No Exit

[Morlock Elloi]

This is a good time to watch Huis Clos - I suggest the version with 
Harold Pinter, directed by Philip Saville: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0v96qw83tw4


It is currently being massively staged in most of the developed world, 
courtesy of the runaway virus and runaway authorities. Divorce rates are 
skyrocketing, and psychotics finally feel adjusted.


In the beginning, there was a frantic exchange of isolation-related 
humor. Then it stopped. Apparently, the Hell is one place where humor 
doesn't work.


And the message being piped is, "it will never be the same again". No exit.

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The Communist Manifesto 2015, written in RNA

[Morlock Elloi]

This was hard to believe, but I checked with Italians, this video was
actually aired in 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80q6754o19U

In short, the Chinese designed this thing, it escaped (or was
released), and is in the process of destroying the neoliberal
capitalism around the world.

Was it intentional (Chinese handled it the way neoliberal societies
can't) or accidental, it really doesn't matter. It works.


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Re: coronavirus questions

[Morlock Elloi]

3-4% of each of these groups will die, so it will likely be a uniting 
experience, a dismal failure of the identity politics, and therefore a 
serious problem for powers that be.


Unrelated, it's funny how coronavirus has the same effect at biological 
and social levels: the damage to the body is mostly due to the 
overreaction of the immune system, and the damage to the economy is due 
to the overreaction of the society. Somehow the ruling class calculated 
that it is worthwhile to decimate the economy to delay deaths by few 
weeks or months (idiotic statements about the virus getting tired 
notwithstanding.)




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Identity politics manual

[Morlock Elloi]

HARRISON BERGERON by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only
equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody
was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody
else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this
equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213 th Amendments to the
Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United
States Handicapper General.

Some things about living still weren't quite right, though. April for
instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was
in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron's
fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.

It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn't think about
it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant
she couldn't think about anything except in short bursts. And George,
while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental
handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all
times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds
or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people
like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.

George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel's
cheeks, but she'd forgotten for the moment what they were about.

On the television screen were ballerinas.

A buzzer sounded in George's head. His thoughts fled in panic, like 
bandits from a burglar alarm.


"That was a real pretty dance, that dance they just did," said Hazel.

"Huh" said George.

"That dance-it was nice," said Hazel.

"Yup, " said George. He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. 
They weren't really very good-no better than anybody else would have 
been, anyway. They were burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, 
and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful 
gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in. 
George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn't be 
handicapped. But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in 
his ear radio scattered his thoughts .


George winced. So did two out of the eight ballerinas.

Hazel saw him wince. Having no mental handicap herself, she had to ask 
George what the latest sound had been.


"Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ball peen hammer, " 
said George .


"I'd think it would be real interesting, hearing all the different 
sounds," said Hazel a little envious. "All the things they think up."




"Urn, " said George.

"Only, if I was Handicapper General, you know what I would do?" said 
Hazel. Hazel, as a matter of fact, bore a strong resemblance to the 
Handicapper General, a woman named Diana Moon Glampers. "If I was Diana 
Moon Glampers," said Hazel, "I'd have chimes on Sunday- just chimes. 
Kind of in honor of religion . "


"I could think, if it was just chimes," said George.

"Well-maybe make 'em real loud," said Hazel. "I think I'd make a good 
Handicapper General."


"Good as anybody else," said George.

"Who knows better then I do what normal is?" said Hazel.

"Right," said George. He began to think glimmeringly about his abnormal 
son who was now in jail, about Harrison, but a twenty-one-gun salute in 
his head stopped that.


"Boy!" said Hazel, "that was a doozy, wasn't it?"

It was such a doozy that George was white and trembling, and tears stood 
on the rims of his red eyes. Two of of the eight ballerinas had 
collapsed to the studio floor, were holding their temples.


"All of a sudden you look so tired," said Hazel. "Why don't you stretch 
out on the sofa, so's you can rest your handicap bag on the pillows, 
honeybunch." She was referring to the forty-seven pounds of birdshot in 
a canvas bag, which was padlocked around George's neck. "Go on and rest 
the bag for a little while," she said. "I don't care if you're not equal 
to me for a while . "


George weighed the bag with his hands. "I don't mind it," he said. "I 
don't notice it any more. It's just a part of me."


"You been so tired lately-kind of wore out," said Hazel. "If there was 
just some way we could make a little hole in the bottom of the bag, and 
just take out a few of them lead balls. Just a few."


"Two years in prison and two thousand dollars fine for every ball I took 
out," said George. "I don't call that a bargain."


"If you could just take a few out when you came home from work," said 
Hazel. "I mean-you don't compete with anybody around here. You just set 
around."


"If I tried to get away with it," said George, "then other people ' d 
get away with it-and pretty soon we'd be right back to the dark ages 
again, with everybody competing against everybody else. You wouldn't 
like that, would you?"


"I'd hate it," said Hazel.

"There you are," said George. The minute people start cheating on laws, 
what do you think happens to 

Re: DiEM25 Green Paper on Technological Sovereignty

[Morlock Elloi]

To quote myself from the ideology & the infrastructure paper ( 
https://cryptome.org/2019/02/elbar.pdf ):


"The ideology of the infrastructure goes deep and is often invisible to 
the involved actors. The participants generally believe that they are 
doing the best possible job. What is specific to engineering is that the 
governing ideology is often internalized as a technical issue, and is so 
presented to the insiders and the outsiders. The presumed difficulty to 
understand technicalities is used as a barrier to shield the ideology 
from the outsiders. The baffling part is that it also works on the 
inside. It is extremely hard to penetrate this construct and separate 
the ideology from the technology: the amount of its inherent nonsense 
can shame any belief system known to man. Yet it must be done."


...

"Perhaps the most sinister aspect is that it captures the energy of 
activism, which adopts the ideological canons and builds the same 
dystopian constructs, on the premise that they are now operated by the 
good guys, as if an Open Source cage is anything but a cage. The 
underlying fallacy, that the power will be used only for good purposes, 
becomes obvious always too late, when the energy and trust have been 
exhausted. Thus the useful idiots complete the ecosystem and seal it 
against the alternatives."


m.


On 1/25/20, 11:35, Luke Munn wrote:

Hence the quotes - I suppose I could have added "ostensibly" in there.

Of course data infrastructures and the wider technological industry are
highly political in constructing imaginaries, appropriating funding as you
noted, aligning with public and private interests, shaping the flows of
data, etc etc. But as I've been reading so much of this industry 'grey
literature' for the last six months, its very much still pervaded by
discourses of performance, efficiency, flexibility, optimisation - with
companies as service providers. So the simple point here was just that it's



<.>



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data sovereignty for some

[Morlock Elloi]

From 
https://www.wired.com/story/us-forcing-chinese-firm-sell-gay-dating-app-grindr/ 
:


"Reuters didn't say what specific issues CFIUS raised, but the US 
government has worried in the past that companies in China could help 
the Chinese government spy on users."


In other news, 85% of intra-Euro traffic goes through US of A*

So far, the only countries that effectively imposed national borders on 
data traffic are USA, China and (soon to start) Russia. As all belong to 
the nuclear club, I wonder if that's the set from which other data 
sovereignty projects will come. Perhaps it's a pre-requisite.


French?


* due to a brilliant propaganda, attempts to curtail this are widely 
deemed to be "attack on freedoms".


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Re: Latin as revolutionary act?

[Morlock Elloi]

Videtur quod non defendat contra stulti.


Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aliquam quis ex
hendrerit, lacinia felis sed, lobortis mi. Pellentesque aliquam pharetra
sem. Aliquam a odio at dui vehicula dictum et ultricies velit. Nulla nec
metus nisl. Cras a turpis a est feugiat accumsan. In hac habitasse
platea dictumst.

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Re: Latin as revolutionary act?

[Morlock Elloi]

Quod enim est in genere quod non potest recte occupati hodie? 
Identitatem rei publicae genus divisa in omnibus vanitatem copia. Non 
necesse est esse simul primum sectus est.



Tabula in Terra Firma dominium repellere occultae mensurae. Noticia est laruam.
Reticulum malorum oculis Occult Centra Imperium: ratio ex captivis.
Ex media materia est potentia distans per aliqua media necessaria!

El Iblis Shah


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Latin as revolutionary act?

[Morlock Elloi]

What would be consequences of using Latin language among 
group/clique/cabal/underground/elite for discourse, publishing, idea 
exchange, tweets? (let's ignore for the moment how does one get the 
above set to learn Latin)


First of all, the noise goes down, as there is intellectual effort 
barrier involved. Feeble-minded, distracted, low IQ, vacuous, and other 
nobodies are out. It would be like early Internet (1990s) - only nice 
and interesting people, no rabble. Only more resilient, because the 
'price' of learning tongue will never go down, unlike computer equipment 
and access.


Second, the cross-pollution from deluge of mechanically augmented media 
firehoses goes way down. Language is the medium, and, of course, the 
medium is the message. It's much harder to influence those thinking in a 
foreign tongue.


Third, the isolated hermetic nature of such setup would allow thinking 
to mature, being spared from cretinous cheering and booing from the 
unwashed crowd. At the same time, it can use modern networking 
technology to attract interest globally.



Perdidi unum in mediis soccus lauandi, et iam sentire perfecta!

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Re: Plan B, the new XS4all

[Morlock Elloi]

The rising awareness of the importance of the infrastructure is 
encouraging. I assume here that the public sees ISP as part of the 
infrastructure; however, that's rarely actually the case.


ISPs are usually retailers - buying bandwidth wholesale (say, 
$1/mbps/month) and retailing it for, effectively, $30-50/mbps/mo. They 
lease local loop (last mile) lines from local telcos, and the only 
equipment they need are routers between backbone fiber feeds they leased 
and the local loops they leased. They do not control the infrastructure.


Some independent ISPs are going beyond this: for example Sonic is 
stringing their own last mile fiber in San Francisco. This is a big 
deal, because both the backbone and the last mile infrastructure were 
virtually untouchable for decades, owned by the same interests as they 
were in the 20th century. Creation of independent/competing 
infrastructures is the prerequisite for any fundamental progress in the 
communication scenery. The current infrastructure predicates the 
existence of MAGAf like a piece of dung in hot weather predicates lots 
of flies. Complaining about flies is a total waste of time. Do something 
about dung.


Is there any sign that Plan B will be more than a retailer?





On 11/5/19, 09:51, Karin Spaink wrote:

I’m not sure that all of you have seen this:

Plan B, a new, independent ISP & follow-up of XS4all, was launched today. After 
many deliberations, including attempts to convince KPN to keep XS4all as an 
independent ISP, and when that fell through: a serious attempt to buy XS4all with 
the help of a trusted investos, only to be brushed off by KPN, XS4allMoetBlijven 
has shifted gears.

- they will start a new ISP;
- they have a viable business plan;
- you can sign up starting Nov 11;
- they will be hiring people, starting Nov 11, too;
- they will start delivering internet services to subscribers early 2020

To accomplish all that, Plan B
- needs capital, and public support, and hence:
- it started a crowdfunding loan campaign yesterday, aiming for a minimum of 
1,25 mln and aspiring to 2,5 mln.
- promising all lenders a 3 percent profit, to be paid alongside the 
instalments, over the next 4 years.

Within 12 hours, they gathered almost 1 mln euro in loans. Current amount 
gathered: 1.647.206 euro. And please note that the avarage amount loaned is an 
effing 866 euro per investor.

This is extraordinary: the fund raising campaign for English version of The 
Correspondent was widely - even internationally - publicised and promoted, yet 
it took The Correspondent _eight_ fucking days to reach the one million mark. 
Plan B reached that same mark in just over 12 hours, with no press _at all_ 
surrounding the start of their loan campaign.

It's a blast from the past: when XS4al started way back when, they hoped that 
they’d gather 500 subscribers within the ensuing year: that would tide them 
over. Instead, they got more than 500 subscribers in one weekend. The same 
thing is happening now.


If you want to join:
https://crowdaboutnow.nl/campagnes/planb
If you want to read up:
https://xs4allmoetblijven.nl/





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Re: Fw: Interlude: Heidegger summarizes signal from 2 decades of nettime

[Morlock Elloi]

This may sound far off, but there are wider analogies that may hint to 
solutions.


(some) drugs are sanctioned (illegal, regulated) because they have 
significant effect on human behavior. Air pollution is regulated because 
it adversely affects people. Sex is (more or less) regulated, because it 
has huge influence on human behavior.


There is little difference between bypassing cognition by deluge of 
information piped through mechanized hoses, and displaying porn on 
screens in packed public transport. The latter is regulated, the former 
is not. It's time to ask the question: why?


I know the answer - it's because the former is the most brilliant 
brainwashing technique ever invented.



There is good reason to view humans and technology in context of other
networks I think, networks overall, rather than just focus on "cyber" or
computer/digital/virtual phenomena.  Networks are very boring in this
sense, like networks of cells, networks of roads, networks of bowling
leagues, soil bacteria, protein networks, squirrel communication
networks, networks of printing presses.  Maybe this is the "primordial"
something that ought to be hearkened back to somewhat.  Certainly we are
facing some harsh limit-points of various reality networks (pollution,
temperature, brain chemistry, other resources) where "cyber" isn't an
instant solution.


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Re: Fw: Interlude: Heidegger summarizes signal from 2 decades of nettime

[Morlock Elloi]

[inline]

On 10/20/19, 11:16, Max Herman wrote:


On the first video, I see the danger of making everything instantly
available so to speak online.  It removes the role of doing your own
activities, having one's own life, just getting one online.  Also the


I think that there is another issue: instant (audio-video mediated) 
consumption may actually impair or prevent cognition. It doesn't help 
when it's one of billion items visibly stacked together*. It may have to 
do with mechanics of humans.


In other words, if you want to disarm a concept or an idea, flood 
Internet with videos and tweets about it.


It explains why the quality of discourse on mailing lists surpass any 
shitty GUI/web media. We should be writing letters. One message to 
nettime would be, what ... $2,000 in stamps? Now that would rise the 
quality!


* I am not sure that "one web site per video" would help - they are 
still all stacked on the same screen. Books are unruly and can assume 
any position and orientation



idea of bioengineering, which takes this to a new level: you not only
buy a premade product, but you buy a premade humanity with all the
errors of the first behavior but now internalized.  Then he references
"the Event" which I would interpret to mean "that point at which humans
started creating themselves by their actions."  But all life forms do


I laughed at this, because the first thing that came to my mind was 
Great Oxidation Event ( 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event ), which poisoned 
the planet's atmosphere with O2 and killed millions of innocent 
anaerobic species.



millennium reference too makes sense.  Is that possibly related to
net-time?


I always wondered if nettime was short for "network time" or does "net" 
mean "netto", like in "net weight" ?



For the second video about Marx, I can see the errors in a statement
like "the point is not to interpret the world, but to change it."  This


Marx did say that in 11th thesis on Feuerbach 
(https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/index.htm): 
"Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; 
the point is to change it."



innovation, on both the left and the right: especially Freud and Marx
but also their "antagonists" (capitalism and the church).  Common sense
replies like family systems theory took a bit longer to find a more
balanced approach and evolve beyond the ideology wars, but have vastly
more scientific longevity and accuracy.


The enduring takeaway from Marx is that shit doesn't happen by itself, 
or because of cosmic rays; there are actors (classes). There were many 
attempts (funded by one of the said actors) to mask this simple fact by 
manufacturing complex "theories", which boil down to cosmic rays. Modern 
economy (including Piketty) is the prime example of this. There is a 
loaded gun at the far end of any social phenomenon.



I forget who it was who asked Freud at one point, "isn't dysfunction
more about the ongoing family system dynamic rather than a single
traumatic event about Oedipus?" and Freud replied, "that is absurd,
because if it were true what use would there be for psychoanalysis?" I
paraphrase here but it is roughly the exchange.  The questioner went on
to establish family systems theory I believe or to help do so, and
systems theory went on to have applications on many levels (like
Bateson) whereas psychoanalysis is now viewed more or less as totally
fake (except, crucially, in literary theory).  Ironically, if you
consider the popularity of psychoanalysis in the USA through the 2nd
half of the 20th c. it is no surprise that we still haven't learned much
about any new ways of talking -- most of the pop culture and leadership
behavior, not to mention academic infrastructure, took Freud (and Marx)
or anti-Freudianism (and anti-Marxism) as gospel.  We still live and
operate in that "built environment" to a great extent and perhaps
getting back to a simpler way of talking wouldn't be wrong.  A lot of
conditions suggest that might be happening.


Exactly. The whole charade just to prevent you from observing the loaded 
gun.


Regarding psychoanalysis, it's rent-a-friend (sometimes a pusher) 
masquerading as 'discipline'. It doesn't mean that rent-a-friend itself 
is useless - on the contrary, it totally works in these pulverized 
societies. Its rise may have something to do with the organized 
extermination of prostitution.

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Interlude: Heidegger summarizes signal from 2 decades of nettime

[Morlock Elloi]

Heidegger on Being, Technology, & The Task of Thinking: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtATDlUSIxI


Heidegger on Marx and World Change: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96xeh_6vYU0


Not the Nine O'clock News - Marxists: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDJeTnLKLEI


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Re: Maschinenmensch

[Morlock Elloi]

Good coverage by Diego Fusaro:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGU1zBAoFao

... if you speak Italian, that is.

If not, try closed captions with autotranslate to your tongue. It's not 
perfect, though ("mannequin" is translated as "dummy", etc.)



On 10/10/19, 22:56, Morlock Elloi wrote:

The Greta creature is epitome and the final product of the last two
decades of the New Propaganda (identity politics, displacement of
ideology with sensory stimulation etc.)

I think it was a mistake to produce her, as she can easily become the
vulnerable focal point for the battle and endanger the whole project.

Like mechanical Maria from Metropolis.


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Maschinenmensch

[Morlock Elloi]

The Greta creature is epitome and the final product of the last two 
decades of the New Propaganda (identity politics, displacement of 
ideology with sensory stimulation etc.)


I think it was a mistake to produce her, as she can easily become the 
vulnerable focal point for the battle and endanger the whole project.


