Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Following in the footsteps of Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, and Kurt Vonnegut, M. T. Anderson has created a not-so-brave new world and a smart, savage satire about the nature of consumerism and what it means to be a teenager in America in his young adult novel "Feed".

Feed takes place in a world where children get brain implants to create a permanent layer of augmented reality called “the feed.” In doing so, they become so engrossed by endless opportunities to buy stuff that they ignore their polluted environment, political tumult, and anything beyond their own material gratification. In the 20 years since its publication, Feed has grown into a contemporary classic, a classroom staple frequently subjected to book-banning campaigns but often beloved by its readers, who marvel at how unnervingly predictive Anderson’s dystopia turned out to be.

...
This is an abrasive book, full of ugly, deliberately irritating dialog and characters who consistently make the worst choice presented to them. Anderson’s vision of our extremely stupid future is not subtle. Sometimes reading Feed feels like getting thwacked in the eyes by an anvil with the phrase “TECHNOLOGY SUCKS” engraved on it.

WIRED article 20 years later.


The 'X' kids...


...as in owned & hypnotized by "X Holdings Corp."

Feed (2002) is a cyberpunk, satirical, dystopian, young-adult novel by M. T. Anderson, focusing on issues such as corporate power, consumerism, information technology, data mining, and environmental decay, with a sometimes sardonic, sometimes somber tone. From the first-person perspective of a teenaged boy, the book takes place in a near-futuristic American culture completely dominated by advertising and corporate exploitation, corresponding to the enormous popularity of internetworking brain implants called feeds.

The novel portrays a near-future in which the feednet, a huge computer network (apparently an advanced form of the Internet), is directly connected to the brains of about 73% of American citizens by an implanted device called a feed. The feed allows people: to mentally access vast digital databases (individually called "sites"); to experience shareable virtual-reality phenomena (including entertainment programs, music, and even others' memories); to continually interact with intrusive corporations in a personal preference-based way; and to communicate telepathically on closed channels with others who also have feeds (a feature called m-chatting).

In the book's setting, the natural environment is deteriorating, with natural clouds having been replaced by trademarked Clouds™, and many parents have their children custom-designed. The corporations responsible for the feed have immense power and even run the school system, which is now known as School™. Throughout the book, corporations appear to hold the true power in the United States, leading to the destruction of the environment and leaving the president virtually helpless as the Global Alliance, a coalition of other countries, begins contemplating war with the U.S.

In 2020, Feed landed the 68th spot on the American Library Association's list of most commonly banned and challenged books in the United States between 2010 and 2019. LOL, banning a novel. I guess there MUST be truths in it.

Ripped from da Wiki

I don't think this was too difficult to imagine in 2002.

PDF book copy

M.T. Anderson discusses the plot of dystopian novel “Feed” - 3 min clip:



Note: The first telepathic "tweet" was sent by an Australian dude with a brain chip implant a few years ago.



BRAIN CHIPS READY TO GO:

Synchron - Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates

BlackRock Neurotech - Peter Thiel

Neuralink - Elon Musk

February 3, 1961: Twilight Zone’s "A Penny for Your Thoughts" airs. A bank clerk accidentally becomes telepathic, and is shocked to hear what people think. Bewitchin magic.




"Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic."
Dune, by Frank Herbert.


"Well, neutrinos are at the center of this massive, and I mean massive, research effort that spans more than 175 institutions, in over 30 countries, the Department of Energy, our National Labs, from the home of the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland to the bottom of a former gold mine a mile beneath the hills of South Dakota."

Listen or read: The Neutrinos Must Flow


Why would anyone anywhere and especially after the last three years trust any of these parasites with something as ridiculous as a "carbon tax"?


Public Trust in Government: 1958-2023


Port Miami, Florida: Royal Caribbean's Icon of the Seas, billed as the world's largest cruise ship. Her official maiden voyage began on 27 January 2024 out of Port Miami. The lead ship of the Icon class built by Meyer Turku in Turku, Finland. The company is fully owned by German shipbuilder Meyer Werft GmbH, founded in 1795. Royal Caribbean plans to have three Icon-class ships by 2026.



Icon of the Seas has 20 decks with seven swimming pools and six water slides. The company claims the ship has the tallest waterfall, the tallest water slide, and the largest waterpark of any cruise ship.

