Now That Trump's President... (not any more!)

Yeah, somehow I thought I was in that thread. I'm still rite doe

  On 1/18/2021 at 11:51 AM, Valleyfold said:

24/7 surveillance from the state to stop terrorism. What could go wrong. 

Matthew Cooke.

  On 1/18/2021 at 2:51 PM, dingformung said:

Let's face it, we are seen as cattle and as a ressource to exploit. Combine mass surveillance with machine learning and privatised media and you have a machinery that allows those who are in control of it to do very effective opinion and indignation management, free will - a market disturbance - becomes a managable factor. By measuring your emotional responses to certain stimula all your weaknesses are exposed and can be used to control your behaviour. Once such an infrastructure is fully implemented there is virtually no way to reverse it because all efforts can be nipped in the bud. Maybe it's too late already.

I have these sorts of thoughts often. What allows me to maintain optimism is a sense that the machine doesn't "know" humans so much as it knows how to recognize patterns - specifically, the desiring patterns, the expressive patterns, the logical patterns of 20th century life. my thinking is that there's an aspect of human spirit which is fundamentally beyond all this, beyond the reach of machine logic. Modern life is largely a process of supressing this, belittling it, denying its very existence - but still, it remains. I feel like one of the major themes of the 21th will be war of the collective human consciousness vs a tumescent machinic organizing intelligence which would reduce all of life to predictable patterns of 1s & 0s

(its been a few years since i've read heidegger but pretty sure this is what he was on about in the question concerning technology)

  On 1/18/2021 at 2:51 PM, dingformung said:

Let's face it, we are seen as cattle and as a ressource to exploit. Combine mass surveillance with machine learning and privatised media and you have a machinery that allows those who are in control of it to do very effective opinion and indignation management, free will - a market disturbance - becomes a managable factor. By measuring your emotional responses to certain stimula all your weaknesses are exposed and can be used to control your behaviour. Once such an infrastructure is fully implemented there is virtually no way to reverse it because all efforts can be nipped in the bud. Maybe it's too late already.

we got a glimpse of this with christopher wylie's information on cambridge analytica. we don't know the latest in evil ai and user-data-based manipulation. i would caution against declaring imagined conspiracies where we do not have evidence that they exist. but yes this is a new kind of threat that we must be cognizant of. 

i may have noticed indications of some things going on in certain spaces, but it's hard to tell, and i don't want to even describe any such evil methodologies that i may suspect, in my paranoia. 

we can say that manipulation is absolutely going on. we see systematic hearding of cattle by nefarious actors. the introduction of the online disinfo environment functioned as a third ingredient, binding with deceptive media and corrupt politicians. they wander, oblivous to accuracy, bound by solidarity, increasingly dependent on their alliance as a result of their discordance with truth. they're drawn to cooperation because the power is in reinforced narratives. they settle on the set of narratives that serve the most important objectives of each. in this way, there is a natural, dangerous potential for massive brainwashing networks to form.

the result is the present situation, and their weakness is that they become a joke of an alternate reality. it's easy to describe the mess. they've kicked up dust, in order to try to get away with it. this is why the solution is sociological norms. we need to empower individuals to be able to sort verifiable from not verifiable on their own. then these monstrosities won't progress so far.

  On 1/18/2021 at 4:08 PM, dcom said:

Matthew Cooke.

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it's a well done speech but i wonder if any republicans will see it or watch it if it does make it into their echo chamber. things like this routinely serve as preaching to the choir. bouncing around left leaning echo chambers with self congratulatory slaps on the back and 'i told you so' type shit. asking misguided people to 'check back in to reality' is a tactic that seems not to work. it starts from a place of 'you are wrong' which sort of automatically turns people off. but perhaps some people will hate watch it or some moderate republicans who are already aware of reality but have just been ignoring for the sake  of their political team will watch it and it'll resonate. 

worth making and releasing but so much of this stuff is a fart in the wind. no matter how many facts it has. like rachel maddow's nightly diatribes on current state of whatever is happening. not matter how smart, how well she connects things to history.. it just serves to rile up the base and confirm their feels. 

but yeah.. he makes a lot of succinct statements. hopefully it finds its way into the ears of people who need to hear it. 

