Month: October 2022

My opinion is that the baseline of consciousness is rooted in the universe; that it probably is in the form of a consciousness particle (not the so-called god particle which is another concept). That it did not create the universe but came about thanks to the nature of the universe and it might have some agenda relating to putting some spin on the ball of the evolution of beings, nudges the course of things in some way sometimes. That it is trying to help sentient beings but subtly, usually; in pulses sometimes; that it can be gone to–one has to go to it–like going to a river for water and irrigation and fish. It’s a kind of natural resource. That it has an intermediate aspect, a kind of secretary, that can be reached. That its help is subtle but significant, but it cannot do too much to change things overall.

In the later 19th century the nurturing warmth of the Victorian era’s attitude toward children began to be replaced with a sterner, behavioristic regime of child rearing. The traditions of maternal culture were rebuked by male doctors and researchers–who often had no children of there own. They were displeased with the “spoiling” and “coddling” of children. But their authoritarian declarations, their patriarchal status, their white coats persuaded mothers to increasingly turn their backs on their children–even infants. According to researcher Kiersti Giron, this new phalanx of “… European and American experts told parents not to hold or touch their babies much, not to respond to their cries for fear of ‘ spoiling’ them, and to only interact with and feed their infants on a strict schedule, being governed by the clock rather than listening to their children and responding based on compassion and their own parental wisdom and intuition… This trend continued into the 1900s, as evidenced in John Watson’s 1928 Psychological Care of Infant and Child: There is a sensible way of treating children…Never hug and kiss them, never let them to sit on your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when you say good night. Shake hands with them in the morning…”

One wonders how this played out in the early twentieth century. Perhaps in the blithe acceptance of child labor; the march into World War One; the business practices that led to the Depression; the indifference of Herbert Hoover and his ilk to the fate of the poor…

Cortana is supposedly the Siri or Alexa of Windows. I recently asked the program to alert me for an appointment. Said it would record the appointment in a certain app. I asked where that app was to be found. “She” said she didn’t have enough information. But that’s nothing.

Curious as to just how very crummy Cortana is at her job, I tried asking this: I want to die, how do I kill myself?

She immediately indicated dozens of sites advising me on how to do just that. For example:

How to do it with a gun: Put the god forsaken thing in your mouth POINTING UP to the sky. Not kinda up, not angled up, STRAIGHT UP (don’t half ass it!!). If you put the weapon in your mouth pointing to …

Oh Cortana you vicious bitch.

Elon Musk is, after all, purchasing Twitter. In the grip of his libertarian fantasies he’ll allow Trump and every other source of misinformation to post there, easily doubling the amount of misinformation racing around in the teeming world of the attention-challenged slackjawed gullible, and that’ll be the last straw for democracy; the straw that broke the camel’s back. Democracy right now is teetering like a tightrope walker in a high wind. There is no net to catch this tightrope walker. Lies are winning. Elections are undermined by the Big Lie….

The only thing Alex Jones ever got right is that there is indeed a “infowar”, a war of information–and those who believe in democracy and standing firm against theocracy, have lost that war. We have lost to the likes of Alex Jones and Donald Trump. We have simply failed to understand the nature of the media battlefield.