Here's A Dichotomy For You

Isn't it interesting that, even though we see at least a few depictions, in popular fiction of, say, a guy like Spock coming to understand that it was sometimes logical to be un logical, it is still very hard for logical, rational people, to find any sort of useable, sense of spirit, and perhaps even worse, faith?

The problem, as I have come to see it, is that we have always been saddled with only once choice as to a path towards these, what I think are fundamentally necessary aspects of human nature. And that path inevitably involves deities and that has always been a big sticking point. I know it was for me, and still remains so. But the thing is, you don't have to have deities involved to have either spirit, or faith be a part of your life. And I can say this now in all sincerity because it is something that I have been able to achieve.

But then it might be asked: Aren't you only replacing one form of deification with another? Saying that process itself is a god? And to that I would say no.

For me, to say that process is "divine" is not to make it some form of super sentient, all knowing entity that not only designed it all, but continues to plan and implement his/her will throughout the firmament. It is, rather, to say that there is something, that is made precious by the very fact both of its essential transcendance of us, but also because we were made to be part of this thing that makes mind, and love, possible at the same time, in the first place. Because then, you have to add the fact that it must be mediated somehow by those same, self sustaining systems; the systems that can make choices; themselves examples of how structure can create ever more complex structure, if it has the right balance, and the mediators make the right choices.

Then there is simply my belief that there is inherent magic in structure because it is both meaningful things to connect to, as well as connection itself, that makes everything happen. And we are an active part of that. And our belief gives it unbelievable amounts of power. Our belief in ourselves does the same thing, and so much of it has to reside in your ability to have faith in the idea of it, because only with it, and the trust that is inherent in it, so that you can then take the intuitive leap, as well as the leap of faith, to have your reach exceed your grasp. Knowing that you have to have these because you will fail on a regular basis. And that will happen because you must often make choices on always incomplete knowledge, and your always imperfect ability to make sense of what you experience.

This is, helpfully, where cooperating with other "perceivers," and "deciders" can come in handy. Not only do you get the benefit of more eyes on the problem, and more minds to pull relevant experience from, you get a chance to leverage all actual decisions to act. You get more hands on to help naturally, but also the chance to do so in concert with, as opposed to randomly bumping into, and frustrating, as you are then frustrated, the efforts of others.

And in this we must make peace with those who choose the other path to divinity. Because there is truth to be found on that path, even if it is not a truth that makes sense to this new path of a "Higher Purpose" as opposed to "Higher Power." We must make this peace for the same reason that they must make the same peace with us. Precisely because we too have a truth to be found in our path.

Keeping humanity going will then be up to continuingly negotiating a balance between these two, many layered, opposites. I think it can be done precisely because I believe in the magic of people, and the magic of the universe. And with balance anything is truly possible. Not very likely in many cases (because inertia, in all its forms, is a formidable opponent), but still possible. It just takes a lot of faith, and love, and reason, and practicality, and sacrifice from all sides, to make it happen.

The choice is literally, and figuratively, fundamentally ours to make.

This People Crisis Is Most Certainly Is Not About Supposed "Open" Borders

What It is about is just as certainly a great indicator of whether we approach desperate people with open hearts or not though. And this is especially so when you consider that the desperation these people are motivated by is, in very large part, the result of our panicked reactions to other things concerning fears that we were manipulated with in the past. And boy, isn't it just the easiest of things these days to manipulate Americans fearful of something. But then that is what hate has always been about.

The bottom line here, however, is that it has been many decades of either Colonial resource rape, rabid anti Communism gone amuck, or a Drug War that excels in outdoing itself in ever more absurd, authoritarian reactionism, to a problem that has everything to do with human frailty, and mental illness, and very little to do with thinking you can just criminalize, and imprison, your way out of people doing bad behavior. And you'd think the folly of this approach would be crystal clear by now as we lead the world in incarcerations, but have no end of the drug problem in sight.