Like mechanical Maria from Metropolis.
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Re: Wash Post: Greta Thunberg weaponized shame in an era of shamelessness)

[Morlock Elloi]

The centralized censorship illustrates the heavy investment in this 
thing. Search for "#gretaisyourgod":


- 1 result on TWTR.
- 23 results on GOOG
- 7 results on duckduckgo
- 0 on MSFT (it's unconditionally converted to "great is your god")

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Re: Wash Post: Greta Thunberg weaponized shame in an era of shamelessness

[Morlock Elloi]

Towards "extremely careful social discourse":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FN7r0Rr1Qyc

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Re: radio nettime: 8 Sept 2019 12:00-13:00

[Morlock Elloi]

It looks like nettime became a thing unto itself (there must be a fancy 
name for that.) Due to its longevity, this was bound to happen at some 
point, like in biological evolution, when random amino acids get 
together and some combination survives, it lingers on, and given enough 
time, you get life. Nettime survived bunch of crisis, and it won't be 
sympathetic to being killed ( http://www.roma1.infn.it/~anzel/answer.html ).


The point being, nettime is more interesting in itself than through 
external references that are 'discussed'. Several thousands of 
moderately sapient people can be a formidable force. Witness the traffic 
surges after termination announcements (I think Ted & Felix are doing 
this for entertainment), or when undesirables need to be condemned 
(Morlock etc.) These surges are beyond any traffic related to externalities.


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Re: radio nettime: 8 Sept 2019 12:00-13:00

[Morlock Elloi]

If the cost of running the list was exactly zero (let's not delve into 
details at this point), would you still kill it?


If yes, then we have an interesting case of potlatch, without bonfire.



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Re: don't be afraid of 'project fear'

[Morlock Elloi]

An interesting proposition: it's about terminal illusions of grandeur. 
Abstract below, full text at 
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10./1467-923X.12739?af=R




Since 2016, the UK government has outlined plans for ‘Global Britain’
as a framework for post‐Brexit foreign policy. Some criticise the idea
as a vision of ‘Empire 2.0’, but it is rarely made clear exactly what
form it takes or what its wider political implications are. This
article argues that Global Britain constitutes not just an idea or a
slogan, but a foreign policy narrative and, more specifically, the
narrative of empire. Indeed, to appear reasonable its grand ambitions
require pre‐existing knowledges of past imperial ‘successes’ and
accepting images of empire among the British public. Yet Global
Britain lacks efficacy: as a domestic rather than an international
narrative, by being inherently regressive in its worldview, and for
contradicting the preferences of international partners on which the
UK heavily relies. These narrative flaws, it is argued, make Global
Britain an actively problematic, rather than merely ineffective,
component of UK foreign policy.


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Re: don't be afraid of 'project fear'

[Morlock Elloi]

Brexit soap is an ideal confluence of irrelevance and fascination, a 
perfect pseudo-intellectual chatter storm.


Likely nothing will happen post-brexit, which would be the proof that 
the whole EU thing became a hollow void ... probably the principal cause 
for the hysteria. Won't be able to keep the appearances.


Maybe few easterners less in the restaurant staff.



I am aware it is a serious issue, but I am bit over-saturated with it as
it just overwhelms everything else and goes on like never-ending
badly directed noir episode of Neighbours.

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intelligence is no advantage, it's a handicap

[Morlock Elloi]

As US political film is mostly dead (© by Miracle Max), what's left is 
perhaps worth mentioning.


[machine translated from 
https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Die-fabelhafte-Welt-des-Kapitalismus-4485903.html 
]


The fabulous world of capitalism
03rd August 2019
Rüdiger Suchsland

The latest film by Canadian Denys Arcand about the demise of the 
American Empire


Nobody can tell you how much of it is in circulation, we are talking 
about billions, if not trillions "- even this dialogue sentence is a 
fable, because actually one would have to speak of trillions. The 
world's cash sum alone is a two-digit billiard number. In any case, the 
main actor of this film is the money. There are quite a few of them, but 
quite a few really have enough.


Everything is about money

Everything revolves around money, it is at the center of the action. The 
main human protagonist is called Pierre-Paul. He is a young and highly 
intelligent man, but at the same time a kind of urban neurotics alien to 
life, as Woody Allen could not paint more precisely and happily.


He works for a low-wage parcel courier in Montreal, Canada, and in his 
free time reads philosophers. His girlfriend, Linda, is a bank clerk. He 
gives her long lectures during a joint date in a mixture of despair and 
intellectual arrogance:


"The great writers were all stupid as straw." Dostoyevsky has shifted 
his wife's furs, he was addicted to gambling, he was sure to win, he was 
blind to the laws of probability, Tolstoy forbade his servants to be 
vaccinated, and Louis Ferdinand Celine fled from France and got lost in 
the SS - a complete idiot Hemingway saw himself as a boxer - what a 
great genius! "


Justified inquiry: "If you are so smart, why do not you run a bank or 
work in the university?"


"I am too intelligent, intelligence is no advantage"

Pierre-Paul's answer: "I'm too intelligent, intelligence is no 
advantage, it's a handicap," he says, quite without vanity, but with 
very sober analytical power. After all, he has a doctorate. 
Pierre-Paul's ability to grasp the depths of this world in its 
complexity provides legitimate depression.


Someday everything will change. Life breaks down with power over 
Pierre-Paul's existence, so that he can no longer escape from him. Now 
his theories about the stupidity of the wise will either be confirmed or 
he will refute them. Because, by chance, he witnesses a bank robbery 
that ends so bloody that at the end of it a handful of corpses and two 
huge bags full of banknotes lie on the street.


Before the police arrive, Pierre-Pauls stuffs the bags in his van.

But what should he do with the money? Especially since all the gangsters 
of Quebec and of course the police are behind the bags.


The disenfranchised and insulted are finally defending themselves

Together with the escort girl Aspasia and the clever ex-rocker Sylvain 
(Rémy Girard), the random millionaire forms an outsider gang of the 
marginalized - driven by the Stoic Marc Aurel and his principle of Amor 
fati, the love of destiny.


With them, Pierre-Paul also gets an insight into the less visible world 
of money laundering.


It is used, for example, by politicians who transfer legal money 
directly to Bermuda because they can not afford the media to jump on it. 
Or from noble prostitutes. Anyone who pays them basically donates to a 
charity.


The new film by French-Canadian director Denys Arcand continues the 
film's critique of the materialism of contemporary society that has 
shaped Arcand's previous films: "The Fall of the American Empire" (1986) 
and "The Invasion of the Barbarians" (2003).


His new work is a comedy and a comic thriller and thus quite 
old-fashioned - more than a Woody Allen movie, it's reminiscent of a 
Peter Sellers comedy like "The Pinky Panter" by Blake Edwards. The 
original title of the film is "The Fall of the American Empire".


The basic idea is convincing: Arcand wants to explain the world and uses 
for it a political-philosophical gangster film. Money is not a mere 
fetish and an excuse to show beautiful men beautiful things, at work, 
kissing, shooting and driving, so it has a deeper (social) meaning.


The disenfranchised and insulted are finally defending themselves. Films 
such as Bertold Viertel's The Adventures of a Ten-mark Certificate 
(1926), Max Ophüls' "Comedy of the Money" or Robert Bresson's "L'Argent" 
("The Money") are the inspiration for this.


As a director, Arcand does not always have his complicated story under 
control. The mood fluctuates sharply between a harsh, sometimes brutal 
thriller, a bitter social drama and a light romance. The dialogues, 
which initially seem a bit sluggish, but become more playful and witty 
with increasing film duration.


Arcand connects with all the deeper meaning, namely a critique of high 
finance, of everyday social corruption and political conditions in the 
West: "Just as pathetic are the politicians: George Bush, Nicolas 
Sarkozy, Silvio 

Re: Nettime is in bad shape. Let's see if we can change it.

[Morlock Elloi]

This.

Ignoring the presence of intermediary (with own agenda) between the 
technology and its deployer/user, and calling the intermediary 'the 
technology', is the most dangerous aspect of present indoctrination.


We are slowly (or not so slowly) sliding back to the pre-Gutenberg era, 
where only the Church can produce and interpret books. Because printing, 
writing and reading is so complicated and inconvenient.




Somewhere along the line we as a culture have forgotten the distinction between
'technology' and 'services'.  A 'technology' is really just a method or system
for applying knowledge to a problem; any individual or business could choose to
implement (or commission, or lease, or purchase outright) that technology
independently and control it completely.  A 'service', on the other hand, might
use technology, but individuals and businesses who use such services do not own
or control that technology directly.




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IQ in the infrastructure web

[Morlock Elloi]

A comprehensive Italian study "The Political Legacy of Entertainment TV" 
came out recently (available at 
https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/aer.20150958 ), providing 
compelling evidence that TV exposure in young age permanently affects IQ 
and cognitive abilities in general.


It is focused on Berlusconi's Mediaset, and deals with rather large 
samples, covering the influence that happened several decades ago, 
affecting today's adult population. Here are few quotes from the study 
(which should be read in its entirety):


"Overall, these results suggest that early exposure to entertainment TV 
led to a decrease in cognitive sophistication and civic engagement, but 
only for individuals exposed during childhood."


"Indeed, ideology does not seem to matter for politicians’ communication 
style: the coefficient of the dummy for right-wing parties is not 
statistically significant and small in magnitude. Instead, communication 
style is most similar between Berlusconi and the populist leader of the 
M5S; see the additional evidence in online Appendix Figure A9. The M5S 
is also the only other party attracting votes from individuals who were 
exposed earlier to entertainment TV (Table 5)."


"Overall, we conclude that early Mediaset viewers did not idealize 
Berlusconi’s qualities as either a man or a politician. Rather, they 
appear to filter such qualities through a different system of values, 
presumably influenced by their prior exposure to Mediaset."


"Our findings offer the first systematic evidence that exposure to 
entertainment television influences voting behavior, and suggests that 
this effect is mediated by deeper cognitive and cultural transformations."


===

Relatively primitive TV technology from decades ago had deep measurable 
and permanent influence on today's adult voting population. The content 
does not seem to matter - the volume and style do.


Which means that low-volume (articles, books and conferences) reasoning 
against these manufactured attitudes is a waste of time. If you can't 
force-feed them your counter-propaganda, or disrupt force-feeding by 
controlling communication pipes, you are wasting everyone's time.


Fast forward few decades - instead of being glued to the broadcast 
television screens with content same for everyone for several hours 
daily, the populus today is glued to smaller screens with customized 
content for the most of waking hours. Make a wild guess how will this 
affect cognitive abilities and political attitudes when they are 
measured few decades from now (the only problem is that there will not 
be relevant control set.)



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Re: Unlike Us links on social media and their alternatives

[Morlock Elloi]

Mmmm no.

Communication sovereignty is a power equation issue, and will likely 
become a new class issue (surveilled class vs. surveillor class.) Saying 
that these efforts are futile and doomed forever is nonsense - class 
struggles overcame far steeper obstacles.


The only question is when will it be recognized as a class issue.

> What is necessary, though, is promulgation of the the notion that
> somehow, some way, communicaions can be made secure and safe for those
> who just want to have fun. Wayback this faith was hawked as
> indulgences, evangelized lately as mail-lists, social media, free
> speech, archival tracking, open source.

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Re: Unlike Us links on social media and their alternatives

[Morlock Elloi]

I agree with all requirements, but I think one needs more refinement:

> in a manner that does not expose information about their 
conversations to third parties.


I think that this should be further clarified as:

Stage 1: "in a manner that does not expose content of their 
conversations to third parties" (ie. the conversations are private, but 
metadata (who talks to whom and when) isn't.


Stage 2: "in a manner that does not expose neither content nor metadata 
of their conversations to third parties".


Why this matters?

1.1 Because any onion-like routing will raise red flags in many places. 
Providing end-to-end privacy alone is a huge step by itself, and easier 
to accomplish without irritating powers that be too much. Let them know 
who talks to whom, and construct social graphs. They were able to do 
that with paper letters as well, since ever. The amount of Tor use by 
"freedom fighters" is infinitesimal compared by semi-criminal and 
criminal use (as defined by legal domains.) This is a bar too high to 
start with.


1.2 It's asymmetric. Lesser governments (all except one) cannot 
penetrate onion routing. Major government can, routinely, as it has 
complete coverage, making correlation attacks trivial (unless we go back 
to mixmaster with random delays up to many hours.) This would be 
discriminatory towards lesser governments, and further empowering the 
major one. Unfair.


2. Once end-to-end privacy is routinely available, anonymity can be the 
next step. But these should be two independently moving parts. Plus the 
solutions for the two are not the same.



Which leaves open the legitimate question of shielding to prevent 
censoring. Anonymity is not the only way to achieve this, there is 
another one, easier to execute without insisting on anonymity: mimicry.


There are numerous channels in existence today that provide 
point-to-point communication between two people. To name one, telephony, 
or voice communications in general. Voice communications are real time 
and involve usually two parties. No one in their right mind would think 
of disturbing voice communications. In addition, there is wide spread 
use of videoconferencing (Skype, Viber, Whatsapp) where voice is 
accompanied by video. All that has to be done is piggyback over these 
channels in a manner that makes data appear voice-like and/or 
video-like, but unintelligible to third parties.


[This would not be the first time this strategy is deployed. The early 
digital modems (30-40 years ago, up to 2400 baud) chirped the way they 
did not because it was the most efficient way, but for entirely 
different reason: telecoms were selling digital lines (all phone lines 
are digital, 56 or 64 kbps) at huge markup (10-100X) over voice lines 
(although their cost was the same.) The telecoms were not happy at all 
with attempts to use voice lines for digital communications, so they 
immediately started installing equipment to detect and block modems on 
voice lines. The modem makers, on their side, started to modify the 
carrier signal to make it hard to distinguish it from human voice with 
technology then available (keep in mind we're talking 70s and 80s.) This 
made telecoms have false positives, interrupting regular calls, which 
caused backlash from customers, and modem makers eventually won.]













On 6/15/19, 04:30, Geoffrey Goodell wrote:

Following an earlier thread --

There are some infrastructures that directly address the points raised below.
In particular, technology infrastructures that put control in the hands of
users will generally involve users running free-software code on free-software
platforms that they control and trust.  This might seem like an insurmountable
challenge, but it is not; it can be done with sufficent support from
institutions.  Whether this (infrastructure) support takes the form of project
funding, regulation, educational initiatives, or some combination thereof,
remains to be seen.

Addressing the challenges of metadata privacy and traversal of barriers
established either for censorship or for price discrimination is a bit harder.
However, efforts are underway, in the form of projects to build software and
peer-to-peer overlay networks.  The most accessible examples involve onion
routing.  (I believe strongly in Tor, as I have indicated earlier.  Objectors
should note that there are alternative onion routing architectures such as I2P.
As long as we are speaking theoretically, feel free to substitute the
onion-routing architecture of your choice.)  My specific responses are below:

On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 03:14:19PM -0700, Morlock Elloi wrote:

This is a promising direction. It's impossible to guess/infer at the first
attempt what the platform should do, but it's almost obvious what it
shouldn't. What we need is a requirements document, the one not produced by
techies, as for one reason or another they tend to make bad choices. At this
point 

The age of Stitchers

[Morlock Elloi]

This is something that has been identified in the tech field (namely 
computing machinery hardware and software.) I'm curious if the 
phenomenon is present in other fields, and if it was researched 
(pointers to papers appreciated.)


The state of the art and practice of the mainstream software and 
hardware engineering has substantially changed over the last decade or 
so, and exhibits dramatic stratification.


In general, re-use, standardization and such can be very useful for 
everyone. But something else is going on in the guise of these: 
practitioners in the field hardly do any 'engineering' any more. Whether 
it's hardware or software, there are 11, 17 or 31 (I like primes :) 
popular components. The names of these are widely known among 'experts', 
they are listed in resumes, and 'engineering' consists of stitching some 
combination of these into the product. Like building with Lego.


The practitioners are generally unable to replicate any of these bricks; 
it's too complicated, and it is done by someone else, in India or 
Russia, for Cisco, Broadcom, Intel, etc. Practitioners are then given 
these bricks to make their toys. They don't need to understand how to 
make them, nor all that they do. And their education and wages are cheaper.


The interesting part here is that OEM's that make these bricks establish 
firm grip on the infrastructure from which 'engineers' can never escape. 
This is considered normal.


Case in point: AMZN is lately providing *everything* - hardware, 
firmware, software, apps, backends - needed to make "Internet of Things" 
devices. The nominal manufacturer can decide on the name and the color. 
There are many other examples. The landscape is ruled and directed by 
decisions of very few.


Such division of labor - fundamental stuff done by megacorps, and 
cosmetics left to the field - creates tectonic shift in the knowledge 
distribution. RMS wrote a lot about this, but at that time engineers 
could do pretty much everything, so the case for FSF was strong. Todays 
engineers learn mostly stitching in schools.


Is there an equivalent phenomenon in non-engineering fields? I would 
naively say yes, as original writings, for example, on philosophy, 
politics and such, are extremely rare. Stitchers rule the field. The 
brick OEMs in these fields as well rule the scene.


Chto delat?

ps. embedded signal processing engineer wanted, alive
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Re: Fwd: [16beavergroup.org] Our Silence is (also) a Commons -- 05.25.19

[Morlock Elloi]

The most reasonable argument against suicide ever. Don't do their work.


Ulrike Meinhof was once rumoured to have said that every suicide is a
death by capitalism. And in this sense her note to her sister, "If they
say I committed suicide, be sure that it was a murder" can be read
beyond that of the specific


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Re: Ben Quinn: Julian Assange shows psychological torture symptoms, says UN expert (Guardian)

[Morlock Elloi]

It's good that nettime-l is archived - this is a fantastic documentation 
about psychopathology of 'progressives'.


X reveals to the citizenry accurate information what their force 
monopoly is doing in wars (namely crimes) and lying about.


X reveals to the citizenry accurate information what their 'political 
parties' are doing about 'elections' (namely cheating) and lying about.


The said force monopoly organizes successful character assassination of 
X, as always starting with sexual misconduct. Progressives obediently 
jump on the bandwagon. No one talks about war crimes and cheating in 
elections. Everyone talks about brutal penetration and timing of the 
publishing. Why? Because, like in Russiagate, it's about the shame of 
going against the tribe. But in this case it's a bit more naked. Because 
the force monopoly is prosecuting X for revealing the truth to the 
citizenry, declaring him spy, and making, obviously, its own citizenry 
the enemy (as he spied for them). Not for the brutal penetration. Not 
obvious to progressives though. They are stuck on the brutal penetration 
and 'protecting women', analyzing X as expert manipulator. Truly 
fantastic documentation.


