Table of contents
FYI. Some explanations are in order.
What is a blog? Explains the difference between a blog and a forum.
Blog Entries List:
Links to blog entries below are listed in descending order starting with the first entry for the year to the newest.
To read the blog entries in chronological order from the first to the newest as I entered them, you can start with the first blog entry listed below and read down from there.
March 20th, 2016: If civilization falls back to the stone age or thereabouts, will emojis become the basis for a new pictogram-based language?
August 27th, 2016: Those eyes. Whose are they? Whose eyes are those?
October 3rd, 2016: It's coming soon.
December 7th, 2016: Hacking entrapment?
December 8th, 2016: The American corporatocracy is now obvious to everyone.
What is a blog?
To those who are asking "what is a blog?", a blog is a personal Web log (blog is a shortened way of saying weblog), a chronicle of events or a journal where somebody writes down things that happen in their lives, their thoughts, and opinions.
What's the difference between a blog and a forum? Some people confuse forums with blogs. A forum is for public discussion. You can look that up in the dictionary if you like. ;-) A blog, being a Web log, journal, or personal diary would be for an individual. Look at some personal blogs and compare them with forums, even those that for some odd reason are calling themselves blogs. You'll see the difference quickly enough.
March 20th, 2016:
If civilization falls back to the stone age or thereabouts, will emojis become the basis for a new pictogram-based language
(This is kind of a response to a picture I saw on the Internet with the caption "What if our use of emojis gradually becomes so extensive that we actually circle back to writing in hieroglyphics?)
It could be that was how it happened before, when a much more advanced and environmentally conscious civilization used technology and building materials which would be biodegradable, breaking down into chemicals which would nurture the soil or at the very least be harmless to it and the majority of their communications were in the form of pictograms, icons and emojis, with very few of them taking the time to express themselves at any length, feeling un-comfortable using a way of communicating with others which would be different than the social norm, which might require long explanations and could possibly put them at risk of being ostracized.
This civilization could have fallen due to the lack of intelligent discourse, fueled by the majority of the population alienating those who pursued knowledge for its own sake, thus leading to fewer and fewer of them choosing career paths which would require someone to acquire several years of education, a doctorate and possibly certifications in their chosen field(s) of expertise. This would at first be marked by the gradual decline in the numbers of medical doctors and nurses which would be the most noticeable as those born in one of the more recent surges in birth rates aged to the point where they would be in more need of medical care.
Other clues would be the lack of quality and durability in consumer goods and appliances. The people could see that products manufactured a mere handful of decades or so in the past worked the way they were supposed to and were built to last, whereas the consumer goods they bought more recently frequently had things wrong with them which were either not discovered during product testing or the manufacturers didn't care if their brand name suffered due to their products being defective, provided nobody got hurt by them. The people, quickly growing dumber, would continue to purchase products of the same brand name (or, a brand name owned by the same parent company), seemingly to have forgotten the product that only recently broke down which was the reason they had to buy a replacement for it.
As their intelligence waned and their complacency grew, the people could have been subjected to tighter restrictions on their freedom and liberty and uttered not a single word of complaint as their rights were systematically taken away from them and they were placed under constant surveillance with even their most overly-hyped electronic devices monitoring their locations and being able to remotely video and audio record all that they do near them. In time, all aspects of their lives would have been controlled and regulated. The various leaders of the world could have fought wars for the diminishing natural resources available, using any weapons needed to acquire their goals, believing that the ends justified the means. The only remnants of such a civilization could have been memories of little colored pictures used to represent an idea or emotion or simply the shapes (such as Sumerian cuneiform).
This is all purely conjecture, of course. After all, things described above couldn't possibly happen even once on a planet populated by an intelligent species. You may as well believe that they would destroy their own habitat for colored pieces of paper. LOL The very idea of it happening repeatedly . . .
But, then . . . How would you know that it didn't? ;-)
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August 27th, 2016:
Those eyes. Whose are they? Whose eyes are those?
Was re-watching Chaos Head recently, and they kept repeating the above line (one is the English-dubbed audio and the other is in the English subtitles). If you like anime that's a little dramatic and thought-provoking, give it a try. If you prefer the funny and cute stuff, it's probably not for you.