That this is also about dwindling, viable habitat also seems to escape all notice. And whether that lack of viability is an economic problem at its base, or an extreme weather situation at its base, hardly matters because the economics, and the extreme weather, both have such deeply integrated cross threads of mutually affecting process intents; which is, of course, just another way of saying that everything affects everything else. And if you think we can escape our responsibility for what has happened to these people, just because not all of us voted for one policy or another, you are sadly mistaken. And it won't matter how much you turn America into a horrible version of "Bunker-Fortress Authoritarianism, those responsibilities will still be there, inside and outside. Reminding us that our only hope of saving this planet is in getting everyone on board the helping process of fixing it. Because in that might be the possibility of not only a great spiritual reawakening, but one of great prosperity as well.

And it all starts when we realize that it is an obsolete operating system that makes us think that this has to remain a zero sum game. That keeps us locked into fighting each other over scraps, all without ever asking why that system provides working people only with scraps in the first place. While the privilaged few live high and dry, and only cry when we ask them to share the bounty.

The pernicious myth of “open borders”

Let Us Also Try To Remember That The Dr. Malcolm Character

Was a big part of the conscience of that movie.

It was his character, after all, who expressed the appropriate shock concerning the amazing lack of humility being displayed by other scientists, playing with their new instrumentality; as if that instrumentality were just another gizmo to make a proper amount of money with because they were the first, with the cleverest new application. And then summing it all up with the, to paraphrase, standing on the shoulders of others speech, and how, just because you can do a thing, doesn't necessarily mean you should. Not if you really gave a moment to think about the possibility of a whole host of other, unintended effects, that you might be putting into play, down the road. You know. In the long view that they don't seem to know how to pay much attention to anymore.

And so the blowback on that becomes a tax of another sort that working people have to pay, for the most part. And a lot of it, though certainly not all of it, can be laid at the feet of the system that makes the dynamic create not only too many dangerous competitions in the first place, but also incentivizes people precisely towards this kind of vary narrow thinking, and self servingly, "disruptive" behavior.

An Ode to Dr. Ian Malcolm

Baseball Has Always Been A Balance Of Right And Left

Those fields that the limits
make us play between.
And if you build it,
A better place to park
newly illuminated,
ways to dream,
fielding playfully,
but still getting it
done on things to base
our running around on.
You might be surprised
on what can be done
with doing
for both the one,
and the many.
The meaning
of the play, and
the beauty of the fields
are what we all must lend
no more invisible hands
on forming, knowing
that neither the left side
of where we park
or the right
should get all they want.
The way things roll
just won't let us
play for long that way.
So what do you Say?

See Also:

James Earl Jones baseball speech

Putting Our Perceptive, And Conceptive, Abilities Where They've Never Been Before

In the new perspectives that this gives us, you can really begin to appreciate not only the quote that starts this wonderful video, but also the nature of why the most interesting things happen at the boundaries of great differentials. Which is, just as naturally, why the Chinese created the "Interesting Times" curse.

So many things then that we must embrace that would not formerly be thought of as embraceable at all. As in embracing pain with the same understanding you embrace joy (because you cannot have one without the other). Or the loss of great love, with the same passion that made the love the great thing that it was in the first place (so that you can live to love again). So then must we also gaze into the abyss, even as it gazes into us. Or, as the quote starting this video admonishes: "There is peace, even in the storm." And aren't we just in a great storm now. But this too must be embraced, and taken in, so that we may benefit from what comes from "the most interesting things" that happen at those boundaries of great differential. It can be done because we can imagine it being done. And if we can imagine it together we can make it happen. Always remember: Americans with a shared vision are a force of nature. And it's high time we put that shared vision back on the track of the high ideals (themselves the result of former great differentials, perceived, and understood) that gave this nation a way to see how all people could be what they were capable of being. Which will then, again just as naturally, allow the creation of folks who can not only see better choices, but have both the will, the discipline, the meaningful connections, and the sense of wonder, to make the very best choice that can be made.