  On 1/18/2021 at 8:08 PM, ignatius said:

but yeah.. he makes a lot of succinct statements. hopefully it finds its way into the ears of people who need to hear it. 

Alas, most probably not.

it's pardon week in D.C. y'all... line on up to get blessed by the orange pope. if you have hundreds of thousands of extra dollars burning a hole in your foreign bank account as you sit inside a minimum security cell somewhere, well good news, you can give all that money to some guy who MAY be able to get you a pardon from the don...just make sure donnie doesn't get a cut of any of it because, well, you know, that would be illegal and all:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/01/trumps-last-power-grab-will-involve-around-100-pardons-in-massive-influence-peddling-operation

  Quote

Criminals have been clamoring at Trump’s heels to achieve exactly this result, one well-connected lobbyists helped facilitate—some for a hefty price. Trump associates have apparently tried to monetize their access to the outgoing administration by selling pardons, or the hope of them, to convicted felons seeking clemency, with some allies bringing in tens of thousands of dollars to promote their clients’ position to the White House in recent weeks, the New York Times reported Sunday.

  On 1/18/2021 at 6:11 PM, very honest said:

paranoia

Paranoia itself can be a manipulation tool. It's exactly this indefinite fear, the sense that something sinister is going on but you can't really point your finger at what or where, that is exploited and used by power elites to manipulate your behaviour. Fears have the advantage that they are easy to generate and that they have a much deeper psychological impact on your actions (and inactions!) than opinions. Generating fear is one important element of power politics, very useful indeed.

yeah. i walked into your trap, again, didn't i

treasonous fucks. 

FBI authorities are seeking a Pennsylvania woman in connection with the U.S. Capitol riot earlier this month after an accusation from a former "romantic partner" that she took a laptop from the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with the intention to sell it to Russian intelligence.

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/national-international/capitol-rioter-plotted-to-sell-stolen-pelosi-laptop-to-russian-intelligence/2447489/?fbclid=IwAR3rsKVcrMdEU-GF9Bpk264WfZWI1WTjud8PVlsut3epjtZ34Jr-sVSO3fA

  On 1/18/2021 at 8:40 PM, very honest said:

yeah. i walked into your trap, again, didn't i

I agree with what you said in your earlier post.

  On 1/18/2021 at 8:47 PM, ignatius said:

treasonous fucks. 

FBI authorities are seeking a Pennsylvania woman in connection with the U.S. Capitol riot earlier this month after an accusation from a former "romantic partner" that she took a laptop from the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with the intention to sell it to Russian intelligence.

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/national-international/capitol-rioter-plotted-to-sell-stolen-pelosi-laptop-to-russian-intelligence/2447489/?fbclid=IwAR3rsKVcrMdEU-GF9Bpk264WfZWI1WTjud8PVlsut3epjtZ34Jr-sVSO3fA

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Seriously. Death penalty. No mercy or it's going to happen again.

  On 1/18/2021 at 8:47 PM, ignatius said:

treasonous fucks. 

FBI authorities are seeking a Pennsylvania woman in connection with the U.S. Capitol riot earlier this month after an accusation from a former "romantic partner" that she took a laptop from the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with the intention to sell it to Russian intelligence.

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/national-international/capitol-rioter-plotted-to-sell-stolen-pelosi-laptop-to-russian-intelligence/2447489/?fbclid=IwAR3rsKVcrMdEU-GF9Bpk264WfZWI1WTjud8PVlsut3epjtZ34Jr-sVSO3fA

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So it's far-right message boards that turned her into a Trump goon in the first place. If I remember right it's not much different from ISIS recruitment methods seven years ago.

  On 1/18/2021 at 2:05 PM, Valleyfold said:

For sure, we've already given away our data and privacy, some because of ignorance, some completely voluntarily. It still feels jarring when people openly celebrate state surveillance

Is it really surveillance when the terrorists broadcast it publicly?