Okay, thought it was high time I put in a new blog entry, so, here it is. LOL
Other thoughts, not in any particular order:
Why do optometrists and ophthalmologists still make computer glasses such as bifocals (the top part for looking at the monitor and the bottom part for seeing the keyboard or some printed text you're trying to transcribe) with the upper section limited to about an 18 inch focal length? Seriously, this isn't the 1990s anymore or limited to laptops! Some of us use monitors which are larger than 17 inches (diagonal measure) and we're not all sitting so closely to it that we're practically in screen-licking range! LOL Certainly, there are some gamers out there who prefer to use a desktop and a large LCD monitor to game with and need eyeglasses to see the monitor clearly. If such is the case with you, bring a tape measure with you when you need to get a new eyeglasses prescription. You can measure the distance from your eyeglasses or the bridge of your nose to the middle of your computer screen (you'll need to measure it out first at home) and the doctor can put text on a computer monitor to check if you can see the text clearly enough. While this isn't a perfect solution (what is, these days?), it's a temporary workaround until the eyeglasses professionals get a clue.
Still waiting for humans to make things like water collection AKA water harvesting (for the purpose of using it for drinking water after it has been properly filtered with the last step being reverse osmosis), earthships, wind turbines and using intermodal containers AKA ISO containers AKA Convex boxes AKA shipping containers (just calling them intermodal containers could help stop the confusion, people) legal to use and build everywhere. That, and creating inexpensive graphene (100 times stronger than steel) roofing material with photovoltaic properties. Building houses with the aforementioned things in them would drastically cut down on the need for electricity production in many metropolitan areas as the homes would be cooled and/or heated via sunlight and bringing in cooler air from tubes buried under the ground. They would also use water more conservatively, re-using it after cleaning it up somewhat to flush toilets in the house. In addition to that, those living there could grow their own food. Naturally, each home should be optimally designed for the location it's in with regards to insulation, mean earth temperatures (it varies for the area, soil type and depth) and positioning relative to the sun for the best internal temperatures for the various seasons and so on. Kind of like a Goldilocks zone, being not too hot or not too cold. ;-)
Got bored and created a new look for my Second Life avatar. The glyphs on it may look familiar to some . . . Click to see a levitating and meditating werewolf.
Been watching too many television shows and movies of late. Need to change that habit or I'm never going to get things done and I've been accumulating 'to do' lists of one sort or another for a long time. Ack! Today, at least, I can say I did something. :-) Now, if I could only do that every day . . .
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October 3rd, 2016:
It's coming soon.
This is something I know for a fact. How do I know? If I told you, I'd get one of those looks . . .
Yes, like that look. LOL
While I could say that this has happened before and in a sense, it's just me, experiencing it again, you may interpret it as me claiming that I can recognize patterns and make predictions based on them. However, that's true for many. Why do you think that fragment of song sticks in your mind? Even if it's in a different language?
But, this is something else, entirely. Oh, go ahead, roll your eyes. But, I won't give you the whole 'there have been signs, omens and portents' line. Except, in a way, I suppose I just did . . . Nope, there were no tea leaves, tarot cards, runes, scrying pool, animal bones or entrails involved. What is going to happen will be obvious soon enough.
History shows how people deal with things that are outside of their control. Some of the greatest heroes are people you have quite likely never heard of and are literally un-sung heroes. What defines them as heroes to people like me are how they faced what life threw at them. The sacrifices they made, the suffering they endured and the hardships they had in their lives all were challenges which in some cases, they not only met full-on but also conquered. I could give you the whole 'a coward dies a thousand deaths, but the valiant taste death but once', 'never give up, never surrender', 'you can do it' and similar overly-used lines, which, from many people, are about as heart-felt as the 'our thoughts and prayers are with . . .' line used by innumerable politicians, but, I won't. What I will say is this. You may not succeed but giving up without even trying isn't the answer. You can't let the fear win. Fear is your true foe. Reach into the depths of your soul and use that kernel of strength within you which absolutely refuses to take it laying down. Look into the face of your fear, show it your fangs and give it your best 'I'm going to rip your lungs out and drop-kick your soul through the gates of Hell' growl.
Kick its ass!
*Disclaimer: What you are dealing with may be an impossible task, every situation is different and requires the correct strategy to deal with it. The above is simply my way of trying to give hope to those who may not have any or at the very least, to give them a smile and encourage them to do their best. What actions you take are your own, determined by you. You cannot blame someone else for doing something you know is wrong or has a good chance of causing yourself or someone else injury. Drop-kicking someone's soul through the gates of Hell may tick off a seriously evil dude with an extremely limited sense of humor when it comes to bizarre surprises. Do not mention my name or say that I told you to do it. I get into enough trouble on my own, thanks. ;-) Oh. And, baring your fangs may be misinterpreted. Or worse, correctly interpreted. Growling (or howling) may get you fitted for a straitjacket so you can hug yourself all day long and locked in a room with all white walls. They might not even give you crayons to draw on the walls with your toes.
