It is why I removed several vital-to-today's-social-experiment apps from my phone.
My eventual plan after retirement is to go the second story of my home and throw my phone out the window. Seeing it shatter into a million pieces is kind of a bizarre fantasy of mine.
One more thing, I am a real person. I am not a bot. Thank you for behaving like a human and remaining positive within this back and forth.
I have lived a long time and despite staying in or around my hometown, I have a lot of knowledge from many triumphs and mistakes. I think that is something people don't often appreciate about GenX living in "fly over" country.
And – I make grammatical errrors and typos – the beauty of talking to humans is our imperfections. Have a blessed Easter. 🐣
For me it is more about location and keeping cashflow. Growth just happened via savings and investing. It is a long process for plebs. 😉
I bought my first home at age 19. It was a complete piece of sh*t for $18,500, but it was a roof. We built equity. That home paid for the next home, and so on and so forth.
I've never paid more than 250k for a home, but repaired them or maintained them, and made more from the sale.
Gardens, some wildlife, a place for family to gather. A simple life is more my style.
The portion of this discussing the Sovok interested me. I am in a large progressive California firm that is hypersensitive to workplace conduct or speech that could give rise to claims of hostile work environment etc.
When I find myself in one of those random workplace encounters in which I am supposed to chat, I endeavor to find the blandest topics upon which to blather. Weather and traffic are the reliable choices. Nobody is compelled to hear my opinions about anything. The chilling effect is cryogenic.
When I still worked at the office, back before 2020, this was how it was. I had one or two people that I could (very quietly) talk to about how messed up our country and government and society was (one had an office so we could close the door for some bit of privacy). I remember another coworker saying to me at one point, "guess we gotta be careful what we say now", after some sort of diversity lecture from the university.
"Most of us wore our face diapers and followed orders."
By my reckoning, "most of us" screeched about masks like they were The Mark of The Beast, but said fuck-all about the largest upward transfer of wealth in this country's history, and the fact that wealthy assholes across the political landscape benefitted at the expense of regular people from across that same landscape.
So you don’t benefit from Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Space X and a large number of other enterprises that have resulted in brill Individuals becoming billionaires. Or perhaps you’re referring to Bernie Sanders who is now a millionaire who, to the best of my knowledge, has contributed nothing productive except volumes of hot air.
The unworthy 1% would be the hedge fund managers and bankers and corporate stooges..As well as the political aristocracy. All those who reap rewards with out contribution or risk. The wealthy have constructed an economy where the profits are privatized and the risks and the costs are on the public. We have defacto monopolies in most areas of the economy because corporations have rigged the system to take power away from the consumer and the employee.
I am fine with anyone getting as rich as they can by offering a real product and assuming the risk and the costs themselves, but that is not the current landscape.
No, that's the better mousetrap effect. Sorry you are butt hurt about nerds and creative folks getting rich from ideas that benefit you. Don't like it? Get rid of your tech. Live in a cabin in the woods.
1) "No, that's the better mousetrap effect." - no, it isn't - I'm referring to the massive upward transfer of wealth during COVID, which is also what I wrote. Learn to fucking read.
2) I said nothing about whatever you're talking about in reference to tech and/or creative folks? Sounds like you're the one who is butthurt about something.
You are a delusional Bernie Bro. You wrote nothing about Covid. Just bitched about wealth you never had and have no chance of ever getting. Have found at your next idiot protest.
I wore my face diaper because in the state where I live the store or restaurant was the one punished if patrons were unmasked. I didn’t want to endanger people who were just trying to stay in business.
No. I bought a flimsy mask from Amazon that said in big letters “Your false sense of security.” Occasionally someone would ask what that meant. No one ever believed me when I insisted masks were useless. I did mention that N95 masks worked but when I said that they were “single use,” people acted surprised.