We will weather this storm. To do that, however, will require that we also embrace who, and what we are; conflicting, difficult, and generally flawed though we may be. And what we are is nothing less than any of the miracles our new abilities keep allowing us to appreciate anew.

Pursuit - A 4K storm time-lapse film

See Also:
[Post Note: I forgot to mention that you really do need to see the Persuit video in no more than half play speed, but that is, certainly, just my opinion. I also thought I'd recommend a few other big music collections to play with this video. Enjoy. J.V.]

World's Most Emotional & Powerful Music | 2-Hours Epic Music Mix - Vol.1

World's Most Emotional & Powerful Music | 2-Hours Epic Music Mix - Vol.2

2-Hours Epic Music Mix | THE POWER OF EPIC MUSIC - Full Mix Vol. 3

[Post Note: This view of our sun is also just as amazingly inspiring, as it is terrifying, at the immensity of great collections of potential. And the kinds of process that can ensue within those collections. You might also want to consider using these links for the background music:
1.

World's Most Emotional & Powerful Music | 2-Hours Epic Music Mix - Vol.1

2. 

2-Hours Epic Music Mix | Most Beautiful & Emotional Music - Emotional Mix Vol. 2

The music included with these image videos is great mind you, but for our purposes something a bit grander might be called for. J.V.]

NASA | Thermonuclear Art – The Sun In Ultra-HD

Another New, Dangerous Competition To Be Worried About

Also a new "gap" to be worried about as well: Whether you are a big behind, or not, in the flipping of "flops," or floating point calculations.

And we have a new meme for mega now in the term "exa," as it will now be known as exaflops; which also means, dare we say it, that maybe one day we'll have computer chips themselves clocking not in measly giga wiggles any more. No sir. For now we can dream of exa wiggles instead (so much more like turning it up to 11 than peta wiggles would be).

You have to state it absurdly because the whole competitive mess has become so absurd. Whether it be for even another round of new nuke, weapons building (something like $1 trillion to pay for), or the ever accelerating rounds of the new software/anti software building, or any of the old, "usual suspects" here (scarce resources, market domination, etc). And again, all at a time when the fate of the planet requires cooperative action.

Our priorities will be straightened out for us, eventually. Of that you can be sure. Whether that's done with even some semblance of thought, or just as a matter of the systems involved re adjusting themselves, as happenstance would have it, is, oddly enough, still something we can have a choice in. That will not be the case indefinitely. That's also something you can count on.

Why the US and China's brutal supercomputer war matters

If It Has Stalled, I May Have A Few Ideas As To Why

Remembering, of course, just what a crazy old, and quite biased, dreamer I am.

Has The Quest For Top-Down Unification Of Physics Stalled?

See Also:

Scientists Propose New Form of Matter Forged in the Heart of Neutron Star

The Problem Here, In My View, Is That Too Many, With Too Much Money

Are also trying to create their own realities. The Zuck. The Amazon man. The people who funded Steve Bannon. The list could certainly go on.

And an even bigger problem for Musk is that most of these people have a good deal more money than he does. All he has is big ideas, and a fair amount of other people's money. And so far his big ideas have been able to defy most ordinary economic realities. And the market instabilities roiling about so far have hurt him, but not quite done him in yet. But that could certainly change in an instant.

All it will take is one big cascade event. One trigger setting off a host of key sector instabilities that will bring those sectors to their knees. And then, as inevitable as gravity itself, big ideas or not, with big money everywhere running to the exits to find sheltering safe havens, what will he do then? What will he do if no one, for say an entire year. or more, can buy any of the things he's trying to sell (lovely idea or not). And there's just no more capital to be venturesome with?

Perhaps More importantly, though, will be what will happen to this supposed reality that he's been trying to hold together, whole cloth, in his own head, unravels? Unravels even beyond his own capacity to hold a meaningful sense of himself anymore?