Icon of the Seas length: 1,196.7 ft (364.75 m)
Capacity:
5,610 passengers (double occupancy) plus a crew of 2,350!
7,600 passengers (maximum capacity)

For comparison the World's largest aircraft carrier:
USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78)
Length: 1,106 ft (337 m)
# of decks: 25
Crew: 4539 (including air wing)

Short clip:



Longer: Icon of the Seas 2024 Cruise Ship Full Walk-on Tour:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8Sn705J0YY





Introducing Enhanced Marketing Games On Roidz...

Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel is throwing his financial muscle behind an “Olympics on steroids” — whose organizer boasts that athletes will dope “out in the open and honestly.”

Thiel, who made his fortune as an early investor in tech startups like PayPal and Facebook, is backing the Enhanced Games, which will actively encourage athletes to use performance-enhancing drugs.

The venture — aimed at aiding research into nutritional supplements and biohacks that push the boundaries of human performance — is the brainchild of Dr. Aron D’Souza, a lawyer by training who famously conceived Thiel’s lawsuit against Gawker Media.

He plans to provide more details on April 17 and promote the controversial concept in Paris during the Summer Olympics, which begin in July.

Thiel is among several high-profile venture capitalists who have backed the project, including billionaire Christian Angermayer of Apeiron Investment Group and Balaji Srinivasan, the former chief technology officer of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase.

D’Souza would not reveal how much money was raised, telling The Post it was in the “high single-digit millions” — a sum that is “enough to produce the first games.”

D’Souza said that Enhanced Games are negotiating with several host cities “that have requisite infrastructure” though he declined to specify which venue will host the inaugural competition, which he expects to get underway by the middle of next year.

The competition will feature five events — swimming, gymnastics, weightlifting, track and field, and combat — and will be held once a year at already-existing venues.

He told The Post that the idea behind Enhanced Games is to allow athletes to use whatever substances they wish “out in the open and honestly” — unlike at the Olympics, where “44% of Olympians admit to using banned substance while only 1% get caught.”

“My body, my choice, your body, your choice,” D’Souza told The Post when asked about the philosophy behind allowing athletes to juice.

“Individuals should be able to make choices about your body and no one — whether it’s a sports federation or the government — should be able to tell them what to do about it,” he said.

He said that the events are open to any athletes — current and former professionals and amateurs — and that allowing them to enhance their performance with substances will enable researchers to get a better idea of what technologies are out there that can boost longevity and “healthy aging.”

He said that the data would be “very useful to determining compounds and therapies to extending human life.”

D’Souza predicted that Enhanced Games would do for anti-aging what “ChatGPT did for AI.”

The 56-year-old Thiel is among several Silicon Valley moguls who have invested millions in funding research aimed at helping people live longer.

Thiel himself takes human growth hormone to help maintain muscle mass as well as anti-diabetes drug metformin, which has grown popular in the anti-aging community.

Thiel told media outlets that he adheres to the paleo diet — which eschews processed foods in favor of unprocessed fruits, vegetables and lean meat — and that he aims to one day have his body cryogenically frozen so that he can be posthumously revived if and when technology allows for it.

So far, 900 athletes have expressed interest in participating in the Enhanced Games, according to D’Souza.

He said Enhanced Games’ free-for-all philosophy will allow athletes who “didn’t win the genetic lottery” to experiment with supplementation that could boost their performance.

“Anyone who wants to compete and can do so,” D’Souza said.

Enhanced Games will also pay athletes a base salary in addition to prize winnings.

The idea is to avoid an Olympics-style competition in which countries and municipalities compete for the right to host the games by building taxpayer-funded stadiums and venues — only for those same venues to stand unused after the event is over.

Economists at Oxford University conducted an analysis which found that every Olympics since 1960 has run over budget.

D’Souza told The Post that the Enhanced Games will be entirely funded with private money.

“The Olympics wastes tens of billions of dollars building stadiums and then throwing them away after two weeks,” D’Souza said.

Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, the Russian anti-doping whistleblower who exposed the country’s state-sponsored doping program, called the idea a “danger to health, to sport.”

Anna Meares, a former Olympic gold medalist who serves as Australia’s Olympic chef de mission for the Paris Summer Games, told The Guardian: “It’s a joke, to be honest.

“Unfair, unsafe — I just don’t think this is the right way to go about sport,” she said.

NY Post

Just another lonely Sunday night at Area S-4.