They're a single use like daily wear contact lenses are one day. Meaning if there is any damage or they get too soiled they need to be tossed but they will last a while. I made it through an entire week 8h/day nursing mom back to health in an assisted living facility where everyone else got covid during the week (one of the variants was erupting) using maybe two N95 masks.
Got some exposure that I fought off with heavy C D and zinc but didnt get sick.
No - they are good for filtering dust and probably bacteria. But when Dr Frankensteins who created the virus then told people to shame themselves with face ridiculous diapers while lying about what they'd done - nope - I'm not a sheep or follower of sheep.
The worst people are the parents who covered their children's faces. Sickening.
It was a revealing time for everyone to see the few who had self-respect were hated for that. "How dare him not cover his face!"
"Donald Trump’s ICE raids devolved into South African or Russian-style pass sweeps, Democrats responded to Covid by hunting the Bill of Rights with a flamethrower, neither party has done a thing to eliminate mass abuse of FISA or National Security Letters, and the private sector increasingly forces public political displays on its employees."
Very well said. Anyone who thinks "their party" or "side" is the hero in this situation is either delusional, stupid or part of the problem.
Vaccine passports and other types of medical surveillance are an additional concern. I remember when medical records used to be considered very private. Now they are vastly more accessible.
I have a small business during the plandemic I refused to have giant stickers on the floor telling us where to stand and I didn't enforce masks.I had a customer ask if I was vaccinated ,as I was eating my lunch- and not wearing a mask-as impossible to do so. I told her it was private-she said it wasn't-I told her it was and it would always be private.She kept asking,getting more aggressive- so I banned her from ever shopping at my store again. I felt great. There were other disturbing freak-out's.I felt it was not my responsibility to keep people "safe" and I was not going to play the role of government monitor -considering I never believed in the goddamned thing from the get go.
"Proof" of vaccination for international travel has been a requirement for a very long time. What's different about the new push for vaccine passports is:
1. Lots of in country and local uses planned for it, whereas nobody here in the US ever demanded to see my yellow card before.
2. The primary rationale was protecting you, the traveler - - "You are coming to a place where yellow fever / typhoid / cholera may be encountered; we won't let you come unless you're protected against it." Protecting others was very much a secondary aspect, especially for things like yellow fever for those of us who would be returning to areas outside the habitat of the mosquito vector.
(Did you ever get the cholera vaccine? Yuck yuck yuck yuck yuck!)
You might want to do a deep dive. Those vaccines were not placebo tested either. This is a rabbit hole you can never recover from going into. The whole issue is more complicated than people realize. I am in the middle on this and will always support personal choice. I delayed vaccination for my kids as they are more effective on a mature immune system and we spread them out. Vaccination an infant for an illness which only becomes serious in adolescence, like mumps, makes no sense. My kids got chicken pox the old fashioned way, but if I had kids now, I would wait until later childhood to vaccinate. My husband caught it after my kids did and in adults it is very serious, but in healthy kids it is trivial. Medicine should be case by case with individual differences taken into account.
What a great scam, huh? Get masses of people to install the cameras for "security," never realizing that some entity could come around later and access it. Of course, I'm so paranoid about surveillance that I wince a little every time I hear my sister in law tell Alexa what music to play. The fact that these contraptions are always LISTENING creeps me out. I don't understand how this has come to be accepted by anyone other than paralytics.
All those classic science fiction books I read as a kid taught me to beware of technology & government. Then Snowden's revelations gave me a sort of long-term permanent panic attack about all this stuff.
Glad that I am old and not of consequence. In the 1980s I welcomed personal computers; in the 1990s I celebrated the World Wide Web in my marketing job. Now my phone-computer-camera remains in a central location most of the day. I am slow to respond to texts. My phone is in my purse when I meet people for lunch. Don't read X or Reddit. I don't even use the Substack app! Just read this stuff at my desktop computer. A friend of mine flushed his watch down the toilet when he retired. Anyone spying on me will pass out from boredom. People here see coyotes on their Ring cameras. Occasionally, there are Sovok types around here, but it is easy to avoid them and ignore them. When I see people protesting, I assume they are witless dupes. I used to worry about a Fahrenheit 451 scenario where people would come for my books. Instead, people are completely indifferent to my books!
