Category: Government

Government, Solving the wrong problem

The Robot Way

If you didn’t already see the story, NYC is going to deploy a giant Roomba vacuum cleaner with cameras on it for additional security in the subway. Ok, it’s not actually a Roomba. It’s something called a K5 from a company called Knightscope. This 400 lb robot is equipped with continuous video recording, facial recognition, thermal anomaly detection, and license plate recognition. Somehow this thing is supposed to make the subways safer. Will it work, or is it just a stunt?

The premise of a wandering robot recording everything it sees and potentially spotting crime isn’t necessarily bad. The problem is – let’s say it spots someone stealing a ladies purse (I guess it could be a mans murse to be fair and balanced). Now what? If you’re not going to have real live officers in a place they can respond quickly, what did it deter?

Ah, but we’ll know who you are and come arrest you later for your evil-doing right? As every large city in the country is experiencing, there already aren’t enough officers to respond to real-time calls for service, let alone try to track down and arrest people after the fact. And even if there were, that only does any good if you’re actually going to prosecute and jail them. See California for how that’s working out.

So basically the NY mayor blew a chunk of budget he doesn’t have on a giant Roomba that rolls around and hopefully captures video of crimes that won’t be stopped or prosecuted. Mmm, ok.

It did make me think about the ever advancing security state. What level of privacy are you entitled to from state run surveillance? New York City already has more security cameras than a Vegas casino. They employ fleets of drones to watch any large crowds or gatherings. Obviously the courts have ruled generally that you have no expectation to privacy in public. But if the police were to set up a camera to watch and record your house and had officers actively follow you and video wherever you went, wouldn’t that level of surveillance require a warrant? Or at least some sort of official procedure and sign-off?

I’m not a lawyer and don’t know the answer to that. My point is, aren’t police cameras on every corner recording everything and creating a searchable record the same thing? This just seems like a slippery slope we’re headed down. If you live in a bigger city, the government is essentially recording your every movement, every place you go, what times you went, and who you interacted with. Who knows what they’re going to eventually do with that info. Hmmm. A giant, permanent database of every citizens movement patterns and network of friends and interactions? What could possibly go wrong?

Lawyers, woke liberals, and the George Soros funded prosecutors have made actually enforcing the law impossible. Too expensive in terms of cost, lawsuits, and negative press to arrest, prosecute, and jail criminals. The end result is the free for all you’re seeing in cities in California… coming to a town near you soon!

So politicians have thrown in the towel on any sort of traditional policing. The potential cost of doing the hard work to arrest bad guys is too high. Confronting a meth’d out psycho threatening people with a machete never ends well. Someone will capture it on cell phone video and the bed wetters will scream for the creation of crisis intervention teams to pass out therapy bears instead of armed police officers. And god forbid the subject is non-white. RACIST!

The end result is that the politicians will trade your freedom for the illusion of security. See, we’ll put all these cameras up and it will be like a force multiplier. We’ll see crime anywhere in the city and can respond. It’s like quadrupling our police department! Except there’s nobody to respond. Nobody to investigate. Nobody’s going to go track down that car jacking that was recorded.

So every city now has data centers containing multiple exabytes of stored surveillance data on its citizens. I know I’m a tad more skeptical than the average guy… but I’m pretty sure some bureaucrat will find a use for all that information.

You know, for your own good and all.

Government, Politics, Solving the wrong problem

Lesser Of Two Evils

I get it. Everyone thinks Russia is evil. Putin is a monster that launched a war that has resulted in massive loss of life. I think the reasons he did it are complicated and will be debated for years, but implementing a blitzkrieg march straight through to the Netherlands is not one of the reasons. You’re quite naïve if you think that was the ultimate goal. You can debate all you want about good vs. evil, ulterior motives, blah, blah, blah… What’s important is – here we are. Now what?

How does this play out? The war hawks claim we’ll support Ukraine to the end. So what does that look like? Russia is not going to suddenly say sorry and pull back to pre-war borders. Therefore, the only way to force Russia back East is to inflict the complete and total annihilation of the Russian military.

Given that, I have an honest question:

Can anyone give a plausible scenario in which that happens? I’m honestly interested in hearing from someone who believes that’s possible.

