JB's Place

Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time, I was a psychology Major at Murray State University, which has now been relegated to “long ago”. I had a professor by the name of Alisha Ritter who was the resident PHD over introduction to research. Lecturing wise, Dr. Ritter was very polished. When it came to the epistemology of the basics, though, we had some disagreements. Though Dr. Ritter was right from an academic standpoint, she was wrong in a philosophical sense. Since I was on a path that would eventually include what was, in psychology parlance, considered a pseudo-science, the collision was perhaps inevitable. Everybody “knew” that astrology was a sham, and boy, if you did not, you were gonna be in for a tough time. Nevermind that Jung basically used astrology. Nobody talked about him. Freud was quoted in passing. It was really all about Skinner, Skinner, Skinner.

My Research

My research for this intro class concerned Piaget and something called a “conservation task” which in six seconds or less, involves a child being able to understand that liquid placed in a glass of differing sizes does not lead to the vessel of larger size containing more liquid. I made a quiz that tested on two questions a very complicated version of this that dealt with jelly beans in jars. The piece behind the theory Piaget propounded was that all adults could understand the “conservation task” and that there really was not much in the model beyond this stage. My quiz which had a lot of noise showed that this was not so, and there was a lot of other research to indicate the same. As you can see, I indicated these results in about 30 seconds like the above, but later learned that our presentation had a time component built-in to the grading which made people go on and on with graphs and theories that were quite honestly boring and unnecessary. I therefore had to fill time for something requiring no more than 30 seconds to realize and understand.

Dr. Ritter’s Research

Dr. Ritter’s Research is here. As can be seen, there is a lot of information on optics and testing. Visual perception, test validity, and so on. Here is an example abstract:

Although every effort is made to make performance tests comparable, implementing the same test or test battery on a different computer in a different program language can produce only approximately identical tests because of differences in hardware and software. Therefore, comparability of the tests is an empirical as opposed to theoretical issue. The present paper examined a battery of six performance tests implemented on two computers, a NEC laptop programmed in N82-BASIC, and a COMPAQ laptop programmed in TurboC. The asymptotic performance levels differed somewhat, as did the rate of approach to asymptote in some cases. More important, after correction for reliability attenuation, the cross-correlations between the two different implementations of the same test approached unity, which supports the conclusion that what was measured after the tests had stabilized was identical for the two different hardware and software configurations. Furthermore, comparison of intercorrelations among tests on the different computers showed no significant differences, which suggests that the factorial structure is the same.

Wow! That sounds fancy! In laymen’s terms, it means if you make a test in two different computer languages, the measured performance on the tests by the subjects is only somewhat the same but that whatever it is the thing measured is the same if you use a very fancy statistical technique for “reliability attenuation”. This reliability attenuation of course assumes that something can be reliable when you measure it (Whatever that is). So what we have learned is we measured something, whatever it is, which, when we use a fancy version of statistics, we are told that this something is the same thing and that whatever this nebulous thing is, changing computer languages and software and hardware makes people perform differently. (Isn’t this just variability?) Remember, Dr. Ritter is a PHD and gets paid lots of money for this research and to teach intro to research. Therefore, as someone who is not a University PHD in psychology and does not get paid large sums of cash and only got a C in her research methods class on his presentation, what I am about to say about a pseudo science which everyone knows is false is probably rubbish at best, and silly and supernatural at worst. Here goes: In astrology, when you have constellations in two different languages or cultures, the results are only approximately the same. However, if you throw out the differences and go with the Hebrew Mazzaroth as the “master template” the results are Unity. Here is the step beyond the above: what was measured by method of constellations were, on some level, units of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Here is what’s more, performance on the tests conducted by Dr. Ritter above, are what we might, to borrow terminology from Ken Wilber, metrics of expected performance of apperception of the holons defined as performant by the constraints of the computer systems and human comprehension. The only thing measurable here potentially is “Signal” which we might also term “compliance”. Confused? Let me make it easy.

The Glyph of Pluto

Everyone knows this is the Glyph of Pluto right? Lord of the Underworld. Has a boat and a guy who boats. Responsible for keys and agriculture. Further research on the glyph indicates that he has two prongs because of his “bident” which is a sacrificial implement. One problem, that’s all Greek, and why does he have a little circle which looks like a head? Neptune, which is defined as a trident has no little circle as a head. Furthermore, it looks like he has his arms up around a head and a little cross for a body. This sounds like something else. What does it sound like? Well, I am glad you asked. It sounds like Moses.

Why Moses?

Moses held up his arms during the time that Israel was in a battle.

Moses said to Joshua, “Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands.”
So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron and Hur went to the top of the hill.
As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning.
When Moses’ hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up–one on one side, one on the other–so that his hands remained steady till sunset.
So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword.
Then the LORD said to Moses, “Write this on a scroll as something to be remembered and make sure that Joshua hears it, because I will completely blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.”
Moses built an altar and called it The LORD is my Banner.
He said, “For hands were lifted up to the throne of the LORD. The LORD will be at war against the Amalekites from generation to generation.”

All of these pieces of mythology sound like the glyph of Pluto. Power, battle, Moses’s face had been transformed before. Prior to all this Moses lived in Egypt the land of Alchemy or science of transformations. So it seems like someone might have MEANT to make the glyph of Pluto be a “bident” but instead they wound up accidentally pulling in a different archetype and wrapping it up in pagan influences.

“But wait,” I hear you cry out. “Moses was after all the giant stuff, so like, isn’t Pluto totally the first thing since it is probably some weirdo Greek giant worship?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I cooly reply and sip on my Capri sun. “The giants were not supposed to be here in the first place, as they had disobeyed YHVH as fallen angels.”

Therefore, the keeper of the archetype of Pluto, is, in any regard, Moses. Any other version was “stolen” and stolen power always gets someone in trouble since ultimately the thievery is against the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

What Makes Moses Different

As badass as Moses is, (can you even call Moses a badass?) he has to have help to wield the power he is holding. He gets tired. He needs to sit down, and a couple of guys need to come in and help him hold up his arms. Despite the fact Moses is holding immense power, he still needs help. If Israel had just said, “Well, Moses talks to God face to face, so I think he’s got this,” the conclusion is “Bad things would have happened that day”.

Back To My Psychology Professor

If you relate to the different astrology systems as different computer programming and hardware, then you can see that the results of what I am here outlining are exactly the same as the computer analog except the difference is that whereas the scientific explanation cannot go beyond and say what it is in fact measuring–the above certainly can. Since the only thing that can be measured in terms of performance is the expectation of what constitutes performance then the only thing that can be measured is what “good performance is”. This is signal defined by consensus. Since comprehension is first a God-given ability, then the conclusion is that whatever is measured will be some mirror of this gift although the definition might be far from what is since the methodology being used in science is “blind” to any source. This makes people do weird things such as make many charts and graphs with long presentations to explain something that should be fairly simple when fully grasped. Something like, “Hey, did you know if I make the same test and use two different computer languages and different computers I get different results from people in a surprising kind of way?” becomes all that you see in the abstract. The reply to why this is so is simple with the methods I indicate above: Those results are explainable in terms of the signaling apparatus that you are using. Computers are different brands and are made differently, and all these factors contribute to how a consciousness parses a given reality at a given moment. Different languages also introduce subtle differences in programs, just as they do where words and definitions are concerned.

How I Solved My Psychology Woes

I decided, not long after all my experiences in psychology, that I would instead go into Internet Technology as I needed something that could be said to categorically either function or not. Ironically, it was a more objective field than psychology and the subjectivism about what made a good psychologist in an academic sense was driving me crazy, also somewhat ironically. In a network, the signal is understood in that the network either provides required information, or lacks it. Though there was still room for opinions about what consisted of things like “Security” the basics were there. I was a much happier person doing this, although it was more like learning a trade. I just was not cut out for making long papers with many graphs describing things better understood through the lens of zen. It was not my dharma. The dharma of the blind/woman with a stick making long presentations though, was, without a doubt, far more laden with grants, riches, and honors. Of course, doing all that would have been equivalent to giving Pluto all the credit.

What Is the Mazzaroth?