Thank you, Matt, for sending reports from the front lines.
It's like the Twilight Zone episode "It's a Good Life" where everyone has to say nice things in front of Anthony or he gets sent to the corn field. "That's a real nice war you started there, Anthony! Real nice!"
I'm not arguing with this viewpoint Mstt, but Ryan's article was weak as supporting your viewpoint. I'm sure you can see that the disclosure and payment provided to the study subjects stands in contrast to a dark conspiracy.
Read Rufo's piece today as a comparison. I don't think he has the resources that Racket has.
Indeed, I watched you write the post. You were suspiciously slow typing it out, as if you were burdened by guilt. We are going to have to pay more attention to you.
I'm not seeing any new article from Rufo on surveillance; today an article on fraud in Ca. Just wondering where to find the article you are referring to. Thanks.
There are new terms of service everywhere. Apps, services, medical, and more are all hoovering-up everything and storing it in data centers to be retrieved, organized, analyzed…. by AI to be used by humans (governments) for whatever purposes they deem “necessary”. Many or most of us would be ok with it if theoretically it catches the guy who lights people on fire in trains, or pushes others into moving trains to kill them, helps catch the murderer, rapist, thief, arsonist, j-walker. It’ll be used to make people conform to whatever entity rules. Will some be “benevolent?” Will most be used nefariously? So far the Dems have been the scariest about this stuff. Didn’t Biden want complete control over AI with a limited number of monopolistic companies essentially working for the govt?
Society hangs by a thread; especially artificial modern societies. We do live artificial lives far removed from reality in the sense of having to directly provide for ourselves w/o technology. The modern world may be luxurious and convenient, but it lulls humanity into a false sense of security. Turn off electricity and everything changes.
Yes I am referring to that article as something important and well researched. Agreed its not on a silly twins study where informed consent was done and subjects paid.
I will say, that I noticed in the short video posted with that story that someone at the twins event recorded, that one of the people at the "research" tent was telling the woman that they were doing it for the FBI and a university and another one of the people at the tent says, "we're not supposed to tell people about the FBI being involved". Anyway, I found that interesting.
Our kids gave us an Alexa 8 years ago… she didn’t last 24 hours. However, it was funny when my husband asked me “ who sent you that joke?” And I said “ Dick “… and Alexa chimed in and said “ that’s not nice”. 😂 Into the garbage she went.
I was talking to a friend the other day and I started whispering because I didn't want my phone to hear me both because it was a sensitive issue and because I didn't want to get bombarded with ads. It's hard not to feel the inevitability of more surveillance. Sometimes I just want to throw my hands up and say "Fuck it," but then I read a post like yours and realize we all need to be more vigilant. Thanks Matt.
Remember when Obama campaigned against the Patriot act and surveillance in 2008? Seems like a lifetime ago. Withe advent of AI privacy is a joke to its creators. Glad to be a gen x kid who grew up in maybe the last era of freedom .
Matt, this is beyond disappointing. “Donald Trump’s ICE” devolved into Soviet style sweeps? It’s such obvious whataboutism to try and find a false equivalence between the extraordinary fascistic and fraudulent administration of Biden and that of Trump now. What are you doing?
Agree. He makes the one statement with no elaboration. Pretti and Good weren't martyrs, they were unfortunate victims of their own stupidity and of their government's ratcheting up of misguided rancor to cover up their own criminal corruption.
I paused at the ICE comparison too, but thought mention of FISA spy programs was solid. Trump, Kash Patel, Jim Jordan et al working to extend Section 702 powers is hardly the work of ‘swamp-drainers.’