Ukrainian losses are in the ~300,000 range, with another 100,000 or so wounded. Kill ratios are 8-15:1 depending on the region. Russia has decimated Ukrainian equipment and artillery. Ukraine has run out of fighting age males. They are snatching people off the streets and conscripting them into the military. They’re now taking women and old men. They’re threatening anyone who fled the country with arrest and forfeiture of their passport/citizenship if they don’t come back to fight.

Russia currently has about 750,000 men in theater, with plans to ramp up to 1.2 million. They have complete air superiority. They have very sophisticated aerial/drone and artillery targeting capability. They’ve ramped up their wartime production of shells, missiles, and ammo to the point they can fire many hundreds per day without fear of running out. They’ve built three rings of massive concrete defensive positions. There are hundreds of thousands of mines to cross before you even get to their defensive lines.

Please tell me how Ukraine defeats that?

The answer is they can’t. It would take the entirety of the US military plus NATO forces to attempt to defeat them. That would be literal world war three. The problem with that scenario is that Russia will not go quietly. I guarantee they’ll use tactical nuclear strikes along the western border of Ukraine before they allow NATO forces to advance further towards Russia. And we can all guess where that would lead.

So now what? Please, someone give me a scenario in which this plays out different if we keep going down our current path.

At this point it doesn’t matter any more if you think what Russia did was right or wrong. It has to stop, and soon. The longer this goes the closer we get to the nightmare scenario. I see our administration and virtually the entire congress gleefully speeding down this path with zero plausible ideas on how it ends.

I don’t know how we convince our leaders that what they’re doing is madness. They don’t listen to the citizenry and the press is in lockstep with these fools. How do we stop this?

I get it. Russia bad, Ukraine good. I don’t like what happened any more than the next guy, but I’m starting to think that if you have any interest in visiting Europe you may want to do it soon. It may be a smoldering crater before too long.

Government, Solving the wrong problem

Thinking About Borders

I woke up thinking about our southern border. I find it odd that our government basically has thrown in the towel and simply left the door open. Why would we do that? I do not buy into the vision that some evil WEF cabal is orchestrating the great replacement theory. Yes, the overall identity of the United States is being slowly replaced. I believe somewhere around 2030 whites will no longer be the majority in the country. This is already the case in California, with Texas not far behind. But I don’t think it’s intentional. The left certainly cheers this development, but I don’t think anyone in government is intentionally planning it.

I think we’re not addressing the border issues due to fear of the Mexican cartels. Drugs, guns, and human trafficking is a 10+ billion dollar a year business for the cartel. They will would not take kindly to that revenue stream being shut down. The Mexican government is fully controlled by the cartel and actively support the massive migrant flows north. Just the other day there was a record overnight surge of illegal migrants crossing the border. Video showed Mexican police escorting buses of migrants to the border. Don’t you find it odd our government says nothing about this?

The DEA assesses that Mexican cartels are operating in at least 1,286 US cities. One of the reasons you rarely hear about the notorious bloods and crips of LA is that the Sinaloa cartel came in and killed many of them and took over. I think it’s fair to say the cartels own the border and many of the US border towns.

The cartels have already infiltrated the border patrol. As far back as 2010 there were congressional hearings into corruption in the border patrol. In 2020 a report came out that said the CBP internal affairs believed that as many as 10% of border patrol officers were involved in corruption. That’s Mexico levels of corruption.

So why won’t our government do something about it? I think it’s fear of the all out war on the border that would ensue. If we actually tried to stop the cartels it would quickly escalate to a hot conflict with huge civilian casualties. I think you’d start seeing the level of violence you see in Mexico on US soil – bombings, beheadings, bodies left in the street, and public officials being assassinated.

Our public officials don’t have the stomach to put troops on the border. Of course there’s also the weird legal wrangling that would occur due to the posse comitatus act that prohibits our military from acting as law enforcement on US soil. If a president actually tried it, we’d end up dithering for years as the Supreme Court decides if it was a law enforcement action or defending our border from foreign invaders.

So where does that leave us? No politician has the gumption to start a hot war on the border and have to explain civilian casualties. We have effectively ceded the border to the cartels. They are free to operate with near impunity and continue the invasion of US cities. Gee, I wonder why the fentanyl issue is escalating? I’d be curious how many local politicians in the US are actually being bribed by the cartel? I’d bet it’s way higher than anyone thinks.

