Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Happy Friday!




It's Beer Can Appreciation Day! For the 2023 Darwin Lions Beer Can Regatta at Mindil Beach in Australia, U.S. Marines used 700 beer cans to build an "amphibious version" of the MV-22 Osprey but were unable to defend their 2022 title, losing to the Techno Vikings.




Jan 24, 1961: the Goldsboro incident occurred in North Carolina. Whew! That was close! And now there's a road sign marker for all the tourists who do not have to wear radiation suits while visiting the state.


Fascinating obituary article on USAF Captain Jack Boyer Revelle:
the man who saved North Carolina from nuclear disaster by Jeremy Markovich, Journalist & Adjunct professor at Wake Forest University.


"The world is not governed by facts or logic. The world is governed by BS ... by belief systems."
— Robert Anton Wilson

"It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth.  Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is  thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of  it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true;  and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers  his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these  bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor  on the side of the false.

His eye is not on the facts at all, as the  eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may  be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does  not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just  picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose."
— Harry Frankfurt, "On Bullshit"

On Bullshit is a 2005 book (originally a 1986 essay) by the American philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt which presents a theory of bullshit that defines the concept and analyzes the applications of bullshit in the context of communication. Frankfurt determines that bullshit is speech intended to persuade without regard for truth. The liar cares about the truth and attempts to hide it; the bullshitter doesn't care whether what they say is true or false. Frankfurt's philosophical analysis of bullshit has been analyzed, criticized and adopted by academics since its publication.

On Bullshit Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1RO93OS0Sk


As 'Dr. They' explains how what people perceive as the truth is twisted and turned until no one knows or cares about it anymore. X-Files from S11E04 (aired Jan 24, 2018)





32 new officials were sworn in at the Pentagon on Monday. One of them was Michael DiMino, former CIA analyst and counterterrorism officer who was appointed to be the Middle East Policy Chief.

DiMino has advocated for Palestine and is against escalation with Iran.


New Officials Sworn-in at the Department of Defense

Pro-Israel Republicans alarmed over Trump’s Defense Department appointee

Trump has made it clear since the golden escalator (June 2015) that, in his eyes, American involvement in the Middle East has been expensive, destructive, and divorced from American national interest. He tried to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and Syria. His tools of choice in the Middle East have been cruise missiles and diplomacy, not boots on the ground. Maybe he’s wrong, but he is trying something different from several generations of failed American foreign policy. Further, most Americans voted for him. Unsurprisingly, he feels he has a mandate to staff his administration with people who agree with him. Shocker.

Michael DiMino explain why he wants to bring our troops home from the Middle East and Africa and only intervene when it’s absolutely necessary vice based on feelings & emotions:

https://x.com/MLiamMcCollum/status/1882245368404185279


I see this pardon request has been resurrected.


Edward Snowden's leaks exposed numerous surveillance programs. Here is a list of many of those programs that became public knowledge through his disclosures:

PRISM - A program allowing the NSA to collect internet communications from major U.S. tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and Apple under FISA Section 702.

XKeyscore - Described as the NSA's Google, allowing analysts to search through global internet data in near real-time, including emails, web browsing history, and more.

Tempora - A British GCHQ program that taps into fiber-optic cables to intercept vast amounts of global communications, which is then shared with the NSA.

Boundless Informant - An internal NSA tool providing a visual representation of the agency's data collection activities, showing details by country and type of data.

Muscular - A joint NSA and GCHQ operation that involved intercepting data from Google and Yahoo's internal networks, bypassing their public-facing security measures.

Upstream - Similar to PRISM but focuses on intercepting communications directly from internet backbone cables rather than from tech companies.

BULLRUN - An NSA program aimed at weakening encryption standards and cracking encrypted communications.

FASCIA - A program that tracks cell phone locations worldwide by collecting location data from mobile networks.

Optic Nerve - A GCHQ program that automatically stored webcam images from Yahoo users, capturing millions of images, some of which were sexually explicit.

Dishfire - An NSA program that collects hundreds of millions of text messages daily from around the world.

