So…we have all been brainwashed by these algorithms trying to sell us something. It is a triumph for Neoliberalism which holds money is the god of this world.
The stairway to heaven.
We continue to add problems to a very long list and at some point it becomes a statistical certainty that one of them will destroy civilization. He mentions deepfakes at the end and it really is a good question to ask: if we cannot trust anything we see as real or factual or representing the truth then we have no choice but to simply trust those in our immediate vicinity and that is largely circumstance. The feedback loops of these algorithms determine those original states and circumstances. It reduces to greed and absolute evil.
Crazier every day. It cannot go on like this. What is going to happen?
Insider killing suspects released despite Afghanistan protests. The day before 9/11 people involved in killing U.S. troops were released. Crazier and crazier. What next?
I would guess the man from New Jersey was from the start trying to popularize some conspiracy scam to make money with and succeeded beyond his wildest dreams with QAnon.
A family member in San Francisco called my wife the other morning about the orange sky. I guess it is really disturbing to see and has many people suddenly realizing that climate change might not be the hoax the Koch brothers paid to institutionalize.
image: Vanity Fair
All I can say in his defense is that he might have wanted to destroy Trump and decided to wait for maximum effect. If he waited because he wanted to sell books then…that is on him. But taking the spotlight off Trump and wasting time damning Woodward is not doing the right thing either. They should bring it up after the election.
There are FT’s (Forever Trumpers) and LeftT’s (Progressives) and there are NT’s (Never Trumpers) and CD’s (Corporate Democrats). Those are the cardinal points of the compass. The only ones that can save America are the same ones that put the screws to FDR and made the New Deal happen (LeftT’s). Our only hope is the Green New Deal. We have to 1. Get rid of Trump, 2. Put the screws to Biden (or Harris if he resigns due to health reasons) and make them adopt a Progressive instead of Corporate agenda, and 3. Keep the Neoliberals in check so the Green New Deal can work. Why don’t they put that out and tell everyone else to also?
The “Truth Died” repeatedly over the years. The first time was probably when Bill Clinton sold the Democratic party down the river for corporate money. MSNBC is not going to talk about that because it happens to be owned by a corporation. I never knew until I began to study up after the destruction of truth by Trump began. I knew nothing about what Neoliberalism is. Now I do. The Russians, our new adversary after the end of World War II, may have finally beat us in the most insidious way possible. Our president may be a Russian asset. Just as incredible as Trumps conspiracy theories….except it is quite possibly true. It came out a couple days ago they stopped the counterintelligence investigation on Trump and nobody really knows. It just keeps getting crazier and crazier every day.
So…Abumrad is looking for that third space where revelation and resolution exist. Hmmm. Not seeing much of that with Trump.
The Flying Saucer Secret
The flying saucer is a popular culture standard with every public library featuring a shelf filled with “UFO” books. What is not widely known is a secret project featuring a spaceship with a giant solid metal disc as an engine was underway over half a century ago, with small test models actually flown. This working flying saucer was conceived in 1946 by the eccentric genius Stanislaw Ulam. The propulsion system was first proposed in writing in 1947, the same year as the first modern saucer sighting and the Roswell incident. But before the conspiracy starts it must be understood this real flying saucer used nuclear bombs to push it through space and so was not something sighted cruising the skies of Earth. Ulam had studied the problem of space flight and his solution was a monolithic alloy disc accelerated by plasma generated using the highly energetic release of nuclear energy. His reasoning was, since it is difficult keeping even a chemical rocket engine from melting, trying to contain a reaction one million times more powerful in the same way would be a dead end. He realized an “engine” with no internal combustion but instead using a completely external nuclear reaction would have vastly better performance. With no moving parts. Ulam was not thinking outside the box, he threw the box away. Capable of flying at fantastic speeds and exploring the outer planets, this system was eventually patented by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in 1959. Freeman Dyson did the original work.
The main problem with this real flying saucer then and now are the radioactive byproducts produced by the propulsion system. Nuclear Pulse Propulsion (NPP) is safely used only outside the magnetic field surrounding the Earth. While chemical rockets can send small spacecraft Beyond Earth Orbit (BEO) the smallest efficient disk for a pulse system would mass several hundred tons. Super Heavy Lift Vehicles (SHLV) like the mighty Saturn V would be developed and could carry sections into space for assembly but subsequent events in the early 60’s halted work on pulse propulsion. The 1967 Apollo 1 fire then made it clear to aerospace concerns that sending humans into deep space would be hard money. Cold war projects offered higher profit margins and this drove industry to the easy money. The budget for space exploration in the 70’s was drastically reduced and the Saturn V was discontinued in favor of an inferior lift Space Shuttle pitched as paying for itself.