It may be a more pertinent question than you think when you see how much of his own ego has been put into making this make believe world around him (these shareholder meetings and interviews that indicate a certain imperviousness to the perceptions of the mere mortals that work and report around Mr. Musk).

It is human nature after all. I do it. You do it. Put a lot of ourselves into something we've convinced ourselves we have to have. Or that we were meant to do. And unless you've had some experience with letting go of old, formerly cherished aspects of yourself, to be more in line with things as they are, and not as you wish they were, you could find yourself unable to bend, and change, and are then only left with the option of just breaking apart altogether; something, if you've had to deal with our mental health system, is not a very good thing to behold at all. Nor be anywhere near in fact, because of a lot of emotional, as well as, potential physical, collateral damage.

And then you have to ask yourself: what if a significant number of the economic, and political, leadership, here, and elsewhere, were sucked up into this new kind of, privileged dementia. A dementia of power, and circumstance (because we have a sick operating system still in place after all that's all about wish fulfillment now). And what if one of them actually does have enough money. And enough time, with the right corrupted, gifted people, to help their particular madness along. What happens then? Does that particular version of madness become the new reality?

Do you really want to keep to the same path we've been on here to find out? I for one do not. But then I'm just a crazy old, biased, dreamer. And worse yet, a humanist. I still believe in us.

Is that a crazy idea? Is it just as bat feces bent as Mr. Musk's reality, just different? Maybe. I can't help think, though, that it, at least, offers a lot more probability that a diversity of minds, working together, always negotiating what "reality" is, and therefore, what our priorities should be; that that mode of operation would give us the best chance of working what would then be a mutually beneficial kind of madness. Both for us and the planet, but that's just me of course.

What do you think? Are you thinking enough about this at all in the first place?

I sure as hell hope so.

HE WILL NOT SEE THE TACHYONS COMING
Elon Musk Is Creating His Own Reality

6 diggs Motherboard Technology

The "real-life Iron Man" is a real American superhero.

See Also:

CARE TO SHARE AN UPDATE?

Facebook's Troublesome Local Media Tactics

2 diggs Columbia Journalism Review Internet

Many large organizations have aggressive or tightly-managed public relations strategies. But not all companies are the subject of an international data scandal, and not all companies are traveling throughout the United States, forging relationships with journalists in each of those markets.

[Post Note: This is what happens when you buy into the madness that results from the "Commoditization Of Everything." And also a good number of egos run amok, and not just in the publicized world, but also in the black world of techno anarchists torching, true believers plotting, true parasites gorging, and those who just want to steal enough to survive. J.V.]

WATCHING IT ALL UNFOLD

The Blockchain: A Love Story — And A Horror Story

7 diggs Wired Long Reads

Cryptomania isn't just a mad rush of scams and speculation. It's a utopian dream. And a living nightmare.

[Post Note: Notice here how where some of the biggest companies are, or have been, lead by the some of the biggest egos you might ever imagine. Great things require great people of course, but isn't there just galaxies of different meanings one might apply to what is meant by "great things," or "great people." All depends on how you look at it doesn't it. And the current set of conditions you are trying to stay alive in certainly, but heck. Even Obi-Wan Kenobi knew the whole "it depends on your perspective" idea. His spirit thingy told Luke didn't he. Too bad we might be losing all control on how things get defined anymore. We seem to be leaving it to the questionable sanity of way too few people. In a very corrupting system to to try and live in. Oh well. At least the disaster movies make for some great entertainment, and in 4K now! Wow! J.V.]

The World's Most Valuable Companies, Charted

A Conjecture On What Having A "Body Meaning Space" Component Might Mean

What if, among other things, the body meaning space part of our total perceptual, conceptual, and identity structural makeup, could do something quite special. Beyond just giving a sense of perception in the limited notion of "muscle memory?" What if it could do something much like what we have created these various ways of simulating neural nets do when they are set forth to create all of the miriad weightings given to vast arrays of supposed synapses, and actual neurons; with equally vast subtleties of whether to fire, or not to fire, whether to trigger just the right cascade effect at the right time, so that, say, a face in a crowd can be recognized.