Stellar Wind - A comprehensive data collection program that included the bulk collection of telephone records of U.S. citizens.

MYSTIC - An NSA program capable of recording and storing every single phone call in a foreign country for up to 30 days, allowing for retrospective surveillance.

SOMALGET - A program that collects metadata from phone calls in certain countries, including the U.S., to identify targets.

EGOTISTICAL GIRAFFE - An NSA operation focused on exploiting vulnerabilities in the Tor network to de-anonymize users.

QUANTUM - A set of NSA hacking tools used for intercepting and redirecting internet traffic, allowing for the injection of malicious code or data collection.

NOFORN - Not a program per se, but a designation used to indicate intelligence that should not be shared with foreign nationals, including allies, highlighting the compartmentalization of shared intelligence.

TURBINE - An NSA system for automated hacking, where pre-installed malware can be remotely triggered to infect systems worldwide.

GHOSTMACHINE - A program that monitors social media platforms like Google+, YouTube, and others for intelligence purposes.

CO-TRAVELER - An analytic feature within FASCIA to identify groups of people traveling together by matching cell phone locations.

MAINWAY - A massive NSA database of telephone metadata used to map out social connections.

This list is not exhaustive, as Snowden's leaks were numerous and covered many aspects of NSA and allied intelligence operations. Each of these programs has contributed to the broader debate on privacy, security, and surveillance in the digital age.

The Snowman has gone dark and has not posted since Nov 18, 2024.



I’m not sure where this "That, Which Does Not Kill me" meme originated from, but a quick google search links to this Twitter post from "Live Through This campaign" in 2016.


DEOMI is down! The mothership of sectarianism is down!

What is DEOMI?

It is Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute. Once upon a time and place where it was needed, staffed with well meaning people doing important work. DEOMI is a US Department of Defense joint services school and research laboratory located at Patrick Space Force Base, Florida, offering both resident and off-site courses, and working in areas of equal opportunity, intercultural communication, religious, racial, gender, and ethnic diversity and pluralism. Courses and research are meant to support the readiness of civilian and military personnel working with the American armed forces.

DEOMI was established in 1971 as the Defense Race Relations Institute (DRRI) based on lessons learned from the Civil Rights Movement. Set against a national policy of inequality and segregation, and problems both in the civilian world and the military linked to racial tension and hostility, military leaders understood that working together across racial lines was not only the right thing to do but also a necessary element in terms of military readiness.

Six years after the end of Jim Crow and the passing of the Civil Rights act when there at at time when there were race riots in the military (Racial violence breaks out aboard U.S. Navy ships)? Yeah, I guess it was needed then.

"In the National Defense Authorization Acts of 2013 and 2015, it became law that every commander, upon assumption of command, must take a command climate survey with 90 days; and that commanders must follow up annually thereafter. in 2015, the Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness (USD (P&R)) issued a memorandum declaring DEOCS as the command climate assessment survey for the Department of Defense. In 2011, Dr. Daniel P. McDonald and his team began to develop a capability for DEOCS that went beyond merely providing a near real-time survey service for commanders, and began to develop a continuous performance support and improvement system around the assessment capability called the 'Assessment to Solutions' system. The concept is that commanders and their equal opportunity advisors or command climate specialists need real-time support not only in carrying out the complex task of a complete climate assessment to detect issues before they evolve, but also should be presented with evidence-based solutions to meet their unique diagnosed needs within their organizations. Furthermore, after using it to establish a base line upon assumption of command, follow-up surveys can also assess progress. The survey can be taken on line by military personnel."

Well, in a view like a pilot looking through the cracked windscreen of his battle damaged X-wing fighter at an exploding Death Star...even their website is now gone.

Their home website: http://www.deomi.org/ which redirects to a .mil site > https://www.defenseculture.mil/ and https://www.deomi.mil/ is DOWN. And their Facebook page is also down. Good riddance.







Day 3 on new job...


Marco Rubio demands immediate halt to virtually all US foreign aid


Words for the Weekend...




Friday night Electric Callboy...