The same four investors keep showing up behind the cameras on your street, the databases holding your records and the AI being built on military bases. I was told not to say their names.
Five years ago, the cameras watching American roads mostly belonged to local police departments, your tax and Medicaid records sat in separate agencies, and data centers used about 2% of the country’s electricity. Today a handful of private companies own the cameras, merge the records and are building AI data centers on military bases, and the government rents it all back from them. By 2031, at the pace things are moving, your car, your phone and your money could all be tracked by tools the public never voted on and can’t see inside.
Behind many of the biggest of those companies are the same four sources of money. They are Peter Thiel and his Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, Joe Lonsdale and Palmer Luckey. They fund the technology, and they appear to be working just as hard to protect it. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz have put $50 million into an AI super PAC whose nonprofit arm, WIRED reported, paid influencers to push its message without telling viewers who paid. Their companies have hired lobbyists from both parties, and their founders and partners have been regular guests on one of the biggest podcasts in the country.
…Since my post two weeks ago, most of the conversation has been about me, including a smear campaign, instead of what I brought to light. Almost none of it has been about the investors, what they are building and how much they have riding on it. So this is about them, where they have taken the surveillance state, where they are taking it next and how they are protecting it, because that is what matters.
…Private money now sits behind every stage of how the government watches you, from the tools that collect information about you to the software that connects it, the computers that process it and the political decisions about how it’s all governed. When the government rents all of that instead of building it, the government and the investors behind these companies get powers a public program would never give them, and they are already using them.
Ask locals where to go out in Shanghai, and they’ll tell you the night usually ends at INS Land, an adult playground housing 20 venues including nine clubs with DJ sets and live stage shows, as well as occasional drop-ins from celebrities such as NBA star James Harden and K-pop idol Jackson Wang. There’s also a shisha lounge and an app that facilitates on-the-spot Tinder-style matchmaking.
Nightlife in China has traditionally revolved around male-dominated status-flexing with expensive bottle service and VIP booths where patrons play drinking games to break the ice. INS — which stands for “Into Nothing Serious” — upended that paradigm with a 288-yuan (around $43) daily pass that grants entry to every club under its roof, creating a more inclusive scene for a cohort seeking budget-conscious fun during an economic downturn.
There’s no bouncer at the complex’s entrance.Photographer: Nico de Rouge for Bloomberg Businessweek
A recent study seems to show that addressing yourself in the third person can relieve anxiety without you doing any other work.
Third person means your name or your third-person pronoun of choice.
Jason Moser, lead author of the study, says of it:
Essentially, we think referring to yourself in the third person leads people to think about themselves more similar to how they think about others, and you can see evidence for this in the brain.
If it turns out that the police officers who cordoned off the Polish Constitutional Court, without wearing service numbers and obviously unable to speak Polish, were from Germany, then it’s even more perfidious than I initially thought:
On the one hand, it would be overt unlawful EU terrorism against a sovereign nation and support for a coup d’état.
On the other hand, it would reopen the barely buried rifts between Poland and Germany and sow discord between the two nations once again.
Entirely in the spirit of the people-despising supranational EU.
There are rumors German police are in Warsaw. And there are reports that Grzegorz Braun questioned those police and none of them spoke Polish. It is difficult to be certain of what is going on, but it is clear a coup has been attempted, foreign police are very likely involved, and the dark hand of the EU appears to be behind it all. Recall that Trudeau employed European troops during the Freedom Convoy in Canada because he knew Canadians would balk. Historically, using foreigners to quell or conquer a people is a common strategy. The foreigners have no sympathy and will do whatever they are told. It does seem the EU is invading Poland to force it to accept invaders from outside of Europe, and thus be conquered, and obliterated. ABN
The government of Donald Tusk, the police intervention, and the removal of the leadership of the Constitutional Tribunal are causing an unprecedented institutional crisis in Warsaw.
President Karol Nawrocki denounces a violent seizure of a constitutional institution, while the stance of the European Union raises questions regarding its political influence.
There are serious indications of European institutional involvement in the dispute.
Poland faces one of the most severe constitutional crises of recent years, following the dramatic events of October 30 and October 31 at the Constitutional Tribunal in Warsaw.
Incredible: The Polish government attempted to prevent the landing of the presidential plane carrying Nawrocki
Serious allegations regarding a potential attempt to obstruct the return of Polish President Karol Nawrocki to Warsaw are coming to light, raising new questions about the dimensions of the institutional crisis. According to information presented on Polish television, consideration was allegedly given to prohibiting the landing of the presidential aircraft at the military facility of the Warsaw airport and diverting it to another city.
There appears to be enough suspicion flying around that Tusk did try to stop Nawrocki’s plane from landing, but was disobeyed by the Polish military. If true, coupled with suspected EU participation, this has been a major act of treason, usurpation, occupation. Poles still remember the Partitions of Poland and the hostile occupation of Poland by the Soviet Union. I do not expect them to take this attempted coup d’état lightly. Poland has already saved Europe once from hostile Muslim invasion. There is a good chance it will do so again. Tusk may have inadvertently done Poland and Europe a great favor by simply pissing everyone off in a most outrageous manner. ABN
Sometimes things become clearer when we have just a bit of information, or several small bits. A single detail can sometimes make us perceive the whole in ways we had not before; we may notice connections we had not noticed or recall pertinent memories that had been submerged. I hope the following short notes will be helpful in this way.
When we speak to someone, we speak to what we think is in their mind. FIML practice helps us know with much greater accuracy what is in the mind of the person we are speaking to.
FIML helps us avoid the worry of wondering if our partner is bothered by something we said (or did) because we know that if they are, they will bring it up.
FIML allows far more leeway in how we speak to our partner. It allows us to speak creatively and exploratorily with our partner. We can speak tentatively without the need for strongly expressed conclusions. We can share doubt, wonder, uncertainty with our partner.
Our minds are dynamic processes. FIML helps us access the dynamism of our minds in the moment with our partner. We can share and communicate dynamic states without clinging to static interpretations.
Interpretations of what others say or of what we think they are saying are all too often static interpretations based on things that happened in the past. With FIML practice, by simply asking, we avoid making harmful or mistaken interpretations. There is no need to guess at what our partner means, and every reason not to.
If you wonder what your partner means but don’t ask, you will still make some sort of interpretation. If you don’t ask them because you think it might feel awkward, you are still making an interpretation and limiting your understanding of yourself and your partner.
Neuroses (ongoing mistaken interpretations) are fed in the moment. Conversations move quickly and are dynamic. If we withhold a FIML query from our partner, we will almost certainly feed one of our ongoing mistaken interpretations of them, we will strengthen our own neurosis and miss a chance for mutual liberation from it.
When we speak or listen, we all tend to be self-centered, in a neutral sense of the term. I don’t mean selfish here, but simply self-centered. When we listen, we tend to listen first of all to how our partner’s speech impacts us. Did I do something wrong? Did I do something right? Will that cost me energy or money? Does that refer to me somehow? Our fundamental self-centeredness is based on being in a body and having a mental autobiography. There is nothing wrong with that unless we use it mistakenly as an integral part of our interpretation of what our partner is saying. If you are wondering if their comments are being directed, subtly or not, at you, just ask them. If you don’t ask, you will either come to a conclusion based on insufficient information or you will continue to wonder about what they said. In either case you will be wasting both your own energy and your partner’s. It’s always “cheaper” (more energy efficient, more truth efficient) to do a FIML query than to avoid it.
It’s always “cheaper” (more energy efficient, more truth efficient) to do a FIML query than to avoid it.