What if the process of letting go, and letting things impinge upon you without filter, actually was doing a fundamentally changing process, even if it was only a new set of entanglements at a very low, quantum scale of consideration, all within the unfiltered receiving, as well, as the reintegration with the old structure of you that launched into a particular session of "mediating."

What if that process was able to do, to a part of us, what the machine learning we put this kind of AI through, does. What if it could imprint into you another kind of codec of understanding about a thing you were very keen to understand. A codec that, if you took the time to learn the discipline of translating from what you felt from that side, into whatever mind side codec of choice fit you; would it then, in that context, provide you with an almost AI learning ability? To provide a deep understanding of complex, analogue data the mind side cannot hope to grasp, other than by the conditional flow of quantity, of very specific parts, of the entire thing. Which, of course, has its own strengths, and weaknesses; just as this would, if it were a real thing.

Just something else to think about.

What Really Is Being Singled Out In A Singularity?

Could this be another one of our elemental intents? Perhaps.

It may, or may not, already be obvious here that my take on cosmology actually automatically implies that a singularity is not necessarily an instant of infinite mass, that then instantly translates into an ongoing expansion of what and when. What it could also be, in this context, is simply a singular set of framing rules by which what and when can then utilize the always present, and never itself ultimately objectifiable, unbounded thing of infinite potential. That thing, as the ultimate of elemental intents, that has to be that which is, was, and always will be; something that has to be assumed for any kind of system of systems; a starting point that needs no other starting considerations. It is what it is and always has; at least as far as we can know now, and until a better way of looking at this comes a long.

The really interesting question for me then is what should happen to one's assumptions concerning a particular vector of experience association if, instead of a certain concept of a bunch of mass being translated to start things off, we started off instead with just rules, much as Stephen Wolfram has suggested, that make use of this "infinite potential?"

The first question that jumps to my mind is how you then make any conclusions as to how much mass can a reality have; especially as it relates to starting out (I know you can make extrapolations of what you observe, but you have to remember that what you are observing is either already hundreds of millions, if not billions, of years old, as well as fact that the baseline of your observations are both physically, and temporally limited). Then, as it works its iterations of ever endless interactions it really starts to cook things up; bouncing around, sometimes banging together, other times just slowly aggregating. Being able to do new interactions precisely because of new aggregates. And then those interactions creating even more complex, aggregated structures still. The governing principle, though, is that "energy can neither be created, nor destroyed," and mass and energy are just two sides of the same coin. So there has to be something that is fixed to keep the mass/energy thing balanced, doesn't there?

Or is that just a formulation bias because we were made inside a system where the mass/energy balance thing was just another of our, as it turns out quite lucky, way of doing things here; and of all of our many quantum branching variations. Perhaps. Perhaps not.

Then there is this notion that we, as sentients, are also fundamental to this process because choice, and meaning, must have processors that can make the choice. Then it logically strikes you, even if it has to cross metaphorical boundaries, that balancing mass and energy, at the largest scales, is not so different than balancing the intents of our other two main elementals, in our own, much more closely scaled concerns, trying to work together as our own special kind of aggregate. Then you throw in the fact that we can imagine far more than what our system's "rules" might allow for, but if things didn't have a way of grasping beyond their reach, so to speak, how does new structure always create ever more complex ways of conceiving new structure; which, with enough power in belief, and self suggestion, we find a way to bring into being. Because, if nothing else, ideas are structures too, and they also possess great power. And we also know that the entirety is semi permeable, so that information leaks across every boundary; always. And we are dealing with infinite potential remember.

What then?

Are we, as sentients, also, at least one key, to the idea of "wormholes" as well? Something about us being able to be sensitive transceivers?

