Tag: thought

nostr – Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

The simplest open protocol that is able to create a censorship-resistant global “social” network once and for all.

It doesn’t rely on any trusted central server, hence it is resilient; it is based on cryptographic keys and signatures, so it is tamperproof; it does not rely on P2P techniques, therefore it works.

This is a work-in-progress. Join the Telegram group!

Very short summary of how it works, if you don’t plan to read anything else:

Everybody runs a client. It can be a native client, a web client, etc. To publish something, you write a post, sign it with your key and send it to multiple relays (servers hosted by someone else, or yourself). To get updates from other people, you ask multiple relays if they know anything about these other people. Anyone can run a relay. A relay is very simple and dumb. It does nothing besides accepting posts from some people and forwarding to others. Relays don’t have to be trusted. Signatures are verified on the client side.

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This was recommended by Jack Dorsey this morning. Something like this has to be done. We all have to support it. A communication system that cannot be controlled by governments or corporations or secret societies, once established, will be a major turning point in world history. There is no other path forward for free speech, individual rights, human rights, a flourishing world civilization than this one. This kind of system is also in perfect alignment with the American First Amendment and core Buddhist ethical teachings. ABN

a native internet protocol for social media ~ Jack Dorsey

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[All of the below is Dorsey’s blog on how he thinks Twitter and social media should be operated. I have bolded some sections in addition to the few places he bolded. I completely agree with what Dorsey is saying and hope all readers of ABN and in the world read what he has written. I have taken the liberty of posting his entire blog post here to ensure we have a copy of it. ABN]

There’s a lot of conversation around the #TwitterFiles. Here’s my take, and thoughts on how to fix the issues identified. 

I’ll start with the principles I’ve come to believe…based on everything I’ve learned and experienced through my past actions as a Twitter co-founder and lead:

1) Social media must be resilient to corporate and government control.
2) Only the original author may remove content they produce.
3) Moderation is best implemented by algorithmic choice.

The Twitter when I led it and the Twitter of today do not meet any of these principles. This is my fault alone, as I completely gave up pushing for them when an activist entered our stock in 2020. I no longer had hope of achieving any of it as a public company with no defense mechanisms (lack of dual-class shares being a key one). I planned my exit at that moment knowing I was no longer right for the company.

The biggest mistake I made was continuing to invest in building tools for us to manage the public conversation, versus building tools for the people using Twitter to easily manage it for themselves. This burdened the company with too much power, and opened us to significant outside pressure (such as advertising budgets). I generally think companies have become far too powerful, and that became completely clear to me with our suspension of Trump’s account. As I’ve said before, we did the right thing for the public company business at the time, but the wrong thing for the internet and society. Much more about this here:
jack@jackI do not celebrate or feel pride in our having to ban @realDonaldTrump from Twitter, or how we got here. After a clear warning we’d take this action, we made a decision with the best information we had based on threats to physical safety both on and off Twitter. Was this correct?12:16 AM – 14 Jan 2021

Continue reading “a native internet protocol for social media ~ Jack Dorsey” →

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey says he lost control of Twitter and ‘gave up’ when an activist investor took control of the firm in 2020

~ ABN ~ 1 Comment

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey has admitted that the social media company’s many failures were his fault – before immediately blaming one of the tech firm’s activist investors. 

In a blog post published Tuesday, Dorsey owned up to allowing the company to stray from preserving free of speech, but added that he only allowed that to happen when he ‘no longer had hope’ maintaining it after an unnamed investment group bought up stock in the company in 2020.

Dorsey did not specify which company that was, but he was likely pointing to the Elliot Management, which that year bought a majority share in Twitter for $387million under the direction of managing partner Jesse Cohn, who then set about trying to oust Dorsey.

The former Twitter CEO’s comments come as the new chief twit Elon Musk started releasing internal Twitter files from before his take over, which showed that the company actively tried to suppress the tweets of many conservative account-holders.