On a less serious note . . .
The Westworld television series is worth watching, in my humble opinion. This, from a guy who has, of late, grown to hate television shows which seemed to be variations on one over-used theme or another. Then there are the cop shows or police procedural dramas or whatever they're calling them with twists like having a zombie cop, a woman with tattoos which give clues to upcoming events (they didn't listen to Cassandra, either, when she said there were soldiers inside the big wooden horse, but, there was a reason for that), a memory expert who used to do a stage show reminiscent of a Vaudeville Mentalist act, psychic consultants who seemed to have gotten their wildly intermittent and unreliable paranormal abilities as government surplus, a cop with an android, time traveler or extraterrestrial partner and so on. Their name is Legion . . .
The Westworld television show may not be fit for children to watch, depending on your geographical loci and what you want them exposed to. Exposed being the operative word . . . I'm not familiar with your home and this is the Internet where people from all over the world can access practically any Web page. Content ratings in one country are a joke in another or not seen as being strict enough in yet another. There is some nudity (primarily upper torso (which isn't considered nudity in some countries but is in others) of the female host androids and some brief 'pickle' shots for the males, as well), some violence and some cussing. That said . . . The Westworld TV show has a cool vibe to it, as though the Westworld movie and the Blade Runner movie had a love child. The sets, the actors, some of the android hosts seeming to have a nascent consciousness forming in them, the modern music played on a player piano in a western saloon, the odd lines which at times make you either laugh or cringe (a reprogrammed android host who had earlier played a cannibalistic cult leader which quoted Shakespeare for a dinner party, anyone?), all seem to work well together and gave you ah-ha moments when you recognize something (for those who have far too much useless junk in their heads, they'll be pinging like pinball machines throughout the first episode) and a couple of twists you may not have been expecting. No, it's not perfect and yes, some of it could have been done better but . . . this is one of the best science-fiction shows out there right now. If you're tired of the same old, same old with plot lines that feel as predictable and as dated as Tonto going into town and getting himself beaten up, a damsel in distress (come on, people, give us some strong female leads who can not only take it but dish it out!), a misunderstood conversation leading to rumors of a couple being romantically involved, et cetera, give it a try.
Happy trails . . . to you . . . until we meet again . . .
The Devil made me do it! LOL And, my apologies to Flip Wilson . . . Which begs the question, is demonic possession a legal defense? Hee hee hee And, there's my plug for the Halloween AKA Samhain season (which I feel is ruined by certain stores putting up Christmas items even before October 1st and should at least wait until Halloween is over, but, that's just my opinion). Maybe I need some more pumpkin spice coffee . . .
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December 7th, 2016:
Hacking entrapment?
Today about 5:30 P.M., I was approached by a couple of guys in suits. One of them seemed to be the leader of the pair and started questioning me about who I was, where I was from and so on, using interrogation tactics which made me think of the Geheime Staatspolizei AKA Gestapo of Nazi Germany, and one of the Reid techniques, interrupting me while I was answering him, which is a tactic to break someone's confidence.
After a short time of this, I was asked to hack something for them. I got the impression that they didn't mean it in the way some of us think of it like hacking the operating system on your own computer (in the past, many of us regularly hacked winblows' registry), but in the Hollywoodland way, which is probably better described as cracking.
The conversation turned to things like Kali Linux and Tails, encryption, WEP versus WPA, et cetera and I started getting nervous, because it was sounding like some kind of set-up, so I decided to walk away. They weren't too hip on that idea and kept questioning me. Eventually, I just turned around and left.
This whole situation made me wonder if others were getting this kind of treatment and if it was a new thing some law enforcement agency was doing. Maybe all the news stories about cyberwarfare is making someone nervous or they've seen the movie WarGames too many times. LOL
Although, considering the fact that it happened in a Walmart store by the electronics department, it was probably just very aggressive Comcast (that some of us call comcrap or crapcast because of their craptastic service) AKA Xfinity (is it just me or does that sound like the name of a condom?) salesmen. This wouldn't be too much of a surprise, considering the fact that their customer service was rated as being even worse than the IRS. But, being so rude and manipulative as to interrupt people over and over again in a manner similar to that of a cop grilling a murder suspect is extremely disturbing. Is that how they want to be represented in public and be seen treating potential customers? That's one way to encourage more people to cancel the services they have with them like television channels packages as many people simply watch their shows on Web sites that stream it or switch to another provider that serves their area which might offer them a better deal. Hint, hint, readers. That might be worth checking into and you can ask your neighbours what they have and what they think of the service. :-)
At times like these, posting video of these events is very tempting. And, it should be perfectly legal, considering the fact that it was out in public and there was no expectation of privacy. Sousveillance at work! With all of the mobile devices including smart phones, tablets and digital cameras (not to mention hidden cameras, spy cameras or DIY stuff) each being capable of recording video along with audio, about the only place you can expect to have privacy away from home is a doctor's exam room or restrooms.