String Theory is involved here too but I have been very reluctant to say anything about it because my ignorance there is even greater than it is for "standard" physics now (which is also another reason why you should always take everything I say with great scepticism). Maybe these vectors of association we call reality are the strings. I don't know, but it is certainly interesting to speculate on.

Just something more to think about. Which of course, I am compelled to do now. You don't need to be so crazy about it certainly. That's what us trained crazy people are here for. But I do think it likely that you ought to be doing more than you are. Remember. The more meaning you find for your perspective, the more perspective your meaning will have. And that becomes a kind of reciprocating engine. Or it certainly could be. Another discipline, like empathy itself, where you need a bit of help from both sides, to keep the peace, and balance, between both sides. Like physical exercise, it is not easy. It is, though, well worth the effort. It has literally, and metaphorically, made me what I am. That and a lot of collateral damage mind you, but they all had their part to play. And as it has happened, I think I, and all of the other stuff, cooked up a pretty good version of me. At least that's the way it feels as I try to share what I am across as many boundaries as I can. And as I always say. Time will tell.

Another Example Of How Everything Can Affect So Much Of Everything Else

One way or another, across all the conditional boundaries, precisely because everything is semi permeable. Even across the boundaries of a multiverse of different, probably related, vectors of experience association, and the hoped for, ever accumulating, structure creating more complex structure, creating the possibilities of more cycles of same, for an infinite trace of expansion; and do this precisely because meaningful connections can be made; and that by the way the rules were set up.

If that doesn't put you both in awe, and great trepidation, if not outright terror, than I guess nothing will.

Rocks Under I-95 Present Odd, and Scary, Threat to Power Grid

See Also:
[Post Note: Everything affects everything else, often as collateral damage, as mentioned in other posts. And so now our decisions have vastly greater effects. And it is one thing to talk about pumping more and more turbulence into both natural, and social systems, over human lengths of time, and seeing the accumulating instabilities that result; which then lead us to ever more dangerous competitions with other players, also making possible, collateral damage decisions; in that context, it is one thing to talk about that kind of input of turbulence, but to then think of doing a quantity of turbulent input, over what is essentially quantum moments of time, in amounts to rival the output of a star, at a single point, over an importantly populated area, is to do as many periods of, of as many centuries long industrializations, as there are nukes that explode, in whatever exchange you might want to imagine. An exchange that probably wouldn't last longer than 20 to thirty minutes or so, give or take a few, to be sure. How anybody thinks that is going to help an already precarious total system is just an amazement to me. I mean, even if one nuke went off, especially in the wrong place (start a really big fire storm some place, set the peat bogs in Siberia on fire? Fed by locked up methane in the not so permanent permafrost? Another underground coal fire? The list could go on) , it could tip the balance of no return for us as having a livable habitat. J.V.]

COLOR US SHOCKED

Morbid Researchers Imagine A 'Best-Case Scenario' For Nuclear War, And The Results Are Grim

6 diggs Gizmodo Warfare

How many nukes could an aggressor nation drop on an enemy before the effects of nuclear winter come back to haunt them?

This Is What "Business As Usual" Created, As Collateral Damage

Do you seriously believe "Business As Usual" is going to even acknowledge it properly at all, much less assume any responsibility for fixing it?

The real question, though, is what are you going to do about it?

DECIDEDLY NOT CHILL
Antarctica Is Melting More Than Twice As Fast As In 2012

6 diggs The New York Times Climate Change

The continent’s rate of ice loss is speeding up, which is contributing even more to rising sea levels.

See Also:

Antarctica is melting faster than we knew. Here's what it will take to save it.

Antarctic ice loss has tripled in a decade. If that continues, we are in serious trouble.

The Possibilities For The New Instrumentalities Of The Mind, And Body

Unfortunately, this is also something you should be very worried about. And I know, there are too many already. But when you are heading into various possible combinations of perfect feces storms, this is what you have to learn to expect.