So what happens next? Nothing good. California has essentially stopped policing. Been watching all the looting and smash and grab videos lately? Just wait until the cartel gets bolder. No California mayor is going to do anything about it. Texas and Arizona are helpless. Their border towns have been completely overrun. Our government will prevent any citizen groups from banding together for protection. It’s not a pretty scenario.

Politicians calling for “building a wall” are just juvenile. It won’t happen and we won’t enforce it. The left is busy reframing the discussion as a refugee issue. Any talk about closing the border is instantly countered with racist and white nationalist accusations. Want to see the future? Spend some time looking into what South Africa has become.

This is how you lose a country.

Government, Health

Let Me Say It Louder

The administration is indicating that there’s an updated covid vaccine about to come out and we should all get boosted. Additionally, there’s lots of talk about mask mandates making a comeback. The appropriate answer to both of these is not just no, but HELL NO. We’re not going down that road again.

The vaccine/mask thing is one of the things I’m really angry at myself for. In the beginning I was all-in for the vaccine. I praised President Trump for finding a way to test in parallel to accelerate the release of the vaccine. I believed in our health agencies and in science. As an RN, I honestly believed the CDC, NIH, and WHO all had the best interests of public in mind. After all, they were scientists and healthcare professionals, right?

When the vaccine was just about to be released for frontline workers, I talked to one of our neurologists about it. He felt very confident in its safety and how they went about testing it. I was all in. I’d already been working the covid floors every week, so having an additional layer of protection seemed appropriate. I got the shot the first week it came out for healthcare workers.

When masks were mandated for workers in the hospital, we were in the midst of the supply chain crisis and zero masks were available. We were issued one mask every three days. Wearing the same mask for a 12+ hour shift was gross. It was downright nasty to wear it for two more days. It was quickly obvious that forcing us to wear masks was for show only. Most of us let them dangle around our ears or kept them pulled down to our chins and we’d quickly pull them up if hospital administrators walked around.

Note: working the covid floors was different – we wore proper fit-tested N95’s, face shield, and used good PPE don/doff procedures when in a room with a covid patient. After all, we’d been working in rooms with highly contagious and airborne diseases for years prior to covid. This was not new for us. I did not know of a single nurse that contracted covid from a patient.

Soon, the mask thing in the public got crazy. The administration and Fauci were pushing “masking” like it was the holy grail that was going to save us from the pandemic. It still boggles my mind that people actually thought wearing some sort of nasty bandana around their face was really doing anything. I’d go hiking and get yelled at because I wasn’t wearing a mask. As a society we collectively lost our minds.

Here’s the part that makes me mad at myself. I went along to get along. I was already being forced to wear a mask by my employer to keep my job. I wanted to go to the grocery store, Costco, get on an airplane, etc… it was easier to just wear the mask than make a big stink.

I called myself a Contrarian. I was sure I’d be the one to resist government overreach and public hysteria. Nope. I folded like a wet blanket. It was easier to just comply so I could participate in society. So much for principles.

Meanwhile, the vaccines weren’t working. In fact, we made things worse by forcing a non sterilizing vaccine on the public and thwarting any sort of herd immunity. And then the side effects and health problems started arising from the shot. My hospital was firing any RN’s who refused to take it. Many of the nurses let go were younger women concerned about long term, unknown reproductive health questions. Keep in mind, we were desperately in need of nurses. At the time we were surviving only with government FEMA nurses and travel RN’s. The hospital administration thought firing nurses who refused the vaccine was the right thing to do… forgetting that they had no problem sending us in to work the covid floors pre-vaccine and with reused PPE and masks.

The long term damage the federal and local administrations did to the reputations of the scientific and health communities is incalculable. I no longer have any faith in anything the CDC or NIH says about anything. Sadly, I will question the efficacy of most new medical/pharmacology “breakthroughs” moving forward. The profit over safety pipeline has become crystal clear.

But more than anything, I’m frightened how easily all of us just went along with something so we could fit in to society. I knew masks were stupid and pointless, yet I did it anyway so I could go to Starbucks. We are sheep. It shows how easily we’ll give up our freedoms for the illusion of a little safety. That scares me.

So, you can take your mask and shove it where the sun don’t shine. I will not comply.