There are people on this list that should know better. Shame on you.

ps.

Spare me from pathetic mobbing and pathetic public declarations of 
loyalty to the tribe, and how you created a badge of honor by publicly 
blacklisting. No one cares who you are publicly against. You don't get 
any points for ad hominem. You do get special points for recognizing 
yourself and being hysterical about it, and you will get special points 
some time in the future when the whole penetration thing collapses, as 
it always does. Now go mob Molly a bit. BTW, does 'brutal penetration' 
irritate? It always does.



On 5/31/19, 17:06, Molly Hankwitz wrote:

I am not eager to argue about the weakness of Hillary or about whether
Trump is/was a strong candidate.


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Re: Ben Quinn: Julian Assange shows psychological torture symptoms, says UN expert (Guardian)

[Morlock Elloi]

Unprotected penetration of a sleeping woman (or sleeping women) is the 
ultimate crime that warrants any punishment one can think of. This 
worldview will be remembered as the only lasting achievement of identity 
politics and victimhood industry.



Whatever Assange has done, he should not be tortured, correct?


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Re: Adam Entous: How Israel Limited Online Deception During Its Election (The New Yorker)

[Morlock Elloi]

It seems that we are collectively failing to perform 'Turing test' on 
virtual entities. The difficulty of distinguishing between actual and 
virtual humans is a testament to fundamental inadequacy of so-called 
'social' networks. Or maybe it's a feature, pigeonholing humans into 
restrictive templates that can be easily mimicked by virtual constructs.


A more interesting question is ... WTF is 'fake persona'? How can 
electronic representation be a fake persona? As opposed to what? With 
'fake news' meaning 'unauthorized propaganda', do 'fake personas' mean 
'unauthorized influencers'?




The use of fake online personas has a long history in Israel. In the
mid-two-thousands, an Israeli company called Terrogence used them to
infiltrate suspected jihadi chat rooms. Later, Terrogence experimented


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Re: John Harris: Is India the frontline in big tech’s assault on democracy? (Guardian)

[Morlock Elloi]

It seems that a strong state (ie. US) can effectively use Internet to 
homogenize the population into desired directions, while the weaker 
states suffer from its divisive effects. Which makes it effective 
weapon, like democracy.




On 5/22/19, 02:31, Carsten Agger wrote:

The author is complaining that "encryption would render everything
conveniently impenetrable"; whether that is for the government or the
platform itself is immaterial.

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The Unimaginables

[Morlock Elloi]

A call for imagining alternatives is a good first step. Unfortunately I 
don't see the a sustainable force to implement the imagined, as 
proposed. It is telling that Morozov correctly identifies problem as 
political, not technical, but then invokes 'Rebel Tech' as a solution 
(Morozov's 'Rebel Tech' sounds like something from Star Wars fighting 
the Empire - but G. Lucas never revealed who is funding the rebels.)


The reality is more depressing - Big Tech will end when capitalism ends, 
so the imagination muscle should be applied there first.



[from 
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/11/big-tech-progressive-vision-silicon-valley 
]


It's not enough to break up Big Tech. We need to imagine a better 
alternative

Evgeny Morozov


As Facebook all but pleads guilty to a severe form of data addiction, 
confessing its digital sins and promising to reinvent itself as a 
privacy-worshiping denizen of the global village, the foundations of Big 
Tech’s cultural hegemony appear to be crumbling. Most surprisingly, it’s 
in the United States, Silicon Valley’s home territory, where they seem 
to be the weakest.


Even in these times of extreme polarization, Trump, who has habitual 
outbursts against censorship by social media platforms, eagerly joins 
left-wing politicians like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in 
presenting Big Tech as America’s greatest menace The recent call by 
Chris Hughes, Facebook’s co-founder, to break up the firm hints at 
things to come.


Neither the Silicon Valley moguls nor financial markets seem to care 
though. The recent decision by Warren Buffet – one of America’s most 
successful but also most conservative investors –to finally invest in 
Amazon is probably a better indication of wait awaits the tech giants in 
the medium term: more lavish initial public offerings, more Saudi cash, 
more promises to apply artificial intelligence to resolve the problems 
caused by artificial intelligence.


More than a year after the Cambridge Analytical scandal, the Big Tech 
debate is still mired in the same hackneyed categories of market 
efficiency, tax evasion, and odious business models that had launched 
it. If we are going to break up Facebook, shouldn’t we at least break it 
up for reasons other than its effects on competition or consumer welfare?


The two ideological camps, despite their presumed convergence on the Big 
Tech issue, are unlikely to use this debate to reinvent their own 
political projects. Those on the right who hope to score electoral 
points by bashing Big Tech are still mum on what their preferred 
alternative future looks like. Furthermore, in as much as these 
movements pine for the return of a conservative and corporativist 
society ruled by forces seated outside of elected institutions, Silicon 
Valley, with its extensive digital infrastructure for permanent soft 
governance, is their natural ally.


In the international context, this insistence on salvation by Big Tech 
acquires an extra twist as there’s so much more salvation – and, also, 
national development – to be meted out by those very technology giants. 
This prompts some populist leaders to fantasize about turning their 
entire countries into efficiently-run fiefdoms of some Big Tech 
overlord. Thus, the Bolsonaro government in Brazil has proudly announced 
that they “dream” of having Google or Amazon take over the national post 
office, soon to be privatized.


Today’s crisis-prone Brazil reveals yet another consequence of 
surrendering the space formerly occupied by politics to the 
savior-industrial complex of Big Tech. The long-term effect of their 
supposedly revolutionary activity is often to actually cement the status 
quo, even if they do it by means of extremely disruptive solutions.


Nowhere is this more evident than in how digital technologies are being 
used to deal with the most burning of social problems. Thus, as crime 
rates have skyrocketed, Brazil has become a hotbed of innovation in what 
we might call Survival Tech, with a panoply of digital tools being used 
to check on the safety of particular streets and neighborhoods and 
coordinate joint community-level responses.


Thus, Waze, a popular Alphabet-owned navigation app, already alerts 
users in large cities like São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro that they are 
about to enter a risky part of town (the provenance of the data that is 
feeding such recommendations has been quite murky). Likewise, residents 
concerned with crime rates in their own neighborhoods increasingly use 
tools like Whatsapp to share tips about any suspicious activities in the 
area.


As things get worse – and not just in Brazil – such Survival Tech, 
allowing citizens to get by in the face of adversity without demanding 
any ambitious social transformation, stands to flourish. The last 
decade, with its celebration of austerity, has been good for business as 
well. In fact, the entire technology boom that followed the 2007-08 
financial crisis 

infonuclear options are coming

[Morlock Elloi]

It will be interesting to see the coming spread of assertions of 
national information sovereignty.


The fact that the Internet started from one country, and that 70-75% of 
all Internet traffic (yes, it includes traffic between, say, Lyon and 
Marseille) goes through that country is often overlooked, as useful 
idiots defending "Internet freedoms" don't get that it actually means 
defending the right of that country to handle, snoop, modulate, inject, 
censor 75% of all Internet traffic. Freedom is slavery.


How would assertion of national data sovereignty be viewed, past the 
useful idiots?


For example, if Germany cuts off all foreign routing of human 
interactions within Germany (it means pretty much all 'social' systems 
are out ... my God ... freedoms ...), would that be viewed similar to 
non-sanctioned acquisition of own nuclear weapons? Because suddenly 
foreign countries get zero say in indoctrination, control and 
surveillance of Germans - and we know where can that lead. Imagine even 
worse, the French doing it?


It is starting to happen. China did it about 10 years ago, Russia is 
starting to do it, and vasal countries will be eying this option as 
well. It's cheaper than nuclear weapons, and as effective.


My guess is that some non-infonuclear proliferation treaties will be 
attempted first, and I'm excited waiting for arguments that bs artists 
will be serving for that purpose (unless they just copy Orwell.) I am 
especially expectant for entertaining arguments how this violates freedoms.


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Re: Unlike Us links on social media and their alternatives

[Morlock Elloi]

This is a promising direction. It's impossible to guess/infer at the 
first attempt what the platform should do, but it's almost obvious what 
it shouldn't. What we need is a requirements document, the one not 
produced by techies, as for one reason or another they tend to make bad 
choices. At this point I wouldn't worry what's 'possible' or 
'impossible'. Just imagine the ideal system and then work back to MVP. 
It may take some time, so the stamina is paramount.



is not technical (see above).  However, I am not sure that the problem is
'solved' even technically.  Consider how difficult it is to manage a system at
the edge in a way that avoids centralisation.  For example, no cryptocurrency
network is decentralised; such networks can always be captured by those with
the means.  Organisations such as Sovrin, which ostensibly supports a
self-sovereign identity scheme, often include in their design some kind of
foundation or governing body whose interests are not necessarily well-aligned
with those of its users.  And so on.  Some networks are better than others, but
let's face it, decentralisation is hard.  The only potential solution I see is
diversity, and that is hard to cultivate.  (Witness how project funding works
within the United Nations, for example.)


I agree. End points should have diverse implementations but contribution 
gating has to be a principle adopted by participants and locally policed 
at each end point, not (non)enforceable centralized policy. The concept 
of miners can not exist, as it leads to obvious centralization. Each 
node has to be able to evaluate every other node (whose contribution it 
accepts) locally.


How can this be done? I would postpone this discussion at this point, as 
it leads to multiple dead-ends due to diverse (in)competences of 
participants. Instead, we should reach some kind of consensus how the 
ideal system should behave. The rest is a technical problem.



this function in the past, although I am concerned about a rising
anti-intellectualism intrinsic to the argument for 'user friendliness'.  Rather
working to the glory of divine (in either the secular or religious sense)
goals, such architectures seek foremost to attract parishoners to the exclusion
of others who might seek to do the same.  It isn't right.  We should instead
call upon users to work with us, using concepts that are just 'friendly' enough
without excluding the 'users' from their design, governance, and management.


I see 'user friendliness' as enabling idiots, but I may be biased. This 
is a fine line that should be carefully threaded. User unfriendly may 
imply certain amount of intellectual/physical effort that can serve as 
moderator. It should not require years of training in particular 
technology. So this is actually a great question: what is 
background-agnostic "user unfriendliness" ? An artificial example would 
be having to turn a mechanical crank to run the dynamo to power the 
contraption.




No.  Systems designed for 'Sybil-resistance' (PoW, geolocation) necessarily
lead either to blacklisting or to plutocracy.  Think about it.  We need to
leverage our institutions, as you started to say earlier but somehow drowned in
the melancholic argument that we can never again have institutions powerful
enough to resist the current interests of a certain set of global, unregulated
corporations and the private, concentrated set of plutocrats behind them.


So we need PoW that doesn't scale. Yes, this leads back to traditional 
institutions, but it could be the least bad alternative. Institutions 
can control voting fraud, maybe not 100% but it seems enforceable. What 
I see sorely (and likely intentionally) missing is blinded proof of 
identity based on government IDs. It's trivially easy to implement, yet 
it's not done. With something like that, each individual cannot 
artificially multiply itself into bots etc.




I'm not sure about Jitsi, and if the core maintainers 'will soon end the
support', then what option will remain to keep it from becoming yet another
rent-seeker?  Personally, I'm much more excited about Nextcloud, which provides
self-hosted chat, H.265 voice calls, filesharing, calendaring, and more.  I
only hope that its open mainfestation can remain adequately funded and
supported by a development community that is committed to developing a free and
open tool that will be audited and maintained by a broad diversity of
interests.


Nextcloud is promising, but there is an infrastructural anomaly that has 
to be fixed first - direct addressability of every human (smartphone, 
home computer, etc.) without intermediaries, directories, assistants. 
Without it, only users with real IP numbers can freely participate 
(DynDNS is a centralized service prone to corruption). It's explained in 
the paper I peddled earlier ( https://cryptome.org/2019/02/elbar.pdf )



that one day we'll have something like Tox that is more private.  I have no
reason to believe that Briar is that 

Re: Shame of going against the tribe

[Morlock Elloi]

Sorry that you recognized yourself. I have no interest in private hate 
mail. Either publish or shut up.




From:   Brian Holmes 
Reply-To:   bhcontinentaldr...@gmail.com
To: Morlock Elloi 



On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 1:19 PM Morlock Elloi mailto:morlockel...@gmail.com>> wrote:

This resolved, for me, the mystery of disgust I had for the US
'progressives', 'left' and 'democrats'. I always thought that they were
far more sinister than the right, as they hijacked those who could do
something, the well-spoken professors, artists, journalists, the nice
educated people in khaki, turning the form into the value (the tanned
POTUS spoke so well, while the present one is grabbing p*ssies, etc
...), and castrating any possibility of the effect.


There is no mystery to the disgust that I feel for the ceaseless parade
of your ignorance and spite, Morlock. To authenticate your personality
you deal in vituperative generalities, exactly like so many other angry
and violent narcissists who recently discovered that they do not
personally rule the universe. Your racism, on display above in the
comment about somebody who's black, not tanned, is tolerated here for
reasons I don't understand. Your virulent anti-leftism is not considered
fascist even though it conforms perfectly to the style of the trolling
alt-right. You think your knowledge of computers replace anyone else's
knowledge of anything else, and so you constantly spew your ungrounded
opinions onto this list and probably everywhere you go. In this case,
the slightest look at the most obvious place belies what you say. No,
you are wrong again, all professors do not shamelessly follow what you
call, in another bigoted phrase, "the tribe":

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/26/opinion/media-constitution-assange-leaks.html

Your opinions are worthless, Morlock. Try shutting up for a day, maybe
you will learn something about the world around you.



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Shame of going against the tribe

[Morlock Elloi]

This resolved, for me, the mystery of disgust I had for the US 
'progressives', 'left' and 'democrats'. I always thought that they were 
far more sinister than the right, as they hijacked those who could do 
something, the well-spoken professors, artists, journalists, the nice 
educated people in khaki, turning the form into the value (the tanned 
POTUS spoke so well, while the present one is grabbing p*ssies, etc 
...), and castrating any possibility of the effect.


But their motivation was always a puzzle. What makes a supposedly 
sapient person with thinking tools drink that Kool Aid, and become a 
boot-licking mindless worm?


C. Johnstone figured it out: shame of going against the tribe.

Privately owned computerized human interaction exchanges (aka 'social 
media') certainly had a major hand in this. This never happened before, 
and, absent some new kind of cosmic rays, their existence is the only 
difference.


[ From
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/04/26/assanges-imprisonment-arguably-reveals-even-more-corruption-than-wikileaks-did/ 
]



Assange’s Imprisonment Arguably Reveals Even More Corruption Than 
WikiLeaks Did

April 26, 2019

By locking up Assange, the U.S, its allies and corporate media have 
inadvertently exposed themselves for what they are, and we’re now able 
to point that out for everyone to see, writes Caitlin Johnstone.


By Caitlin Johnstone

Consortium News has launched a new series titled “The Revelations of 
WikiLeaks”, geared toward helping readers come to a full appreciation of 
just how much useful information the outlet has made available to the 
world with its publications. Which is good, because there’s a whole lot 
of it. Understanding everything that WikiLeaks has done to shine light 
in areas that powerful people wish to keep dark makes it abundantly 
clear why powerful people would want to dedicate immense amounts of 
energy toward sabotaging it.


What’s even more interesting to me right now, though, is that if you 
think about it, the completely fraudulent arrest and imprisonment of 
Julian Assange arguably exposes more malfeasance by government and media 
powers than than what has been revealed in all WikiLeaks publications 
combined since its inception. And we can use that as a weapon in waking 
the world up to the dystopian manipulations of the powerful, in the same 
way we can use WikiLeaks publications.


Really, think about it. Thanks to WikiLeaks we know about a military 
cultural environment in the Iraq war that was toxic enough to give rise 
to U.S. servicemen merrily gunning down civilians, including two Reuters 
war correspondents, while whooping and exchanging verbal high-fives. We 
know that the CIA cultivated a massive cyber-arsenal which enables them 
to spy through smartphones and smart TVs, remotely hijack vehicles, and 
forge digital fingerprints on cyber-intrusions to make it look to 
forensic investigators as though hackers from another nation was 
responsible, and that they lost control of this arsenal.


 We know about the DNC’s agenda to undermine Bernie Sanders during the 
primary in violation of its charter, that Hillary Clinton told a group 
of Goldman Sachs executives that she understood the need to have “a 
public position and a private position,” and that Obama’s cabinet was 
basically selected for him by a Citigroup executive. We know that and a 
whole lot more, information which mainstream and alternative media 
reports use to this very day when constructing analyses of what’s going 
on in the world.


All of these things are of course hugely significant. But are they 
anywhere near as significant as the earth-shakingly scandalous 
revelation that the U.S. government and its allies conspired to imprison 
a journalist for reporting facts about the powerful? That the 
governments of America, Ecuador, the UK and Australia all worked in 
concert to arrange a series of bureaucratic technicalities which all 
aligned perfectly to create a situation that just so happens to look 
exactly the same as imprisoning a journalist for telling the truth?


The only thing which keeps this scandalous revelation from registering 
in the minds of the greater public with the magnitude it deserves is the 
fact that the mass media doesn’t treat it like the scandal that it so 
clearly is. If, for example, the mass media were treating this open act 
of tyranny with the same enthusiasm they treated the Democratic Party 
emails as they were published drop by drop in the lead-up to the 
presidential election, or the same enthusiasm they regarded the 
diplomatic cables or the “Collateral Murder” video, everyone would be up 
in arms at the fact that their government was acting in a way that is 
functionally indistinguishable from what’s done to journalists by the 
most totalitarian dictatorships in the world.


And that refusal of the mainstream media to run virtually anything but 
smear pieces is, in and of itself, a part of why this scandal is so 
breathtaking 

Re: Unlike Us links on social media and their alternatives

[Morlock Elloi]

Hopefully this time around it will be a more radical approach.

But first some non-technical issues have to be solved.

Anything that has a 'center' shall be censored and regulated sooner or 
later, no matter what the current operators say. Having the most 
benevolent hand holding your balls is always a bad idea. Usually the 
'alternative' center-full systems are left to operate as long as their 
membership is low. The moment they become popular the game is over. 
Whether the 'center' is material (ie. servers at known locations) or 
just administrative CCC (ie. Silk Road via onion) does not make much 
difference.