In keeping with my blog and “the year of the internet as the way it was with some crypto thrown in due to evil payment processors”, I am going toss in some links to other useful sites in addition to webrings. (these will appear at the top of the page) For you youngins out there, back in the beforetime of the internet, the search engines could find a given page, but were very bad at finding related material. Your best bet was to use the search engine to stumble into a given webpage, and then examine the links on that site to find other interesting items. The advantage of this method was that you were guaranteed a human being had read the material and probably interacted with the other human beings to which the material linked in some meaningful way. This allowed human beings to do what human beings do best–that is determine and interpret context for other human beings–and robots do what robots do best–which is mindlessly indexing seemingly thousands of unrelated stacks of information produced by human beings. At no point did robots index pages made by robots to sell marketing and ads. That was some Blade Runner crap, which was watched as Dystopian Fiction for amusement and cautionary tales. However, I digress. I’m here to focus on the Mazzaroth today, not the web of old–or AM I? (That’s a not very subtle segue) What’s that you say? Why, I am glad you asked, intrepid scholar! It is the night sky as interpreted by Hebrew people.

The Night Sky

The Night Sky, in no small way, forms the psychic culture of a collective people. The constellations have stories shared by the collective consciousness, and this in turn links to understandings of divinity and in the monotheistic culture of Hebrew people, YHVH. Modern Christians have lost this understanding because they have tried to “saw off” the Hebrew parts in favor of a Pauline doctrine that “does away with” Torah in an Old Testament variety. Since there is no way to understand the night sky and that “Signs” are posted there by YHVH, they can only view the Mazzaroth as being a subset of witchcraft or fortune-telling which is ironic since by doing that they are casting themselves as only understanding Hebrew culture as witches and fortune-tellers. To be sure, Hebrew culture contains witches and fortune-tellers, but what makes the culture specific in the Torah is that those things are forbidden and punished. Hence, the only way to view the night sky and interpret what it has to say without getting into trouble is to neither be a witch nor a fortune-teller. The word used that I think fits best is an old one which is “seer”, although that word later got updated to “prophet”. The Night Sky was the very first “internet” with related “pages” and “links” and had its own “usenet/bulletin board”. The study of this sky linked to other matters like letters and numbers and together formed an entire understanding of the culture.

My Study of the Mazzaroth

My own study of the Mazzaroth is not as deep as I would have preferred for it to be. Most often when I wear my astrologer hat, I have to jump through other cultures’ views on the heavens, and so I have to be able to translate “between” systems. If you have ever seen the movie inception where there is a dream in a dream in a dream, it is a little like that. The Mazzaroth, however, is the “master template” since it comes from the one True God. Why do I say that? I say that mostly because I have had long enough to study to know it. That is not to say that other views of the heavens are “not correct”. It is to say if someone wants to understand those other views there is only one view by which they will completely comprehend the nature of them.

Where One Scholar Leaves Off

Fortunately, although my own studies have often been interrupted or else necessarily linked to some other part of wandering Israel, there does exist a site that does a good job of explaining the Mazzaroth and its connections. Over at Robert William’s site there is a great foundation in Mazzaroth study. The constellations he has are linked to the letters, which in turn are linked to tribes. Mr. William’s site also gets into the complementary signs and how they link to prophecy. So, for instance, in a common astrology chart the sign of Leo is linked to the sign of Aquarius in that they are opposite signs. However, the sun has the “shadow” of the sign opposite it. So in the system outlined on Mr. William’s page, Deli is linked to Aryeh which are Leo and Aquarius respectively. If you look at the letters he has associated with the signs, you will notice some other connections that relate to Bible stories. You might, for instance, say that the letter for Aryeh looks a little like a sperm or a seed, and that the letter for Deli looks a little like a whale. Therefore, you might conclude that the “righteous seed of Jonah” will make a people who “repent” as a collective. “Aquarius”. You might also conclude that the use of the “fertile powers of the sun in the wrong way” might be something that has to be repented for should the “Sign of Jonah” appear in the sky. (An eclipse) In addition to all this, he has a beautiful poster (which I hope to be able to purchase) with all this information contained on it for a very reasonable price. Here is an image of it:

The Power of Interpretation

The power of interpretation changes radically when you have the ability to see what the “grand design” of any given tribe is supposed to be doing. You can then begin to figure out in other mythologies of the night sky what people are going to do relative to that movement. Therefore, in the above, we might say that Judah (leo) and Joseph(aquarius) are supposed to be heading the virgin that appeared after the solar eclipse such that sexual desire is used appropriately or “fruit-fullness” is put into proper perspective. How then do pagans see fruitfulness? Well, they might try to do some “not Torah authorized sexual ritual” that will produce health issues for them, for instance. In Polynesian cultures if the land was not yielding they would find a virgin sacrifice to throw into the volcano as an appeasement. Therefore, a burned offering was made. None of that is legal in the sense of Torah, of course, which is why those traditions are “pagan”. Human sacrifice post the Messiah is off the table. There is no “bigger” appeasement to be made or offered.

So, Go Buy His Poster!

Go support Mr. Williams and his research and buy his poster! Also, if you are interested in natal interpretation in the manner I have outlined above, well, I am not hard to find. (or maybe I am if you are trying to find me with robots) It will not be a cheap session, though, since I will likely have to interpret three natal charts at once–the psychological or tropical–the vedic or sidereal–and finally the Mazzaroth and how it links. If, on the other hand, you are pagan, well, that chart is cheaper in the sense that I do not have to interpret the chart AS MUCH, but the cost to you personally in your life rises so really, I suppose it balances out.

Akashic Records and Blockchains

If serendipity could be defined as the ability to find increasingly weird shit with relative ease, then I would say I am quite serendipitous. Shortly after writing my previous post, I stumbled onto a well-written blog by a fellow who I assume is named Luke Smith. If that’s not his name, he really missed out on being named that from a marketing/domain standpoint. (the domain is lukesmith.xyz). In his article he does two things I want to bring up here since I previously made a post about a similar theme.

From his article:

In the late 1800’s, there emerged a group of spiritualists and scammers called Theosophists, principally followers of the eccentric Helena Blavatsky.

This New Age religion was a mishmash of perennialism and invented secret eastern teachings (which Blavatsky claimed to have learned in a fabricated part of her life in Tibet), with significant parallels with other universalist sects like Freemasonry. It was one of the many spiritual vultures preying on the spiritually empty as the power of Christendom waned.

The Akashic Records were their idea of a cosmic repository of all reality, past, present and future. They contain every event of the universe from all past and all future. Theosophist psychics tried to “tap into” these records to attain universal and specific knowledge.

This information is correct to the extent that it describes the concept of the Akashic records. I would not be prepared to say that Blavatsky was a parasite/vulture, but I would be prepared to say that she definitely mired herself into some occult practices that did not turn out well, and that’s putting it lightly. The Freemasons mostly were re-utilizing the knowledge found most likely under the Temple mount in Israel in dubious ways and so were, ironically, using the “actual records” of how to build a temple from the library of Jerusalem. In both cases, there is an attempted utilization of knowledge, which in both scenarios seems to bring about more trouble than it solves.

The Akashic Records, though, are more complex than being simply a repository. Rather, a better way to think of them is like a hologram that records all the deeds of a thing in real time and can be played back from a first person perspective in total immersion. This becomes an important part of the definition for the next part of his article that I am going to quote:

…blockchains, as they come to maturity, are functioning as Akashic Records of our own invention.

Bitcoin’s blockchain is a necessarily public ledger of all past transactions, the origin of their funds, the wallets they interact with and more. People often erroneously think that the “crypto” in cryptocurrency means that information about it is somehow “cryptic” or hidden, but this is just ignorance.

Bitcoin is substantially worse for privacy than even the most corporate credit cards, since even then credit cards don’t broadcast your transactions publicly on the internet as bitcoin must do for all submitted transactions.

As time has gone on and projects such has Ethereum have developed, blockchain technology is employing these public ledgers for an ever wide range of tasks: decentralized computing, contracting and much more…

If blockchains continue developing as they are, they will gradually record and make publicly available every transaction, action and for that matter—idle word of every human. There are projects and coins for every segment of digital life, including storing and accessing files, watching videos, interacting with the internet of things and more. A combination of greed, stupidity and neophilia are leading us to disaster world that might not be able to be undone.

Here the definition is separated from the function. One could say, for instance, that the World Wide Web is serving the same function as blockchains and that blockchains are, if anything at the moment, the re-imagining of that space with the hope of eliminating the middlemen corporations that polluted the first/second version of the web.

So, I think Mr. Smith misses the most important threat of the blockchain for the purposes of religious alarm–it is not so much that it can function as an Akashic record–but rather that it can serve as something that provides a digital identity.