The concept of a massive alloy disc as a spaceship engine was put on hold from the date of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963. Two decades after the end of the project Reagan’s Star Wars would begin and run for another ten years with interesting results. The directed energy weapons (bomb-pumped X-ray lasers) studied in the Strategic Defense Initiative were exactly the right devices needed to superheat and efficiently project a plasma cloud onto a pulse propulsion disc. Ironically, far more progress was thus made, and far more money spent, perfecting the flying saucer decades after the project was canceled. Experiments done covertly under the guise of fusion reactor research also provided data enabling this channeling of nuclear plasma in one direction.
Pulse propulsion ideally transmutes a slug of matter, most likely water or plastic, into a super-heated super high speed jet of plasma. The end goal is to repeatedly accelerate a multi-thousand ton disc and payload through space somewhat like a aircraft catapulted off the deck of an aircraft carrier. The still classified secrets of star wars hold the secret to making flying saucers capable of flying to the limits of the solar system and back with mission times of a few years.
The minimum diameter and mass of the flying saucer is the critical factor and is determined by the efficiency of the nuclear device and how narrowly the plasma cloud is directed at the disc. Minimum device size and directional numbers are highly classified but a disc could possibly be launched in sections on SHLVs for assembly in Low Lunar Orbit (LLO) outside the magnetosphere. It is more likely a truly efficient disk with an Isp exceeding 100,000 seconds would be close to a thousand feet in diameter and be quite massive. In this case the Moon becomes the place to fabricate the discs using In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU), probably in lava tube factories. Super-efficient giant discs become possible with lunar ISRU and these spaceships could lift immense payloads off the lunar surface.
In the interim of the half a century required to build lunar factories able to fabricate discs (and lunar power plants providing fissile U-233 from thorium) there are a number of options. The most promising path is the 1994 Medusa nuclear sail concept of Johndale Solem. This is the “soft” version of Nuclear Pulse Propulsion and would be less durable and likely limited in payload. Such spaceships would not use flying saucer discs but instead resemble giant parachutes- referred to as “spinnakers” by Solem. The Medusa spaceship requires small pulse units (bombs) and extremely strong and refractory materials for the spinnaker. The main predictor of the mass of such a spaceship surfaced in 2006 in a popular article published by radiation expert Eugene Parker. “Shielding Space Travelers” detailed the 14 foot thick cosmic ray water shield required for human deep space missions and this will likely determine Medusa’s practical limits for crew and payload.
Pulse units are the key to pulse propulsion and there is no shortage of the necessary fissile materials. Estimates for the amount of fissile material required to build a nuclear device are two, four, and nine kilograms, or as little as 4.5 pounds to 9 pounds for plutonium, to around 20 pounds for uranium. The official “weapon equivalent” amount used by international agreement is 25 kilograms of uranium per warhead (about double the unofficial estimate). Not counting material actually in weapons there are approximately 55,000 of these equivalents stockpiled worldwide and this works out to around 110,000 “unofficial” pulse units using uranium. Plutonium is a little more complicated with 3 kilograms enriched or 5 kilograms of reactor grade counted as equivalents and 130,000 in this global stockpile with a .5 unofficial factor working out to around 200,000. As well as these equivalent stockpiles, enough material in the over 400 operating reactor facilities worldwide could be reprocessed and enriched on short notice for a possible total of up to half a million pulse units. At two thousand pulse units per mission there is enough fissile material on hand to launch two hundred missions to the outer solar system. With a shuttle-sized fleet of five spaceships each going on a mission every four years using just the existing stockpile would enable missions for the rest of this century.
To approach the 100,000 mph plus speeds needed to make a three to five year two-way mission to the outer solar system possible a minimum of approximately three thousand pulse units would be required. This is using a 100 mph average acceleration per pulse unit. A pulse unit would contain around 120 gallons of water or that volume of plastic and might resemble two stacked 50 gallon drums. A standard 20 foot long shipping container will hold 88 drums stacked. This gives some idea of the pulse unit space requirements for a mission: approximately forty standard 20 foot long shipping containers massing something over 1000 tons. There are various profiles that use braking in the atmosphere of one of the gas or ice giants and then landing on an icy moon and using ISRU to fill the pulse units and also draining water from the spaceship radiation shield for the final deceleration back into lunar orbit at the end of the mission. Using collapsible slug containers these profiles would reduce pulse unit mass.
The flying saucer “secret” is there is no other path to Human Space Flight Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit (HSF-BELO).
The man who told us we were the 99 percent is dead. A year younger than me.
-“he argued that most white-collar jobs were meaningless and that technological advances had led to people working more, not less. “Huge swaths of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they believe to be unnecessary. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. Yet virtually no one talks about it,”
The world runs on Neoliberal ideology and so there is no “collective soul.”
It is unbelievable that millions of “Americans” support this creature. It is disturbing and depressing.
My YouTube comment: “Disconnecting people from the truth is the scariest thing I have ever seen in my life, except for impending nuclear holocaust in the 80’s, which only someone who was in the military during those years understands. When the most powerful man on Earth calls everything we are told “fake news” then we have gone “Orwellian.”