The center-full alternatives that do survive with limited popularity 
tend to become isolated islands, and usually end up with invitation-only 
memberships (because some dick 'knows' who to invite.) Great if you are 
into incest but suck otherwise (the islands.) There is something magic 
about 'public', the possibility of random connection and unintended 
consequences.


Technically, center-less platforms embodied exclusively on the edge are 
a solved problem.


The non-technical problems are how to manage general non-moderated 
access, and how to make it popular without exclusivity and known honchos 
in charge. For illustrative history, research the tragedy of Usenet.


The wrong way to think about these solutions is to assume that machines 
will somehow naturally liberate the society and enable everyone to have 
the say, even those with IQ in teens.


The right way is to deploy tried and tested real-world mechanisms for 
selection and throttling. People participating in traditional discourse 
today have means to come to cities, or they already live there, so they 
have money and access (hillbillies don't come to conferences.) Money is 
a functional moderator. Early Usenet was great because only those with 
access to computers and networks could participate, and that was a 
select elite from academia, industry and individual tinkerers (modems 
used to cost a fortune.) Education and club memberships are great 
moderators.


Along these lines, we need an electronic system that's neither cheap nor 
simple to access. Never forget that 'user friendly' concept is a 
sinister ideological instrument to ensure impotency of the medium. Yes, 
that's hard to digest, but it's true.


Then we need to make it popular.

I don't have a solution for the latter, but the former can be easily 
done by requiring costly PoW to participate, resulting in very material 
electricity bills, and likely a reserved piece of equipment that is used 
exclusively for the purpose of participation. Anyone willing to pay and 
set it up can participate. It would be like going to expensive night 
club: mostly nice people there, with only few scattered gangsters. The 
cost can be adjusted (via geolocating) to match the GDP of the locality.


Don't even THINK about liberating anyone - it's a guaranteed 
self-defeating concept - even the dumbest open access 
computers-as-democracy-enablers activist should have it figured out by now.


Jitsi is great, BTW. 100% edge-based and end-to-end encrypted. Use the 
'jitsi desktop', not the other stuff (which is all center-full,) and 
download the source, as they will soon end the support. It takes some 
effort to convince others to use it though, and then the idiots start to 
complain that Skype has better quality.


Everything else mentioned is center-full.



On 4/28/19, 09:50, Geert Lovink wrote:

Dear nettime, as the world slowly moves towards regulation of Facebook
and Google, the question of social media alternatives seems nowhere near
to be resolved. Or is there some progress? For a while I have been
compiling link lists related to the social media question for the Unlike
Us email list and I am happy to share some of the ones from March/April
with you here. What do you use? How about telegram, signal, duckduckgo,
mastedon, jitsi, protonmail, openstreetmap, cryptpad.fr
, deepl translator? Are there ways to create a
critical mass within your own networks and communities? Best, Geert


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infrastructural interventions

[Morlock Elloi]

Reality, from John Young:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D5JxigHW0AA6zjw.jpg

Fiction, from John Carpenter:
https://cdn2.lamag.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2018/11/theylivelocations_jaredcowan-2.jpg

Carpenter was optimist.
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Re: Tom Hodgkinson: What do they do with all that money? (The Idler)

[Morlock Elloi]

It's an easy answer, just imagine that you've been asked by someone from 
one of the several African nations with GDP less than $800/year, 
effectively living from $5 a week: How can you possibly spend $200/week? 
(for EU dole recipients.)


Once you get beyond bare basics to keep a humanoid alive for its natural 
life span (30-35 years), everything is artificial luxury and 
manufactured need. Differentiating between $200 and $500,000 a week is 
frivolous.




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To spot Wizards of Oz

[Morlock Elloi]

The infrastructural grip on the human exchange reached the stage where 
there is little sense in having discourse with end points. Drones with 
smartphones grafted onto their faces have little, if anything, to say. 
They are like smart Christmas lights creating patterns that they 
individually don't even understand. Fake news about fake news. Probably 
many failed experiments to figure out the efficient ways of information 
injection. That's how you learn.


So who is the one to talk with? There is definitely a Command and 
Control Center (CCC) (one or several.) Its presence can be detected by 
the speed with which dissemination points (DPs) (TV channels, print 
media, server operators, various talking heads) synchronize the message. 
The communication between CCC and DPs is undoubtedly electronic and 
likely overlayed over the existing infrastructure.


This, of course, has all hallmarks of a conspiracy theory, so if your 
religion includes chaotically emergent phenomena and Deity of 
Complexity, you should stop reading here.


There are two interesting questions that matter: who owns CCCs and how 
is communication actually performed? Investigating actors on remote 
controls, which is where most of the discourse is, is a total waste of 
time, evidenced by exactly zero effect.


CCCs are likely manned by some subset of elite and Roman Guard, most 
likely tightly associated with various security services. These are the 
people you actually want to talk with - they are humans like the rest of 
us. But first you need to find them, and that's not trivial.


As for communications, they appear to be properly secured. There was not 
a single leak of coordination messaging. This hints that the 
communication hierarchy is exclusively populated by high pay-grade 
humans - there are probably no low-level operators in the chain. It may 
make sense to see what kind of personal communication equipment do 
high-level managers of DPs carry around.


For artistic approach, see Carpenter's "They Live".
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Re: Guardian Live on Assange's arrest

[Morlock Elloi]

I agree Assange's impact has been immense, but that kind of heroic model
is a counterproductive way of thinking about Assange and his
contributions. If anything, the distinctive (maybe even decisive)
feature of the last decade was its lack of heroes and the growing sense
that we're enmeshed in tangled and collapsing systems.


I often see this system vs. heroes argument, and if you look at my 
infrastructure rants, I generally support the 'systemic' approach and 
denigrate 'heroes'. But who creates the proper systemic approach, as 
opposed to the present one? The 'system' more often than not turns into 
ecosystem of cowards, leeches and opportunistic parasites, and nothing, 
*nothing* ever comes out of it. So we are back to the necessity of 
heroes and martyrs, and if you look back in the recorded history, 
nothing happened without them.


The cycle is then: corrupt system -> hero/martyr -> better system -> 
actual change. Assange's efforts may become visible long after he is 
neutralized. But he is a required component.


As for the theory, look up his paper on how elites organize and how it 
can be disrupted. I think it's a general mistake to classify Wikileaks 
as the new journalism model. Journalism is part of the system and 
journalists are prostitutes. Wikileaks is about actual disruption of 
elites, which journalism sometimes accidentally or incidentally does. 
While calling them publishers is convenient in the legal battle, it has 
a side effect of masking what they actually do. This is what makes the 
case interesting: everyone that matters knows what Wikileaks is really 
about, yet it has to be narrated through this silly cover. Similar to 
Cryptome - where JY has to put up a balanced front of a runaway mind in 
order not to be carried away by neither TLA nor people in white. In the 
end, it's all about who will you be carried away by.



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Re: Guardian Live on Assange's arrest

[Morlock Elloi]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D351_3qWwAEkMXt.jpg


Now watch the sad show of British and their judicial system as they bend


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Re: Guardian Live on Assange's arrest

[Morlock Elloi]

The principal sin is that Wikileaks undermined (by explicitly exposing 
crimes) the wide spread belief among subjects of modern states: "it is 
OK for my state/party to behave criminally, because I benefit from it, 
as long as they keep it quiet". This is the unpardonable offense.


If documenting crimes requires "super-empowered individual" it just 
means that criminals are expending enormous efforts to hide them.




Assange (and Wikileaks) has become a prime example of what military
theorist in the early 00s called a "super-empowered individual" capable
of marshaling technology and resources available to non-sate actors to


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Re: Guardian Live on Assange's arrest

[Morlock Elloi]

There is no such thing as "Swedish request for extradition" - this is 
fact that is easily checked. He was never charged. The case was dropped. 
It was manufactured attempt by US to snatch him.


It's really depressing how effective the propaganda is.

Now repeat:

There is no such thing as "Swedish request for extradition".
There is no such thing as "Swedish request for extradition"
There is no such thing as "Swedish request for extradition"

They say that repetition works for decontamination as well.

But there is hope - idiots obsessing how Assange "inserted bare dick 
into vulnerable female" are quiet these days.



On 4/11/19, 10:24, David Garcia wrote:

Given the nature of the allegations agree to Swedish request for extradition.


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Re: CiTiZEN KiNO #78 - Eyes Wired Shut - April 11 premiere ( Berlin ) + coming to a theater near you ?! ( Tour )

[Morlock Elloi]

So what happens when re-packaging of Frankfurt school into 'tactical 
footage' ends up on Youtube, becoming one of ten billion videos? The end 
game of showing/publishing became a nightmare. We need unscaleable medium.



This is an invite for our new tactical media show in Berlin 2morw nite,
but also to alert you to our experimental media platform + artivism


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Re: rage against the machine

[Morlock Elloi]

The below is a grim read, and shows what happens when imponderable 
complexity performs very ponderable mass murder. Unlike red-herringing 
here on nettime, it was a very physical fight between humans and 
machines, which humans lost due to limits of muscle power.


Next time someone tries to abstract the murder into some bullshit 
complexity, re-read from the below:


'''Manual trimming means using banal muscle power, insiders call this 
work even "acrobatic". Probably that is why the affected airline 
Ethiopian Airlines in their communication this week, it is very 
unfortunate that the pilots of the crash machine "despite their hard 
work" could not prevent the aircraft to continue the deadly course.'''


They probably died swearing. They knew that it was the machine killing 
them. I wonder if they died screaming at the machine or at its designers?



Machine translated from 
https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Absturz-ET-302-Minuten-des-Schreckens-4365546.html


Preliminary investigation report from Addis Ababa relieves the pilots 
after the second crash of a Boeing 737 Max - and provides dramatic 
insights, at the same time, the question of the relationship between man 
and computer comes to a head


On a dry field a few miles outside the Ethiopian town of Bischoftu, 
flight ET 302 ends on Sunday morning, March 10, at 8:45 am in a 
fireball. For 149 passengers and eight crew members from 33 nations, it 
meant death. Several meters deep, the soil is torn open, the earth 
burned black. A short flight of terrifying moments: The Boeing 737 MAX 8 
machine was barely seven minutes in the air after it had just left the 
Bole Airport of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.


The pilots flew according to the standards

Now, just over a month later, a preliminary report is available. The 
report was eagerly awaited as the circumstances surrounding Flight ET 
302 continue to raise pressing questions. The aircraft's control 
software was soon suspected, as in a crash a few months earlier, in 
which a Lion-Air machine of the same type (also a Boeing 737 Max) 
crashed in Indonesia. This killed 189 people.


Whether the controversial control system of the model family for the 
calamities ultimately alone (or in which constellation) was decisive, 
must be further clarified in the details.  However, the preliminary 
investigation report from Addis Ababa, which the Ethiopian Minister of 
Transport Dagmawit Moges presented to the public at the end of the week, 
provides some information that could help to educate.


For example, the crew of Ethiopian Airlines acted correctly in the 
minutes before the crash and complied with all requirements set by the 
manufacturer Boeing for the critical flight phase. Occasionally even the 
qualification of the crew had been questioned. At first, the pilots were 
acting professionally according to the checklist "Stabilizer Trim 
Runaway" and switched off the electric trim. Nevertheless, you can not 
bring the machine under control. The course of the flight remained 
unstable. According to the research from Addis Ababa, there is no doubt 
that the nose of the machine has been pushed down automatically several 
times without appropriate instructions.


Deadly fiasco

In vain did the crew of the 737 fight to stabilize the situation. Three 
times the captain called to his co-pilot "Pull up!", But it did not 
help. The data from the flight recorder of ET 302 clearly shows that the 
pilots repeatedly switched the automatic control on and off. They 
followed the instructions. The on-board computer stubbornly took over 
and kept the direction, pulling the nose of the aircraft down again and 
again. Enormous forces must have been created, possibly in connection 
with an unusual acceleration - forces that had a dramatic effect on the 
course of the flight and worsened the situation.



Is that why obvious attempts to trim by handwheel failed?  Such manual 
interventions are part of the pilots' flight repertoire - and they are 
usually associated with considerable effort. Manual trimming means using 
banal muscle power, insiders call this work even "acrobatic". Probably 
that is why the affected airline Ethiopian Airlines in their 
communication this week, it is very unfortunate that the pilots of the 
crash machine "despite their hard work" could not prevent the aircraft 
to continue the deadly course.


However, the question also remains after these considerations ultimately 
not answered, why the juggernaut did not continue consistently manually. 
If the electric motors for trim adjustment are disconnected from the 
power supply, the autopilot can actually no longer provide any inputs. 
Did the pilots of ET 302 come up with the right approach, but - under 
enormous stress - changed the "course of action" too hectic and thus 
enabled further trim inputs of a faulty system?


More software problems - rival Airbus rethinks security architecture

While the crew is relieved to a certain extent by the 

Re: Not Brexit

[Morlock Elloi]

Appologies to Morlock who rightly berated those of us obsessed with arcane


No problem.


why if you live here its like staring at the Sun and proably as dangerous.


The paper?



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crexit

[Morlock Elloi]

I don't know much about the 'crisis' caused by contractual issues 
between GB and EU, it seems to me it's mostly about GB ruling gang 
hugely overestimating its negotiation skills (that upper class breeding 
strategy needs rethinking), and this picture illustrates that idiocy 
better than any texts I've seen:


https://i.imgur.com/9aU4XVy.jpg

BTW, I hear EU negotiators are lately openly calling their GB 
counterparts 'idiots', in the medical sense.

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Re: rage against the machine

[Morlock Elloi]

In case you missed, all narratives about pilots not being 
trained/informed were red herrings. It looks like it was an attempt to 
deflect blame on humans (either those that were supposed to inform 
pilots or those that were supposed to establish proper training 
procedures - from Boeing and individual airlines), in order to save the 
sanctity of AI deity. It all turned to be bs.


Pilots did everything Boeing deemed required to regain control:


As the jet began nose diving, the pilots "repeatedly" performed all emergency procedures 
provided by Boeing, the manufacturer, but they "were not able to control the aircraft,"

...

According to the sources, the pilots did not try to electronically pull the 
nose of the plane up before following Boeing's emergency procedures of 
disengaging power to the horizontal stabilizer on the rear of the aircraft. One 
source told ABC News they manually attempted to bring the nose of the plane 
back up by using the trim wheel. Soon after, the pilots restored power to the 
horizontal stabilizer.

With power restored, the MCAS was re-engaged, the sources said, and the pilots 
were unable to regain control before the crash.


So it's much worse than it looked like. Boeing designed automated 
machine controls which they (Boeing) did not understand. It had modes of 
operation unknown to its designers. This is inevitable - I'll repeat: 
INEVITABLE - when you have more than few thousands lines of code. There 
are no testing procedures to save you from this. There are only testing 
procedures to cover up your ass with legal compliance requirements.


This placement of complex automated control loops everywhere is starting 
to look like putting small nuclear reactors in homes, cars, schools, 
offices, etc., because it's cheaper than distributing gas and 
electricity, and hoping that sh*t won't happen. No, I'm wrong: they know 
that the sh*t will happen, but the calculation is that even after 
insurance pay-out and ephemeral PR damage it is still cheaper. The two 
recent disasters were allowed calculated risks.




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Re: Managing complexity?

[Morlock Elloi]

There are simpler ways of viewing this:

1. The 'complexity' is so complex that individual actors do not matter 
any more, and what is there is new emergent phenomenon so complex it's 
nearly impossible to understand; we need to spend our lives analyzing it 
while in semi-catatonic paralysis.


2. Complexity is sleigh of hand used to shield actors from 
responsibility. It's a new deity, akin to the traditional ones, in whose 
name atrocities were allowed to happen, as nothing else could be done 
without being blasphemous. It became a classical religion, removing 
responsibility from individuals, introducing Fate 2.0, and 
self-reinforcing as it prevents one from going into dangerous and 
correct direction of action, becoming self-preservation vehicle. If you 
think that today's highly liberal educated philosophiles are immune to 
such basic religious contamination, you're an idiot.


Which one is correct? Let's see what those that can do, I mean powers 
that be: when they don't like something, they target and kill, maim and 
imprison *individuals*. From heads of state to inconvenient loudmouths. 
Somehow they don't let the complexity overwhelm them into perpetual 
ruminations in their cabinets. And it works, perfectly: the power of 
dominant powers that be is more solid today than it ever was.


This should give you a hint to the correct answer.

---

ru·mi·na·tion/ˌro͞oməˈnāSH(ə)n/
noun

   1. ...
   2. the action of chewing the cud.

Also see https://i.imgur.com/PVpHtDM.jpg




* The chains of interactions have grown longer. Many (social and
ecological) systems used to be relatively local phenomena have become


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Re: rage against the machine

[Morlock Elloi]

Didn't have to wait for long:

"Fake lane attack: ... Misleading the autopilot vehicle to the wrong 
direction ... we pasted some small stickers as interference patches on 
the ground in an intersection ... This kind of attack is simple to 
deploy, and the materials are easy to obtain. "


https://keenlab.tencent.com/en/whitepapers/Experimental_Security_Research_of_Tesla_Autopilot.pdf

Note that this intervention was not on the vehicle, but on the environment.


On 3/17/19, 12:48, Morlock Elloi wrote:

Note that autonomous vehicles are becoming affordable assassination
instruments. It would cost a fortune a decade ago to create robotic


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Re: rage against the machine

[Morlock Elloi]

Everything is already in place to properly regulate this space, except 
naming things for what they are.


All industrial/commercial activities that impact humans below cognitive 
levels (ie. directly biologically or by exploiting basic innate drives) 
are in general heavily regulated:


- sex (rent, lease or purchase)
- food supply
- air
- religious/cult indoctrination
- health/medicine

It is simple and recognized fact that prevalent machine interfaces 
provide artificial socializing stimuli and exploit ability to create 
biological addiction, in order to make money (either by advertizing or 
selling their hapless subjects to influences by the highest bidder.) 
Exploiting socializing drive, which in humans is rather prominent, is 
not different from exploiting the sex drive, and needs to be regulated 
as such.