  On 1/18/2021 at 9:25 PM, ambermonke said:

So it's far-right message boards that turned her into a Trump goon in the first place. 

yep, message boards...those things can turn mild mannered docile intelligent folks into ranting raving batshit crazy maniacs over the course of time. any long time watmmer I think would vouch for that.

  On 1/18/2021 at 9:37 PM, chenGOD said:

Is it really surveillance when the terrorists broadcast it publicly?

Yeah let's not further cheapen words like "surveillance" and "research" - that's how you end up with QAnon armchair sleuths. 

  On 1/18/2021 at 6:11 PM, very honest said:

we need to empower individuals to be able to sort verifiable from not verifiable on their own. then these monstrosities won't progress so far.

Wish it was that simple. I’ve been having a hell of a time trying to help a loved one think critically about all of these election fraud claims. Motivated reasoning prevents people from doing the sorting you’re talking about.

  On 1/18/2021 at 6:11 PM, very honest said:

we need to empower individuals to be able to sort verifiable from not verifiable on their own. then these monstrosities won't progress so far.

Many of these people utterly lack the resources to do so, or refuse due to identity / tribe / allegiance / cult / conspiracy-belief. It's become a thought disease.

I think this is an increasingly common example where all we know how to do, or are allowed to do, is hope people come around and do the right thing, but that is totally inadequate. Profit is being made keeping them ignorant and riled up.

dan carlin made a great point regarding right wing nut jobs in his most recent podcast.

before the internet, these fringe ideas were not spread nearly as easily. shit like q anon, these ppl didn't have much of a voice.

the only way you heard about stuff like this was if you came out of the grocery store and saw a flyer on your windshield, or if you saw someone holding a sign on the sidewalk lol.

now they have free reign to spread lies and manipulate desperate and gullible people to not only get money from them, but to control them for their own gain.

we're living in an age where jim jones and marshall applewhite from heavens gate have free reign to reach out to billions of potential victims.

idk where we go from here.

  On 1/19/2021 at 3:32 AM, mister miller said:

idk where we go from here.

I've heard (and uttered) this exact phrase more in the last 2-3 months than the rest of my existence combined.

I don't envy Biden.

^ imo part of it has to be regulation of major social media platforms and more 3rd party (read: government, but this will trigger all the 'libertarian' r-words) oversight. more content moderation, more transparency, more public accountability. I'm sick to death of the inaction over the free speech argument. people who harp on the most about free speech either fail to realise or wilfully ignore the fact that it's being used as a shield for all kinds of disingenuous lies that are creating real, physical harm. we all know what's happening, we can all see this unfolding in front of us and we're being asked to ignore it and just live with it in the name of an ideal that has been eroded by power politics anyway. the ideal of free speech means nothing when the most powerful people in the land exploit it to amplify their voices and the voices of other bad actors for their own gain, while ordinary sane voices are just drowned out.

there are various lofty philosophical thinkpieces written by the intelligentsia out there claiming that orangeman shouldn't have been booted off Twitter cos it was "bad for free speech". fuck them. identifying and deplatforming bad actors works, and furthermore is a moral imperative. I've never believed in free speech for all without consequence or judgement, not when you've repeatedly demonstrated that you're using it in bad faith and creating social harm on an industrial scale (e.g. Qanon). I completely agree that the process of judging this is fraught with difficulty and depends very much on who is doing the judging (hence the requirements for transparency and accountability to the public), but not engaging with the problem at all and allowing dangerous lunatics to speak freely is a copout, it's just not good enough. the costs of not acting on this have been mounting for years now. also private enterprises like FB and Twitter are absolutely not obliged to carry anyone's voice regardless of their social or political views, they simply hide behind the free speech argument and say their hands are tied because for them to act would hurt their bottom line.

lastly, here's something you can do as an individual to help fix the problem: delete your social media accounts. it's not as hard as you think, living without that shit.

an insurrectionist lopez appears