forest will ultimately contain 50 million new trees, stretched in a dense 62,000-acre patchwork along a 120-mile strip.

TAKING MATTERS INT OUR OWN HANDS

Our Climate Is Changing Rapidly. It's Time To Talk About Geoengineering.

13 diggs futurism.com Science

Humanity has turned the planet into an immense, long-term experiment of what happens when we tinker with the types and quantities of gases in the atmosphere.

[Post Note: The thing here, of course, is that we could use this sort of tech to aid us in having nearly self sufficient City States, as opposed to replacing us as no longer competitive workers. J.V.]

This Army Of AI Robots Will Feed The World

Everything Is Interconnected

So, if you are a mean spirited bully, who also doesn't understand this, and you happen to be in charge of a nation, certain hard realities are likely to come back to bite you in the ass.

Case in point. For a while there, after a weather disaster in Puerto Rico, it was convenient for this bully to make political points with a very ignorant base of supporters, at the expense of suffering American citizens. It was convenient for this bully because, in his supreme ignorance, Puerto Rico didn't seem to have any political, or, most importantly, economic power.

Funny thing though. Puerto Rico is where a lot of the IV bags used by hospitals are made. Woopsy! His bad.

And as bad as this could be, it only serves to illustrate how much worse other, ignorant refusals to understand complexity in a complex economic system, could be. The ones we don't know about yet, but will probably have to find out about the hard way. You know, when it's too late to do much more than lament the fact that a mean spirited bully is still in a very important office.

Just something to chew on as you count yourself lucky that you don't need an IV bag right now.

Saline shortage has hospitals scrambling as flu season hits

 

Will Someone In the GOP Kindly Take Their Heads Out Of Their Anal Orifices...

Please. You are starting to really scare the children now; and I am referring to actual children in this regard, just to be clear.

THIS SEEMS NOT RIGHT

For First Charges In Congressional Russia Probe, Republican Senators Finger Author Of Trump Dossier

5 diggs The New York Times News

The first congressional criminal referral in connection with Russian meddling targeted a former British spy, not anyone accused of conspiracy.

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FBI knew of possible Trump-Russia collusion, according to Glenn Simpson’s Senate testimony

Society, And the Planet, As A Whole, Would Have A Lot More Longevity...

If we had a way to live that fostered better purpose, and meaning, because the two have to go together.

People with meaningful purpose just have more natural incentive to take care of themselves, as well as their connections; not only to each other, but to all of the natural systems that make life possible in the first place.

Right now we let work create our values; by the cold logic of counters, net gain, and personal accumulation . And little could be more at odds with balance.

The right stance should be to have already found our values (both spiritual and practical), by personal investigation, learning, involvement, and loving interaction; those very values that we wish to work for, and towards, to preserve the structure that could continue to foster the stability to pass it on forever; together, fully engaged with each other, so that difficult consensus can be maintained. Not the easy path by any means, but surely the better path.

Think about it because we could structure a way to do this. We must first recognize that it needs to be done. We must then make the commitment to do it. Then we must begin the negotiations, and compromises, to make it happen.

How can I live longer? Researchers say the key to longevity may be simpler than we think

More "War On Drugs" Idiocy

But what is one to expect from an administration that motivates along in a demented clown car.

Let's not forget as well that it seems to please this administration a great deal more to go after anything progressive, rather than anything actually constructive of the nation's current, physical well being; especially as it relates to either infrastructure, balanced budgets, affordable justice, or a health care system that actually provides the care, and not just the opportunity to purchase a plan; one which, most likely, carries so much deductibility, that it will hardly ever pay for anything.

Do not let this idiocy stand. People willing to pay for taxed pot consumption (and thus not indirectly pay Criminal Capitalism Inc in any way) is not a major problem right now. Anything can be done to excess of course but, as potential addictions go, pot is small potatoes of the first order. I mean seriously, compared to the addictive power of money itself? Are you kidding me (and didn't we just witness the GOP give a big fix to their donor base recently -- with the gall to call it tax reform)? Take whatever peaceful action you can.

AP News Break: US to end policy that let legal pot flourish

These Kinds Of Lines Of Inquiry Are Important

And I support them, but let us not forget one major concern that ought also to be a top priority. And that is simply that the commoditization of VR, which will be, to put it mildly, the commoditization of fantasy on a whole new level; that commoditization will be a dangerous new link to addiction, and the overall furtherance of Capitalism as the number one enabler of addiction in the first place.

This is, after all, nothing more than to say that, as in other aspects of life right now, philosophy must also be revolutionary, to some extent at least.

How could it not be when a complete rethink on what is the nature of work, and by extension, what should we value to work for, is also required. But then, what else would you expect when electrified experience retrieval, the thing that makes VR possible in the first place, has rendered Capitalism absolutely obsolete; both because human skill is no longer a viable, competitive commodity, but also because this new electrified environment requires a completely new kind of involvement to be adequately responsive to -- assuming your goal is continued survival; the very kind of involvement in depth that VR would tempt to suggest in fantasy, but for which we actually need in everyday, working life. Something the factory mindset of Capitalism was never even dreamed of to be able to provide.

I can only hope that the Philosophical Community, as well as the social, and hard, sciences, will come to this revolutionary view. and soon. As I have said countless times before, time is not on our side.

New realities are imminent -- how VR reframes big questions in philosophy


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[Post Note: And let us also not forget that, within the commoditization of everything, lies the terrible creep of how money can corrupt every process; even one dedicated to finding scientific truth. J.V.]

A MERCERNARY APPROACH

What's A Climate Denial Funder Doing On The American Museum Of Natural History Board?

Apple investors urge action on iPhone addiction among kids