The censorship under Biden was definitely more elite-class connivance and perception control. Trump’s bull is stomping around the china shop in full view of the other customers. It’s still a problem. And if he pisses away enough political capital to cause a blue wave in the mid-terms, no writer wants to be on record as ignoring his mistakes. It’s not the same thing, but it’s definitely a thing.
It’s particularly odd, since Matt himself reported on Obama’s sweeps and mentioned the comparison in a very different context on ATW. Though, that was when Matt seemed to start looking for reasons to align with the DNC narrative that Orange Man Bad.
It might be more correct to refer to "Noem's immigration sweeps." As I understand it, the tempo of apprehensions and deportations has not decreased, it just isn't so ostentatiously public.
It was every bit as public under Obama. The difference between then and now is media framing. The media perspective under Obama was fawning and there were no mass protests or organized insurrection from state governments.
True enough, there wasn't an organized "resistance" aside from AOC weeping. But, Obama didn't associate himself with the effort. Homan, who worked for Obama, seems quietly efficient.
I use my phone for texts and calls mostly. I don't use many apps, and don't take it with me when I leave the house. I never wanted one and only got one in 2015 when I realized it was cheaper than the landline I had. I still despise the things, as from the very beginning it was clear to me they were going to be used to track people everywhere they went. And most Americans seem perfectly happy with this development. Whatever happened to privacy and being alone with your thoughts? I see people out in the woods on hikes looking at their phone or documenting everything. People no longer live their experiences, they are too busy live streaming them to the world. Is this my "get off my lawn" moment?
It is why I removed several vital-to-today's-social-experiment apps from my phone.
My eventual plan after retirement is to go the second story of my home and throw my phone out the window. Seeing it shatter into a million pieces is kind of a bizarre fantasy of mine.
One has to dream.
I think you will have to go higher, but I like it...
It's okay. Behind my house is a quarry with a cliff. I always have a Plan B.
My fantasy is retirement!
Mine too, and I am going to achieve it. I watched my dad work until 2 days before he died in his mid 70s. That to me would be my personal hell.
Yet you have used credit cards that track the location, time and purchased item for every transaction you've made over recent decades.
It's good to be aware of the tradeoffs and choose to make them. But many of them are not that big a deal.
Who uses credit cards? I uses cash. Debt is the master to the slave.
Ooo tell me you have no mortgage or you were a 15 year-er... love it
One more thing, I am a real person. I am not a bot. Thank you for behaving like a human and remaining positive within this back and forth.
I have lived a long time and despite staying in or around my hometown, I have a lot of knowledge from many triumphs and mistakes. I think that is something people don't often appreciate about GenX living in "fly over" country.
And – I make grammatical errrors and typos – the beauty of talking to humans is our imperfections. Have a blessed Easter. 🐣
I did the Dave Ramsey plan. Cash is king! I re-fied at 2.02% on a 10-year when rates were rock bottom. Will pay that off early in a couple years.
If I cannot pay cash, I don't do it or buy it. I have been operating this way most of my life.
For me it is more about location and keeping cashflow. Growth just happened via savings and investing. It is a long process for plebs. 😉
I bought my first home at age 19. It was a complete piece of sh*t for $18,500, but it was a roof. We built equity. That home paid for the next home, and so on and so forth.
I've never paid more than 250k for a home, but repaired them or maintained them, and made more from the sale.
Gardens, some wildlife, a place for family to gather. A simple life is more my style.
The bottom line is, when you are a poor pleb, who went to college, but never broke that glass ceiling, you MUST behave differently with your finances.
My past five cars, I paid cash. They were all used except one. Poor folk have to think differently.
Without dreams, how can they come true.
"after retirement"! A man of real principle. Plenty of bitchin' little action.
Bot...
Why don't you go find me a good recipe for cheesy potatoes?
The portion of this discussing the Sovok interested me. I am in a large progressive California firm that is hypersensitive to workplace conduct or speech that could give rise to claims of hostile work environment etc.