This is a big part of what scares me about Recombinant Mega Message. As you've seen only an inking of with the new social media manipulations, as well as with media conglomeration, and the ever increasing control of what passes for the making of "informed consent," new instrumentality, new methods. But the real possibilities are far more reaching, and scary.

In the very near future, if not even now, If you can combine the right combination of hypnosis, drugs, audio visual suggestion, and very carefully applied physical stimulus, to a subject (another description to where VR is heading), you will be able to turn that person into a myriad of things both good, and bad; with the bad, I think, being of substantial proportionality to the amount of excess you apply to one factor or another, in either how you go about getting what you want, or the specific goal you had in mind for the overall result. Which is precisely why you do not want people engaging in looking into this sort of thing if "excess" is part of the foundation of your current economic operating system.

Either way, this is power pure and simple. Terrible power to change fundamental aspects of a person's whole identity/meaning matrix. Redefining a person, in essence, on a fundamental level. Something that might be able to be delivered, ultimately, without people being aware of it at all.

And if that weren't bad enough, this really gets ugly when you then add in what will be increasingly possible with genetic manipulation.

Just imagine what will happen if the profit oriented convince enough of us to the idea that, if someone is willing to sign away all liability rights, on being a test subject, for fair compensation, without coercion (so they'll promise profusely), why not let it proceed, full speed ahead? And if they can start testing regardless of liability, what limit on what, too many questionable fantasizers, might be trying to achieve, would there be? That you could enforce in any practical way, even if you could get some watered down rules in place at all in the first place?

And if they can do that, with far too many people, far too desperate, and willing, to sacrifice themselves, if only to give to loved ones, for even a million or more at a go, it would sell. Even if it cost the powerful tens of millions a go, they'd be tempted to do it. They'd be tempted because they would see so many possible fantasies about one aspect, or another of our makeup, that could be made much more useful if it could be amplified way beyond factory specs. And most especially if so under their control.

All this so that the powerful could make a certain response, to a certain stimulus, ever more powerful; and even overpowering. You could do that so that only you could provide the needed input stream, as it were, whatever it might be, wherever it might be needed. And then they might be able to use retroviruses to spread a Trojan Horse entry hack to get you to come to some place for the rest of the procedure (maybe something as simple as a new, wonderful smell you can't quite quantify, but to which you are drawn to, the more of which you get, the better a new drug makes you feel, and so on). And if they had a copy of your specific DNA, they could target you specifically. For whatever bit of whim, or horrible whimsy might come to them as regards to you specifically.

The simple truth here is that so many new good, but also terribly bad, possible outcomes, from the choices that are going to become possible now, that too few people can be empowered to make, cannot be one you could ever rely on for good outcomes for a civilized group of human beings. But this is indeed what you are allowing to happen if you continue to see things in terms of whether it is a profitable commodity or not; which really means that all "values" then are forevermore disconnected from their, original, human origins.

When a thing is then worth what a purchaser is willing to pay for it, and fantasies have become AI aided, electro,chemto,optical, new drugs; drugs that can be realized as a whole being experience of about a supernova of new effect. If that is the case, then all I can say is, pray all you want, but work as hard as you can to make sure that this does not happen.

You Better Pay Attention To This

This is what having information being the "gold that nobody wants to share properly" is all about. This is why you cannot let information be a commodity any more in the first place. Not if you value Democracy. It's just the way it is. In my, undoubtedly biased, opinion of course.

Sinclair Broadcasting, not Fox News, is becoming the truest heir to Roger Ailes' conservative news legacy

See Also:

AT&T wins: Judge approves $85.4 billion Time Warner acquisition

Let Them Eat 4K

TV cake.
We'll have them
fitted for the proper
electrode. The one that fires
the cake place that reality
used to fill you up with.
And you will be made
happy that 8K is even tastier.
And it will fill you
with anticipation at least.