Jesse Cohn, a managing partner at the $55billion hedge fund Elliot Management which bought a majority share in Twitter in 2020 for $387million

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I have been unable to find Dorsey’s blog. In the linked article, Dorsey makes it clear that he lost control of Twitter to a wealthy investor. According to this article, Dorsey wanted to established 3 rules for Twitter, which he believes should apply to all social media companies:

He said that the first rule for social media companies ought to be ‘resilience to corporate and government control,’ as well as only allowing the ‘original author to remove content they produce,’ and finally relying on ‘algorithmic choice’ to implement moderation online. 

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I like Dorsey’s first rule, but believe: The correct algorithm to use on Twitter is Twitter users being allowed to say and view what they want. This algorithm will work perfectly while also conforming perfectly to our First Amendment. ABN

UPDATE: Dorsey’s blog post is here. My reading of his post is it agrees with what I am saying in: The correct algorithm to use on Twitter is Twitter users being allowed to say and view what they want. He has more knowledge about how to do this but the underlying principles are the same: users of the internet and social media have complete control over what they view and what they say. Filters and algorithms are controlled by individual users, not governments or corporations or hedge funds. ABN

Tribute to David Ray Griffin: Friends and colleagues remember him in their own words.

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OffGuardian has been privileged to feature the work of David Ray Griffin several times in our history. So when we heard the sad news of his passing we decided to organize a small tribute to his life.

We asked his close colleague Elizabeth Woodworth to say some words and to name the colleagues and friends she thought David would most have wanted to leave a remembrance of him.

Here, with one or two additions of our own, is that remembrance.

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Meet The Celebrity-Endorsed Extremist Movement Expert Calls The ‘Greatest Threat To Black Americans’ Today

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  • Black Hebrew Israelite (BHI) ideology is growing in America according to several experts that spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation, one going so far as to call it the “greatest threat to black Americans.”
  • A 2019 poll sponsored by the Philos Project entitled “African American Attitudes Toward Israel” surveyed over 1,000 African American participants. Several of the questions specifically pertained to BHI ideology. Males were twice as likely to pick the response stating “I agree with most of the core ideas taught by Black Hebrew Israelites” than females.
  • The DCNF spoke with Bishop Nathanyel, the head of the IUC church with locations in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Nathaniel stated that the term ‘Black Hebrew Israelites’ was a false moniker made up by the media.
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This article is heavily slanted and does not hide it but also has some good information and is worth reading. ABN

A Tale of Two Pandemics: Why was Covid More than Twice as Deadly in Vermont AFTER Nearly the Entire State was Fully Vaccinated???

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The goal of this article is to demonstrate that the following two propositions are strongly indicated by the death certificate data from Vermont:

  1. The covid vaccines did not at any point demonstrate discernable efficacy against severe covid disease or death.
  2. The most straightforward plausible interpretation of the data is that the covid vaccines caused covid disease to become markedly more severe.

The crux of the argument for of these propositions is that covid disease-related deaths substantially increased following mass vaccination with the covid vaccines in Vermont, where population that suffered the vast majority of such deaths occurred had a >95% vaccination rate. This is not something that can be plausibly or realistically explained if the vaccines provided any degree of meaningful protection against covid disease morbidity/mortality.

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VERMONT: Collectively, cancer-related deaths are ominously rising in 2021 and 2022 well above pre-pandemic levels, far more than in 2020

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One of the more frightening and potentially cataclysmic public health disasters brought on by the covid vaccines is the dysregulation of immunological mechanisms critical to suppressing cancerous cells. There is at the same time a plausible mechanistic basis to suspect that the covid vaccines themselves also promote the development of cancerous cells.

…It is important to remember that when there are consecutive years of excess deaths above the nominal ‘expected’ number of deaths, the true number of excess deaths is going to be increasingly higher than the difference between the topline numbers year to year, because of what is known as a ‘pull-forward’ effect.