When I find myself in one of those random workplace encounters in which I am supposed to chat, I endeavor to find the blandest topics upon which to blather. Weather and traffic are the reliable choices. Nobody is compelled to hear my opinions about anything. The chilling effect is cryogenic.
That is so creepy.
So everyone is babbling about nothing, in order to avoid speaking about anything important.
When I still worked at the office, back before 2020, this was how it was. I had one or two people that I could (very quietly) talk to about how messed up our country and government and society was (one had an office so we could close the door for some bit of privacy). I remember another coworker saying to me at one point, "guess we gotta be careful what we say now", after some sort of diversity lecture from the university.
Weather
Hopefully you are saying something like THERE IS NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY, FIGHT THE POWER
I’m sure that goes over well in Cali
you should put some dogshit in the breakroom microwave and heat it up.
Why was Fauci pardoned?
Most of us wore our face diapers and followed orders.
The problem is us.
Sheep who get angry only when they are called sheep.
"Most of us wore our face diapers and followed orders."
By my reckoning, "most of us" screeched about masks like they were The Mark of The Beast, but said fuck-all about the largest upward transfer of wealth in this country's history, and the fact that wealthy assholes across the political landscape benefitted at the expense of regular people from across that same landscape.
So you don’t benefit from Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Space X and a large number of other enterprises that have resulted in brill Individuals becoming billionaires. Or perhaps you’re referring to Bernie Sanders who is now a millionaire who, to the best of my knowledge, has contributed nothing productive except volumes of hot air.
So you think you're going to change the subject? No thanks, have fun pulling on them bootstraps though, chucklehead.
The unworthy 1% would be the hedge fund managers and bankers and corporate stooges..As well as the political aristocracy. All those who reap rewards with out contribution or risk. The wealthy have constructed an economy where the profits are privatized and the risks and the costs are on the public. We have defacto monopolies in most areas of the economy because corporations have rigged the system to take power away from the consumer and the employee.
I am fine with anyone getting as rich as they can by offering a real product and assuming the risk and the costs themselves, but that is not the current landscape.
"upward transfer of wealth"?
No, that's the better mousetrap effect. Sorry you are butt hurt about nerds and creative folks getting rich from ideas that benefit you. Don't like it? Get rid of your tech. Live in a cabin in the woods.
1) "No, that's the better mousetrap effect." - no, it isn't - I'm referring to the massive upward transfer of wealth during COVID, which is also what I wrote. Learn to fucking read.
2) I said nothing about whatever you're talking about in reference to tech and/or creative folks? Sounds like you're the one who is butthurt about something.
You are a delusional Bernie Bro. You wrote nothing about Covid. Just bitched about wealth you never had and have no chance of ever getting. Have found at your next idiot protest.
You're an illiterate retard and a troll. Bye.
And you are a Bernie Bitch. Clueless angry little girl.
Precisely.
I didn't wear the mask or follow anybody's orders. I knew we were being scammed after hearing Fauci talk one time. My instincts were correct
Just out of curiousity: did you use N95 masks in any situations?
No. If it absolutely required a mask I just didn't do it. And I did my grocery shopping at 6 AM when there was nobody to offend
Harmlessly passing our time in the grassland away, only dimly aware of a certain unease in the air.
I wore my face diaper because in the state where I live the store or restaurant was the one punished if patrons were unmasked. I didn’t want to endanger people who were just trying to stay in business.
Just out of curiousity: did you use N95 masks in any situations?
No. I bought a flimsy mask from Amazon that said in big letters “Your false sense of security.” Occasionally someone would ask what that meant. No one ever believed me when I insisted masks were useless. I did mention that N95 masks worked but when I said that they were “single use,” people acted surprised.
They're a single use like daily wear contact lenses are one day. Meaning if there is any damage or they get too soiled they need to be tossed but they will last a while. I made it through an entire week 8h/day nursing mom back to health in an assisted living facility where everyone else got covid during the week (one of the variants was erupting) using maybe two N95 masks.