Current discourse on this, basically porn industry, is ridiculous: it's 
as if regulating classic porn (can children view it or not, or can you 
put it on billboards) consisted of selecting and vetting actresses and 
actors that can perform in a sanctioned way, while banning other ones 
(dick too big/small, too fat/too skinny, minority status etc.) It 
doesn't matter: as long as dick entering pussy is shown, it's porn. Same 
for social media: as long as presence of strangers and interaction with 
them ('friends' in social parlance) is simulated, it's porn.


The main issue here is that, while powers that be cannot easily exploit 
classical porn (I'm sure they tried - references, anyone?), they can 
exploit 'strangers care about you' reflex titillation, so they *like* 
this type of porn and won't do anything about it.






On 3/30/19, 09:05, tbyfield wrote:

'innovation' is enabling around the world. The US has ironclad
regulations and norms about experimenting on human subjects, which are
enforced with brutal mania in academia. But, somehow, we haven't been
able to apply them to pretty much everything Silicon Valley does.
Instead, we get ridiculous kerfuffles about Facebook experimenting with
making people 'sad' or the tangle around Cambridge Analytica, which is
both real and borderline-paranoiac. The blurriness of that boundary is a
by-product of, if you like, the micro-epistemological divide that
separates general journalism and investigative journalism. We're
terrible at 'scaling' this kind of analysis or down: either from
subtract to concrete, by saying 'WTF is going on?!' and channeling it
into broad, effective limitations on what infotech companies can do, or
from concrete to abstract, by catching companies


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search no more

[Morlock Elloi]

You may have noticed in the last few days that date-based searches on 
industrial-surveillance properties are malfunctioning. Especially if you 
search for something recent (like "sort by date"). This is most easily 
seen on the Youtube subsidiary: try sorting by date uploaded, see what 
you get.


The reason is simple: failure of scalable censoring mechanisms (because 
ML (AI for the masses) has to 'learn' - that's what L stands for) to 
prevent dissemination of just uploaded undesirable content, they simply 
decided that you can never search by that criteria. This new episode in 
'search' adulteration is entertaining because it could not be made 
invisible.


The end game is obvious - searching will return only approved content, 
and the gap between the most recent searchable content and 'now' will 
depend on the speed of content approval processing. Right now they seem 
to be far behind.


Can they close the gap? It remains to be seen, as this looks like the 
first real war between humans and AI: if humans win, the search engines 
will start to look like Wayback machine or Wikipedia - very few curated 
results, which will undoubtedly affect the bottom line. Maybe this is 
acceptable, as other sources of data-siphoning income are steadily 
growing. If the machines win, the Network will start to look far more 
sterile and barren, but it will be in real time, and thus can 
successfully project that sterility into hapless users, who interface 
the world through handsets. Words you cannot hear and things you cannot 
see you cannot think.


Both of these outcomes will provide lots of initiative for alternative 
systems. I wouldn't be surprised if Russians or Chinese provide free 
uncensored search services to US/EU audiences (like they already do for 
the news). Now you know what Huawei vs. Cisco is all about.


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Re: rage against the machine

[Morlock Elloi]

Seemingly totally unrelated:

1. flight recorders are brightly colored these days. The term "black 
box" originates in WW2, mostly because the first flight recorders, as 
all other "secret" electronics, was housed in metal boxes painted matte 
black.


See 
https://web.archive.org/web/20171019110346/http://siiri.tampere.fi/displayObject.do?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.profium.com%2Farchive%2FArchivedObject-8077CE76-2B43-6FAA-D11C-77AAFD6C72E8


2. Schematic "black box", meaning circuitry/algorithm that is opaque and 
not supposed to be seen or understood, and only I/O is available also 
originates in WW2.


It's hilarious that #1 and #2 overlap again these days, as most airlines 
have no capability of examining their own flight recorders, so we are 
back to black boxes: Ethiopian Airlines refused to hand over their black 
boxes to Americans, as they don't trust them. Instead they gave them to 
the French (this really existing trust hierarchy is getting 
interesting.) For Ethiopian Airlines, the brightly colored flight 
recorders are true black boxes: the input was something their aircraft 
generated, and the output is something that French will generate. 
Ethiopian Airlines doesn't get to understand the rest.


So term "black box" is fully justified and interchangeable with "flight 
recorder", in true schematic sense.




On 3/28/19, 11:48, Felix Stalder wrote:

Let me just pick up on one point, because it kind of annoyed me since
the start the thread, the significance of the the existence of a "black
box" in the airplane and in cybernetic diagrams. To the best of my
understanding, these two "black boxes" stand in no relation to each other.


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Re: EU == USSR v2.0 ?

[Morlock Elloi]

Property is just an opinion, programmed into certain number of human 
brains. It's soft, and can be modified or erased. There is no brain area 
dedicated for private property (witness human societies without it.) 
Using this ephemeral phenomenon to understand underlying dynamics is 
unproductive. Observers from Mars cannot detect property, as they cannot 
detect human gods. But they can detect lifecycles, illnesses, buildings, 
murders, poverty, luxury and such. The worse sleigh of hand done to 
communism was to divert focus to this single soft aspect (remotely 
similar to POTUS pussy grabbing idiocy.)


The basic similarity between USSR and EU is the willingness of large 
number of people, *not* based on religion, leaders, or tribal/national 
identity, to pitch in for the better common* future. Both events are 
unique in the history in this regard.


* note the word root


How is the EU seizing control of the means of production?  How is the EU
delegitimising the ownership of private property by private citizens?  When
last I checked, it was still possible to establish for-profit businesses in the
EU, and it was still possible for individual EU citizens to purchase goods from
Ka De We.  To say that the EU model incorporates elements of socialism is one
thing, to say that it is 'communism' is a bridge too far.

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Re: rage against the machine

[Morlock Elloi]

The basic issue is complexity crossing the threshold that humans cannot.

So far, at least in the last few thousand years or so, mental abilities 
were one of key factors for individual 'success' (the other, likely more 
important one, was class and heritage.) We appreciate smart people as 
much as the rich ones. In the last few decades there was acceleration of 
cognitive stratification, as the class of more-than-average smart 
technicians was needed to tend to more and more complex computing machines.


Today it's obvious that the system of controlling capital/power, the 
Roman Guard of technicians, and computing machinery itself is 
practically ruling the world. Yet we can see smart people behind it so 
at least we can map the new order into familiar space, where smart 
people, evil, good, or just sociopathic, are at the helm.


What happens when the machine complexity surpasses the human cognition? 
Skynet aside, the most dire effect is that the smart Roman Guard becomes 
redundant. Instead, it will be the inbred, semi-retarded ruling 
oligarchy, some 30-40,000 families on the planet, that will have this 
miracle machinery in its lap. Like a chimp that got hold of unlimited 
supply of AK-47s. It's not going to be sophisticated, it's going to be 
ugly. The final disintermediation. The heritage becomes the sole factor. 
Smartness is out.


These things, societies optimizing themselves out of existence, happened 
before in different forms. Easter Island rulers liked those statues so 
much that they depleted all natural resources in building them, 
destroying the whole society in the process.


The chimp logic is dead simple. It's a total waste of time theorizing 
and philosophizing about it. All that just buys them more time.





On 3/28/19, 08:38, tbyfield wrote:

That's why criticisms of the 'complexity' of increasingly automated and
autonomized vehicles are a dead end, or at least limited to two
dimensions. I liked it very much when you wrote that "the rise in
complexity in itself is not a bad thing"; and, similarly, giving up
autonomy is not in itself a *bad* thing. The question is where and how
we draw the lines around autonomy. The fact that some cars will fly
doesn't mean that every 'personal mobility device' — say, bicycles —
needs to be micromanaged by a faceless computational state run amok. Yet
that kind of massive,


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EU == USSR v2.0 ?

[Morlock Elloi]

The arguments and narratives on EU don't really make much sense. Not 
that deeply entrenched sides do not have self-coherent dogmas, they do. 
But it all just doesn't make sense. There is a total disconnect between 
them and between them and reality, it seems. Immigration, sovereignty, 
neoliberalism, nationalism, etc. etc. ad nauseam, barren and fruitless 
drivel goes on and on. Especially in GB (why anyone cares so much what 
happens to the irrelevant inbred island is a separate topic) - 
intelligent people have to admit that they don't have a clue what 
Brexit-no-Brexit discourse is about. Not that it will prevent anyone to 
contributing.


Maybe, then, the real issue is completely different, and present 
discourses and narratives are simply psychotic avoidance of confronting it.


EU is really another attempt at communism.

Communism appears to be genetically attractive to large swaths of 
population, so it does come up and will continue to be coming up, one 
way or another. It's like when you are constipated - it *will* come out 
sooner or later, and you know it. The question is how much are you going 
to pretend and suffer in the meantime.


The first attempt, USSR, failed for known reasons. It did work in the 
beginning though. The same happened to EU. The really existing communism 
appears to be perishable matter.


The neurotic need to brand it as something else in the case of EU didn't 
change much, if anything. The pattern is unmistakeable: wide initial 
support from working class masses and honest intelligentsia, belief in 
transnational unity and rosy future, followed by corruption of officials 
and apparatchik system of government. In the post-mortem phase, 
flourishing of 'analysis' and bickering about the exact way the decay 
should proceed.


So don't be sorry about EU. Hopefully we learned something, and the next 
time it will be better. It *will* come out, again.






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Re: rage against the machine

[Morlock Elloi]

It looks like Boeing hired car salesman. These are the options that you 
may choose to add (and pay extra, like heated seats) with your brand new 
737 MAX purchase:


Option #32: "Angle of attack disagree light": informs pilots about 
discrepancy between nose direction and airflow, in pre-stall condition. 
May mean faulty sensors.


Option #47: "AOA indicator" similar but different. Provides continual 
visualization of airflow vs. nose.


Neither Ethiopian Airlines nor Lion Air chose to pay for these ... options.

There is no excuse for such criminal product packaging. Anyone doing it 
or defending it should be burned at stake in any civilized country. The 
fact that it will not happen is the best statement about the times we 
live in.



ps. I made up option numbers. In reality they are likely 3-digit.
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Re: Christchurch and the Dark Social Web by Luke Munn

[Morlock Elloi]

Accelerated and (unconditionally) broadcast communications affect humans 
at many levels, not just the surface cognition.


One (imperfect) model of the networked society:

We are all in the same (not Olympic-size, but half) swimming pool. As we 
pee, shit, fart, ejaculate and ooze various stuff, it spreads around and 
affects everyone within minutes or hours (on the far side of the pool.) 
The water in the pool is never recycled, everything stays there forever, 
including excrement from decade ago. Try to be friendly.


Perhaps there should be an annual (bi-annual?) Network Cleaning Day, 
when everything electronically stored is erased, under the pain of 
imprisonment?




But now all social relations in all the developed societies are in some way 
mediated by networks. That means two things simultaneously: computer networks 
seep into all culture, and all elements of culture - including the worst and 
most rancid white supremacy - seep directly into computer networks.


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Re: Banality of code

[Morlock Elloi]

The most scary recent example I've seen are the new elevators: there are 
no buttons/controls inside. They will take you where you have been 
authorized to go, by someone else.


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Banality of code

[Morlock Elloi]

Instructions written at one place and time, executing at another place 
and time, are relatively new to the species. We are used to inanimate 
objects that are relatively easy to comprehend, from hammer to train 
locomotive. We are not used to objects that 'think'. Cats and parrots 
may think, but locomotives don't.


This new class of thinking objects makes decisions on the fly. So what 
are these objects, really? Cats? No, cat is relatively predictable and 
not too smart, plus rather fearful. These objects enforce complex 
policies, and can make life-critical decisions. For the sake of 
discussion, let's assume that all the glitches are fixed; today's 
thinking objects may be slightly retarded inexperienced beginners, but 
tomorrow they are going to get rather good.


What happens when an object makes an appropriate policy-based decision 
that you disagree with? From PKD's Ubik:


---
... he therefore vigorously strode to the apt door, turned the knob
and pulled on the release bolt.
 The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.”
 He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you
tomorrow,” he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it
remained locked tight. “What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the
nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.”
 “I think otherwise,” the door said. “Look in the purchase contract
you signed when you bought this conapt.”
 In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had
found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough;
payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory
fee. Not a tip.
 “You discover I’m right,” the door said. It sounded smug.

 From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife;
with it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his
apt’s money-gulping door.
 “I’ll sue you,” the door said as the first screw fell out.
 Joe Chip said, “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can
live through it.”
---

It totally doesn't matter if thinking objects make life 'better'. That's 
bs marketing copy. They act without warning, because we cannot read 
their face or mood. They make things happen to us unconditionally; there 
is no exchange.


These objects perform activities without responsibility and fear of 
repercussions; they don't have self-preservation drive; you cannot 
threaten them. The ones who defined the policy and its execution are 
safely far away.


These objects are only following orders, and they don't give a f*ck if 
you hang them.



On 3/18/19, 13:25, tbyfield wrote:

Obviously, quite a lot has happened since then, and a big part of it has
to do with the growing reliance on computation in every aspect of
aviation. In short, the problem isn't limited to the plane as a
technical object: it also applies to *the entire process of conceiving,
designing, manufacturing, and maintaining planes*. This interpenetration
has become so deep and dense that — at least, this is how I take
Morlock's point — Boeing, as an organization, has lost sight of its
basic responsibility: a regime — organizational, conceptual, technical —
that *guarantees* their planes work, where 'work' means reliably move
contents from point A to B without damaging the plane or the contents.


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Re: rage against the machine

[Morlock Elloi]

This is deeply ideological and political issue, not technical one. 
Inserting code written by middlemen between humans and reality empowers 
only the middlemen. Humans are presented by fantasy that adheres to 
reality when and in degree being decided by the middlemen.


There is one small step between this and removing all agency from humans 
(if not already done). It's like company wants to sack someone, first 
they make sure that the sackee's job is irrelevant (someone else 
controls and does it) and the sackee cannot do damage.


Well, you are being sacked.

Note that autonomous vehicles are becoming affordable assassination 
instruments. It would cost a fortune a decade ago to create robotic 
suicide vehicle bomber, so humans were used. Today anyone with basic 
skills can buy one of these and hack the controls. It's 100% software 
job. Add some ML and the vehicle can pick victims on its own ("dark 
skinned males" or "carrying yoga mat" or "MAGA hat", etc.)




" But Boeing isn’t planning to overhaul its training procedures. And
neither the F.A.A., nor the European Union Aviation Safety Agency
, are proposing additional simulator
training for pilots, according to a person familiar with the
deliberations. Instead, the regulators and Boeing agree that the best
way to inform pilots about the new software is through additional
computer-based training, which can be done on their personal computers."


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Re: rage against the machine

[Morlock Elloi]

It's not just about fun.

If a company/manufacturer/authority samples 'all' possible 
circumstances, and embeds 'required' reactions in the machine, then 
several things happen in the arena of diminishing agency:


- the logic unconditionally reflects authority's ideology, and not the 
one of the human interacting. Yes, there is ideology in driving cars and 
flying airplanes. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem . 
One corollary of this is that the human is stripped of possibility to do 
evil, and the choice of not doing it (effectively ceasing to be human.)


- human's sensory and cognitive apparatus becomes irrelevant. If you 
don't decide how to drive, fly, cook, fuck (today) and many more things 
tomorrow, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU GOING TO BE DECIDING ABOUT? Tea flavors? 
Human activities are finite.


- the human interfacing machine becomes 'user'. As you cannot re-arrange 
a web page or modify its interaction flow, the same now happens with 
cars and airplanes. And everything else.


Do you realize how many fewer human faces you see in your waking hours 
with your attention focused on the handset? The life becomes UI/UX-ed, 
gamified, by someone else. The main purpose of the machines became 
agency transfer. You will be sucked dry.




permutation of the devices we just discussed. This annoys some drivers
who think it deprives them of fun, of the opportunity to sharpen and
demonstrate their driving skills.")


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Re: rage against the machine

[Morlock Elloi]

This is the key. Designers do not understand impact of the complexity 
that emerges from combining relatively simple components. This is 
especially amplified in real-time processing of multiple inputs.


In a completely different field (packet switching from millions of end 
points) we had to design separate monitoring system because it was 
impossible to understand what our own system is doing in real time. The 
monitoring code was almost as complex as the switching code. We are 
talking less than 100K lines each.


Airline modules are in millions of code lines. My assessment is that 
human life should not depend on anything with more than 50K lines of 
code total, period. Anyone claiming that there are proper testing 
procedures for huge systems is either a liar on an idiot. Enterprise 
software contractors are often both. The general public has no slightest 
idea of the dismal state of the software development industry.




Sarter said, “We now have this systemic problem with complexity, and it
does not involve just one manufacturer.


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rage against the machine

[Morlock Elloi]

Handling of the recent B737 Max 8 disaster is somewhat revealing.

What seems to have happened (for the 2nd time) is that computing machine 
fought the pilot, and the machine won.


It looks like some cretin in Boeing that drank too much of AI Kool Aid 
(probably a middle manager) decided to install trained logic circuit 
that was supposed to make new aircraft behave (to pilots) like the older 
one. As its operation was far too complicated (ie. even Boeing didn't 
quite understand it) they decided not to inform pilots about it, as it 
could disturb the poor things with too much information.


One part of the unknown operation appears to be the insistence of ML 
black box on crashing the airplane during ascent. As it had full control 
of the trim surfaces there was nothing pilots could do (I guess using 
fire axe to kill the circuit would work, if pilots knew where the damn 
thing was.)


That's what the best available info right now is on what was the cause.

What is interesting is how this was handled, particularly in the US:

- There were documented complaints about this circuit for long time;
- FAA ignored them;
- After the second disaster most of the world grounded this type of 
aircraft;

- FAA said there is nothing wrong with it;
- It seems that intervention from White House made FAA see the light and 
ground the planes.


Why? What was so special about this bug? FAA previously had no problem 
grounding planes on less evidence and fewer complaints.


It may have to do with the first critical application of the new deity 
in commercial jets. The deity is called "AI", and its main function is 
to deflect the rage against rulers towards machines (it's the 2nd 
generation of the concept, the first one was simply "computer says ...".)


FAA's hesitation may make sense. After several hundred people have been 
killed, someone will dig into the deity, and eventually the manager 
idiot and its minions will be declared (not publicly, of course) the 
guilty party. This could be a fatal blow to the main purpose of the deity.