Identity

The identity proves to be key from the standpoint of the Bible because there are passages where the Messiah will turn people away and say “I never knew you.” This is a matter of identity which is what Peter did by denying he was a disciple and most often the disciple who appears in chains is Peter. (blockchain anyone?) Indeed, we all ready have experienced a situation where all of our deeds are on the web in the electronic sense which was part of what the Snowden revelations were disclosing–the extent to which that data is being used to try to persuade and control the population at large. So if anything, the blockchain could be used to exert an influence that causes people to deny the Messiah and therefore God which, eventually, can lead to a change in identity as a believer or as someone who was “saved” from the system that is doomed to destruction. Combine this with the idea of some manner of Musk-esque brain neural interface, and one can see why the blockchain could become a real problem. The original internet did not concern itself with the concept of money AS SUCH. It was more a vast library of weirdness. This next version though, intends to make sure commerce is woven into the fabric of its being. On the one hand, this could allow unparalleled freedom economically since it eliminates banks. On the other hand, anything digital can be controlled if someone wants to exert enough processing power.

The Rest of the Article

The rest of the post is spot on:

Transhumanists, as their name suggests, ultimately believe in what they might glowingly describe as humans “transcending their biology and psychology” or other cloudy terms. In reality, these people are pining for the death of humanity, or as some absurdly put it, “human civilization surviving [sic] in human-created AI.”
This is actually the best case scenario of ‘transhumanism.’ If you think this comic is weird, wait until there are Matrix-style warehouses of pod-people hooked up to auto-masturbators. Acutally, you’ll realize in some senses, they’re already here.

They imagine husks of biological humanity, perfectly climate-controlled by vaccines, “augmentations,” and directly-injected stimulation and entertainment, embedded in a casket of metal for their entire lives. They imagine human-created robots, then totally de-tethered from their creators, exploring the universe and installing robot colonies on distant planets. In some perverted way, they call this genocidal conquest of humanity humanity itself, or humanity “improved.”

Yes, this is the goal for certain in one way or another. All of the discussion about “gender politics” and the like is part of that agenda. The Nephilm/giants did not have gender in a normal sense, since they were angels that fell to Earth. Because they did not belong here, they had grotesque bodies and when they bred, it caused the acting mother most often to die in labor. Because they did not come from here, they developed all manner of appetites and desires that were unnatural, and wound up becoming tyrant kings/queens that usually ate people or enslaved them or both.

All of these devices above are trying to “knock the soul out of” humanity, so these forces can run slip-shod over top of it and convert it to worshiping some image of humanity that is false. Mostly, it is using fear to try to bring this into play. Covid vaccines, for instance, hardly had anything to do with science and had much more to do with providing people a sense of perceived safety up until they started dropping dead of heart attacks. I suppose killing people does, at some point, stop a pandemic. However, people can just inject themselves with bleach and accomplish that end probably just as effectively.

A final concluding point from his article is worthy also of mentioning:

The reason that people like Richard Stallman continue ending up sounding prophetic about the dangerous of proprietary software is because they are serious enough to realize that programming is the closest mankind has ever come to wizardry and dark arts. With such supreme power and with such a lack of oversight (either by writing closed-source code or otherwise), even the most noble programmer can be easily seduced into flexing their Will-to-Power to do the absurd.

Not quite, but I am picking up what Mr. Smith is putting down. Stallman, it will be remembered, was in tight with MIT and trying to figure out if something might be wrong with pedophilia. So, Mr. Smith has the cart before the horse. Stallman was a programmer of some renown because he was all ready playing with people who were doing much darker things than programming could conjure. He was allowed to play with computers and develop technology to inspire other would-be magicians on down the road but of course he did have a moral awakening that maybe schtupping children is a “bad idea”. It is worth remembering also that the computer revolution really took off because of the Los Alamos scientists and countless cryptographers during World War II proved that computation could do impressive things–like cook your adversaries like a bowl of soup in a microwave–or break and reveal their confidential plans to destroy your country. Alarmingly, Stallman also happened to be a brilliant programmer. Sometimes intellectual giftedness comes with deeply benighted morality.

Wrapping Up

If one wants to blow the alarm on technology like the blockchain, one needs to understand the threat it presents, and how it is different than the web before. There is a one-off line Mr. Smith tosses into the mix concerning transhumanism:

This is the Gnostic Heresy reborn, but worse than original Gnostics, who at least believed in the structure beyond matter, and who consistently denigrated matter compared to it. These new Gnostics believe in creating this realm of ideas, but destroying and mutilating the human mind and body that they believe to be the very metric of value of this new realm. In a literal sense, they want to destroy nature, mankind and the universe as they know it.

No, no, it is not. Most Gnostic heresies end in the death of the Gnostics at the hands of some other institution that most often rhymes with the phrase “Catholic Church”. Those Gnostics most often die because they conclude this world is evil, and it is hard to argue against them. When Satan shows up to kill them, their attitude is usually “Thank goodness!” Satanic Gnostics, on the other hand, are more what Mr. Smith means and there is a drastic difference. Knowledge can come from the Messiah, or it can come from Satan. This is why one must be “wise as serpents and as gentle as doves.” The technology people are not especially wise, and definitely not gentle as doves. They are, however, very cunning as a general rule and are “increasing knowledge” just as it was foretold would happen before the “end of days”. That doesn’t mean, however, that I approve of them or wanna hang out with them and swap bitcoins or something. We are on different teams in important regards and anyone who is against that team ought to damn well be on mine.

New Technologies

Some time ago I implemented Coil on this site. If you have not heard of Coil, and odds are you have not, you will understand why I am not using it on the site now. The idea behind it, however, was good. Monetizing content creators or independent authors is what it is supposed to do, but requires a “buy-in” of five dollars monthly. Since I have had months where five dollars was the difference between making rent or missing it, and because there was not wide adoption of Coil, I stopped using it. Lightning, however, is a blockchain that does not require a “buy-in” and allows a set amount to “flow out to” websites a person wants to support at a given rate using website plugin crypto wallets like Alby. Since no one hardly used the previous donate link in a traditional sense to help support content that appears on this blog, I got rid of it. I added a webring link instead in a homage to “old school” blogging, where one kept track of others who wrote by belonging to groups where the notices of new posts and comments were “tight”. Both of these measures are in strong support of “The Independent Web”.

IndieAuth Blogs

Also, this blog has a lot more capability than I have previously utilized, because I am somewhat “less social” than most technology users are. I got rid of Facebook some time ago and never really enjoyed it or Myspace that much with which to start. Twitter was a non-starter for me at inception, since I prefer longer communications that require a person to focus.

I strongly feel and believe that authors and users should own their own information. Meta-data harvesting and selling ought to be a criminal enterprise. So, this blog has features that allow it to participate in the “indieweb” which means that it can act as something like a hub for any communication I decide to allow it to. A big part of that participation is called a “webmention” which is analogous to the “pingbacks” of yesteryear. Mostly, they notify you when someone has linked to your post, and they allow you to display whatever was linked on your page. So, if someone webmentions you in a Twitter post, suddenly you will receive a notification about it on the appropriate post. In academia this is a little like “citing the source” and is desirable when someone is quoting something you have said. That way, you can go on Twitter or wherever it was said, and have a “flame war” where nobody agrees and everybody leaves sad and upset. Yes, I jest, but remember, this IS the internet everybody made!

Geek Technical Stuff

In order to enable webmentions, I had to do some digging about as my site is statically generated. This great post over at Fundor 333’s helped me out although it left off the important part about including the partial in the webcontent thusly: {{ partial "webmentions.html" . }} I am not really sure if that small period is always required, but I know it was for my specific template in a file called single.html located in a _default folder. It is important to remember to copy this file and mirror it outside the theme file within a Hugo directory structure since anything outside of the theme that mimics its form will override the default. Also, the webmentions.min.js file had to go in the public directory for the sake of Gitlab. That took a little while to figure out.

Alby, on the other hand, was as simple as adding a header tag and enabling it. So that wasn’t too bad.

Technology Prophecy Stuff

Implementing all of this made me have to question what technology I think others are likely to use and how it might work with this little blog. Everything is always such a frothing sea of change in technology that it feels a little like going to Vegas and playing the slots. The goal, of course, is to be able to receive some kind of money for content that is all ready developed and that others believe is good enough to read. This enables future content to be generated on a “I can develop content and also make enough pocket change to continue to do so”. If that isn’t doable then at least being a part of some kind of community of people who are fighting for that future ought to provide some kind of emotional payoff. After all, altruism usually at least gives you that “warm, fuzzy, feeling” right?

In thinking about the technology and how I am never sure it is moving us toward a “better world” I was reminded of the Hopi Prophecy but especially of a couple of lines that talk about how an individual will be able to tell the end is near:

“This is the Fourth Sign: The land will be crossed by snakes of iron. (Railroad Tracks)

“This is the Fifth Sign: The land shall be crisscrossed by a giant spider’s web. (Electric power and telephone lines)

source: https://wolfruck.com/the-nine-signs-of-white-feather-hopi-prophecy/

Helpful parenthetical to the contrary, the second clue could easily be referring to the internet as opposed to electric power and telephone lines alone. It is, after all, called a “web”.