Er, provided the owner or any of the employees hasn't installed a pinhole camera with a fisheye lens in the ceiling tile holes or the plastic ceiling things that have large square holes or in something like a toilet stall door . . . Got a hidden camera detector and, can you use it while video-recording it scanning for hidden cameras (provided it isn't one of those that skews the results by giving a false positive, but, you can test that for yourself at home before using it in the field)? It might be worth buying one. And, of course, post the video on-line before you confront management with it in case they try to cover it up by stealing your smartphone or whatever you recorded it with! Heh. You should also video and audio record that encounter (if you decide to risk it, as they might not stop at simply stealing your smartphone, but, it could also involve them reacting violently) using your own hidden camera. If they complain after you post that video, they're not only a peeping Tom AKA pervert, but also a hypocrite, and, you'll have it on video that you can splice together and upload the combined version to share with the world. ;-)
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December 8th, 2016:
The American corporatocracy is now obvious to everyone
Donald John Trump was elected, not by popular vote, but by the electors. This was to be expected, as he was anti-climate change. The corporations do not want a president who will cost them profits by reducing their pollution even further. This happened before with the 2000 presidential election when Al Gore was running against George W. Bush. Al Gore had been interested in climate change and the like since his college days. Trump believes that global warming is a hoax and said as much on 11-06-2012 in a tweet on his Twitter account, saying "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive." The corporations preferred to have him in office rather than someone like Hillary Clinton who believed in climate change, opposed the Keystone XL pipeline and got Wal-mart to adopt more environmentally-friendly practices.
For those who are not aware of some of the things the media is saying about president-elect Trump, I'll clue you in on some things:
Authoritarian leanings. He's said to behave like a dictator when it comes to his views on freedom of speech. He'll insult others publicly even via Twitter, but, when others say something bad about him even just quoting him or posting an audio or video of him saying or doing something, he says they're crooked and once sued an architect who voiced a negative opinion of a skyscraper he proposed building for 500 million dollars. There even appears to be a sadistic streak in him, as he said about the latter "I did it to make his life miserable, which I'm happy about."
Donald Trump has absolutely zero political experience (he has never been elected to a public office or been appointed to any government position) or military experience. As far as I know, this is a first for any United States president. Even Thomas Woodrow Wilson had two years of experience in an elected public office (he was the governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913). George Washington had the least political experience before becoming president, which was just a little over a month of being the Virginian delegate to the First Continental Congress and another month to the Second Continental Congress. One of the more famous American presidents, Abraham Lincoln, probably had the least military experience, being just under three months in the Illinois Militia. But, he also had about ten years of experience in public office before he became president, that being eight years in the Illinois House of Representatives and one day less than two years in the U.S. House of Representatives. Donald Trump's only military experience had been in the New York Military Academy, where it was said he wore a uniform and did marching drills. In 2015, he told someone (a biographer) that the NYMA gave him "more military training than a lot of the guys that go into the military." Oh, really? I just can't picture Trump doing a low crawl through mud under barbed wire holding a rifle in his arms.
His hotels and casinos have declared bankruptcy six times. Now, he's going to be running an entire country which is already over 19 trillion dollars in debt.
He wants to increase military spending while at the same time, he's been called a non-interventionist. In February, 2016, he said in the Republican debate in Manchester, New Hampshire, that he would "bring back a Hell of a lot worse than waterboarding" (which Ted Cruz said was enhanced interrogation, yet, I don't recall him saying that he would voluntarily experience it for a few hours). This makes me wonder if he's planning on using the military on American citizens.
In regards to his views on education, he wants to abolish the Common Core standards (they detail what students should know about English language arts and mathematics in each grade level) and get rid of the Department of Education. According to some, his proposed changes would mean that 490,000 teachers would be out of work, eight million students every year would lose their Pell grants, five million children and those students with disabilities would lose money for their education, nine million low-income students would lose funding, three-quarters of a million (or possibly more) students from military families, those living on federal property and Native American students would lose over a billion dollars for their schools. Does he consider education his enemy or a threat to his masters?
