DaveZale

Great analysis, but I would probably add that most (but not all) of those who end up with the six- and seven- figure salaries are smarter, more well-connected and socially adjusted, optimistic etc. Most _not_ all. And some are just really good bullshitters, of course.

Ever been to a third world country and seen happy people who make just a couple hundred bucks a month, yet are very healthy and happy? I have. It's very life changing.

Who are the historical figures that you revere the most? Did their positive influences upon your life originate from making and having money?

why, so they can watch corporate news from earth to get depressed? /s

Actually, it's a great question. Even if we have single photon sensitivity detectors, just what kind of power would a laser need? Or would it be some other area of the emf spectrum? Or some other kind of communication? Sci fi ventures into gravitational waves sometimes

need to get small fusion reactors online, then many options blossom.

And work out safe systems for hibernation, maybe rotate the crew in shifts

Oh yeah this is the stuff of science fiction coming to life

Well that kind of "news" is persistent and often completely false. Meanwhile churches and mosques and people get destroyed by the "best friend and ally" of the US. It's a coordinated disinformation campaign by the agency whose motto is "by deception we wage war"

Nothing to see here, move along move along.

I reconcile it by realizing that advertisers wield enormous power. Also, it's not called "good information" it's called "news" - nothing is promised in terms of guaranteed good factual content. And I remember that Palestinians are semites. So are Arabs. Immigrants from Eastern European flocking to the mideast are not semites at all.

Sure, Germany has excellent journalism. I visit dw.com often. derspiegel has very in-depth quality journalism too. And many others surely exist, I just don't know about them.

100% agree about the personalization of news topics and stories. When I look at my spouse's newsfeed in the evening (she uses yahoo) I remark to her "that's clickbait" and get a relatively violent reaction. "Relatively" because normally she is very pleasant. But tailoring the media to past viewing history is potentially very dangerous. In the wrong hands, the news feed could be tweaked just a little bit, day by day, week by week, to enable or worsen certain biases. And surely, we see some of this daily already. Why else would billionaires purchase large US media companies?

The best guidance I've seen to have a well balanced view of world news, is to use several independent sources globally. Do not rely upon "newsfeeds" (doesn't it suggest that we are cattle in a way?), don't spend too much time in any one place, use a variety of search engines to confirm or disprove questionable conclusions, and try to read print books by reputable authors on topics that really fascinate us.

Nassim Talib offered some good advice in his books on the so-called "news" - if you really want to see the value in the news, try to go to the library for a print newspaper, and look at the news from a week ago. Is it really as important to you as the "news" today? Very often, it will seem completely meaningless, ancient history. If that is the case, we are getting something from the information other than the information itself. It's something that has to be tried to learn the lesson.

Advertising? I see very little, using linux with brave browser and various plug ins. When I use google chrome, the results are horrifying. I've used google for 30 years now, but have been de-googling for over a year now. It's been a healthy experience. I don't know what is happening with them. Maybe they abandoned the "don't be evil" prematurely?

Yup. Get outside. Screens are increasingly addictive by design. I am going outside now. Enjoy your days. Use the internet and your phone as tools, not separate realities.

I've been watching both the corporate media, and social media, rot completely over the past 30 years.

A large part of that was that early adopters tended to be more educated, played nicely, and were not involved in attention-seeking, sychophancy, and often, escapism.

Another factor is the bright colors, moving videos and other eye candy, and psychological hacks like the emojis for "liking" and gaining "followers" which produce addictive feedback loops.

Of course, this interview touches on valid points, but is not the whole picture. "Bad news travels fast" and gets more clicks. That helps explain the rot of the news media.

Maybe I am oversimplifying too, however. Factors like sophisticated persuasion campaigns by various organizations, for example, cannot be discarded. Likewise with the advertisers.

a couple of decades ago there was viral advice going around about "the 1000 hour rule" saying that's how long it would take to master something new. Maybe it's time to refresh that?

oh jeez mossad operatives... that downvote. That is not rational behavior. It is either bots or some flunky following instructions. Infiltration of Silicon Valley is a foregone conclusion. Everyone I know that has cared for and loved the internet is completely disgusted with it at this point. Mission accomplished, Mossad? If you can't control it, destroy it? This is misanthropism. I don't trust any of you guys. Take your trillions and shove them up your ASSHOLE. Feel better now? I thought you would. It's all good.

absolutely right. I am not antisemitic. All my career so many of my bosses and employees and coworkers were jewish. Because it was LA! And that is what really horrifies me. That they will all get impacted by all of this equating of zionism and judaism. What a huge lie. But the rampant destruction of innocent people repeatedly over long time spans is just severe mental illness. It's not genocidal. The real semites are the Palestinians! The diaspora jews are from Eastern europe. Our minds have been seriously fucked by this all. And tens of thousands of people get killed or displaced yearly. Can't they just stop?