Any of the above technologies can and all ready have been used to make the life of human beings worse. Bitcoin may seem great because it is not regulated, but if it did in fact become regulated, it could be something used as a Mark of the Beast in a way paper money never could. The same thing is true of the internet. It has been seen as a fun little playground of information for some time, but it also has been in the middle of election frauds and domestic surveillance. A technological savior in a moment is, at another moment, a cruel, tyrannical despot.

So I guess you could say, I am beyond the “I’m so excited for this technology and hopeful” and more at the “How are we also going to mess this up” stage of technology. However, I think it wise to prepare for things going better than one anticipates in addition to not being surprised at the worst case scenario. If there has been anything being in tech and humanity and around Prophetic utterances has taught me, it must be that people are mostly a bi-polar, suicidal lot that think that there is ultimately no consequence for their actions until it is far, far too late. By the point everyone is appropriately sorry, there is all ready enough trauma to keep therapists in luxury cars and boats for years. Of course, that assumes that whatever happens leaves some therapists around. The kind of trauma we appear to be moving toward is the kind that leaves a psychic, collective scar in the soul memory for eons. But hey, at least we had “digital money” and “Webrings” right?

Dogs

For much of my life, I had a dog or dogs. Only recently, within the past ten years or so, have I been dog free. Having dogs, I think, requires one to have certain guarantees in life. You need a yard with a fence. You need potential dog sitters. You need the right kinds of food. You also are going to require a lot of vet trips. My life does not meet these parameters at this point, and so therefore I do not have a dog. I only mention this so that when I start speaking about Sirius, the “Dog Star” momentarily, everyone will know it is not because JB hates dogs or something.

Sirius

The Bible tells believers to “come out of Egypt”. This phrase originally meant the actual country of Egypt, but subsequently it means the mentality and spirituality of Egypt since it is and was a place of spiritual bondage. In the lineages traced in the Bible, we find that Mitzraim, or Egypt, is a son of Ham, and we all know what happened with Ham and Noah–he “saw” his father’s nakedness while his father was inebriated. This caused Noah to curse him from that day forward. Therefore, we can understand Egypt as a place that culminated and concentrated this curse such that Pharaoh and Egypt were torn apart by God. So, it is imperative that if we do not wish to share in some nasty Egyptian curse that we “come out of it” as much as possible. Indeed, this is so whether one believes or does not believe. If not, ask yourself the question if you are not in Egypt why you should not get up and move there today!

The Star Sirius, in Egypt, was a “Big deal”. As a matter of fact, it was such a big deal, everybody wanted to know when it was going to rise helical–that is before the sun–because this signaled that the Nile was about to flood. If you lived in a lower region, you better haul your Egyptian ass elsewhere with haste!

But that was the only reason Egypt tracked this star.

Sirius Association (or, This is Why so Serious)

Other cultures regarded Sirius and Egypt saw it with many of these associations in addition. Traditionally, the Egyptian view of the Dog Star were the “Dog Days of Summer” but a little research shows us there is more:

SEIRIOS (Sirius) was the god or goddess of the Dog-Star, the brightest star of the constellation Canis Major. The pre-dawn rising of the star in the path of the sun was believed to be the source of the scorching heat and droughts of midsummer.

Seirios appears in many guises in myth. He or she was variously described as Maira (Maera) daughter of the Titan Atlas, Maira the dog of the hero Ikarios (Icarius), Lailaps (Laelaps) the hound of Orion, and Kyon Khryseos the golden-hound of Zeus. It may also have been associated with Orthros (“Morning Twilight”) the hound of Geryon, giant of the west. The star was no doubt also connected with the dog-loving goddess Hekate who was the daughter of Perses “the Destroyer” and Asteria “the Starry One.”

ALTERNATE NAMES
Greek Name

Αστηρ Κυον
Transliteration

Astêr Kyon
Latin Spelling

Aster Cyon
Translation

The Dog Star
CLASSICAL LITERATURE QUOTES
THE DOG-STAR SIRIUS APPEASED BY ARISTAEUS

Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 2. 518 ff (trans. Rieu) (Greek epic C3rd B.C.) :
“Seirios (Sirius) was scorching the Minoan Islands from the sky, and the people could find no permanent cure for the trouble till Hekatos (Hecatus) [Apollon] put it in their heads to send for Aristaios (Aristaeus). So, as his father’s [Apollon’s] command, Aristaios assembled the Parrhasian tribe, who are descendants of Lykaon (Lycaon), left Phthia, and settled in Keos (Ceos). He raised a great altar to Zeus Ikmaios (the Rain-God) and made ritual offerings in the hills to the Dog-star and to Zeus Kronides himself. In response, Zeus gave his orders–and the Etesiai (Etesian Winds) refresh the earth for forty days. The priests of Keos still make yearly sacrifice before the rising of the Kyon (Dog).”

Callimachus, Aetia Fragment 3. 1 (from Oxyrhynchus Papyri 7) (trans. Trypanis) (Greek poet C3rd B.C.) :
“The [Kean (Cean)] priests of Zeus Aristaios Ikmaios (Aristaeus Icmaeus, the Lord of Moisture) : priests whose business it is upon the mountain-tops to assuage stern Maira (Maera) [Seirios (Sirius)] when she rises.”

Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 4. 81. 1 (trans. Oldfather) (Greek historian C1st B.C.) :
“A plague [i.e. a pestilence arising in a time of drought] prevailed throughout Greece the sacrifice he offered there was on behalf of all the Greeks. And since the sacrifice was made at the time of the rising of the star Seirios (Sirius), which is the period when the Etesian winds customarily blow, the pestilential diseases, we are told, came to an end. Now the man who ponders upon this event may reasonably marvel at the strange turn which fortune took; for the same man [Aristaios (Aristaeus)] who saw his son [Aktaion (Actaeon)] done to death by the dogs likewise put an end to the influence of the star which, of all the stars of heaven, bears the same name [i.e. Seirios (Sirius) was known as the dog-star] and is thought to bring destruction upon mankind, and by so doing was responsible for saving the lives of the rest.”

SEIRIOS (Sirius) was the god or goddess of the Dog-Star, the brightest star of the constellation Canis Major. The pre-dawn rising of the star in the path of the sun was believed to be the source of the scorching heat and droughts of midsummer.

Seirios appears in many guises in myth. He or she was variously described as Maira (Maera) daughter of the Titan Atlas, Maira the dog of the hero Ikarios (Icarius), Lailaps (Laelaps) the hound of Orion, and Kyon Khryseos the golden-hound of Zeus. It may also have been associated with Orthros (“Morning Twilight”) the hound of Geryon, giant of the west. The star was no doubt also connected with the dog-loving goddess Hekate who was the daughter of Perses “the Destroyer” and Asteria “the Starry One.”

The Dog Star
CLASSICAL LITERATURE QUOTES
THE DOG-STAR SIRIUS APPEASED BY ARISTAEUS

Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 2. 518 ff (trans. Rieu) (Greek epic C3rd B.C.) :
“Seirios (Sirius) was scorching the Minoan Islands from the sky, and the people could find no permanent cure for the trouble till Hekatos (Hecatus) [Apollon] put it in their heads to send for Aristaios (Aristaeus). So, as his father’s [Apollon’s] command, Aristaios assembled the Parrhasian tribe, who are descendants of Lykaon (Lycaon), left Phthia, and settled in Keos (Ceos). He raised a great altar to Zeus Ikmaios (the Rain-God) and made ritual offerings in the hills to the Dog-star and to Zeus Kronides himself. In response, Zeus gave his orders–and the Etesiai (Etesian Winds) refresh the earth for forty days. The priests of Keos still make yearly sacrifice before the rising of the Kyon (Dog).”

Callimachus, Aetia Fragment 3. 1 (from Oxyrhynchus Papyri 7) (trans. Trypanis) (Greek poet C3rd B.C.) :
“The [Kean (Cean)] priests of Zeus Aristaios Ikmaios (Aristaeus Icmaeus, the Lord of Moisture) : priests whose business it is upon the mountain-tops to assuage stern Maira (Maera) [Seirios (Sirius)] when she rises.”

Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 4. 81. 1 (trans. Oldfather) (Greek historian C1st B.C.) :
“A plague [i.e. a pestilence arising in a time of drought] prevailed throughout Greece the sacrifice he offered there was on behalf of all the Greeks. And since the sacrifice was made at the time of the rising of the star Seirios (Sirius), which is the period when the Etesian winds customarily blow, the pestilential diseases, we are told, came to an end. Now the man who ponders upon this event may reasonably marvel at the strange turn which fortune took; for the same man [Aristaios (Aristaeus)] who saw his son [Aktaion (Actaeon)] done to death by the dogs likewise put an end to the influence of the star which, of all the stars of heaven, bears the same name [i.e. Seirios (Sirius) was known as the dog-star] and is thought to bring destruction upon mankind, and by so doing was responsible for saving the lives of the rest.”

Pseudo-Hyginus, Astronomica 2. 4 (trans. Grant) (Roman mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
“Icarus [of Attika (Attica)] received the wine from Father Liber [Dionysos] . . . when he showed it to the shepherds . . . some of them, became stupefied, and sprawling here and there, as if half-dead, kept uttering unseemly things. The others, thinking poison had been given the shepherds by Icarus . . . killed him, and threw him into a well, or, as others say, buried him near a certain tree. However, when those who had fallen asleep, woke up, saying that hey had never rested better, and kept asking for Icarus in order to reward him, his murderers, stirred by conscience, at once took to flight and came to the island of the Ceans. Received there as guests, they established homes for themselves . . . But when Erigone, the daughter of Icarus, moved by longing for her father, saw he did not return and was on the point of going out to hunt for him, the dog of Icarus, Maera by name, returned to her, howling as if lamenting the death of its master . . . [and] taking hold of her dress with its teeth, led her to the body. As soon as the girl saw it, abandoning hope, and overcome with loneliness and poverty, with many tearful lamentations she brought death on herself by hanging from the very tree beneath which her father was buried. And the dog made atonement for her death by its own life. Some say that it cast itself into the well, Anigrus by name. For this reason they repeat the story that no one afterward drank from that well. Jupiter [Zeus], pitying their misfortune, represented their forms among the stars . . . The dog, however, from its own name and likeness, they have called Canicula. It is called Procyon by the Greeks, because it rises before the greater Dog. Others say these were pictured among the stars by Father Liber [Dionysos].

[The constellation] Canicula rising with its heat, scorched the land of the Ceans, and robbed their fields of produce, and caused the inhabitants, since they had welcomed the bandits to be plagued by sickness, and to pay the penalty to Icarus with suffering. Their king, Aristaeus, son of Apollo and Cyrene, and father of Actaeon, asked his father by what means he could free the state from affliction. The god bade them expiate the death of Icarus with many victims, and asked from Jove that when Canicula rises he should send wind for forty days to temper thee heat of Canicula. This command Arsitaeus carried out, and obtained from Jove [Zeus] the favour that the Etesian winds should blow.”

Nonnus, Dionysiaca 13. 253 ff (trans. Rouse) (Greek epic C5th A.D.) :
“He [Aristaios (Aristaeus)] had not yet migrated to the island formerly called Meropis [Kos (Cos)] : he had not yet brought there the lifebreathing wind of Zeus the Defender [the Etesian Winds], and checked the fiery vapour of the parched season; he had not stood steelclad to receive the glare of Seirios (Sirius), and all night long repelled and clamed the star’s fiery heat–and even now the winds cool him with light puffs, as he lances his hot parching fire through the air from glowing throat.”Pseudo-Hyginus, Astronomica 2. 4 (trans. Grant) (Roman mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
“Icarus [of Attika (Attica)] received the wine from Father Liber [Dionysos] . . . when he showed it to the shepherds . . . some of them, became stupefied, and sprawling here and there, as if half-dead, kept uttering unseemly things. The others, thinking poison had been given the shepherds by Icarus . . . killed him, and threw him into a well, or, as others say, buried him near a certain tree. However, when those who had fallen asleep, woke up, saying that hey had never rested better, and kept asking for Icarus in order to reward him, his murderers, stirred by conscience, at once took to flight and came to the island of the Ceans. Received there as guests, they established homes for themselves . . . But when Erigone, the daughter of Icarus, moved by longing for her father, saw he did not return and was on the point of going out to hunt for him, the dog of Icarus, Maera by name, returned to her, howling as if lamenting the death of its master . . . [and] taking hold of her dress with its teeth, led her to the body. As soon as the girl saw it, abandoning hope, and overcome with loneliness and poverty, with many tearful lamentations she brought death on herself by hanging from the very tree beneath which her father was buried. And the dog made atonement for her death by its own life. Some say that it cast itself into the well, Anigrus by name. For this reason they repeat the story that no one afterward drank from that well. Jupiter [Zeus], pitying their misfortune, represented their forms among the stars . . . The dog, however, from its own name and likeness, they have called Canicula. It is called Procyon by the Greeks, because it rises before the greater Dog. Others say these were pictured among the stars by Father Liber [Dionysos].

[The constellation] Canicula rising with its heat, scorched the land of the Ceans, and robbed their fields of produce, and caused the inhabitants, since they had welcomed the bandits to be plagued by sickness, and to pay the penalty to Icarus with suffering. Their king, Aristaeus, son of Apollo and Cyrene, and father of Actaeon, asked his father by what means he could free the state from affliction. The god bade them expiate the death of Icarus with many victims, and asked from Jove that when Canicula rises he should send wind for forty days to temper thee heat of Canicula. This command Arsitaeus carried out, and obtained from Jove [Zeus] the favour that the Etesian winds should blow.”

Nonnus, Dionysiaca 13. 253 ff (trans. Rouse) (Greek epic C5th A.D.) :
“He [Aristaios (Aristaeus)] had not yet migrated to the island formerly called Meropis [Kos (Cos)] : he had not yet brought there the lifebreathing wind of Zeus the Defender [the Etesian Winds], and checked the fiery vapour of the parched season; he had not stood steelclad to receive the glare of Seirios (Sirius), and all night long repelled and clamed the star’s fiery heat–and even now the winds cool him with light puffs, as he lances his hot parching fire through the air from glowing throat.”

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20220903001207/https://www.theoi.com/Titan/AsterSeirios.html

Hot Dog!

That was a lot of reading, was it not? There was a whole lotta Zeus, and fevers, and death, and water and…oh yeah, that’s all a bunch of pagan witchcraft stuff. The implication of that, of course, is that on some level Egypt liked pestilence and witchcraft stuff, right up until the tables were turned on them and they did not. Biblically speaking, we hear a little about dogs licking up the blood of Jezebel. So, the conditionals essentially hold. We know that Zeus was considered to be the “abomination that brings desolation” or at least the worship of him through swine, and we even get to see the Angel of the Pit in there make some recommendations! I mean, what could go wrong with any of that?

Sirius and Royalty and Other Annoying Assertions

Many astrology books like to put Sirius up as being a star of kings or something probably equating the money that it ties to from previous associations with medicine and the flooding of the Nile. This is categorically a mistake. If you want to deal with a Royal Star tied to gold, you would been looking at the constellation of Leo with a star like Regulus or another star in Leo that is modernly referred to as “alpha”. What you would not pick is some weird witchcraft/plague star unless of course you wanted a lot of people to die to make you money. I mean, that’s a pretty awesome 401-k inspiration, having everyone basically tie themselves to a death angel and think they are royal because of it and then have them die AFTER buying your book or whatever, but I would say that it is also quite likely evil if not malevolent to do that. You want to feel special? Here! Take this gold star of cursedom!

Greek Thought

However much of the issue derives from a Greek confusion. Remember, Greece was, for a long time, pagan. Therefore the Greeks got especially good at paganism and being clever and tricky. Maybe this is why the term “Grecko-Roman” is often not all that far removed from “Egyptian.”

Back To Dogs, Though

It has been my observation that a lot of folks who own dogs are actually, in a very strange way, paying homage to the Dog Star as though they are somewhat “worshiping” their pets. Of course, we can see from the above this eventually ends very badly for the pets, but it seems as though people do not stop doing whatever they were doing after this happens. They just move on to another dog. Combine this with elements of technology like satellite radio called Sirius, and you can really begin to see who is under the influence of what. If a person will gladly dish out money for their dogs and an usually named satellite radio subscription, odds are there is something else going on that is not simply a love of satellite radio or dogs. Worst case scenario, they are devotees of Hecate which is about the same as saying they worship Satan.

Sirius Ain’t Gold

The bottom line is that Sirius is not Gold or Golden and if it is, pretty soon whatever it is will be dead and probably burning in Hell. That, to me, seems sort of like the opposite of Gold unless it is Pyrite. Of course, I think that is called Fool’s Gold for a reason…

Awake During A Bake?