Government, Politics

Same Story, Different Day

I’m pretty sure I write the same thing every four years. What happened last night was not a debate. A debate is someone putting forth their ideas/opinions and allowing others to present counter arguments in a way that allows the audience to judge who has the better argument. Last night was a real housewives screech-fest, where the goal is to be the best at shouting over everyone and having the best cutting one-liner moment.

According to Twitter/X, whoever your candidate is was the winner. Every pundit has declared that candidate X DESTROYED candidate Y. So the end result is that whoever you supported going in… is still who you support today. What a pointless waste of oxygen.

Here are my takeaways from the little bit I watched last night, combined with reading the “news/analysis” this morning:

  • Everyone except Vivek and DeSantis are Bush era neocon clones who will bumble us into WWIII.
  • Vivek is a Trump clone desperately trying to capture the Trump base.
  • DeSantis seemed the most “presidential”, but had a bad moment with the hand raising thing.
  • Christy is an unlikable anti-trump plant who needs to give up and go back to the buffet.
  • Pence loves the baby Jesus. Did I mention that he really really likes Jesus?
  • Haley is Jeb! Bush reincarnated.
  • I think there were two other guys there, who’s names I don’t know.
  • Trump is still the nominee.

It’s a sad state of affairs. We are at the end stage of the republic, given our current trajectory. And what is the focus the GOP thinks we need to hear about? Some viral song, abortion, and loyalty pledges to Trump. It’s not a winning combination.

The republican house will continue writing sternly worded letters. The senate is already a complete uni-party. The GOP will put forth a nominee who has zero chance of winning. President Newsom will transform this country in eight years to something truly unrecognizable.

All empires eventually come to an end. Fingers crossed ours simply slowly fades away rather than a more violent undoing. I still have some travel plans and landscaping to finish.

Government, Politics

Shoot At The King

As the old saying goes – if you take a shot at the king, you better not miss. Trump took his shot at the deep state and the DNC and missed badly. He thought his name, self-declared fame, and his money would protect him. He was wrong. Trump is done. This is not some MAGA rally where he can throw out pithy statements to thousands of fawning fans. There is a very real possibility he sees prison time. At the very least he’s tied up in very expensive legal quicksand for the next decade.

For all the Trump fanboys who disagree… where’s the judge who’s going to dismiss the indictments? Where’s the RNC who’s going to go to the mattresses to fight this? Trump has burned every bridge possible. What politician or businessman is going to commit their future to the Trump train at this point?

No, the sad reality is that Trump will spend whatever remains of his campaign time fundraising and then siphoning off most of that to his legal defense (he’s already doing that if you haven’t been paying attention. He has the money to repaint his private jet but not for legal fees apparently). He’s too much of a narcissist to admit he can’t win. He’d rather torpedo the rest of the party and play the martyr when Gov Newsom takes the oath of office.

Normally this would be a who cares moment. A politician overplayed his hand and is regulated to the ash heap of history. Happens all the time. But this feels different. This feels dangerous.

The near unchecked power of the deep state and the DNC is frightening. The RNC continues to demonstrate we have a Defacto uni-party. Oh sure, there’s a few republicans that write sternly worded letters but that’s simply throwing spitballs at the castle walls. Currently the power of the federal government is unchecked and is being wielded to fundamentally alter this country.

When this election is over, there will be millions of very angry voters. A MAGA crowd that will feel disenfranchised and betrayed by their country. And that anger is going to be stoked by quite a few people looking to use that anger to their advantage. Odds are that most of that anger will be shouted into the Twitter (sorry, X) void. But… if the right personality comes along… someone with charisma and persuasion ability… someone who can organize and channel that anger into action – bad things could happen.

And President Newsom has already demonstrated as governor that he does not tolerate dissent. Lockdowns and curbing of rights in the name of safety are a given. And that my friends, is a recipe for a real coup. Not a silly J6 coup, but actual violent attempts to overthrow the government. Who knows what happens at that point?

Maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps the angry right is all bark and no bite. Generally speaking, Americans have been turned into herd animals. All we want to do is chew our cud and watch TV. Odds are that we wake up a decade from now and wonder where our country went.

We’ll have given up our freedom and national identity for the promise of safety from mean words, climate change, and science deniers.

Maybe. Who knows? The future is hard to predict. Besides, there’s that minor little WWIII thing developing that could alter everything. Regardless, the next few years are going to be an interesting soap opera to watch.