Sure, and that's like asking an AIPAC bribed congress to stop the killing around you-know-who's neighbors. Money talks. But your idea is worth a try. Actually both of those ideas. Thanks. But I'll tell ya- over the past 15 years we just have waaaaay too much money here in America. The purists say "we don't print money" to which I reply "Bullshit" - we let banks print the money. And once you have all of these trillions floating around, they find pockets to fall into, influence to buy. But, your suggestion is good. If there are no voices heard, nobody has a voice. Gotta start somewhere. Thank you and stay safe.

OH JUST SAW that link.. thank you. So these forces are as strong as AIPAC. Good to know. FWIW, I try to be grassroots, just enlightening people one by one. Most don't want the truth. They want convenience, likes, thumbs up and worthless confirmation bias. But I'll try.

Yes, and the fact that something like oral hygiene can influence AD would support your thesis. Often an infection in the gums/teeth can result in boils or worse in distant parts of the body. Add a dysfunctional blood brain barrier and you are screwed.

Brush and floss bruddahs.

I certainly cannot survive much more of the AI memes generated about our so-called Commander in Chief with a fake bodybuilder mystique... you are absolutely correct, this kind of material is psychologically damaging. And a huge distraction from the genocide by the "best friend and ally" of the US. Heart wrenching and extremely damaging hasbara - just please stop, haven't you stolen and killed enough guys? This is _not_ the old American West when communications were few and it was most often a tale of solitary survival. It's organized Nazi-esque kill, command and control, enable by so-called AI to take some guilt off the shoulders of those pushing buttons and pulling triggers.

and make it free so we're not paying to be beta testers ;-)

My weight dropped 10%, and my blood lipids and "bad" cholesterol dropped to levels I hadn't seen in 35 years, after 2 years with creatine. Do not overthink this. Just try it, especially if you are 40+

Read you loud and clear. I enjoyed the crazy adventure that was the early internet. Really truly enjoyed it for over a decade, almost two. It's now gone, FUBAR and loaded with trackers. I usually can't even access an online newspaper anymore without logging in and being tracked. That's where I draw the line. It is nobody's business what I am reading. Got a stack of books to read now, instead. Not to say that legit sites without trackers don't exist anymore, but finding one of those randomly, for example as a result of search, is getting harder every day. Of course, the risk is real is that as the quality of journalism has diminished, thanks to trackers and putting the most popular dating advice and recipes on online newspapers' front pages in lieu of the reports of what's really happening in the world, we'll all soon be living in bubbles of filtered, sanatized information. So, it's not just privacy threats anymore.

Oh this is too funny. Yes, silicon idiot, human brains are the result of a million years of evolution. Nobody said they were perfect. For example they make terrible mistakes. Like designing LLMs that "hallucinate" articles like this

no, verrrrry expensive

https://www.theregister.com/off-prem/2026/05/26/big-tech-ext...

these "free" products are hugely, mind-bogglingly, yet invisibly expensive

"the only thoughts of value are those reached through walking" - Nietszche

(reading that in German might have more nuances)

I've been buying a "new" used iphone for $100-150 now, every few years, for over a decade. My "new" used Dell laptop I bought a few months ago for $40 which became a linux system in just an hour. All good here.

https://archive.org/details/pinkfloyd-live-at-pompeii-origin...

for those not crazy about yt, no ads

they swapped out the "t" for an "e"

/s

Nice essay, good analysis of the Machavellian types that thrive around unlimited money, power and bullshit. Would a scene from another Russian novel about playing Russian roulette while partying would fit here? Sure you capture the spirit of that but nearly everyone has severe dopamine addiction while online these days. It has to be outrageous and over-the-top to get clicks and resharing!

The internet has become a circus and AI keeps us all on the freak show and hall of distorted mirror images.

Make it into a script/screenplay, perhaps?

that garden site is something I'll return to. I have a "baby" site at xeriscape.neocities.org and this kind of feature would be muy excellente to include

thanks

Here's another rough one of mine... about 59% complete on my quest to document 100 DAYS OF PICKING UP LITTER

https://100daysoflitter.blogspot.com/

https://xeriscape.neocities.org/

it's still rough. Working on content only, style will follow later.... anyone wanna help?

who cares?

Just don't buy a Tesla without researching the alternatives. That would be like buying a car because the salesperson is cute.

So stunning to see his "100 models of the world" and hints about superintelligence being interdisciplinary. Almost like he was anticipating powerful AIs.

I could not read some of his talks, but most of the text was very clearly thought out, and time-tested over decades of stunning success. He lived his advice of staying within the boundaries of what he understood well.

there seems to be a there, there.

So if quantum computing is expected to be that powerful, what will happen to the trillions pouring into old-tech data centers?

Anyone else get the feeling that something doesn't add up here? Just what nonpublic evidence is behind these decisions to ban the new tech?

excellent idea to read this at year ending/ year beginning ... the local library had a copy in ebook format.

So Charlie almost went blind in the 1950s, then went on to live many decades more, with amazing success. Ben Franklin and then some.