Several weeks ago, I woke up in the middle of the night because I had gotten too hot. Usually, this involves a throwing off of covers and going back to sleep, but I had done that several times all ready, and so I had an additional problem of being annoyed as well as being hot. I decided to get up instead, even though it was around 2:00 am. I was of course, browsing the internet in a semi-groggy state when I happened across one of those “think carefully about this” calculation sort of problems. This also, somewhat annoyed me, since I was trying to get my brain to go to sleep and not think about some problem that would not necessarily allow for a deeper sleep state. What was the problem? Well, allow me to present it here:

Billy The Whizz, a 19th century cowboy, carries an 1847 Colt single action 6 shooter revolver. So proficient is he with this weapon that when he fires all 6 shots in a row, the time between the first bullet and the last is 60 seconds. How long would it take him to fire 3 shots?

In my sleepy state, I knew the question was not an obvious answer and I vaguely remembered something about how degrees of freedom in statistics as a concept overlapped this one. If you haven’t taken time to think about it yourself, you ought to do it for a few moments before you go on. I’ll just wait here.

Did you think about it? Good. Let me just go ahead and hit you with the answer that was supplied that my groggy mind also found rather annoying. The answer, as provided by the puzzle, is 12 seconds. The part that my groggy brain got quite irritated by was there was a little disclaimer saying that no matter how much you might want it to be, the interval between shots was 12 seconds, not 10. Something about this that I could not immediately say with a clearly defined “Why” nagged at the back of my brain. So, I decided “To hell with this not sleeping thing and this damn problem,” and went back to bed. My brain, though, was going to churn on this matter for the night. Its equilibrium had been disturbed.

Sleepy Thoughts

Somewhere in the middle of the night, I had the vague thought that most of this problem concerned how one defined an interval. The answer provided gave a clear visual which I will reproduce here:

Image Credits - http://puzzles.nigelcoldwell.co.uk/sixtythree.htm

As can be seen, it all makes perfect mathematical sense. So what was my brain putting up a fuss about? Well, the problem proceeds on the basis of giving one an interval by definition in the problem. It tells you to consider the first and last bullets and the space between them. However, we are accustomed to dealing with time as being a rate. Therefore, I tell you that a bullet is fired say, once every ten seconds. That means, then, that our little picture above has ten seconds that exists OUTSIDE that first bullet and ENDS when the last shot is fired which is the sixth bullet. So, a rate is a “rational”–by definition–mathematical construct. An interval does not tell us when something begins in time. It only tells us how long it lasted. Therefore, when the first shot is fired, the first bullet is at “zero” because the rate is measured from that moment forward. We tend not to think very much in quality-from-our-senses derived intervals. We travel, for instance in miles per hour. If I give you a number of miles, and a unit of time, you determine the rate of speed at which I traveled per unit of time. If I tell you I covered X number of miles in an hour and that I was traveling at a constant speed, you can figure that out as well. If I tell you my first mile began at 5:33 and my last began at 7:00 and the distance was 500 kilometers or something, you might look at me a little strangely. Certainly you can express distance in this manner, but something about it feels not quite right–like you are measuring a coastline with a ruler.

So Why The Annoyance?

So having dealt with that problem and then basically being able to articulate that the interval changes depending on whether one has defined a ratio, I felt some better. To put it more clearly, the perception of the time of the interval is different and therefore when it starts is different in time depending solely upon whether one gives a rate or whether one gives the “first instance of a thing occurring”. Note the second definition is caught up specifically in perception. I have to “See” the first shot, or “hear” the first shot. At that moment, zero is defined. In a rate, my units start at the zero rate of the beginning of the ratio. 10 miles per hour means at time 0, I haven’t gone anywhere yet and at 60 minutes I have gone 10 miles. The happening of the thing is moving along with the occurrence of motion. The zeros match. In the bullet example, something has all ready happened, and that moment is defined as zero. Too little, too late–especially if you happen to be on the receiving end of the bullet being fired. Something about that feels “wrong” to define as a zero. It’s like saying, “The moment that I fell off the building and hit the ground is the beginning of the interval of a lot of pain.” The truth is, that interval started well before that–when you tripped off the steps or when you did not sleep well the night before due to being hot and having puzzles like these thrust before your eyes. A ratio is more “predictive” and a quality-sensory-based-interval is more descriptive after-the-fact or more akin to something being a priori or a posteriori respectively. Put differently, a ratio of normal speed/time is a bit like a Prophet, and the description of the interval traveled is a bit like a dead man. The second kind of reasoning is handy academically, but is useless for purposes of predicting when that first bullet is going to fly. Because mathematics is “Bad” at distinguishing this kind of knowledge from one another, it has a kind of “I knew it all along” that comes along with it. However, it cannot tell you when the bullet is fired. It might not be able to tell you when the journey will start with the car either, but it can tell you where it will be at some point in the future given a starting point. That, is useful information since one can “plan” with that information. The shooting begins when you hear it, though, is not especially useful information for the purposes of planning. At that point, everything is reactive should you happen not to be dead, and otherwise the interval of anything doesn’t matter to you if you have left this mortal coil. (12 seconds between shots probably won’t be in your calculations either from the experience of a firefight)

So Really…

So really, the problem is that the question is asking a life and death question where the first occurrence of something makes the rest of the question potentially useless, since if you are dead, it is irrelevant. It “feels smart”, but it really isn’t all that useful, since you can “feel smart all you like” and still be stone dead. Hence, the description of YOUR EXPERIENCE of the question is potentially the first bullet flies at time zero, and the rest of the rate collapses for you since you are no longer around to “measure” anything else beyond that first occurrence.

The Dream Internet

The internet is mostly a dystopian technological nightmare. The irony, or course, is that it was invented to deal with an apocalyptic dystopian nightmare in the guise of nuclear war. What is that old phrase about the road to hell being paved with good intentions? Right. So what’s wrong with it?

Machines of the Internet

Well, the first thing that’s wrong with the internet has to do with the technology used to access it. Windows is a gigantic steaming pile of garbage. Linux, while better, is hard to standardize on due to differing distros and is a little like a group of anarchists trying to organize a time to meet for tea. Openbsd is awesome for stability and security, but takes security so seriously it will not run on certain kinds of hardware (I am looking at you, GeForce) which is, more often than not, stuff at the cheaper end of the user continuum. Haiku is a neat implementation of BeOS. It seems like it could be awesome but is not really ready to be utilized as a daily driver. Everything scratches one itch but seems to cause a host of other unsatisfied itches.

The DNS System

Before we even consider machines, though, there is the matter of the nightmare of DNS, which, even if we do find a machine that we like well enough to make a website with makes it quite easy to shut the entire website down via censorship. Add to this various firewall and traffic filtering, and even if your site is not down, if it is not able to receive traffic, it might as well be down.

The Ubiquity of the Web

Whereas in the early 90’s the internet was optional, now everything runs on it from toasters to cars. This would be fine except that everything usually has to cooperate with http inspired technology in one way or another better known to the rest of the world as the “www” system of hyperlinks. This system while very robust in certain ways, absolutely sucks in fundamental ways. One way that it sucks is in backlinks and “linkrot” where links that existed yesterday are gone today. There is a real lack of “where something came from” or who said it, which encourages a whole lot of a kind of Alzheimer’s induced stealing provided one is not an outright thief or despot. Oh, also the internet is NOT a utility.

Surveillance States

Add to all the above the fact that most of these devices that are on the web are busy reporting back to their masters about some aspect of your life that you have not expressly said they should. These reports are collated and sold to the highest bidders so that your life and the patterns in it become worth high amounts of dollars to those seeking insight into the behavior of crowds usually for the sake of advertising and how to pitch it.

No Flying Cars/Holograms

When you examine all the above facts, it indicates we are far from the internet of the future that movies like Minority Report indicated we were moving toward. We do seem to have the part about being arrested for crimes you have yet to commit down, though. The pieces for a “Dream Net” are all here, though. They just are not yet receiving funding or attention in the manner they ought to be.

Decentralized DNS

If you want to fix the DNS, burn it down with gasoline and replace it with something else. Gnunet has done that and developed a system that makes the domain system P2P where everyone is basically hosting their own DNS and peers can find the site of the friend of a friend. This system solves the DNS problems at a construction level, though how well it scales is an unknown. Check it out here: Gnunet

Machines of the Internet

If you want the ultimate in freedom and standardization, a solution exists in the structure of NixOS. In Linux, the biggest headache is usually being able to build an application on one version in the same way as you did on another. With Nix, you can automate all this. Heck, you can even automate the build of an entire machine WITH the program all ready on it. It accomplishes this task by using “hashing” of the programs in a store as opposed to using direct links to the bin files. This solves a lot of volatility around using Linux. If you could marry the concept of NixOS to something like OpenBSD on a Gnunet, you’d probably solve about 80 percent of the above issues quite quickly. See NixOs here:NixOs

Ubiquity of the Web

I sincerely doubt anyone will be putting all the toothpaste back in that tube. If all computers stopped working tomorrow, I suspect the mental model of the internet would still be there for many generations to come and something like it would be made again. Take my above suggestions, future technician!