Government, Politics

Fair And Balanced

If you’re new here, let me add some context to how I think. If you didn’t read the sidebar, I am a Contrarian. So much so, I offer an on-line course teaching Contrarian skills. $29.99 a month will earn you a certificate as a registered Contrarian (I jest… or am I?) As a Contrarian, my view of 99.9% of politicians starts with the word tar and ends with feather. I have no allegiance to any political party. I look at all of them with equal scorn. Why am I telling you this? Well… I was going to stay away from politics for a while, but I couldn’t resist this latest example of bias. I promise we’ll get back to some exciting weight loss news shortly.

We’re going to start by going waaay back to 2016. Don Trump Jr had a meeting with a Russian attorney in his office at Trump Tower, along with other Trump campaign folks. The premise was that the attorney was offering damaging info on Hillary Clinton. The event itself isn’t important, other than the media coverage it spawned. Weeks/months of wall-to-wall, 24×7 analysis by the talking heads on cable “news” and approximately 5 billion words written by print journalists (those are the serious journalists, if you didn’t know). The event even has its own Wikipedia page.

Fast forward to present day. The FBI has produced a document in which a whistleblower alleges the President of the United States, and his son Hunter Biden, were paid five million dollars apiece by a Ukrainian energy company. The FBI was forced to release the document following a game of political chicken and threats of contempt of congress. The document itself is unclassified. Even so, what the FBI produced was heavily redacted.

Yesterday, a US senator went to the floor of the senate and stated that the whistleblower in the FBI document also has audio recordings. 15 of Hunter and 2 of the President, supposedly discussing something about the alleged bribes. I mean, come on, audio recordings are the holy grail of bringing down cover-ups and corruption. For juicy stories, it doesn’t get much better.

Here’s my point – in a normal world, that would be news. Even if it eventually turns out to be nothing more than some sort of Sydney Powell, release the Kraken nonsense, it is news.

In a fair and balanced world, a world of unbiased journalists, this would have wall-to-wall coverage similar to the Don Jr story. Journalists would be racing to be the first to scoop some sort of corruption involving the resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and his family. Instead… crickets.

All the major news website coverage is Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, DeSantis, Trump, Trump, Ukraine counteroffensive is winning. Virtually zero about this story. Memory holed faster than the Hunter Biden laptop story.

I don’t care what side of the political spectrum you’re on – this should bother you. I get that you want your team to win. But a media that so blatantly suppresses news for one side is scary. The entire point of journalism is to hold the monsters in power at least semi-accountable. When one side can operate consequence-free, bad things happen.

I urge you to check your political affiliation at the door. Become a Contrarian. Be suspicious of EVERYTHING. Be extra wary when there’s a concerted effort to not report something.

Given everything going on in the news, I’m going to double down on my earlier predictions, with one change:

  • Trump will continue running until the bitter end, even if it’s from a jail cell.
  • Trump’s continued campaign will effectively create an RNC split ticket. The MAGA folks will go down with the ship, especially with the latest indictment. They won’t vote for DeSantis. The Never Trumpers are, well, never Trump. Game, set, match. DNC win.
  • The change – Biden is officially out. He’ll either have an unspecified “health issue” or the DNC will hang him out to dry with the alleged bribery allegations. He’ll drop out of the race.

Welcome President Newsom.

Daily Life, Government, Politics

It’s All About Equilibrium

equilibrium noun a state of rest or balance due to the equal action of opposing forces.

Our world will do everything in its power to achieve equilibrium. Fluids, gases, nature, economics, politics, relationships – everything needs balance. Fluids move in and out of cells due to unequal pressures. Remove all the predators from a habitat and the deer population will explode. Our financial markets can’t survive extreme highs or lows indefinitely. Humans don’t thrive without a healthy work/life balance. The world constantly strives to be at a steady state. It’s one of the immutable laws of nature.

The 1950’s ushered in an unbelievable level of prosperity in the United States. That prosperity trickled out to the rest of the world and raised the economic prospects of most nations. The political world, broadly speaking, does everything possible to maintain that prosperity and balance. How it does that is the subject of untold numbers of history books. The Deep State, The Enterprise, The Cabal – whether you think there’s a coordinated group that controls the levers of power or just simply individuals hungry for power and money, the end result is the same. The desire to enforce US hegemony has resulted in a hundred years of the United States pulling the strings and levers of the world.