(BTW, 'rage' is also a verb)




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Re: How the East Was Won, starring Cisco Stewart & Huawei Wayne

[Morlock Elloi]

I don't know details about dwindling of Nordic communication 
manufacturing - any pointers appreciated.


The absence of own nervous system is and will be causing increased 
subservient position of the involved countries. The disciplined ones 
will suffer the most. I'll make a prediction that the first European 
semi fab will be built in Italy ... not any time soon though.


On 3/13/19, 03:04, Niels ten Oever wrote:

You might be forgetting the role of Ericsson and Nokia in the European part of 
this saga.

Unfortunately the tender demand for an communication infrastructure built on 
open hardware, open software, reproducible builds and full formal proofs of 
correctness are nowhere to be found...


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How the East Was Won, starring Cisco Stewart & Huawei Wayne

[Morlock Elloi]

[John Ford's 1962 classic has rough sketches of concession wars between 
railroad builders on the virgin land.]


The current Huawei/Cisco wars being fought in Europe, directly fueled by 
governments and involving heads of state, have little to do with 
equipment sales/profits or 'security'. No one gives a flying f*ck about 
that.


They have everything to do with data siphoning concessions: will it be 
done by Chinese or Americans?


Europe's data industry has been expertly amputated, so like a legless 
cripple it has to buy limbs somewhere, and there are two options. 
Europe's traffic will be siphoned in its entirety, everyone in the know 
is cool with that (as they have no choice.) Except maybe hapless populus 
- anyone counting on stuff like GDPR is a complete idiot (would you 
trust cat's promise not to eat bacon?)


The cripple will buy its limbs in one of these shops, and the rest is 
described, do stay with film, in Nick Park's 1993 The Wrong Trousers.


The real depravity of European politicians, committees, non-profits and 
assorted parasites, is reflected in the fact that they don't mention the 
3rd option: buy nothing. Not going with the Program is unthinkable, and 
obviously the right thing to do.




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Re: The smog covering Facebook transparency

[Morlock Elloi]

Exclusive access to correlations between apparently (to those without 
access to data firehoses) totally unrelated data, and act on such 
correlations without bothering to understand why they exist (it's a 
fallacy to assume that understanding is required for acting) is the name 
of the game:


https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/21/the-digital-military-industrial-complex/ 
: Nike and KitKat addicts hate Israel, statistically speaking.


So perhaps specific word constructs in seemingly unrelated ads (maybe 
dealing with fish and chips) can nudge a relevant fraction of subjects 
to support the hard exit?  (there is no way you can prove this wrong 
without access to data, and you don't have it.) The only way to detect 
these ops is to follow the money. The baffling part comes when you 
cannot begin to fathom why are they doing some specific thing. See the 
article above.




On 3/9/19, 09:57, Allan Siegel wrote:

Hello,
All roads lead to Rome, or the the CIA, NSA, MI6, etc. etc. What happens
when you try to follow the money and reach a seemingly dead end?
"Obscure no-deal Brexit group is UK's biggest political spender on
Facebook / Britain’s Future has spent £340,000 promoting hard exit – but
no one knows who’s funding it…

happy hunting
allan


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Re: Cyberpunks who were right about everything, but so what

[Morlock Elloi]

The relevant repeating pattern is eliminating the local social network 
with its filtering and inertia, and substituting it with a faraway CCC, 
which can move at any speed it chooses.


This is exactly what is going on today with Twitter, for example, which 
bypasses everything (except Twitter's political commissariat), so POTUS 
can have a direct line to its subjects.


This elimination of local barriers was cheered more by left than by 
right, and it could point to a fundamental difference between them.



BTW, CCC = Command and Control Center


They sought to bypass the data center people and deal directly with the
users (this was the first time the term was used), pitching them against


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Re: Cyberpunks who were right about everything, but so what

[Morlock Elloi]

This began when IBM started selling "personal computers" (PC XT, AT). 
They were pitched to the mainframe customers as a way of liberation from 
the evil data centers and their high priests, the operators. It was 
immensely successful, the playbook IBM sales used was nearly perfect. 
They sought to bypass the data center people and deal directly with the 
users (this was the first time the term was used), pitching them against 
the data center staff. This was intentional, as it was giving direct 
power back to IBM. The data center staff looked at dismay at the bs 
being served to the "users", but no one listened to them. They were so 
60s and 70s.


There were innumerable texts praising the 'liberation' - which actually 
was enslavement from the outside megacorp, without your own professional 
staff to defend you. It's interesting to look at the articles and 
imagery from those times - they defined and predicated almost everything 
that's going on today, especially the indoctrination, but it wasn't 
polished, so the ideology shows through the cracks.


Take a look:

https://archive.org/search.php?query=collection%3Abyte-magazine=-publicdate&[]=year%3A%221982%22[]=year%3A%221981%22[]=year%3A%221980%22

For example, in 
https://ia802509.us.archive.org/2/items/BYTE_Vol_07-05_1982-05_Japanese_Computers/BYTE%20Vol%2007-05%201982-05%20Japanese%20Computers.pdf



The "Master Plan"

Of potentially greatest significance in Japan's computer fortunes is
the ten-year plan for national computer policy announced last fall by
the Japanese Information Processing Development Center QIPDEC) ,
whereby Japanese computer companies would jointly develop a  grandiose
fifth-generation computer system on several different levels, relying
on sophisticated artificial-intelligence research into natural
languages and graphics.



Or in 
https://ia600308.us.archive.org/10/items/byte-magazine-1980-06/1980_06_BYTE_05-06_Inter_Computer_Communications.pdf



"Computerized conferences [are] a new form of human communication
utilizing the computer. We believe that it will eventually be as
omnipresent as the telephone and as revolu­ tionary, in terms of
facilitating the growth and emergence of vast networks of
geographically dispersed persons who are nevertheless able to work and
communicate with one another at no greater cost than if they were
located a few blocks from one another."




On 3/5/19, 02:26, Joseph Rabie wrote:

We look upon computing as ubiquitous and all-encompassing, which of course it 
is.

But this was preceded by the mainframe, very big, very rare, with the authority 
of science and its priesthood of programmers. Each unit confined to a building 
all of its own. More representative of bureaucratic institutional control than 
capital, which came later.

In the sixties mainframes were decried as a major symbol of the modern, 
dystopic state.

Relative to which personal computers (coming in the wake of the Whole Earth "ecology") 
were seen as a force of liberation. As Apple said, "Think Different!" -- which as 
corporate utopist propaganda might even have been half sincere, at a time when Microsoft was the 
devil incarnate.

Today, Microsoft passes as a benign (?) grandfather and Apple says "Think 
Apple!"


Joe.


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Re: Cyberpunks who were right about everything, but so what

[Morlock Elloi]

Not to sound skeptical, but is there another way of viewing it?

The new Pretorian Guard, a guild tending the computing machinery for the 
pedestrian cause of concentrating control tools of the capital, needed 
its mythology, and cyberpunk was born. Historically speaking, there is 
no evidence of spontaneity in the recent cultural, ehm, movements:


https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP86S00588R000300380001-5.PDF

https://www.orbooks.com/catalog/finks-by-joel-whitney/




*As a cyberpunk ideologue, I’m touched that this subject would come up on 
nettime.  As it happens, I know where all the cyberpunks are.  At the moment, 
they’re in London, San Francisco, Vancouver, Providence, Austin, Raleigh, Los 
Gatos, Seattle, and the village of Nottingham, New Hampshire.



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The stupidity of the Americans

[Morlock Elloi]

[ Machine translated film review from
https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Die-Dummheit-der-Amerikaner-4323913.html?seite=all 
]



The stupidity of the Americans

March 02, 2019
Rüdiger Suchsland


From Cheney to Trump: Adam McKay's "Vice" shows that the majority of 
the US is a land of morally corrupt self-righteous idiots


The films, which are once shot about Donald Trump, can be taken from a 
famous sentence of the Nazi Propaganda Minister: "Gentlemen, in a 
hundred years you will be showing a beautiful color film about the 
terrible days that we are going through Play the role now, so that 
viewers do not yell and whistle in a hundred years when they appear on 
the screen, "Dr. Joseph Goebbels on April 17, 1945.


The interesting thing about this sentence is that here one knows what 
will come, as he knows what is. It directs all its actions only on the 
effect, on the appearance and suitability for the aesthetic effect. And 
indeed: aesthetically, the Nazis have won the Second World War across 
the board. To this day, they determine the iconography of evil on the 
canvas.


Will that be like the powerful of America? One can see in the poor 
performance of "Vice" at this year's Academy Awards an indication of the 
virtues and disadvantages of this film: "Vice" is not good for the 
well-tempered politically correct symbolic action such as "Green Book". 
Adam McKay's feature film about the republican "Dark Knight" Richard 
Cheney was the film of this year's Academy Awards, which fiercely 
focused on the immorality and abyss of American politics.


He does not show harmonious coexistence and racial reconciliation. He 
shows a portrait of white political America. An America that is corrupt 
controlled by the big corporations, especially the arms and energy 
companies that dominate the politicians like puppets.


Director Adam McKay serves the myths of power: 9/11 - what a moment! The 
film shows what we can not know: the crisis center in the White House 
bunker, insecurity, chaos, a piercing alarm and all eyes on the boss's 
boss. Its round, pink-doughy face looks down expressionless. Only the 
corners of the mouth move, the lower jaws grind. Cheney thinks.


He is determined and only we interpret retrospectively a "dark" to it. 
He is a haven of peace. Work on the myth, because so much rest and cold 
blood you have to have first. If it was war, one wished that one had 
such a man on his side. He just gives his orders - a man where he 
belongs by nature - in the center of power - and stands behind him, a 
bit tender, a bit reassuring, a little bit controlling, Cheney's wife 
Lynn, immensely mesmerizing, brilliantly abysmal of great Amy Adams is 
played.


Because Amy Adams, not Christian Bale is the star of this movie. Bale, 
like many of his colleagues, once again confuses acting performance with 
external similarity approximation to the object; He eats dozens of fat 
cubes, can daily several sausage pelts of make-up and prostheses over 
the head, until he looks like a meat incarnate volleyball, and of facial 
expressions anyway nothing is recognizable. Adams needs a wig.


It starts with a surprise: a young man driving in 1963 in Kansas drunk 
car, is stopped by a police officer, for the second time. And here Lynn 
turns up. They are already married, but now she folds him together, 
makes him small, takes him apart, breaks it down into its individual 
parts and then rebuilds it as a new human being: What women power is 
also called, as an inseparable mixture of sex and violence this movie.


She makes him her avatar

Because Lynn Cheney is tough, stiff, all-American, a class leader with 
all one and ambitious. And because, as a woman in her sixties, you can 
not fulfill this political ambition in spite of all yours, she puts 
everything on her husband. She makes him - and that is the daring thesis 
of this film - her avatar.


First he fails, then she makes sure that does not happen again. The 
result is a power couple of two powerful people who correspond to each 
other, whose story the movie tells as a farce, and modern version of 
Shakespeare's "Macbeth", but one turned into comedic. Richard Cheney, 
whom we know, is Lynn's creature.


Thus, from the late sixties onwards, he happens to become a Republican, 
becoming a perfect second man behind Donald Rumsfeld, who appears as a 
happy cynic, adviser to new president Richard Nixon, precisely because 
he is not distracted from conviction and ideology.


"Rummie"

Next to Lynn, "Rummie" (played with energy by Steve Carell) is the 
second man to make Cheney what he is: Dick and Don are a decade-long 
couple Machiavelli and Shakespeare could not have invented better. "What 
do we believe in?" Young Cheney asks his mentor once in a key scene of 
the movie. What the later Minister of Defense can hardly keep from 
laughing and disappears into his office. The point of the scene seems to 
have escaped the makers: Apparently, Cheney believes that one should 

the resurrection of the edge

[Morlock Elloi]

Some 10-15 years ago the edge devices gave up, and became robotic 
extensions of the center. As Interwebs deteriorated* into 'web' and 
'apps', the agency of the edge devices all but disappeared. The 
organization behind the last non-corporate browser took money from 
corporations, and that was the end of it. The "Open source" become a 
lipstick on the pig, as pretty much all involved succumbed to the 
ideology of centralization (more on that at 
https://cryptome.org/2019/02/elbar.pdf .)


[* to illustrate to non-tech outsiders the sad state of computing 
machinery: take one page from your favorite book on philosophy; now 
imagine that all philosophy books can only be written by using only 
words from that page. Except that it's worse than that.]


But there are signs of life! Gab.ai created a piece of software that 
runs on *your* computer and overlays 3rd party web pages with Gab user 
comments. 3rd party sites can't do shit about it. The decades old 
concept that content can be locally modified prior viewing is back (I 
still remember an extension I used for years, that replaced each 
occurrence of select words on any site I visited with some other words. 
It sounds simplistic, but it did make a huge difference and made me 
realize how words hit you at levels below perception ... 
s/government//mafia/ etc.)


Why this didn't happen earlier? One part was fear of lawsuits. But the 
main reason was widespread collusion that the sanctity of the 
centralized model is not to be challenged. Now the first step was made, 
and it will be interesting to watch how it develops. It threatens the 
whole industry - after all that money spent on web and apps, some jerk 
can deface it with impunity. But more importantly, it reveals the 
elephant in the room - end user devices are actually computers!


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Re: Bullshit as emergent phenomenon (Re: Julia Ebner: Stop the online conspiracy theorists before they break democracy (Guardian))

[Morlock Elloi]

BTW, take a look at this graph:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y=US=%22fake%20news%22,%22conspiracy%20theory%22

It seems that "fake news" meme failed, and we're moving back to 
time-tested "conspiracy theory".


On 2/18/19, 23:57, Morlock Elloi wrote:

Read this over and over:


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Bullshit as emergent phenomenon (Re: Julia Ebner: Stop the online conspiracy theorists before they break democracy (Guardian))

[Morlock Elloi]

Read this over and over:

> it will be
> necessary to regulate against harmful infrastructures and malicious
> behaviors. As early adopters of new technologies, extremists will

"harmful", "malicious" and "extremists" will be detected by objective 
mass spectrometry in certified labs.


It used to be that non-governmental actors were screaming at governments 
"YOU ARE LYING!". Now governments are screaming at them "YOU ARE 
LYING!". This means that things are getting better, as propaganda 
capacities are more evenly distributed.


News have always been mostly fake, especially from reputable outlets. 
They just don't like competition. Social and economic theories have 
always be mostly false, particularly when excremented by tenured staff. 
But there were some token facts. The end game will likely be 100% of 
lying, without bothering with sporadic truth. Lying is cheaper. Like 
firemen in Fahrenheit 451, "news" will become to mean a firehose of bs 
to which we meekly subject to demonstrate compliance. What word shall we 
use for facts?



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The London Billboard

[Morlock Elloi]

Karl Marx grave has been vandalized ... 
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dzhn7-7WwAIl8jE.jpg


What does this mean?

If one makes the obvious assumption about who did it, it means that Marx 
is increasingly relevant in realpolitik.


The less obvious assumption is a false flag op, to bring Marx back to 
the scene.


The point being, the act itself has no inherent meaning. It's just a 
canvas. Like so many other acts, it's a propping up of a billboard to 
project onto. Once the audience is trained to this, it becomes easy to 
mask real acts. The result is that meaning as consensus is gone.


Masses behave like superheated liquid way past it's boiling point, 
waiting for something, anything, to explosively boil. The art of 
maintenance seems to consist of ensuring that every nucleation appears 
suspicious and unreal. Statistics and quantum noise work against the 
maintainers, though.


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scaling the humiliation

[Morlock Elloi]

A brilliant passage from
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-internet-divided-between-the-u-s-and-china-has-become-a-battleground-11549688420
:


One side, championed in China, is a digital landscape where mobile
payments have replaced cash. Smartphones are the devices that matter,
and users can shop, chat, bank and surf the web with one app. The
downsides: The government reigns absolute, and it is watching -- you
may have to communicate with friends in code. And don't expect to
access Google or Facebook.


This is at the level of WW2 anti-jap propaganda.

It seems that we have reached the stage where state propaganda is openly 
addressing audiences with presumed IQ in teens, and yet there is no word 
of opposition from the general public.


Such quiet submission must have massive effects on one's self respect, 
which is likely the primary goal.


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Re: John Naughton on Shoshana Zuboff: 'The goal is to automate us': welcome to the age of surveillance capitalism

[Morlock Elloi]

E. Morozov's long take is at
https://thebaffler.com/latest/capitalisms-new-clothes-morozov

Tl;Dr:


The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’s most pronounced shortcomings have to
do with the relationship it establishes between capitalism and surveillance
capitalism—as well as the way in which it prioritizes the problems of this
new market form over those of capitalism itself.

...

By seeking to explicate, and denounce, the novel dynamics of surveillance
capitalism, Zuboff normalizes too much in capitalism itself.


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Lost in Marx

[Morlock Elloi]

"Lost in Math" by Sabine Hossenfelder, ISBN 9780465094257.

Nominally, the book is questioning popular assumptions ('simplicity' and 
'beauty') that appear to be driving theoretical physics research. It 
seems that many clever people got caught in the honeytrap of untestable 
and unprovable but mathematically sound hallucinations. And they keep 
getting paid for it.


It would probably be impossible for someone from the other side of 
science to write credible book about science mafia. Sabine (a 
theoretical physicist herself) does a good job (she also sings ... see 
https://www.youtube.com/user/peppermint78/videos )


The parallels with social ... ehm ... sciences and theories are 
staggering, numerous and entertaining. I'd recommend it to anyone 
involved in sponsored philosophical-theoretical-social circuits, and 
sick of it.


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Re: The list of European neocon shills

[Morlock Elloi]

It would be interesting to map 
author-publicist-publisher-distributor-grantor-investor-etc. 
relationships, and reveal the money/influence/reputation flows. Very few 
authors operate in vacuum, none write for free.



Of course I find it difficult to respect anyone who'd cosign as much as
a grocery list with a creep like BHL.


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The list of European neocon shills

[Morlock Elloi]

(conveniently compiled by Guardian at 
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/25/fight-europe-wreckers-patriots-nationalist 
)



Fight for Europe – or the wreckers will destroy it

Fri 25 Jan 2019
Bernard-Henri Lévy, Milan Kundera, Salman Rushdie, Elfriede Jelinek, 
Orhan Pamuk and 25 others


The idea of Europe is in peril.