Surveillance State

Most of the spying comes as a byproduct of not owning your own data. If, for instance, it were illegal to send your GPS coordinates to anything whatsoever without first asking your permission, anything that engaged in that behavior would be quite quickly lawsuitted. It follows then that if you made an internet where the user had their personal data and metrics more encrypted and locked up by nature that this kind of business would be greatly diminished.

Holograms and Flying Cars?

If the internet sucks less, then I see no reason why you could not stick some wings on a Tesla and call it a day.

Architecture of the Web

Finally, we visit the glorious area of the architecture of the web. A truth here is that there were other models than the www version. I am rather fond of the basic outline that Ted Nelson articulated in project Xanadu for the simple reason that it makes the back link as permanent as the forward link. I am not sure about his specific model for copyright and the seemingly proprietary elements of his model, but I think it is important to be able to visually show precisely where something came from so a person can read it for themselves. Otherwise, with footnotes and appendices, we have to stop the flow of our reading to go “look it up” which is, at best tedious. I especially like the idea of those who own a copyright being able to easily receive royalties, which is where the web currently is quite lacking. Most of the web has the content for free, and the price of time and hardware is being paid by someone else, somehow. Writers, I think, in particular, are especially hard hit by this model, since they are expected to write for free. Sure, you can get a crowdfunded subscription, but for that, you require building an audience which was traditionally what the magazine did that writers wrote for. Add to that the headaches of payment processors and deplatforming for someone writing something somebody else does not like, and it is clear what a mess and headache publishing becomes for a writer who simply used to write a query letter and then pecked away at his or her word processor to get paid for content. The gardens where this happens are rapidly growing smaller on a daily basis.

So, Dystopian Nightmare?

Yeah, but like any nightmare, the solutions to the problems are right here. At some point, we either believe in the nightmare and reinforce it, or say screw that, and start investing in the dream.

Adobe Flash

In the early days of the internet, multimedia effects were not a simple thing to accomplish. I can remember having to make specific graphics for down states and up states for buttons, and doing clever manipulations with tables to get a page to display in a way that made it more interactive than HTML really had the ability to support. Everybody, though, was clamoring to get a website although nobody seemed to really know what that meant. More or less, it was, for businesses, rather like a telephone book listing with pictures. Flash occupied a place in history when Real Time video had little existence other than through Quicktime which was, to my memory, an Apple player. Flash allowed a person to make animations and interactive sites. It did this by not being HTML but being a plugin that one could embed in HTML. As a consequence, everyone dreaded seeing the “flash loading” on a website. Of course, this was not really entirely true. We dreaded seeing the “Flash loading” or “plugin needed” on a website we did not expect to have Flash content. Places like Albino Black Sheep and Newgrounds had plenty of Flash, and nobody complained because it was the nature of those sites to make videos. An example of one that made the rounds in 2004 that is typical of the Adobe Flash Style is the JibJab Kerry/Bush video which went viral. (something I would later, in a roundabout way, need for my dissertation on viral videos and marketing)

Hypercard

Before the day of Flash, though, there was Hypercard. Hypercard was a Macintosh-quasi-powerpoint like application that allowed one to make “stacks of interactive cards” that one could use to “program” a presentation. Supposedly, the inspiration for this program came from someone’s acid trip, and no, I am not making that up. The game Myst was supposedly inspired by Hypercard, and was programmed in a stack. People had large piles of these they saved and more than a few communites sprang up around them. Then, something happened to Hypercard that also would later happen to Flash, they were both discontinued.

Beginning Technology Stuff

Many beginners in programming though, loved Hypercard and Flash. The reason this was so is easy to surmise–quick results were easier to achieve with these two applications. The focus was on being user-friendly, and the approach was more heavily visual than code based. Programmers, however, hated both and indeed at the nexus of the end of these two pieces of software lies a common name–Steve Jobs. The replacements for these applications, however, was not forthcoming. Indeed, there is still a gigantic hole in the market where these two pieces of software resided. Sure, if you want to pay enough money, you can get close, but that really defeats the purpose of easy-to-use software. If the cost for ease is a trillion dollars, then it might as well be as difficult to master as C++.

Results Of The Death of Flash and Hypercard

The result of the deaths of Flash and Hypercard is that everyone who wishes to do something similar nowadays needs to learn an entire pile of code for something like HTML5 with Canvas support. There really is not, to my knowledge, anything that interacts like the above programs to make compliant sites using those standards unless you happen to live on an oil well. The death of Hypercard resulted in many clones and users trying to find ways to run the stacks they had invested in along with a wish for its return. The death of Flash has resulted in millions upon millions of hours of created content being unusable or needing to be adapted in some way or another to remain viewable. So, for using those programs, the users were hosed. The Apple Store, however, managed to make the barrier to entry quite high and getting rid of these two technologies has the quite–I am sure–”accidental” effect of making sure that “normal people” would not be creating much by way of content that could possibly go in such a store. The changes, of course, were made in the interests of “security” but the reality is many users who spent hours upon hours with these pieces of software were screwed, and the “new technology” that was rolled out served a very definite Priesthood of Coders.

Creativity

Now we have moved on into the age of the trustless web. Sounds about right, right? The next movement will be the “shotgun in your car at all times” trustless driving age otherwise known and shown in the film(s) Mad Max. The trustless web runs on blockchains and is by nature paranoid. Traffic is encrypted end-to-end, and decentralized identities that are not obviously tied to any one person are more the norm than the exception. Hell, as of basically a week ago, we are working on de-platforming an entire country! About the only thing half-way interesting to anyone doing anything artistic are NFT’s, and even those are trying to push the boundaries of what art actually is. Just because, for instance, I take a picture of your car or piece of art, one does not necessarily therefore have something that is “creatively theirs” but an NFT blurs those boundaries. Who owns what? Why? How?

For my part, I made an NFT of the front cover of my meditation book that acts as a token for an exclusive interview that I have pre-recorded concerning the making of said book. Since I am not going to hand this video out to 20 people, it is therefore rare and exclusive content which adds to the value of the token. It is rare because it is limited. It is up for auction at rarible.com.

What makes this a little different than the above Hypercard and Flash situation is that as long as blockchains exist, this item will exist. If someone places the hash that points at the address it resides on on the respective blockchain to which it belongs on IPFS, it will not go away unless blockchains and IPFS go away, which would probably mean that the entirety of the internet would be gone. Nothing is permanent, as it is said, but a house built of stone is probably going to be around a lot longer than a house made of wood all other conditions being equal.

Programmers And Artists

While I see programming as an art, I also see Art as an art and I think that the web is big enough for both. I do not see a need to kill out the hypercards of the world or the Adobe Flash Players. Nobody is forcing anyone to go to sites that choose one technology or another. It is not necessary for us all to agree on the technological stack and methodologies we intend to use anymoreso than it is necessary for us to agree that we must all take the exact same steps to take a brush to a canvas to render a painting. At this point, we are re-doing the web because it turns out we cannot trust people, but then again, did we not notice all the locks and guns in the world before the web? Who was it that thought we would be just one big, peaceful village as a world? Short of Messianic intervention, that ain’t gonna happen. The good news there is that I would say we are much closer to that than we ever have been. To fix a trustless web, the networking administrator just might have to be God. The problem is not the stack, or the technology. It is people, power, and greed. The normal way we solve that is we blow each other up with nuclear weapons of one kind or another, feel bad about it later, then do it all over again in about twenty years or so. I cannot think of a more trustless web than that.

Making The Internet Great Again

Since I am old enough to remember the world without the internet, I am aware that that makes me an increasing rarity. I am here defining the internet as “Not DARPA” which existed long before the
1990’s. I am talking about the AOL Compuserve dial-up modem internet of yore. So, my generation sits at precisely the cutoff between world without internet, and world with more internet than
we really know how to utilize. I have come to a conclusion having studied technology and even having earned a degree within the field of it. The conclusion is this: the internet really will never
progress until a certain select group of people are gone and greed is removed as an incentive.