Trump's inability to tell fact from fiction: I'll let you look these up for yourselves, but, do a search for the Donald Trump the King of Whoppers for a start. Don't think I've ever heard anyone get the facts wrong as often as this guy and I've been around for a while.
From the news stories, he seems determined to anger as many countries' leaders as possible, which makes me feel like he's painting a kind of target on the back of every American citizen.
The Trump temper. It might be just me, but, in my opinion, letting someone who can't control his temper be in control of all of a country's nuclear weapons is a bad idea . . .
This guy has more flip-flops than a shoe store.
There's a lot of talk out there about how racist Donald Trump is. I won't list all of the examples, but, some of them are noteworthy such as claims that his real estate company had different rental terms and conditions for people of other skin colors. Then, there's him saying that "the only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day" and calling a couple of guys who beat up a homeless Latino man passionate.
Some claim he is sexist. What kind of a man says a woman has the face of a dog, says that breastfeeding is disgusting (the woman didn't even show any part of her breast, she just asked for a break to breastfeed her three-month old daughter) and blames sexual assaults on cohabitation? Personally, I would think the blame should be on those who have no self-control. On September 26th, 2016, he interrupted Hillary Clinton 25 times in the first 26 minutes of the presidential debate (interrupting people even once is rude and shows they have no respect for others and as I've said above, it's a tactic used to break people's confidence such as a murder suspect). In one news story, he's quoted as saying that when you're a star, you can do anything and talked about grabbing women by the p*ssy. Okay, while I realize that being a president isn't the same as a priest, talking about women in such a way is . . . disturbing. Then you have to ask yourself, how is he going to treat heads of state from foreign countries or their representatives if they're women? Can you see a guy like him being capable of diplomacy in such a situation?
He claimed to be a constitutionalist, yet, when asked about Article 1 of the Constitution (Congressional powers), he said "I am going to abide by the Constitution whether it's number 1, number 2, number 12, number 9." For those who are totally clueless (say, for example, a recent president-elect who is expected to swear to defend the Constitution), the United States Constitution only has seven articles. Have you even read it? If you haven't read it, how can you swear to defend it? What about Article 1, Section 9, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution which says that no person holding any office of trust under the United States (like president) can accept any present, office, title or emolument (renumeration, compensation or payment of goods or services) of any kind whatever, from any king, prince or foreign state without the consent of Congress? Wouldn't you be breaking that if any of your businesses (like a hotel or casino for instance) accepted payment of any sort for anything from a representative of a foreign government and maybe even a corporation that is owned by a foreign government?
So, what can we expect under corporate rule? For starters, anything which threatens maximum profit would likely become a target. This would include not only the EPA, which fines corporations for polluting but might also include any laws which would restrict them from setting outrageous prices on prescription medicine. Then there's employee safety and rights. How long will those last if they're seen as a barrier to a bigger profit? What about Medicare, Medicaid and even Social Security? Would those be considered wasteful? Maybe they would see them as helping someone who can't work without help and decide that it would be better if they weren't there at all? How about forced labor factories for those who don't agree with the corporate leaders? I wouldn't expect to see a CEO shedding a single tear over what many of us would view as a form of slavery.
What about the future? Can you imagine what corporations would do if they had sufficient technology to override thought processes and totally control all of your body's limbs? Or, just the latter? Can you imagine the Hell that people's lives would become as they were treated as nothing more than biological robots or automatons working on assembly lines? Before you shake your head and claim that it couldn't possibly happen, you should look up what corporations do to their workers in places where they have no restrictions or where the governments themselves not only allow it but purposely create such situations. The technology itself isn't exactly science-fiction, either. Have you noticed the recent developments in mental control over artificial limbs? If a device can interpret the nerve impulses as a movement to control a limb, how difficult would it be to write a program (or simply to monitor how a brain does it and copy the pattern) for a device to override your control over your own flesh and blood arms? You wouldn't have peace even through death, as knowledge of control over dead limbs through electrical stimulation is centuries old.
Do you want to know something even more frightening? There are far worse things and I have known about them for decades. Hell, I live with them in my thoughts and nightmares every single day. Horror movies are not that frightening to me. The real monsters are humans, which they prove themselves to be whenever they think they can get away with it.
I've done my best to warn people of the coming corporatocracy and the growing influence and control corporations have over politicians, but . . . . Nobody seemed to care or saw the danger.
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