From all sides there are criticisms, insults and desertions from the cause.

“Enough of ‘building Europe’!” is the cry. Let’s reconnect instead with 
our “national soul”! Let’s rediscover our “lost identity”! This is the 
agenda shared by the populist forces washing over the continent. Never 
mind that abstractions such as “soul” and “identity” often exist only in 
the imagination of demagogues.


Europe is being attacked by false prophets who are drunk on resentment, 
and delirious at their opportunity to seize the limelight. It has been 
abandoned by the two great allies who in the previous century twice 
saved it from suicide; one across the Channel and the other across the 
Atlantic. The continent is vulnerable to the increasingly brazen 
meddling by the occupant of the Kremlin. Europe as an idea is falling 
apart before our eyes.


This is the noxious climate in which Europe’s parliamentary elections 
will take place in May. Unless something changes; unless something comes 
along to turn back the rising, swelling, insistent tide; unless a new 
spirit of resistance emerges, these elections promise to be the most 
calamitous that we have known. They will give a victory to the wreckers. 
For those who still believe in the legacy of Erasmus, Dante, Goethe and 
Comenius there will be only ignominious defeat. A politics of disdain 
for intelligence and culture will have triumphed. There will be 
explosions of xenophobia and antisemitism. Disaster will have befallen us.


We, the undersigned, are among those who refuse to resign themselves to 
this looming catastrophe.


We count ourselves among the European patriots (a group more numerous 
than is commonly thought, but that is often too quiet and too resigned), 
who understand what is at stake here. Three-quarters of a century after 
the defeat of fascism and 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall 
there is a new battle for civilisation.


Our faith is in the great idea that we inherited, which we believe to 
have been the one force powerful enough to lift Europe’s peoples above 
themselves and their warring past. We believe it remains the one force 
today virtuous enough to ward off the new signs of totalitarianism that 
drag in their wake the old miseries of the dark ages. What is at stake 
forbids us from giving up.


Hence this invitation to join in a new surge.

Hence this appeal to action on the eve of an election that we refuse to 
abandon to the gravediggers of the European idea.


Hence this exhortation to carry once more the torch of a Europe that, 
despite its mistakes, its lapses, and its occasional acts of cowardice, 
remains a beacon for every free man and woman on the planet.


Our generation got it wrong. Like Garibaldi’s followers in the 19th 
century, who repeated, like a mantra, “Italia se farà da sè” (Italy will 
make herself by herself), we believed that the continent would come 
together on its own, without our needing to fight for it, or to work for 
it. This, we told ourselves, was “the direction of history”.


We must make a clean break with that old conviction. We don’t have a 
choice. We must now fight for the idea of Europe or see it perish 
beneath the waves of populism.


In response to the nationalist and identitarian onslaught, we must 
rediscover the spirit of activism or accept that resentment and hatred 
will surround and submerge us. Urgently, we need to sound the alarm 
against these arsonists of soul and spirit who, from Paris to Rome, with 
stops along the way in Barcelona, Budapest, Dresden, Vienna and Warsaw, 
want to make a bonfire of our freedoms.


In this strange defeat of “Europe” that looms on the horizon; this new 
crisis of the European conscience that promises to tear down everything 
that made our societies great, honourable, and prosperous, there is a 
challenge greater than any since the 1930s: a challenge to liberal 
democracy and its values.


• Copyright: Libération/Bernard-Henri Lévy. Milan Kundera, Salman 
Rushdie, Elfriede Jelinek and Orhan Pamuk are novelists. Bernard-Henri 
Lévy is a philosopher


Other signatories: Vassilis Alexakis (Athens), Svetlana Alexievich 
(Minsk), Anne Applebaum (Warsaw), Jens Christian Grøndahl (Copenhagen), 
David Grossman (Jerusalem), Ágnes Heller (Budapest), Ismaïl Kadaré 
(Tirana), György Konrád (Debrecen), António Lobo Antunes (Lisbon), 
Claudio Magris (Trieste), Ian McEwan (London), Adam Michnik (Warsaw), 
Herta Müller (Berlin), Ludmila Oulitskaïa (Moscow), Rob Riemen 
(Amsterdam), Fernando Savater (San Sebastián), Roberto Saviano (Naples), 
Eugenio Scalfari (Rome), Simon Schama (London), Peter Schneider 
(Berlin), Abdulah 

Peak Anger Rocks

[Morlock Elloi]

Machine translation of a review (original at 
https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Analyse-von-Songtexten-Die-Wut-nimmt-zu-4289511.html 
).


The paper itself is paywalled at 
http://jpms.ucpress.edu/content/30/4/161.full



Analysis of lyrics: The anger increases
January 28, 2019 Florian Rötzer

In the 1950s, the lyrics of pop songs in a US hit list were much better, 
according to a study


It is not a nice time, rather a gloomy one. The conflicts, the anger, 
the intolerance are increasing. Almost everywhere in recent years, 
parties have arisen or have prevailed that, under the presage of 
apocalyptic scenarios, are aggressively opposed to political liberalism 
and against minorities, pretending to speak for a delusely identical 
people. Fight is between the members of a society and against 
"strangers" announced, the hate level increases, even between states and 
blocs. The prevailing mood in the new Cold War is also reflected in a 
study in contemporary pop music, a study claims.


Kathleen Napier and Lior Shamir of the Lawrence Technological University 
of Michigan have tried, as they write in their contribution to the 
Journal of Popular Music Studies, to compare the lyrics of 2018 with 
those of earlier decades, including those of the Cold War War, where not 
different states have competed for geopolitical interests as now, but 
two blocks with two different economic models and political visions.


The scientists have lyrics of the Billboard Hot 100, a hit list in the 
United States, studied linguistically since the 1950s, in total there 
were over 6000 texts. Previously, the ranking of the songs was tracked 
by sales or replay on the radio, and in recent years streaming and 
social media have been included as well. The mood, which should be 
expressed in the texts, was assessed with an automatic feeling analysis, 
which evaluates words and phrases. The combination of all words and 
phrases then gives the mood of a song. The scientists then combined the 
top 100 songs of each year into an average. This can then be compared to 
the average moods over the years. It's more about the music that's best 
for the Americans, not the music itself. Was everything good in the 1950s?


After the analysis carried out in this way until the year 2016, the mood 
has long since gone down the drain. Somehow, anger or hatred has 
increased since the 1950s. But not completely continuous. Although the 
songs are the least angry in the 1950s - after the Second World War - 
there is still a brief break in the rise in rage between 1984 and 1986, 
until the mid-1990s - with the end of the Cold War, the Rising 
terrorism, the lack of alternatives of capitalism and the knowledge of 
its destructive consequences for the environment and society - the 
lyrics became more angry, more than before and with a peak in 2015.


According to the analysis, sadness, disgust and fear have also grown, 
but not as strong as anger. Fear, for example, increased during the 
mid-1980s and then declined sharply in 1988 as the tension of the blocks 
waned. However, there was another massive increase in fear in 1998 and 
1999, perhaps as a result of bin Laden's declaration of war on the US, 
attacks on US embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi and failed US 
attacks on targets in Sudan and Afghanistan , More interesting, perhaps, 
is that joy in the lyrics of the 1950s outweighed, but since then with a 
peak in the mid-1970s - less and less.


The scientists emphasize that, according to their analysis, in the 
1950s, Americans favored - one could also say optimism - while now 
preferring sadness or anger. This is independent of what the musicians 
want to express but could well be in agreement with it. That would have 
to be examined separately. Of course, it remains unclear if the analysis 
has grasped the trend correctly, why anger has risen and the joy, ie a 
benevolent, trusting and expectant relationship to society, to one's own 
situation and to fellow human beings, has continued to decline. display


Perhaps people have resigned to change after the high expectations of 
the 1960s. Added to this is the lack of alternatives of capitalism, that 
is, the omission of the vision of another social organization. That 
another world is possible, believe less and less, while it is becoming 
increasingly clear that the world society despite contrary slogans and 
conventions, the nature and further destroys global warming, while the 
inequality in the rich and poor societies increases. No Future 
infuriates, the dance on the volcano is not happy, dystopias convince 
rather than utopias.




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Re: No evidence of digital wrong-doing...

[Morlock Elloi]

Judging by astronomical investments in #2 and #3, it's reasonable to 
assume that they can produce *any* election result. While the interplay 
between #2 and #3 can be discussed (I still think that #3 rules the 
game), there is no question that they create "reality" for #1.


The practical question is how to develop a group immunity without 
matching $$$. A Party of Abstinence?



On 1/31/19, 02:23, Felix Stalder wrote:

You are absolutely right, these work in different registers, but I don't
think there is a clear hierarchical relations between them like in a
technological stack where one layer builds upon the other.

It's more like these are different ways to structure our understanding
of, and agency in, social reality and they co-exist at the same time.
Ideally, one would more or less balance out  the deficits of the other,
but at the moment, it's rather less than more.

So the idea would be and with one add yet other registers, or frames,
then different ways of understanding, and acting in, reality might be
opened up.

Felix

On 30.01.19 14:31, Morlock Elloi wrote:

The three work on different protocol layers, going from top to low level
(in OSI terms think of them as Application, Transport and Physical layers):

1. Voting for someone involves some "thinking", in the sense "Is A
better for me/my village/guild than B?"

2. Mass media operates by displacing 1:1 human input/gossip with 1:many
input, and is essential for creating group identity beyond the village
(starting with Bible).

3. Social media, the latest entrant, works (the real work, not the
veneer) below the perception level, by exploiting finite nature of
wetware, somewhat similar to DoS. If you don't have access to data (you
don't), there is no way to know how exactly it works.

There are interactions between the three, mostly one-way, but it's a
mistake to consider them operating at the same or even remotely similar
level. None of them displaces the other, but the lower ones change the
ground for the higher ones.

On 1/30/19, 04:29, Felix Stalder wrote:

Repesentative democracy: institutional capture by special interests and
money necessary to run a political campaigns.

Mass media: small group of professional writers/speakers with narrow set
of opinions and often unacknowledged conflicts of interest.

Social Media: polarization of opinion due to the speed and brevity of
exchanges and the focus of the platforms on producing segmented
"engagement".


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Re: No evidence of digital wrong-doing...

[Morlock Elloi]

The three work on different protocol layers, going from top to low level 
(in OSI terms think of them as Application, Transport and Physical layers):


1. Voting for someone involves some "thinking", in the sense "Is A 
better for me/my village/guild than B?"


2. Mass media operates by displacing 1:1 human input/gossip with 1:many 
input, and is essential for creating group identity beyond the village 
(starting with Bible).


3. Social media, the latest entrant, works (the real work, not the 
veneer) below the perception level, by exploiting finite nature of 
wetware, somewhat similar to DoS. If you don't have access to data (you 
don't), there is no way to know how exactly it works.


There are interactions between the three, mostly one-way, but it's a 
mistake to consider them operating at the same or even remotely similar 
level. None of them displaces the other, but the lower ones change the 
ground for the higher ones.


On 1/30/19, 04:29, Felix Stalder wrote:

Repesentative democracy: institutional capture by special interests and
money necessary to run a political campaigns.

Mass media: small group of professional writers/speakers with narrow set
of opinions and often unacknowledged conflicts of interest.

Social Media: polarization of opinion due to the speed and brevity of
exchanges and the focus of the platforms on producing segmented
"engagement".


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Re: John Naughton on Shoshana Zuboff: 'The goal is to automate us': welcome to the age of surveillance capitalism

[Morlock Elloi]

- Booking targeted advertising becomes illegal/impossible, so you
   go back to do regular advertising.
- Since the whole industry does the same, your competitors have
   no advantage over you.
- If your business model was profoundly unethical, you go out of
   business. That is intentional.

Transition within months, mostly painless.


Looks much simpler than detecting heretical behavior of Catholic 
converts - and that one totally worked.


However, not sure that painless is a good idea ... this is a great 
opportunity to rehabilitate garroting. Transition within days. I'm 
pretty sure that prospect of garroting FB and GOOG execs can bring high 
double-digit votes in most of the developed word. Why is it not happening?


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Re: John Naughton on Shoshana Zuboff: 'The goal is to automate us': welcome to the age of surveillance capitalism

[Morlock Elloi]

Right. Involving 'capitalism' into this is total bs., even an 
intentional sabotage - to make it look inevitable (as no one can imagine 
alternative for capitalism, surveillance must also be inevitable.)


Motherf*ckers. So many vacuous words just to avoid mentioning 
possibility of simple legislation within existing legal frameworks.




On 1/25/19, 10:09, carlo von lynX wrote:

Stop using leftist terminology (which makes Christian Democrats
and other peeps stop paying attention). What we are facing is a
facet of totalitarianism. Surveillance totalitarianism. We just
don't know who's going to be the big dictator at the end
(presuming that ten years into this game it isn't all sorted
out yet), and maybe we will never be told.


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Re: European Islamophobia report - countries needed

[Morlock Elloi]

EUR 16K ??

They should invest at least the same for europhobia reports.



On 1/7/19, 15:04, Molly Hankwitz wrote:


::Call for Islamophobia reports ::

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Re: The Cryptopticon

[Morlock Elloi]

A technical note: the actual SIM card, while helpful, is not essential 
for tracking. What is far more useful and harder to circumvent are 
identifier associations and turning patterns into identifiers:


1. If you ever use a particular cell phone (IMEI), a browser with high 
entropy fingerprint, a particular IP number, credit card, car with a 
license plate, you will be forever associated with them. So using a 
different SIM in the same phone (or a friend's phone) is as pointless as 
deleting cookies or as using a different computer from the same house. 
Not only that, others using the same will be forever associated with 
you. I don't need to mention that using the same e-mail address to 
register to multiple services is out.


2. If you carefully avoid #1, and, for example, buy brand new computer 
for cash and then start using it in the same way as you did the old one, 
you are back in the network: computer use patterns are highly individual 
(check this web site, then this e-mail, then ...). Or if you buy 
pre-loaded credit card for cash, and start buying the same food at the 
same supermarket (BTW, did you know that cash-paying supermarket 
consumers are as easily tracked as those using credit cards, as most 
have discerning patterns? Even more if you usually buy with cc, and then 
buy once with cash, it is very likely that the cash purchase record will 
be de-duplicated and consolidated with the credit card purchase history, 
if you buy the same stuff at the same time of the day/week.)


3. If you buy new cell phone and SIM card, then walk with them past face 
recognition posts long enough to correlate GPS tracking (or cell tower 
tracking if you were paranoid enough to disable GPS) with your movement 
on the street, you are back in the network.


The above is not the future - it's the present. It's just not in the 
popular press yet. The psychological barrier is the problem - it's too 
horrific, so it's more comfortable to write it off as conspiracy/lunacy. 
That could even be a rational choice, as it results in better mental health.


The future of tracking will not rely on any consumer-replaceable things 
such as SIM cards; that's old school. It will be mostly biometric, so 
start working on your split personality skills. Develop new gait, for 
the start (hint: the easiest way is to start a slight limp.)





On 1/7/19, 09:08, Adam Burns wrote:

local German voice numbers, Freifunk offers open wifi connectivity, and
with the right app, smart phones work for calls and SMS with no SIM card
over WiFi. The setup is by no means perfect in terms of connectivity,


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Re: The Cryptopticon

[Morlock Elloi]

There isn't much there, other than expanding on the nature of the 
invisible threat with long term consequences, which is usually dealt 
with by the organized government (smoking, pesticides, etc.), except 
that in this case the government is the cause of the threat, so it won't 
touch it, and there is no other body of sufficient weight to do anything 
about it.


What would be more interesting to analyze is the phenomenally successful 
installation of social stigma against those who are effectively 
protecting themselves against organized surveillance. Unlike early users 
of car seat belts (before they were mandated) who were just weenies and 
chicken, people using PGP, one email per each service, tor, fake names, 
etc., are considered potentially dangerous psychopaths.


It will take more than one R. Nader to fix this one.

On 1/6/19, 17:46, jeremy bentham wrote:

Why haven't this list's mavens de-, re-, pre- and otherwise-
constructed Siva Vaidhyanathan's Cryptopticon?

If for no other reason than it is such a lovely neologism?


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are you 0 or 1 ?

[Morlock Elloi]

The article below examines what could be the essence of issues we're 
facing today, the issues of hidden workings of things around us. It 
shows how communication revolutions are revolutions of reductions.


It's time to realize that increasing efficiency, reducing waste, growing 
productivity, etc., is a death knell. We can only exist within the 
noise, leakage, overhead, wear, slipping, redundancy.


The case can be made against general purpose computers. Maybe they 
should be outlawed. Each thing does one function, like can opener or 
scissors, and its 'instruction set' is interpretable by humans. Each 
'program' will contain few instructions obvious to almost anyone (no 
more binary encoding, instead use sexagesimal system - radix 60 - as 
Sumerians did.)  No need for abstracting higher level languages, as 
humans will find the 'machine languages' palatable. Embodying function 
in an object will make clandestine functionality impossible.


The point is that making workings of the technology obvious makes the 
whole ecosystem of deception disappear. Is this realistic? In most 
civilized places you cannot walk on he street wearing a mask. Contracts 
have to use certain language. So there may be precedence in legalizing 
transparency, at the very base level. Do not confuse this with ToS, 
various 'directives' and similar bs., when someone pretends to tell you 
what is going on or what must be going on.


[ machine translation from 
https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Kommunikation-Was-zeichnet-Code-Revolutionen-aus-4246072.html 
]


Communication: What distinguishes code revolutions?

December 30, 2018
Günther Orend

Theses on the genealogy of communication and introduction of 
communicative transcendence


Thesis 1: Digitization is a turning point in human cultural development, 
as is the shift from iconography to phonetics.


One knows the general place that the digitization represents a 
comparable to the invention of the book printing. This is too short and 
on closer inspection superficial. Our previous code consisted of 26 
letters and 10 numbers. In fact, not only has a new system for the 
reproduction of code been created, but a new code has been introduced 
which gives our culture a great advantage. This new code is binary, that 
is, it comes with two symbols: 1 and 0.


Thesis 2: Digitalization and its potential have been enormously 
underestimated so far. The full extent of the consequences was not 
recognized. This digital revolution is not just about theories, but 
about what's really possible. The amount of conceivable and the amount 
of feasible will approach each other rapidly.