The Internet That Was Not

I could go through the history of the internet and show you a thousand technologies that could have made it and probably would have been as good if not better solutions that what we have now. In
each instance of the internet’s history, there are always a handful of people that are working on something usually rather idealistically. Eventually, whatever this project is comes across the radar
of some “people with serious money” and usually those people with “serious money” have a specific agenda in mind. Most often, this agenda is not some ideal like “Freedom of Information” or the
“betterment of humanity”. Instead, it is usually something like “I would like to trade stocks slightly faster than everyone else, so I can keep my gazillions of dollars”. This, I call the “hidden pressure”
of the internet or what before the internet was called “The Market”.

A “Market” does not work on any basis of logic. Rather, it is driven by supply and demand and a myriad of hidden pieces of logic that work counter to something like “freedom of information”. It might
be expedient in such a market to have one thing free so you can sell another thing that becomes demanded by the first being free. Of course, that only works so long as the second thing does not also
become free. I might, for instance, give you a free small box of nails for your purchase of a hammer. Why will I do this? Because I make more on the hammer, and nails costs me fractions of pennies.
I therefore can “afford” to give you something in exchange for your purchase.

Internet Databases And Data

Back in the later 90’s and early 2000’s, there was a big push to get data and presentation separate from one another for the purpose of data mutability. This meant you could write something once and
then turn it into a variety of formats. It might be a webpage, or a pdf. This format was called XML and it was made in no small way by the people who made the internet to start with at DARPA.

Microsoft and Office

Microsoft though, was busy making a small fortune off of document processing. Their office solution was hard to use with anything else other than Microsoft products. This is a trend that continues
to this day. While the windows interface is arguably easier to use than something like a Unix or Linux system, the tradeoff for the “ease of use” was to have all of your data completely tied up
in the commercial solutions that Microsoft offered. As time moved forward sometimes these formats worked backwards and sometimes they did not. If you spent a long time adapting your business to say an
Excel spreadsheet, then of course you had better have a working version of the spreadsheet in question, or else would would need to start all over again. All of these data entry requirements take time,
and if there is one thing business understands well, it is that time is money.

Circles and Circles

So all this starts a basic adoption cycle. The businesses are going to buy the products that seem the easiest to use. The easiest to use products are going to be developed by who gets funding. The people
who get funding are either going to work for the people making the seemingly easiest solution, or else make the easiest solution and then get bought up by one of the big players. The net result
is that the small fish who love to work on the internet for ideals are either gradually depleted of funding, or that the large sharks are so large that it is only a matter of time before you either
become a large shark member yourself, or your school gets eaten.

So where is XML today? You do not really hear all that much about it. Its school was eaten by other things, like XHTML and pandoc and a thousand
other ways to wrangle data like buying more copies of Microsoft Office. We keep re-inventing the wheel.

Fixing The Problem

I was always taught that you should not complain about something without a solution, and I think I have it. This small group of people who, usually through financial pressure, control what gets
developed and what does not need to simply get out of the way. I do not especially care how they get out of the way, but those people who I am talking about even if they make software that say, compromises
an entire election, can usually afford very good marketing even if their solutions suck. They rub elbows with big business, and big business rubs elbows with them, and so they crowd out the small folks who simply
would like an internet that does not force your data to travel over toll roads at every turn.

How Do They Get Out Of The Way?

Well, the best way is they put it down, or donate some funding to charities who are interested in specific humanitarian internet problems. I do not believe someone like say, Bill Gates, can turn
around after basically raping the data of humanity and suddenly decide he has motives that are “for the best of humanity”. No, what he can do if he has those deep abiding feelings is donate a portion
of his vast cash reserves to a charity he does not control and then simply walk away and let that charity do what it does. Some place like EPIC might be a good start. If, on the other hand, Mr. Gates
does not want to do that, then I submit to you the fact that he has the vast sums he has to start with is mostly by holding the data of common people hostage. In other words, we have a situation
where data has been kidnapped somewhat like a child and has been held hostage all the while being sanctioned by courts. This, I suggest, is what most people like Gates can do. My suggestion is that do
it now while they can still look like they have the facade of being decent human beings. Pretty soon, what I am suggesting will be more mandatory–just as mandatory as they are trying to make a COVID shot
except that in the case I am describing, the enforcement and authority to do as I am here describing will be absolute and without question. If that sounds scary to any billionaire who reads my blog–that you might
have to face the reality where you are not a multi-billionaire but a mere millionaire, then I do not have anything by way of solace to offer you. Ill gotten gains sooner or later always return back where they belong,
and of course, in technology as in many other facets of life, there are plenty of examples of people having “just done business”. I guess you can consider my words as a professional courtesy that I am not charging you
5,000 an hour to do. So, while I am done appealing to the “you should want to do the right thing” argument, I am stating, quite flatly “you definitely want to do it now if at all,” since the next leg of this journey
when what I have said comes to pass occurs, you will have no recourse and will do well to escape with your lives.

So There You Have It

To make the internet basically great again, the solution is to get rid of some very serious scarlet-red sin in the form of greed and other agendas. At that point, people who actually love both humanity and
technology can do what they do best, without having to provide a handjob to some executive who thinks he deserves a second boat in his garage.

Distilled Buddhist Teaching From Elsewhere

Five Things to Consider Before Speaking

Now we arrive at another of the Buddha’s teachings on right speech: The five things you should consider before speaking.[v] Is what you’re about to say:

Factual and true
Helpful, or beneficial
Spoken with kindness and good-will (that is, hoping for the best for all involved)
Endearing (that is, spoken gently, in a way the other person can hear)
Timely (occasionally something true, helpful, and kind will not be endearing, or easy for someone to hear, in which case we think carefully about when to say it)

In the Pali Canon sutta “To Prince Abhaya,”[vi] the Buddha describes the six-step process by which he, the Tathagata (which is a title for the Buddha, meaning “one who has thus gone”), decides whether or not to say something:

“[1] In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be unfactual, untrue, unbeneficial, unendearing and disagreeable to others, he does not say them.

“[2] In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be factual, true, [but] unbeneficial, unendearing and disagreeable to others, he does not say them.

“[3] In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be factual, true, beneficial, but unendearing and disagreeable to others, he has a sense of the proper time for saying them.

“[4] In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be unfactual, untrue, unbeneficial, but endearing and agreeable to others, he does not say them.

“[5] In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be factual, true, unbeneficial, but endearing and agreeable to others, he does not say them.

“[6] In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be factual, true, beneficial, and endearing and agreeable to others, he has a sense of the proper time for saying them. Why is that? Because the Tathagata has sympathy for living beings.”[vii]

source: https://zenstudiespodcast.com/right-speech/

Imagine then, with the above rules in mind, that I stand to gain something by personally withholding information. Or, imagine that I know something
horrible is about to happen, and I could make you aware of it so the horrible thing did not happen to you, but I do not do so. Am I participating
in accordance with the above rules? Or, if I know something I have been told, see evidence of the thing, understand it is evil, and still remain silent about
it, am I doing what I ought to be doing in accord with the above teaching?

On To My Interview

Had I been told what all the guests were doing and involved with in this interview ahead of time, I would not have done it. Why? Simple. It is not within my Dharma to do
an interview with all the participants present. Why is it not? Would you ask a horse to ice skate? No. Would you ask a master in oil paint to use crayons? Probably not.
There are activities that are proper for the person, and there are activities that are improper. If you make a person aware of something that is improper,
and they do not fix it, and they know it is not on your “path or dharma” and they do it anyway, is that in accord with the above teachings?

Or, imagine a very advanced teaching. Is it proper to discuss such a thing in front of a beginning student? Suppose it is about “advanced welding” and the student hears
you and tries the technique and loses a finger. What responsibility does the teacher then bear? If you think about the above questions carefully, you will understand
why I would not have done this specific interview in mixed company. So why am I linking it? Because, for one, it is done. For two, it is a teachable moment. For three,
it will allow a person to understand why my book is different when it comes to Buddhism and meditation.

Links: 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYbkrnEJM2Q
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1Qv-iXu5Xo&t=1403s

So You Saw Me Speak, So What?

My dharma is different in that I delineate an entirely new spiritual path in terms of meditation that you might call “Messianic Buddhism”. I was not asked directly about
this in the above interview, but then, I have established that this interview was not entirely within my dharma. Indeed, I believe if one puts their time into the actual
practice, the questions and answers to the issues posed in the interview become quite clear. There is only chatter and discussion because minds are preoccupied with
problems that have been defined into existence by minds that do not practice such meditation. Therefore, we speak for an hour on a problem that we have colluded to collectively
create.

Link To My Book

Downloadble editions for free here: 1. https://archive.org/details/meditationbooksecondedition
2. http://thebp.site/217103

Final Remarks

Gentleman, it is no longer a stick you should be worried about from the master. It has instead become an iron rod.