Category: Uncategorized

Chronophagia

(seen in Richard Powers, Overstory)

“It’s not hidden, it’s just spun. Disguised by the propaganda of the mass media who frame this holocaust as a war of defense in response to a terrorist attack while constantly diverting our attention to other far less significant issues.” Caitlin Johstone, 26/4/25

A spittingly angry newsletter about a process that Chomsky called the manufacture of consent (and although Caitlin does note refer to that work directly, it fits …)

An interesting example of the problem of ‘intelligent’ systems built on the coorpus on online content (mostly drivle):
This WP article reports on the stupid health statistics that stupid RF Kennedy likes to put about: e.g. “When my uncle was president, 2 percent of American kids had chronic disease. Today, 66 percent have chronic disease.”

Quote from Article: “This is a favorite line of Kennedy’s — which he repeated while pitching his plan to phase out petroleum-based synthetic dyes from the nation’s food supply. In the interview with Watters, he spoke broadly, about all Americans. During his confirmation hearings in January, he used a similar talking point about children: “When my uncle was president, 2 percent of American kids had chronic disease. Today, 66 percent have chronic disease.

“He’s said it enough that the figures have started to creep into search results of AI models on chronic diseases in the 1960s. Presumably that’s because Kennedy is now a Cabinet secretary and apparently is considered a voice of authority.”

The article goes on to locate relevant stats from the 1960s – the period that RFK is referring to – and shows that his proposition is rubbish (in more ways than one).

Have TV ads (in the UK anyway) become more ‘ideological’ lately, politicising how to live in a darker world?

…’fulfil your self’; ‘be better/more talented/euphoric/safe/in control’ etc. by eating chocolate, jolly betting, using deodorant or, for women, social power thru bladder control …

Stoppit!

If things go on like this we will be living in an algocracy (government by algorithm). It can still be a democracy of course but there won’t be an easy way to know whose promises to believe.

So, no change then!

Somewhere, years ago, I read one the the shortest science fiction stories, just one page of a paperback. The plot line depicted a clever bloke who who tinkered for years to build a super-duper computer; it got better and better (chess and all that), could answer all kinds of questions about arcane maths and philosophy.

Continue reading “Now there is …”

“How inappropriate it is to call this planet Earth when clearly it is Ocean.”
Arthur C. Clarke

Frederick Douglass said: “To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.”

For reasons I won’t go into I just read this paper:

Readman, P. (2005). The Place of the Past in English Culture c. 1890-1914. In Past & Present: Vol. Feb. (Issue 186, pp. 147–199). Published by : Oxford University Press on behalf of The Past and Present Society. http://www.jstor.com/stable/3600854

It discusses the role of history in creating an understanding of the past as a way to understand our present, and then from that we gain an understanding of what we should become present and an idea about what we want to become, i.e. history is about the future as much as, if not more than, the past.

A trivial thing perhaps but it’s harder than you think to change browsers.

Continue reading “Harder than you think …”