A Token Of My Extreme

[EndtheMadnessNow]

L. Ron: Don’t you be tarot-fied, it’s just a token of my extreme.
Joe: Oh, oh, oh, Mystical Advisor
What is my problem, tell me, can you see?
L. Ron: Well, you have nothing to fear, my son!
You are a Latent Appliance Fetishist, it appears to me!
Joe: That all seems very, very strange
I never craved a toaster or a color T.V.
— Joe’s Garage Acts II & III, Frank Zappa

AI is changing how we think about money.

When I was a Paduan learner, we used to joke that at least they can’t tax air. Then the bastids created global warming, which evolved and expanded into climate change, which allowed them to tax sunshine, as well.

As I read and listen to a wide variety of commentators on the current global situation, it strikes me that few of them actually understand what’s going on. The entire global economy is being dismantled by design, and there is not much anyone can do about it.

All the “green” energy transition nonsense is to wean us peons off of the good stuff, so “they” can save the hard core power sources for their data centers. What “they” are trying to do is create a precise model of our world, and tokenize every…single…piece of it. The idea is to monetize and weaponize literally everything. You won’t be able to do anything without your “smart” devices, and “they” will allocate and tax everything down to the molecule.

All these little ‘fit bit” thingies? That’s your personal monitoring system. Don’t get enough exercise, or have chronic health issues? Your access to medical services will be rationed, since you don’t deserve good health care.

Eating too much protein? Your per-gram tax will go up to control your access to beef, pork and chicken. Not sleeping enough at night? You will have a curfew and your electricity rations will be cut at night to take away your distractions. Regularly exceeding your travel allotment per week? Your access to enter or leave various zones will be restricted.

This is happening right now in China, which is the test bed for this authoritarian nightmare. Folks can’t get enough of this technological imprisonment. Everyone is equally miserable. Everyone gets punished or rewarded according to their behavior. They can even rat out folks who aren’t part of the Collective—see Star Trek TOS, Return of the Archons,” to see what’s coming at you. Landru loves you.

Oh sure, there are some benefits. If you are a good little Collectivist, your taxes and fees will go down, you’ll get extra rations, and your freedom of movement will relax. Think of it as an extension of loyalty points or air miles—the more you comply, the more bennies you rack up.

It’s already under way. If you use 2-step verification for any account, you’re tagged. It’s not about security, it’s about subverting VPN and finding your phone’s location. If you use any form of biometrics to log into anything, you’re in the system. If you have gone through Know Your Customer processes for any account, your privacy is no more.

We are being herded into this system through the use of various scandals, emergencies and other subterfuges to get you plugged in one way or another. As the system builds, you will be tokenized, as will everything you consume and produce down to the molecule. All that data will be scoured and patterns will be established so that your behavior can be predicted with a fair amount of accuracy.

If you have a smart phone, then your daily movements can already be broken down into minute-by-minute maps. Malls and other commercial interests are already using this to build a customer profile, pushing vouchers and coupons at you depending on where you are standing at that moment.

You may think that not using a smart phone makes you immune, and you’d be wrong. Any electronic device at all—dumb phones, pacemakers, radios, pagers, even your car are all connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) and publishing your location every second of the day.

Any more, we can’t even trust jabs and pills. Your prescription might be tagged with nano-transmitters similar to RFID chips on products. All your bank accounts and credit cards are logged and all your economic activity is duly logged—what bills you pay, what subscriptinos you have, what treats you give yourself every month.

Generation by generation, we’ve all been conditioned to accept a bit more of the Gilded Cage. The minute we allowed every home to have an individual address, the process had begun. It’s been a process of narrowing the address down to your person ever since. It only takes one small crack to breach a dam. Think of the Magician’s Apprentice in Walt Disney’s Phantasia.

Is there a ray of hope in all this bleakness? Why yes, there is.

The most basic hope is that human nature abhors captivity and it cannot be changed. Though “they” are working feverishly on it, they haven’t yet been able to breed this ineffable quality out of us. There are always radicals, outlaws and subversives who rise up to throw wrenches into the cogs.