Got some exposure that I fought off with heavy C D and zinc but didnt get sick.
THEY knew we would eat each other alive in the cage:social experiments unleashed as great entertainment.
Can’t disagree. Most of my friends thought the masks were absolutely essential and that I was nuts.
No he wasn’t and he won’t be and that is the origin of my anger. Why care? The6 got away with it.
Just out of curiousity: did you use N95 masks in any situations?
No - they are good for filtering dust and probably bacteria. But when Dr Frankensteins who created the virus then told people to shame themselves with face ridiculous diapers while lying about what they'd done - nope - I'm not a sheep or follower of sheep.
The worst people are the parents who covered their children's faces. Sickening.
It was a revealing time for everyone to see the few who had self-respect were hated for that. "How dare him not cover his face!"
Thx. I always wondered why people wore the nonfunctional masks. If you believed there was risk, wear something that protects you at least.
"Donald Trump’s ICE raids devolved into South African or Russian-style pass sweeps, Democrats responded to Covid by hunting the Bill of Rights with a flamethrower, neither party has done a thing to eliminate mass abuse of FISA or National Security Letters, and the private sector increasingly forces public political displays on its employees."
Very well said. Anyone who thinks "their party" or "side" is the hero in this situation is either delusional, stupid or part of the problem.
Vaccine passports and other types of medical surveillance are an additional concern. I remember when medical records used to be considered very private. Now they are vastly more accessible.
They've been pushing for us to put all our medical info online for 10 or 15 years now, which always made me nervous.
I'm sure it's totally safe.
To say nothing of effective.
(wink)
Some information should never be networked.
well. it will never happen. we'd find out all the drugs the mass shooters and serial killers are on, not to mention the psychos in congress.
100%. And multiple winks are in order.
I have a small business during the plandemic I refused to have giant stickers on the floor telling us where to stand and I didn't enforce masks.I had a customer ask if I was vaccinated ,as I was eating my lunch- and not wearing a mask-as impossible to do so. I told her it was private-she said it wasn't-I told her it was and it would always be private.She kept asking,getting more aggressive- so I banned her from ever shopping at my store again. I felt great. There were other disturbing freak-out's.I felt it was not my responsibility to keep people "safe" and I was not going to play the role of government monitor -considering I never believed in the goddamned thing from the get go.
Are you vaccinated though? You left us hanging
you missed the point!
bwahahaha
When I was a kid we had to show vaccine cards to travel internationally. I still have mine.
"Proof" of vaccination for international travel has been a requirement for a very long time. What's different about the new push for vaccine passports is:
1. Lots of in country and local uses planned for it, whereas nobody here in the US ever demanded to see my yellow card before.
2. The primary rationale was protecting you, the traveler - - "You are coming to a place where yellow fever / typhoid / cholera may be encountered; we won't let you come unless you're protected against it." Protecting others was very much a secondary aspect, especially for things like yellow fever for those of us who would be returning to areas outside the habitat of the mosquito vector.
(Did you ever get the cholera vaccine? Yuck yuck yuck yuck yuck!)
That's when vaccines were rigorously tested and weren't fast-tracked with manipulated and corrupted data.
You might want to do a deep dive. Those vaccines were not placebo tested either. This is a rabbit hole you can never recover from going into. The whole issue is more complicated than people realize. I am in the middle on this and will always support personal choice. I delayed vaccination for my kids as they are more effective on a mature immune system and we spread them out. Vaccination an infant for an illness which only becomes serious in adolescence, like mumps, makes no sense. My kids got chicken pox the old fashioned way, but if I had kids now, I would wait until later childhood to vaccinate. My husband caught it after my kids did and in adults it is very serious, but in healthy kids it is trivial. Medicine should be case by case with individual differences taken into account.
So, you are trying to justify vaccine cards?
Giving historical context.
I really appreciate your observations based on your own experiences in the USSR, Matt.