We’ve initiated coups, fostered wars, manipulated the media, tweaked monetary policy, and controlled industry. All of that is neither good nor bad. It is what it is. It’s a system trying to maintain what it considers as equilibrium. It’s the nature of the world – if we weren’t in control, someone else would be. You and I have been massive beneficiaries of that system. You may not like how the sausage is made, but most people don’t complain about how good it tastes (sorry vegans). There’s a reason a million people a year are streaming illegally across our borders.

So, here’s what’s interesting. Despite the States never ending efforts to prevent you from seeing the sausage making process and maintain what it considers the status quo… we have just enough freedom to question things without fear of the Stasi showing up in the middle of the night and disappearing you (mostly). Recently, the fourth generation of the internet, coupled with Moores law, has enabled the population to share pesky, unpopular, information outside of the mainstream press at a level and speed never before imagined.

We’ve seen it in fits and starts. Alternative, fringe, conspiracy blogs. The Drudge Report (early days). Alex Jones. But now… now we’re seeing non-traditional views carve out a sizable chunk of the mainstream information landscape. I’d argue Joe Rogan was the pioneer. A source of information and views from every side of the spectrum. Uncensored and fed to a massive audience. It’s fair to say he spawned the podcast revolution. More recently, Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter further changed the information landscape. A sudden, shocking dismantling of what was a government influenced censorship tool, to something that has quickly evolved into what looks like a true public square of discourse.

You may not like the discourse – but it’s hard to argue against it being much closer to multiple sides freely shouting whatever they think is the truth (or whatever version of the truth they want to push). I want you to be able to scream whatever cockamamie theory you have at the top of your lungs. What I don’t want is a Ministry of Truth deciding what truth I get to hear.

And now we have the climactic moment of this film. A recent grand trifecta of events. First up is Tucker Carlson. Fox fires him. He quickly starts a new “show” on Twitter. Now you may not like him or anything he says. But his first episode has 110 million views. His just released second episode is at 30+ million views in the first nine hours. Fox News, the highest rated cable show for years, rarely hit more than 2.8 million views for any show. That’s a staggering difference in reach.

Next the FBI just released, under threat of a congressional contempt order, info about allegations that indicate President Biden took a 5-million-dollar bribe from Ukraine. Prior to the new Twitter, that would have been memory holed out of existence instantly (see Hunter Biden laptop). And finally, cough, cough, coincidentally on the same day as that FBI release, former president Trump and the current leading presidential candidate, was indicted for the same thing Hillary and Biden did (possessing classified documents). Hmmm nobody’s above the law, right? The avalanche of online outrage right now is at a level I haven’t seen before.

So what’s my point? I don’t care if you do or don’t agree with Tucker, Trump, DNC, RNC, Elon Musk, the FBI, or the DOJ. Up until this point the State has been able to exert enormous pressure to control the narrative. That dam has been breached. Tucker’s new platform signals the official end of the mainstream media as the primary information source for millions upon millions of people. Tucker and/or his new platform may or may not survive, but it’s a clear sign we no longer have to rely exclusively upon the various news talking heads to feed us the official party line.

The State, and the mainstream media, have pushed the scale of information control so far out of whack, something is going to happen. A very large portion of the population are angry. They’re tired of a narrative being forced upon them. They’re tired of being lied to. I think we’re about to see an absolute flood of information reach the population that is different than what they’ve been told. An angry populace is craving to hear something closer to the truth. You are about to see the field of “non-traditional” journalists explode. Thousands of people jockeying to leak the latest bit of government overreach and corporate manipulation without fear of censorship.

Truth, rumor, scandal, targeted misinformation – all of it is going to be sucked up by millions of people craving something closer to the truth like a dry sponge in a glass of water.

An angry, unsettled population is a dangerous population. The more details about how the sausage is made are made public, the more there will be shouting for accountability and lashing out in frustration. And the more unsettled the population becomes, the more likely it is for the State to crack down. The State will not give up its power and control without a fight. And that my friends, is a recipe for scary times. There might be one or two historical precedents for such scenarios if you wanted to look.

Part of me craves the idyllic 80’s and 90’s of my youth. Oh, the same crap went on behind the scenes… we were just mostly oblivious to it. If Ted Koppel or Dan Rather didn’t say it, it didn’t happen. But now – as the famous saying goes, do you want the blue pill and wake up happy in your bed, or do you want the red pill and see how deep the rabbit hole goes?