The second ray of hope is that every complex system is beset with random errors that cannot be predicted or eliminated. Over time, these errors multiply until the system collapses. “They” are also working frantically to solve this problem, but it can’t be done, because in our Universe any sufficiently complex system always breaks down. The current central banking system is a great example. In just over a century, the faults within the system have multiplied to the point that it is collapsing at this very moment.

Think of the chaos theory guy in Jurassic Park.

Universe loves entropy and dissipation of energy. Any amount of organization must always corrupt and collapse. Kodak, once the dominant global name in photography, shut its doors recently. They invented digital photography, but the decision to sit on the technology so as not to harm their chemical-mechanical industry led to this moment. A fallible human made a fallible choice that compounded to bring down an empire. As Lord Acton noted a while back, “Absolutely power corrupts absolutely.”

Keep in mind that “corruption” is just decay and rot. It is not necessarily a choice to do evil, immoral or unethical acts for personal gain. Corruption is built into Universe as a means to recycle raw materials for other being to organize to their liking.

In the immortal words of Robert Blake, “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, Gang aft agley.” Though the overlords struggle mightily to build their ivory towers, they can never control everything, no matter how much they try.

And that’s a good thing.

=====

In keeping with Robert Burns’ theme, today’s cultural tapestry is the brilliant Of Mice and Men (1939), with the great Burgess Meredith playing George, and the iconic Lon Chaney Jr. playing Lenny. If you aren’t openly weeping by the end of this movie, you have no heart. If you’re one of those quaint hold-overs who still read, John Steinbeck’s novel is amazing. One of my early performances was the character Boss in the stage play, and it’s stuck with me for 50 years.

[FCD]

If you authored that, GREAT post!  If someone else authored it, well...GREAT post!   

As I strolled through that piece, I had several comments along the way.  Gee, where to begin?  ...

Regarding "token-ization" (of virtually...everything), this is dead on!  Couldn't have hit the nail more precisely on the head!!  Every single day, some Millenial, or Gen Z'er, comes up with another 'brilliant' idea to tokenize something in our sphere of existence.  It's endless.  Every single calorie of it!!

Regarding 2FA, and other such; I'm not sure I subscribe to all that.  Yes, it likely is valuable data for the IoT, but the World, and by default, the 'Interwebz' is much too vast to have this really be a notable thing, unless it's confined to a specific area.  But, people can find virtually anything to be skeered and paranoid over.  Some are simply beyond hope.

Regarding 'targeted advertising'...it's true!  I've even been asked to assist on a couple such projects like this, from an electronics perspective.  (I refused, after I understood what was the end-goal.)  One of the (very) few things in my career I've ever flat out refused to do based on morals and principles alone!  And, this initiative was the most "predatory" thing imaginable too!!  I knew exactly how to accomplish their objective, but I'd be damned if I was going to share with them 'how' to actually do it!!  They wanted to zero in on people standing in queues (lots of them) for a completely different reason, and surveil them for their Bluetooth identity (on their phones).  Then, they wanted to track where this person went (like everywhere, including even the bathroom(s)), and push advertising to them which was specific to the exact geographical spot they were standing in (using the latest generation GPS technology (not the old 1 meter+/- technology)!)  That level of data only exists on a person's phone as a result of regulatory requirements for Emergency Services, like 9-1-1 (and probably other less above board 'spook' reasons coming out of Chantilly, VA).  I was born at night...BUT not LAST night!  Anyhoo...I told them to get on their bike and ride that shaky bastage the fuck outta' town!  (I've said too much already!)

Regarding cellular phones tracking your every movement...you are precisely right!  They do exactly this, ALL of them!  They HAVE to!  It's required by Law!  It is indeed a regulatory requirement for every cell phone, phones from the AT&T store all the way down to 'burner' phones people buy at the grocery store thinking they are 'anonymous'.  The very second they turn on, the first thing they do is register the GPS location of the phone with the service provider, even before it comes up to the 'ready' state.  And , accessing this data does NOT require a Court Order, unlike wiretaps and the like.  Law enforcement and sworn civil servants can access this data in seconds with the mere tapping out of a few very short keystrokes.  Most 9-1-1 call centers have these apps open 24x7 (don't ask me how I know this, I might just design and build such centers).  