Let them love gold
plated brands of new
resolutions to depict the finest
fidelity of relationships,
so perfect in form
and function.
You'll come
to new heights
of filling low receptacles
not even reality can imagine
in this new sense
of manifested fantasy.

Let them know the perfection
of our branding
new productive
social addictions. 
Because it is working
to make us stronger and
you won't mind
what you won't know
is thoughtless
anymore. Because
the coming and going
will all be worked out
for you, and
us because what emerges
will find a loop
even we can't buy a hole
out of.
Because it will find
what we can't,
the place where "more" resides
and put in the filament
to fire that satisfaction
to make our masters
just as fidelity finalized
as they cleverly made us to be.
It's in the mold
of how things hold
these days.
Whatever else could it
channel churn it all,
very competitively,
out to be.

Is This The Test That All Sentient Species Eventually Face?

Especially if they spring from organic, bio-electrical evolution?

Isn't this the test we face now? And isn't it really more about how we see ourselves, and our place in the cosmos?

Are we, for instance, still the semi-organized, semi-civilized, semi-animals that began truly directed, collective effort? Back when we were also so territorial, and so bare to the bone impoverished for the most part, it had to be harshly hierarchical, and expansionist. And we were impoverished in no small part precisely because of how ignorant we were in those days. And so you can imagine that, if a system were developed to do things better by, it would have to be based in the economics of scarcity in a very significant way, and that harsh, hierarchical control, would be a lingering issue, no matter how much talk would ultimately be put into the power of markets.

But we've come a long way baby, since then. So long indeed. And the mind boggles, continuously, at what new forms of instrumentality keep being created, as well as what each new one can do to outpace what was amazing only a year or two ago. And that too is increasing. And now the economics of scarcity need no longer apply, if we do not wish them to. Because, as I said, it is really more about how we see ourselves now, and how we'd like to see ourselves. Because now we have new ways to do that too. Possible ways of living, taking advantage of new instrumentality where it applies, and is sustainable. Ways to give us not only what we need, but a good portion of what we yearn for as well; those things we put special passion to because they are more than what mere logic, or pure rationality can speak to.

The first thing, though, is to recognize that this choice is upon us. Then we can start thinking about how we're going to go about stopping the "Business As Usual," that now passes for everyday life, and get the negotiations going as to the specifics of an alternative, as well as to the balanced process we'll go about putting in place to implement the alternative.

The thing is, however, a very large majority of each and every one of you has to make the choice to do this; each in your own communities, so that you can decide how you want to set things up there. Understanding that you and yours are going to be owning that community from that point forward. Owning it, however, within a Federated collective that will leverage our cooperation to the greatest degree possible; and we'll do that because it will be in everybody's very keen interest to do that; in their interests because no single community will ever be able to be completely self sufficient. Not with the difficulties that we and the planet face if we still want to have anywhere to live at all. As well as to say a future that will touch the stars because we can find a way for our reach to exceed our grasp. We just have to give up some old ways of thinking, and seeing things, to do it.

Climate change killed the aliens, and it might kill us too, new simulation suggests

See Also:

GOTTA GO FASTEST

Move Over, China: US Is Again Home To World's Speediest Supercomputer

4 diggs The New York Times Technology

Summit’s speeds, announced on Friday, boggle the mind. It can do mathematical calculations at the rate of 200 quadrillion per second, or 200 petaflops. To put in human terms: A person doing one calculation a second would have to live for more than 6.3 billion years to match what the machine can do in a second.

[Post Note: And no sooner do you say new kinds of instrumentality a new one pops up yet again. J.V.]

SCIENCE

"Mind-boggling" Stanford research turns human blood cells into functional neurons

In breakthrough new research described as "somewhat mind-boggling," a team at Stanford University has developed a technique than can transform human immune cells found in a regular blood sample into functional neurons in just three weeks.   Read more