Thesis 3: The essential advantage that Jewish culture has gained over 
others was based on the very early introduction of a phonetic 
transcription (consonant writing). Just as Asian equestrians were able 
to conquer the physical world very early on by inventing the stirrup, 
the Jews conquered the spirit world with the invention of phonetic 
spelling - in that most peoples adopted phonetic transcriptions. The 
simultaneous transmission of religious content to the Torah is at least 
close, because existing examples must have been used to illustrate the 
new communication principle.


For this we have to take a closer look at the advantages of phonetic 
transcription compared to the old icon font. Hebrew letters have come 
from icons:


Aleph was the icon that depicted a bull's head and referred to it.

Beth was the icon that represented and referred to a house.

Gimel was the icon that represented a camel and reported on it.

etc.

Today's Hebrew letters are abstracted icons. So Jewish culture must have 
known a variety of icons at one time in its history, like the Egyptian 
ones. Over time, however, there was a reduction to 24 icons, all of 
which were reduced to an initial consonant. Thus, the former icons no 
longer referred to references in the world but became references to 
sounds of language. Through this first case of self-referentiality of 
communication, the potential of writing was increased enormously. These 
icons were eventually reduced to pure symbols that form today's Hebrew 
alphabet. display


Thesis 4: The respective benefit of a new code revolution versus an old 
one has to be exponentially increased.


Thesis 5: Digital communication has a higher potential than our 
reproductive biology, because life is reproduced using a 4-character code.


At this point, the transcendent concept of communication has to be 
introduced. To illustrate, I have chosen a sphere model. Because the 
development of human communication was in spheres.


The first sphere of communication was the inarticulate sounds of the 
first monkey humans. This was followed by the second sphere of the 
voiced and sung proto-language, which could already refer to more in the 
world. The third sphere represented the articulated language, which in 
turn was another empowerment of man over the world. In the fourth 
sphere, the first 

Letter to a young philosopher

[Morlock Elloi]

[Machine translation from 
https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Brief-an-einen-jungen-Philosophen-4250192.html 
 ... note the failure to translate 'Misstraue' ]



Letter to a young philosopher
December 31, 2018
Winfried Degen

Well-intentioned advice for the study of philosophy to prevent the worst

In times when the shortage of good professionals, especially in the STEM 
subjects, is increasingly hampering the development of the German 
economy, any talented young person turning to any orchid subject rather 
than studying science or engineering is harder Loss for our country. The 
author had such a case in the family and, to prevent the worst, he wrote 
a letter to a young philosopher.


Dear S.,

I learned from your mother that you have decided to study philosophy in 
B. That bothers me a lot and I write you this letter to move you, but 
still let go of this useless company.


This is not my first concern for your economic future. You know yourself 
how many Doctores Philosophiae ultimately deserve their bread as taxi 
drivers. No, taxi drivers are an honorable profession, and those who 
practice this profession do a more useful service to society than most 
philosophers. That's not what I'm concerned about.


I would rather ask you to seriously and honestly examine your motives 
for this decision. You told me that science and technology are not 'your 
thing'. Your mathematics at school were seldom better than adequate. All 
this does not interest you. I also know you as a young man, who thinks a 
lot, many questions remain unanswered. I know your commitment to 
justice, your support of the weaker ones. display


All of this honors you, and I am far from dismissing this as a crush of 
youth that will settle with age. But believe me, to find out what 
justice is, what you should do, what the world is made of, what you can 
recognize, and how you yourself are in this world, how you can find 
yourself You little help studying philosophy. If you believe that, you 
are making the same mistake as those who believe that you can bend your 
messed-up soul back with a degree in psychology.


Why does it have to be a study? Why do not you want to learn a 
respectable craft? A carpenter who creates useful things with his hands, 
a gardener who brings the beauty of nature to life, or a cook who 
pleases his guests with his palate art - all of which can proudly point 
out at the end of the day that they are the world, everyone in his 
place, have done a little better. You say you have two left hands, and 
crafting is not for you. Do I hear an undertone of arrogance? display


Now I have told you earlier that everyone should study that to which his 
whole interest applies. Only then will one achieve the greatest success 
and be able to live a contented life. And you tell me now, you just have 
a great desire to become wise. Oh, you lover of wisdom, you do not know 
that Mrs. Sofie spares her affection sparingly. How many who lie at the 
feet of this lady are ultimately just a fool. But let it be, I suspect 
you do not want to change your mind. Then at least I want to give you 
some well-intentioned advice.


Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses (Oh philosopher, if you had kept quiet!)

Not only do you have two left hands, but, I believe, two left 
hemispheres, or at least one hypertrophied linguistic center. You like 
to talk and, as I have to admit, complacent. Then it seems you heard 
yourself talking. And when you take a break, you seem to think, "Oops, 
what did I say smart again?" This is Kleist's method 1 , in which one 
starts talking, in the hope that the thought will come to an end. This 
method may be allowed to the poets but not to the philosophers. Excuse 
my frankness, I call the chatter.


The philosophers are unanimous in no way and at the same time they are 
as right with nothing as with the assumption that most of their guild 
are only babblers, respectively. To give you just one example, I quote 
Mr. GWF Hegel 2 :


There is, however, another manner in which criticism is to be 
adhered to,

namely, that which purports to be in the possession of philosophy, that uses
and expresses much of the forms and words in which great philosophical 
systems

express themselves an empty word vapor without inner content is. Such
chattering without the idea of philosophy acquires some 
sort of authority by

its expansiveness and own presumption, partly because it seems almost
unbelievable that so much shell should be without kernel, partly because
voidness has some sort of general intelligibility. Since there is 
nothing more

disgusting than this transformation of the seriousness of philosophy into
flatness, criticism has everything to offer to avert this misfortune.
Hegel

One who felt himself kicked, then called the professor:

"... a disgusting, mindless charlatan and an unprecedented nonsense 
smoker

(who) ... showed the greatest impudence in nicking nonsense, in the greasing
together of meaningless, 

Re: Foundations for "Anthropocene Socialist" Movement

[Morlock Elloi]

Maybe it's just me, but when I recently re-watched Easy Rider, I kept 
rooting for someone to off the f*cking hippies. The same film now has 
happy ending. It's funny how death as exit strategy lost its appeal.


On 12/30/18, 09:45, Patrice Riemens wrote:

"You do one thing" was an admonition I often heard when I lived in
India. My 'thing' I'd advise you (all?) to 'do' would be : (re)read
Bolo'bolo! (*) It's of course not _the_ (only) solution, but as a
'realistoc utopia' it does give a number of possible lines of thought &
action.

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Re: Foundations for "Anthropocene Socialist" Movement

[Morlock Elloi]

The issue is not implied morality of scaling, whether it's good or bad 
(and I agree on the current modality of scaling for value extraction by 
few from the many.)


The issue is that the opposition bent on atomizing the society does 
scale, and has no moral issues with it. The concentrated capital 
invested a lot in it, and has laid its hyphae, from server farms via 
enormous infrastructure (of fiber and terminating devices,) directly 
into brains of the rabble, supplanting social impulses with simulacrum, 
cutting lateral ties with others and routing everything through the 
modulating center.


I don't see how isolated colonies (of open door crappers) can prevail or 
even thrive, when faced with the planet-sized fungal organism. They will 
be eaten and digested. Which is exactly what is happening today. If they 
do not scale (and in your words, roughly, become their own enemy) what 
can they do but die? Because you can't take knife to a gun fight. This 
battle is lost. Look around. Knives do not work. There is no better 
knife, which seems to be the sole focus of the so-called 'progressive 
community'. They are like stamp collectors - benign.


Can open door crappers scale and not become their enemy? Is the hatred 
of guns so great that death is better? This is starting to look as a 
psychiatric problem.


m.



On 12/30/18, 10:27, tbyfield wrote:

I think that's worth noting, because instead of casting scaling as an
intrinsic quality of some *thing*, the capacity to scale, it shifts our
attention to the environment in which that scaling is said to take
place. So, basically, it's the capacity to monopolize.


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Re: Foundations for "Anthropocene Socialist" Movement

[Morlock Elloi]

The problem is that this doesn't scale. Or at least the scaling model 
has not been discovered. At the same time, the opposition scales pretty 
well.


For this scaling to involve machines (computers, programs, networks and 
such, and I cannot imagine competitive scaling not involving machines - 
anyone?) another problem has to be solved, as the current crop of the 
available computing machinery is heavily biased towards individualistic 
outcomes. The redesign would be a major effort, as it definitely does 
not consist of another 'app'. It involves interventions at the 
infrastructure level, and there are $ trillions already invested in the 
current one, so it's hard.


How do you motivate open door crappers to lay own fiber, grow own 
silicon and use only P2P protocols with source routing? It's hard to 
even imagine this.



On 12/30/18, 04:53, Keith Hart wrote:

When I grew up in Manchester after the war, solidarity was a powerful
weapon against privacy, the cult of being exclusive. We could not close
our house doors since neighbors should be free to come and go as they
please. When the men took their morning crap in the outside loos, they
left the door open to converse across the low backyard walls. After
sanitation was modernized, you could still  accidentally run into a old
lady in the bathroom who couldn't bring herself to close the door. All
bedroom doors were left open. The corner pub was our living room. When
the gas company started work with their machines outside too early, half
a dozen women would assail them on behalf of   "our street". They shut
down the machines.

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it is the end of history

[Morlock Elloi]

While looking for something else, I found unrelated interesting stuff 
(as it usually happens):


https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0109/maillist.html

This is nettime archive from September 2001, and the good stuff is not 
just after September 12 (nettime was not particularly impressed by the 
NYC demolition job.) The number of interesting postings is incredible 
(and I wasn't even trolling nettime then.)


[ Regarding 11092001+ postings, I liked profound predictions - some 
totally wrong, some on the spot. We should remember who did which:

"What I am worried about is massive surveillance of all aspects of
life: of our phone calls, of our email, and of our physical movements." ]

Things were happening. Things are not happening. It's not just that they 
migrated out of nettime, they stopped happening. We collectively did 
something stupid.


I'm tempted to analyze nettime archives and plot the decay of the public 
comment. When did it start? Did it level off? Is it getting worse? It's 
funny that the ultimate utility of nettime is documenting the demise of 
the comment.


I am not aware of any other medium that provides such good insights into 
real-time history of commentariat from 17 years ago. If anyone knows 
about other similar publicly accessible archives, please let me know.


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inverted fascism

[Morlock Elloi]

Interesting insight from 
https://newleftreview.org/II/114/dylan-riley-what-is-trump - 
internationalized elites vs. nationalist proles is the exact opposite 
from the environment that brought us fascism.



" This underlines the dramatic inversion of class–nation relations that 
is another contrast with the 1930s. In the US today, a pro-globalist 
professional layer is pitted against a ‘nationalist’ white working 
class—a configuration that is almost the opposite to that of interwar 
fascism. Classic ‘populist’ movements of the Peronist type, which are 
not much in evidence today, linked nationalist working classes and 
nationalist white-collar workers, or ‘new petty bourgeoisies’. Fascism, 
in contrast, emerged in contexts in which the political leadership of 
the working class, the communist parties, remained internationalist, 
whereas the petty bourgeoisie swung to extreme nationalism. Far from 
being a form of populism, fascism was premised on its failure. 
Socialism, at least in the advanced world, has emerged where both the 
new professional strata and the leadership of the working class are 
oriented internationally: an unfortunate rarity. The contemporary new 
rights differ from these in attempting to mobilize a nationally oriented 
working class against a globally oriented ‘new petty bourgeoisie’. "



[ The unmentionable obvious solution is internationalizing the proles as 
well, but first subdivisions of identity politics' freak empowerments 
need to be handled: it's just too much work to unite lesbians of all 
countries, then homos of all countries, then trans of all countries, 
then ... ]


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Surplus population: the rage of the product

[Morlock Elloi]

I wonder how long will it take to rebrand sterilization - perhaps by 
offering volunteers virtual children, which would be synthesized from 
parent's DNA analysis, live on AWS (or Azure for more traditional 
value), backed up in prominently displayed living room media containers 
("he was only 3 years old here"), daily visiting parents via 
telepresence, although not so often in later years (missing the children 
also has to be realistic.) The AWS bills will be paid by the state.


[ Machine translated from the original at
https://non.copyriot.com/joshua-clovers-riot-strike-riot-theorie-und-praxis-der-sozialen-aktion/ 
]



Joshua Clovers "Riot.Strike.Riot": Theory and Practice of Collective Action
By Achim Szepanski

23 May, 2016

Joshua Clover's Theory of Insurrection is the impressive attempt of a 
Marxist explanation of the political and socio-economic conditions that 
lead to fighting time and again, bearing in mind from the outset that it 
takes into account only the fully developed industrialized nations, 
especially the US. For Clover, the theory of insurgency includes the 
theory of crisis, that of a community or city, an hour or days. It is 
about the internal and structural significance or about the historical 
movement, which is responsible for the form and substance of the 
uprising, and further about the reference to the crisis. The first 
relationship between rebellion and crisis makes Clover in surplus. 
Usually the uprising is understood in the context of deprivation, lack 
and deficit, while for Clover it indicates in itself the experience of 
surplus, surplus danger, surplus instruments and surplus affects (Clover 
speaks of emotion, we speak with Deleuze / Guattari in deposition of 
affects). However, the most important surplus is the population itself. 
The moment when the uprising breaks the police management of the 
situation and decouples itself from everyday life. This kind of 
insurgent surplus production always relates to socio-economic 
transformations that respond to crises or that constitute them and that 
include the surplus of capital as well as that of the population. All 
this indicates the uprising as a necessary form of struggle.


The theory is inherent in the struggles, but often enough they precede 
the theory, with Clover's theory, much like Laruelle's, being understood 
as one of lived experience and confrontation (Laruelle always uses the 
notion of the real here) and less as interpretation, program or 
description. The uprising has no place in the Leninist concept of the 
proletarian vanguard party, but is often enough understood as an 
apolitical, spasmodic, anarchist-oriented interruption, a disorder that 
must be adjusted by the party that possesses a scientifically sound 
historical mission. In this context, uprising and strikes are also 
recorded as opposites. Today, with some melancholy, some Marxists react 
to the death of the classical industrial proletariat, which is also 
characterized as white and male, and which now has to be replaced by a 
new revolutionary subject, possibly the multitude, in the course of 
globalization. For Clover, certain points of reference to his own theory 
can be identified here, but they must be condensed into a problem 
concerning the uprising itself, with the current uprising being 
dramatically different from those of the 17th and 18th centuries.


Clover relates his theory of insurgency to Marx's theory of values and 
crises, to the accumulation rhythms of capital in the global framework, 
to local cycles and the theory of long waves. Decisive for a theory of 
insurrection is first the early industrialization and later the present 
phase of deindustrialization in the West. Although these historical 
phases are not privileged places for the uprising, they do indicate the 
terrain on which both the logic of insurgency and that of capital can be 
seen in its catastrophic autumn. Quite deterministically, for Clover, 
the uprising expresses the global transformations of capital and their 
objective conditions. This requires a) the exact definitions of the 
insurrection and the strike, b) the justification of the return of the 
uprising, and c) the relationship between the logic of (future) 
uprisings and the global transformations of capital. Clover wants to add 
a heuristic theory of passages and transitions between the insurgency 
and the strike. While the uprising is associated with violent disruption 
of social peace, lawless extravagance, and noise, the strike, which 
emerged sometime between 1790 and 1842, picks up certain forms of early 
rebellion, but also opposes it. At certain intervals of time, rebellion 
and strikes co-exist, for example, around 1968, until the crisis in 1973 
led to a reclassification of the class, the global division of labor and 
the weakening of the possibilities of militant workers' organizations.


The (historical) line insurrection strike insurgency designates a form, 
less a theory. The 

Tim May

[Morlock Elloi]

Tim May has passed away.

The post below is from 20 years ago, in many ways deeply optimistic.


Subject: What we are Fighting
From: Tim May
Date: Sun, 6 Sep 1998 20:04:48 -0700

For the Nth time, let me restate the obvious: all current crypto
restrictions being discussed involve _exports_. There are no domestic
restrctictions whatsoever on domestic use of crypto. Any of us, even
resident aliens, tourists, terrorists, etc. are perfectly free to use
PGP, one time pads, stego, and even Meganet Snake Oil Unbreakable
Crypto.

There are, officially, no proposals on the table to limit speech
within the U.S. by limiting the types and forms of language may use.
There is the SAFE bill, which stands zero chance of passing, but this
involves relaxing export requirements (though I expect compromises
added, such as the felonization of crypto use in a crime, are an
unwelcome step toward domestic restrictions).

But it bears constant repeating, especially to the skeptical, that
there are NO DOMESTIC CRYPTO LAWS. Unlike some other countries, the
fascists have not yet managed to get a foothold in the attempt to
limit use of crypto by the citizen-units.

We all know this, but Freeh and Company continue to mumble about
"meeting the legitmate needs of law enforcement." What can they be
speaking of?

And since the Fourth Amendment is an internal U.S. thing (not counting
limited applicability to some foreigners, and of course to U.S.
citizens abroad who encounter U.S. offices, etc.), what can Louis
possibly be referring to when he speaks of the Fourth Amendment?
Surely he is not referring to satisfying the Fourth Amendment concerns
for privacy amongst the Russians, Afghans, and so forth?

Obviously his side is contemplating domestic crypto restrictions.

We all know this, but it sometimes bears repeating what the
Constitution says, what the status quo is, and what they are
proposing.

They are planning domestic crypto restrictions, GAK, and all the rest
of what we have long expected.

When that comes, anyone will be full jusfified in taking action by any
means necessary to halt the onset of the total state.

--Tim May

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The Geert thing

[Morlock Elloi]

Dear Geert,

Please publish your official veteran-approved nettime posting guidelines 
so that you can be spared from having to do ad hominem outbursts when 
you get agitated. I'll be careful not to violate them.


I would also like to ask the wider nettime audience - not the 6 veterans 
- about acceptability of out-of order postings on a quiet maillist.


m.

> From: Geert Lovink 
> To: Morlock Elloi 
>
> There are five Morlock Eloi postings to nettime in a row. Is the 
problem back? Let’s not repeat the blues, OK? Best, Geert

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