Nature craves equilibrium. People are slowly waking up to how unfairly the game is rigged. A whole lot of folks are about to take the red pill for the first time. For good or bad, the scale will eventually find a way to swing the other way.

Let’s just hope we don’t overcorrect.

Daily Life, Government, woke

I Think It’s Over

Yesterday was a good day. The temperature approached 70 degrees. We got a bunch of yard work done. Multiple trips to the dump. I took a nap. We went out to dinner and watched the sunset over the lake. Just before bed, I rescued my garbage can from a marauding bear. We’re very blessed to live where we do and to be as fortunate as we are. It’s easy in my little corner of the world to feel like everything is hunky dory.

Meanwhile, there’s a literal invasion crossing our southern border. 10,000 people a day from countries across the globe. Folks who have limited job skills, can’t speak the language, no money, and carry scabies, lice, and TB. And our government facilitates it. We bus them to cities across the country. We give them cell phones. They receive court dates 4-5 years in the future. The majority of the migrants are single, fighting-age males. Your government is doing everything possible to hide this.

They are not leaving. No politician has the political will to take any meaningful action. We have conceded the southern border to the cartels. The cartels have clearly taken over the southern border states. They are now the primary gang in most major cities. Given our nationwide push to defund police and elect liberal district attorneys… how long do you think it will be before major parts the US look like cartel-run Mexico?

Mobs of violent criminals operate with impunity in major cities. They loot and steal without fear. Major brand name stores are pulling out of big cities at a record pace due to crime. If you’re stupid enough to try and defend yourself or others, you will lose everything. You will be prosecuted and vilified by the media. Antifa operates at will in most big cities and are never targeted by police or the FBI. Yet if you protest drag queens targeting children, you’ll be guaranteed to have federal agents busting down your door. Hate crime!

Our current national debt is $31.7 trillion. Our debt service alone is equal to our defense budget. The republicans have passed a bill raising another $1.5 trillion in borrowing, and the democrats immediately accused them of trying to starve grandma. These are not serious people. Debt, inflation, war, and a banking crisis don’t bode well for a long-term stable economy.

The average person in this country probably rarely hears any of this. CNN won’t cover it. They’re too busy trying to generate new Trump outrage for ratings.

So, what happens next? It’s the decline of the Roman Empire, 2.0. In my opinion, we’ve crossed the tipping point. There is no going back. It’s been a slow decline, but now it’s beginning to accelerate. I don’t think the collapse happens in my lifetime… but I also didn’t think society would crumble as fast as it has.

I fear two scenarios. The first is large portions of the country finally deciding they’ve had enough. Vigilante mobs form. Private “security” groups organize to patrol and protect neighborhoods. Violent encounters ensue with criminals and clashes with government forces trying to stop citizens taking matters into their own hands. The wild-wild west on steroids. The cartels will thrive in this environment.

The second scenario is the rise of a hugely influential politician. One who pushes an extreme nationalism as an excuse to massively expand the security and military industrial complex. Someone capable of convincing the masses to give up just a little bit of freedom in exchange for security. As a nation of sheep, we would happily follow a charismatic leader down a dark road. A real-life handmaiden’s tale.

In the face of my Sunday morning dystopian view, what can we do? Not much. Long-term, I think it’s going to happen no matter what. Do everything possible to get yourself out of bigger cities and go to a small town and put down roots. Be ready for food insecurity. Read and watch news sources other than mainstream media. Be a contrarian and reject the status quo. Learn to be realistic about what’s looming around the corner and realize that nobody’s coming to save you.

But then again, maybe the future will be amazing! Flying electric cars and helpful home assistant robots in every home. A borderless society with people living in peace, love, and harmony. A gluten-free and tofu driven nirvana.

Maybe. Meanwhile, enjoy life. Go do something fun today. Tomorrow is not a guarantee.

Daily Life, Government

Do You Have A High Social Score?

Every single aspect of your life is available on-line. Every purchase you’ve ever made. The prescriptions you had filled. Every text message you’ve sent. Your phone calls. Any picture you took with your phone. Every single thing you’ve liked, retweeted, or commented on with Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Your browsing history. It’s all out there in the cloud. Don’t believe me? If you use Google Maps, go have a look at your timeline. Every mile you’ve ever driven, walked, or traveled is there. Every single store or destination you visited. How many minutes and hours you spent driving or walking. It’s a bit disconcerting the first time you see it if you didn’t realize all that info was being harvested.