The ‘pull-forward’ effect is essentially as follows: If there are excess cancer deaths in one year, this depletes the pool of people susceptible to dying from cancer for the next year (or few years depending on the magnitude & characteristics of the excess), because inevitably some or most of the excess deaths happen to people who were already susceptible to dying from cancer, meaning that there should be fewer cancer deaths than ‘normal’ the following year. Put differently, if the next year had the normal number of cancer deaths, that would in reality be excess cancer deaths because there are still people dying from cancer in year #2 who were not ‘supposed’ to (you can ask your local actuary about this).

Therefore, the fact that 2021 – and even more for 2022 – saw excess cancer deaths following excess deaths in 2020 [& 2021] means that the degree of excess is probably more than what would appear to be the case superficially.

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The correct algorithm to use on Twitter is Twitter users being allowed to say and view what they want

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“New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.” -Elon Musk 11-18-22

Musk is wrong about this. An easy way to see this is consider a same or similar message sent by thousands of people. If this message is made “unreachable,” no one will see it. Making a message unreachable is censorship.

A very serious example of this kind of censorship is the “unreachable science” of covid. Hundreds of doctors and scientists and tens of thousands of others have been doing everything they can to make the voice of real science be heard. The have met with some success but not nearly enough.

Until Musk took over, in addition to outright bans, Twitter shadow banned, demoted, delisted, and otherwise hid the “reach” of real science as millions died. What’s worse, not only Twitter did this but also virtually all social media, all MSM, all academia, and all government agencies did it too. For three years all of the top official speakers in the West have concertedly and deliberately gaslit the world with the help of demonic algorithms and misguided intentions.

If real science had not been censored by government, social media, Twitter, and MSM, we would probably not even remember covid today.

Real uncurated science—which was difficult for most to reach—found effective early treatments for covid within months, thus precluding any need for a vaccine. Real uncurated science also identified the danger of Remdesivir, ventilators, and the experimental vaccines.

I congratulate Musk on removing all bans on covid-related speech from Twitter. By doing this, he is proving the point: The correct algorithm to use on Twitter is Twitter users being allowed to say and view what they want.

Consider again the banned and “unreachable” real science of covid. During these years, bad theories and evidence have appeared and been quickly exposed as such, just as they should be. As a “free speech absolutist,” which he claims to be, Musk should realize that all subjects will follow a similar evolution. Basing speech proscriptions on feelings, vague ideas, or lousy moral philosophies only opens the door to censorship by other names.

Moral reasoning in grey areas

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Fundamental to moral reasoning is a grey area of proportion or the degree to which something is done or how easy or hard it is to do it. Or whether it should be done at all. Legalistic cultures like Canada, USA, and the West in general have many problems stemming from our inability to clearly draw lines between right and wrong on many issues with large grey areas.

Euthanasia, especially in Canada, is one of these issues as is maiming the bodies of children based on extremely dubious—I would say completely crazy—psychological and moral reasoning. Elon Musk is having a similar problem with free speech on Twitter. He can’t figure out where to draw a line that actually does not need to be drawn.

To me, it is self-evident that irreparably maiming a child based on a crazy idea is morally wrong. So is killing a sad man or suggesting to him that he might be better off dead and we can help you with that. Musk’s dilemma is no less serious as billions of people and the future course of world civilization will be affected by his decision, which in my view is very clear: The correct algorithm to use on Twitter is Twitter users being allowed to say and view what they want.

Every culture struggles with moral issues. In the West, we have to do better. I have described two lines that can be drawn to protect children and adults from medical malpractice and one line that can be drawn to protect the world from people who want to control the speech of others. ABN

US outlines four scenarios for Chinese attack on Taiwan

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The four courses of action against Taiwan according to the US DOD annual China Military Power Report, include an air and maritime blockade, a limited force or coercive campaign, an air and missile campaign, and a full-scale invasion.

During a joint blockade the PLA could cut off maritime and air traffic, stopping vital imports to force Taiwan’s surrender. 