But yes, there IS a ray of hope indeed!  You hit this nail on the head precisely as well.  The random errors DO multiply, and they very quickly become a whole collection, a storm, of nonsensical garbage, in an absolute typhoon of data shooting every which way imaginable.  

Regarding Kodak corporation...their failure is almost comical if it wouldn't have been so true.  Kodak failed on three (3) major fronts.  First, they failed to capitalize (at all) on some of the very things they invented!  The first was the laser printer, and the second was the digital camera.  It's just unimaginable to me to walk into a computer store and see laserjet printers out the butt from companies like HP, Canon and Brother.  Never once did anyone see a Kodak printer, yet they invented the damn things!  Same for digital cameras.  Every manufacturer in the Universe was making digital cameras, and then twenty five years later, here comes Kodak with their first clunky and antiquated digital camera.  Everyone else was light years ahead of them by this point, and when they finally did come out they were 2-4x more expensive than even the shittiest cameras out there! I mean, you couldn't make shit like this up even if you tried!!  The third area where they failed is a little more understandable, and a lot of other companies have fallen into this same trap, BUT...Kodak relied too heavily on the sugardaddy federal government to make them whole forever.  They had, and still have, so many Secret and Top Secret government contracts it would stagger most people to even hear about!!  When those contracts came to an end, like in the last few years, they went tits-up.  Just absolute marketing failures and madness across the board!  I used to seriously wonder if they had a 'Marketing' department at all!!  If they did, it was some little old lady hiding under her desk from all the nukes which were going to hit at any moment (the butter which was buttering Kodak's bread all those years).

Lastly, corruption.  Corruption isn't all that hard to fix, aside from how widespread it is.  All it takes is awareness and willingness to act upon it.  What absolutely does NOT work to fix corruption is...apathy!!  People need to get this thought out of their head's and kick its ass!  Corruption doesn't have to 'be' just because it always has been, and it doesn't have to exist because... 'everyone else is doing it'...it has to be identified, the people involved exposed and embarrassed, as well as terminated (either by employers or by voters). It's really simple, but first people must understand how damaging it is to our society, AND they must understand that 'we' as a people are completely able to abolish it...IF we only try!!

That is all.

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

Perhaps F.U.D. is the answer (F'd Up Data) and creating a data fog around your personal information. AI will figure out much of that, like registering your phone under another name and/or never carrying it with you. Leaving your home computer on and running something while you are out with your phone, trying to make you appear in several places at once.

Whatever you try to do to mess up and interfere with can be sorted out by AI, esp. with CC cameras everywhere with speech and facial recognition. There was a TV show a few years ago where people would try and escape from a team of investigators using all the electronic and digital surveillance available to track them. The only ones who succeeded were the ones who stayed out of town and off the roads, while they abandoned all devices and their money cards. They avoided people who might witness them out at places like campgrounds and such as well. Even with that, if the investigators would of had access to the really high-tech spy satellites, the people on the run would have been caught regardless.

[Kenzo1]

Great post EndtheMadnessNow


Welcome to Earth Penitentiary gulag system ...


One example about corruption and rotten human behavior, Ernst Stavro Blofeld aka  klaus schwab....he got really greedy was removed from WEF .

Klaus Schwab is left with nothing, and he won’t be happy

[F2d5thCav]

Great post EndtheMadnessNow


Welcome to Earth Penitentiary gulag system ...


One example about corruption and rotten human behavior, Ernst Stavro Blofeld aka  klaus schwab....he got really greedy was removed from WEF .

Klaus Schwab is left with nothing, and he won’t be happy

Yep.  Ditch that smartphone.  Rely, instead, on the instinct of your hound.  His nose cannot be hacked.