Your devices are listening to you 24×7, vacuuming up everything that’s said. How do you think those recommendations on YouTube or ads in your Instagram feed get there? All that data is being collected and mined for information about you. Why? Right now, it’s mostly so companies can market and sell to you. That information is collated and sold to anyone who’s willing to pay for it. Increasingly however, that information is being used to authenticate who you are.

I mentioned it previously – Dynamic Knowledge Based Authentication. Companies buy all this personal information about you and then use it to generate authentication questions. It’s presumably more secure than the previous method of Static Knowledge Based Authentication. The static version was the canned questions you’d set up and be asked; what was the name of your first pet, or what city were you born in. The static version has become too easy to hack, so smart dynamic questions are now generated from the massive databases of information collected about you.

As we start to add AI to this huge collection of data gathered about you… systems are soon going to be able to start making judgments about you. They’ll be constantly creating and updating a profile of you. And that, my friends, is the beginning of the end. Here’s a few scenarios I can think of off the top of my head:

  • You go on to OpenTable to make a dinner reservation for tonight. Hmm, not a single restaurant has a table available except for a few one-star, lower end places. That’s odd for a Tuesday night. Not really – your profile indicates you infrequently eat out, most of your clothing purchases are from Costco, and you rarely buy alcohol. Odds are you won’t order drinks, may share a plate, and probably aren’t a big tipper. The algorithm will hold on to that reservation for someone with a better profile.

  • You’re trying to find a new job and haven’t received any interviews, despite applying to at least 50 different job postings. You went to a good school, have a killer resume, and have been a loyal employee for many years. What’s wrong? Well, your profile indicates you might be a problem employee. You travel a lot and seem to be a big shopper – often during work hours. You comment quite a bit on social media and appear to be vocal about your opinions. Based upon your shopping habits, you buy a fair amount of alcohol and there are quite a few pictures of you drinking with friends. You’re not a good risk, despite a solid work history.

  • You have a USPSA shooting match coming up next month, so you go on-line to buy some bulk ammo for practice. For some reason the sale won’t go through. You contact your credit card company, only to find out they’ve cancelled your card for violating their terms of service. You apply to other credit card services, but every single one declines you. You’ve always paid your balance in full every month. What happened? Your profile indicated that you attempted to buy more than what is considered a “safe” amount of ammo. You posted an anti-BLM meme on Facebook at one point, which puts you in a white nationalist category. That, combined with support you’ve expressed on-line for various right-wing politicians and causes, makes you a risk.

  • You suddenly receive a notice that your auto insurance is dropping you for violating their ESG (environmental, social, & environmental) terms of service. As you shop for new insurance, all the rates you’re quoted are at least five times what you were paying before. Why? Your profile shows that your car is more than ten years old and doesn’t meet MPG requirements. You drive more than 15k miles per year and your route data shows that most of your driving time is on high accident routes. Your consumer profile indicates that you may not be performing all the recommended service and maintenance on the vehicle, which increases emissions, reduces performance and increases the chances of an accident. You’re a poor risk.

There are a billion other scenarios you could come up with where an AI generated profile of you might impact the outcome. Does any of this seem outlandish or tin foil hat conspiracy? I don’t think so. I think we’re on the very cusp of this being reality (if it’s not already). As this trove of personal data is increasingly shared in massive databases, and as AI becomes more prevalent… your social credit score is going to dictate your future quality of life.

So, what can you do about it? At this point, not much probably. I think it’s going to happen regardless. Especially since all of it will be put in place “for your own good”. Virtually all of us have been sheep – oblivious to what the technology was doing. I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

If I was a parent of young kids, I’d be thinking about creating and maintaining multiple identities for them. One that’s used for any casual on-line activity (the web, social media, your phone) and one that’s protected. Anything you can do to enable them to enter adulthood with a clean, neutral, social profile. Educate them that everything you do, say, purchase, or interact with will be evaluated and potentially be used against you at some point in the future.

We are no longer a free people. If you want to interact with society, have credit, make purchases, rent a car, or get a job – your profile better conform to whatever is deemed to be acceptable.

Hmmm… this has the making of a good movie screenplay.