A limited force or coercive campaign could include computer network or limited kinetic attacks against Taiwan’s political, military and economic infrastructure to induce fear among the public. PLA special operations forces could also infiltrate Taiwan and conduct attacks against infrastructure or leadership targets.

An air and missile campaign could see precision strikes against key government and military targets, as well as communications facilities “to degrade Taiwan’s defenses, neutralize Taiwan’s leadership, or undermine the public’s resolve to resist.”

An amphibious invasion of Taiwan, the fourth scenario, could envision a complex coordinated operation to break through shore defenses, build up combat power along the coastline and seize key targets across the entire island.

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The Earth-Lunar Lagrange 1 Orbital Rapid Response Array (ELORA)

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Elora is a name meaning ‘The laurel of victory’. Within this paper, The Ethical Skeptic has proposed for consideration a concept for an elegant, flexible, high delivery-mass, rapid response, high kinetic-energy and low rubble-fragmentation system called ELORA. A Lagrange-exploiting orbital array anchored at LP1 between the Earth and the Moon, which can be rapidly deployed to interdict an approaching Earth-impactor threat, through massive, adaptable, and repeated kinetic impact. It is the contention of this white paper that this concept system offers features superior in every facet of challenge, to the existing asteroid/comet deflection technologies under consideration.

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This is about how to protect earth from an asteroid or other potentially catastrophic impact. Great read, wonderfully inventive device. ABN

The correct algorithm to use on Twitter is Twitter users being allowed to say and view what they want

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

“New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.” -Elon Musk 11-18-22

Musk is wrong about this. An easy way to see this is consider a same or similar message sent by thousands of people. If this message is made “unreachable,” no one will see it. Making a message unreachable is censorship.

A very serious example of this kind of censorship is the “unreachable science” of covid. Hundreds of doctors and scientists and tens of thousands of others have been doing everything they can to make the voice of real science be heard. The have met with some success but not nearly enough.

Until Musk took over, in addition to outright bans, Twitter shadow banned, demoted, delisted, and otherwise hid the “reach” of real science as millions died. What’s worse, not only Twitter did this but also virtually all social media, all MSM, all academia, and all government agencies did it too. For three years all of the top official speakers in the West have concertedly and deliberately gaslit the world with the help of demonic algorithms and misguided intentions.

If real science had not been censored by government, social media, Twitter, and MSM, we would probably not even remember covid today.

Real uncurated science—which was difficult for most to reach—found effective early treatments for covid within months, thus precluding any need for a vaccine. Real uncurated science also identified the danger of Remdesivir, ventilators, and the experimental vaccines.

I congratulate Musk on removing all bans on covid-related speech from Twitter. By doing this, he is proving the point: The correct algorithm to use on Twitter is Twitter users being allowed to say and view what they want.

Consider again the banned and “unreachable” real science of covid. During these years, bad theories and evidence have appeared and been quickly exposed as such, just as they should be. As a “free speech absolutist,” which he claims to be, Musk should realize that all subjects will follow a similar evolution. Basing speech proscriptions on feelings, vague ideas, or lousy moral philosophies only opens the door to censorship by other names.

Two threads analyze Balenciaga

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Both of these threads are admittedly speculative. It must be that the people controlling artistic expression are promoting these designers and encouraging them. Some of the photos are very good but most depend entirely on disturbing dark themes. Add these to Satanic themes in CERN opening ceremonies and elsewhere and we cannot turn from the suspicion that so much of the evil we see in our world today is inspired by and supportive of demonic arts, beliefs, and practices. In Buddhism, this world is a mix of light and dark, good and bad, moving toward the Tathagata or away from. Christianity emphasizes the power of Satan. In the West we are more deeply influenced by Christian thought and thus express it more in artwork. But the underlying conflict between good and bad is also prominent in Eastern thought and traditions. ABN

Continue reading “Two threads analyze Balenciaga” →