I had never realized that the result of mass surveillance would have been incessant babbling, but the way you explained it, it makes sense.
Really intriguing observation.
I was also horrified at that Super Bowl Ring ad.
What a great scam, huh? Get masses of people to install the cameras for "security," never realizing that some entity could come around later and access it. Of course, I'm so paranoid about surveillance that I wince a little every time I hear my sister in law tell Alexa what music to play. The fact that these contraptions are always LISTENING creeps me out. I don't understand how this has come to be accepted by anyone other than paralytics.
All those classic science fiction books I read as a kid taught me to beware of technology & government. Then Snowden's revelations gave me a sort of long-term permanent panic attack about all this stuff.
“Give me convenience, or give me death!”
You'll get both.
It’s the title to a Dead Kennedys compilation of B-sides released in the late 80s.
Jello saw it coming.
Glad that I am old and not of consequence. In the 1980s I welcomed personal computers; in the 1990s I celebrated the World Wide Web in my marketing job. Now my phone-computer-camera remains in a central location most of the day. I am slow to respond to texts. My phone is in my purse when I meet people for lunch. Don't read X or Reddit. I don't even use the Substack app! Just read this stuff at my desktop computer. A friend of mine flushed his watch down the toilet when he retired. Anyone spying on me will pass out from boredom. People here see coyotes on their Ring cameras. Occasionally, there are Sovok types around here, but it is easy to avoid them and ignore them. When I see people protesting, I assume they are witless dupes. I used to worry about a Fahrenheit 451 scenario where people would come for my books. Instead, people are completely indifferent to my books!
Thank you, Matt, for sending reports from the front lines.
It's like the Twilight Zone episode "It's a Good Life" where everyone has to say nice things in front of Anthony or he gets sent to the corn field. "That's a real nice war you started there, Anthony! Real nice!"
I'm not arguing with this viewpoint Mstt, but Ryan's article was weak as supporting your viewpoint. I'm sure you can see that the disclosure and payment provided to the study subjects stands in contrast to a dark conspiracy.
Read Rufo's piece today as a comparison. I don't think he has the resources that Racket has.
Just saying, you can and should do better.
I think I agree with Gary. There is a far more pervasive surveillance on which we engage willingly, like right now as I post this.
Indeed, I watched you write the post. You were suspiciously slow typing it out, as if you were burdened by guilt. We are going to have to pay more attention to you.
🤣🤣🤣
I felt your cold eyes upon me
Now that was funny.
🤣😂
I'm not seeing any new article from Rufo on surveillance; today an article on fraud in Ca. Just wondering where to find the article you are referring to. Thanks.
There are new terms of service everywhere. Apps, services, medical, and more are all hoovering-up everything and storing it in data centers to be retrieved, organized, analyzed…. by AI to be used by humans (governments) for whatever purposes they deem “necessary”. Many or most of us would be ok with it if theoretically it catches the guy who lights people on fire in trains, or pushes others into moving trains to kill them, helps catch the murderer, rapist, thief, arsonist, j-walker. It’ll be used to make people conform to whatever entity rules. Will some be “benevolent?” Will most be used nefariously? So far the Dems have been the scariest about this stuff. Didn’t Biden want complete control over AI with a limited number of monopolistic companies essentially working for the govt?
Society hangs by a thread; especially artificial modern societies. We do live artificial lives far removed from reality in the sense of having to directly provide for ourselves w/o technology. The modern world may be luxurious and convenient, but it lulls humanity into a false sense of security. Turn off electricity and everything changes.
Yes I am referring to that article as something important and well researched. Agreed its not on a silly twins study where informed consent was done and subjects paid.
I will say, that I noticed in the short video posted with that story that someone at the twins event recorded, that one of the people at the "research" tent was telling the woman that they were doing it for the FBI and a university and another one of the people at the tent says, "we're not supposed to tell people about the FBI being involved". Anyway, I found that interesting.