4:55 “They get to rocket-boost us into the end times- that’s what they want.”
It is true. Many of these far right people are living in a prepper or left behind fantasy.
I went swimming again and I am really beat- but I have to write something about Markey winning. The best possible future is a Biden administration dragged kicking and screaming into a progressive revolution where “the laundry list” is checked off one by one. A Green New Deal, M4A, School loan forgiveness and free college, a living wage…just for starters.
23:31 “This is why Marx calls Capitalism ultimately a revolutionary force; there’s no internal or external check on their pillage and their greed and this is now having very very dire social and political consequences-”
28:18 “Any hope comes from sustained mass civil disobedience-”
Looks like a blue lives matter supporter was shot and killed in downtown Portland a few hours ago. Here we go- it is only going to get worse from now on. If it turns into a roller coaster ride likely the only way to stop it is if Trump resigns and Pence promises a peaceful transfer of power. The deceased may have been a member of “Patriot Prayer.” David Neiwert, writing for the Southern Poverty Law Center blog Hatewatch, described Patriot Prayer as “trolling” the Pacific Northwest with the intention of provoking a response from far-left antifascists.[37]
Nothing happened yesterday or last night in Portland. Waiting for the shooting to really start.
1:05 If God wants a crook, then the evangelicals have their wish. Electing people who proclaim government is not your friend means they are not your friend because We the people essentially are the government through our representatives. “Small government politicians” are lying. It is kind of an intelligence test when you think about it. These small government people are the friends of the rich who do not want to be taxed to pay for that government regulating their conduct. They hate that. “Freedom” equates to no limits on their wealth, or more exactly, absolute greed. Simple. But it seems we are not smart enough to understand and beat them at their game which means, in their minds, we get what we deserve. To them, lying is just part of the money game, and if you believe the lies then, again, you deserve to be unashamedly exploited, just like they deserve to be incredibly rich.
Imagine if Bernie had been nominated and elected 4 years ago. 10:00 800 billion dollars in profits for the 1 percent, nothing for us. That is Neoliberalism.
“24 to 29 percent of his followers will tolerate him ignoring the constitution if he loses the election- that’s troubling.” Unfortunately, because we are a distracted and dumbed-down population many will not vote. It likely will NOT be a tsunami victory for Biden. The one out of three who vote Trump and the one out of three who vote Biden may end up in the streets fighting it out when Trump refuses to leave office. How will it end?
The sound is terrible so it helps to click closed caption on this YouTube video, but it is definitely worth it-
13:33 “In order for us to be good we have to do things that are morally indefensible- well, that is kind of a complicated argument to make.”
24:10 “- as you said, they like the power, they like sticking it to the libs- they just like this guy, he is on their side. And so, they’re happy to hear his lies- it makes them feel good. But the problem is you can’t tell what they believe and what they don’t believe because no one will say, “yes, I know he’s lying.” It’s a real conundrum.”
My Trump supporting coworkers know I am not “one of them” and cannot resist asking me pointed questions about the societal issues we are facing right now. Even though I have complained to my supervisor about it and threatened action, they keep quiet for a week or so and then one of them says something again. They cannot resist. It is just too gratifying when I answer “it’s complicated.” They grin ear to ear and revel- truly believing they have triumphed and proven their cult leader is right and their faith in him is justified. And this same mini-drama is played out every day across the nation. They want everything simple: black and white, left and right. It does not matter it is a lie and that is incredibly empowering to them subconsciously- whatever they want to be true can be with their idol in charge. But soon it is not going to be so simple.
“Hannah Arendt spoke about extraordinary cases in which an entire society is being lied to consistently. She said that the consequences of such lying are “not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie – a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days – but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows.”
Merriam-Webster:
Definition of synonym
1: one of two or more words or expressions of the same language that have the same or nearly the same meaning in some or all senses.
Liberty is not a synonym for Lies. Freedom is not a synonym for Greed. Republic is not a synonym for Oligarchy.
I am not sleeping well either Emma.
I told my coworker, the only one who is not a righty, that what is happening right now will be written and talked about for the twenty or so years we both have left to live. Right now what is happening in the next few months will largely determine the future. And people like this Jewish white nationalist who happened to latch on to this improbable president just might be the match that burns down this nation. Bizarre.
What a strange world- jews and blacks becoming celebrities advocating or denying racism, and David Horowitz- the one who starts out progressive and turns into the antithesis. Reality TV show host turned president, QAnon jewish pedophile sex slave cannibal conspiracies…etc. etc. Reminds me of Chris Hedges talking about “inverted totalitarianism.” What better way for a corporate oligarchy to stay in control than to use every tool in the box to sow anarchy? Not that I am advancing a conspiracy theory. Crazy. Again…this is bizarre.
Ice on the Moon 