It's a little odd. Altho I can see that FBI on involvement could be a turn off. I'm thinking MKUltra here.
Not that it matters but I'm not sure if a drug trial can reveal it's sponsor.
"Hey wiretap, what's a good recipe for pancakes?"
I quit asking my phone questions and never had Alexia in my house.
Our kids gave us an Alexa 8 years ago… she didn’t last 24 hours. However, it was funny when my husband asked me “ who sent you that joke?” And I said “ Dick “… and Alexa chimed in and said “ that’s not nice”. 😂 Into the garbage she went.
See?!
That's what I'm talking about!
Well done!
That's okay Tim, they're listening anyway.
At the very least, the snoopy bastards should sponsor a citizen's help line so I could call someone who can tell me where I left my fucking glasses...
Check your hairline. I lose up to two pair at a time up there...
😂🤣
😆🤣
Best comment.
I was talking to a friend the other day and I started whispering because I didn't want my phone to hear me both because it was a sensitive issue and because I didn't want to get bombarded with ads. It's hard not to feel the inevitability of more surveillance. Sometimes I just want to throw my hands up and say "Fuck it," but then I read a post like yours and realize we all need to be more vigilant. Thanks Matt.
I've learned to love the bomb.
and to stop worrying.
Remember when Obama campaigned against the Patriot act and surveillance in 2008? Seems like a lifetime ago. Withe advent of AI privacy is a joke to its creators. Glad to be a gen x kid who grew up in maybe the last era of freedom .
Matt, this is beyond disappointing. “Donald Trump’s ICE” devolved into Soviet style sweeps? It’s such obvious whataboutism to try and find a false equivalence between the extraordinary fascistic and fraudulent administration of Biden and that of Trump now. What are you doing?
Agree. He makes the one statement with no elaboration. Pretti and Good weren't martyrs, they were unfortunate victims of their own stupidity and of their government's ratcheting up of misguided rancor to cover up their own criminal corruption.
I paused at the ICE comparison too, but thought mention of FISA spy programs was solid. Trump, Kash Patel, Jim Jordan et al working to extend Section 702 powers is hardly the work of ‘swamp-drainers.’
I would have thought that, too, if Biden hadn’t buried the investigation of the Chinese spy that was dating a Congressman?
The censorship under Biden was definitely more elite-class connivance and perception control. Trump’s bull is stomping around the china shop in full view of the other customers. It’s still a problem. And if he pisses away enough political capital to cause a blue wave in the mid-terms, no writer wants to be on record as ignoring his mistakes. It’s not the same thing, but it’s definitely a thing.
It’s particularly odd, since Matt himself reported on Obama’s sweeps and mentioned the comparison in a very different context on ATW. Though, that was when Matt seemed to start looking for reasons to align with the DNC narrative that Orange Man Bad.
It might be more correct to refer to "Noem's immigration sweeps." As I understand it, the tempo of apprehensions and deportations has not decreased, it just isn't so ostentatiously public.
It was every bit as public under Obama. The difference between then and now is media framing. The media perspective under Obama was fawning and there were no mass protests or organized insurrection from state governments.
True enough, there wasn't an organized "resistance" aside from AOC weeping. But, Obama didn't associate himself with the effort. Homan, who worked for Obama, seems quietly efficient.
I use my phone for texts and calls mostly. I don't use many apps, and don't take it with me when I leave the house. I never wanted one and only got one in 2015 when I realized it was cheaper than the landline I had. I still despise the things, as from the very beginning it was clear to me they were going to be used to track people everywhere they went. And most Americans seem perfectly happy with this development. Whatever happened to privacy and being alone with your thoughts? I see people out in the woods on hikes looking at their phone or documenting everything. People no longer live their experiences, they are too busy live streaming them to the world. Is this my "get off my lawn" moment?
...you can do all of these things ... and LOL ... you get the completely unsolicited Cologuard test kit on your porch one day ...