Sadly, the lesson that CBS will learn from this event is to not release previews of interviews. Without the original preview, we would have never known that they hot swapped the answers.
indeed. and therefor the lesson that we must learn from it is "never trust CBS" and the more widely we may spread that lesson, the better off we all shall be.
I'm trying to sort out the editing. It is so creative I'm wondering if it's not actually Kamala Harris but a deep fake...can I use "deep" in the same context as Harris? I guess it's more of a shallow fake?
After their "creative editing" with DeSantis and Publix, Stahl's apologia for the Biden laptop, and the Dan Rather follies, why would anyone trust CBS and 60 Minutes?
The first fraud of which I was aware was the editing of Gen. Secor (sp?) in the 80s to make his answers the opposite of what he really said, intended to torpedo his run for public office (it did); he sued but because he was seeking public office, the courts ruled against him - free press protected the network - but that judge wrote pages and pages of searing condemnation of what CBS had done, declaring it unethical and immoral while upholding the 1st amendment protection. Then CBS lied about what the judge wrote.
More recently there was the Chevy trunks a few years ago, where it failed to explode in a crash so the had Hollywood special effects guys rig it with explosives, Mythbustesr style, and showed that claiming it just happened. GM actually prevailed in court on that one.
To call that show and the network pond scum or swamp slime is an insult to scum and slime.
The list of fraudulent stories and doctored interviews is extensive!
Anyone who thinks 60 minutes or the network worthy of respect are madly disconnected from reality. 60 minutes in particular has decades (at least 4) of repeated fraud. Editing interviews to misrepresent what was said, such as editing a "no" when the interviewee said "yes", is standard procedure. Public admissions and court records are full of examples. I laugh out loud when someone says something like "I trust CBS and 60 minutes" and starts me thinking about selling them a bridge or beach front property in Nevada.
The Commenters on SS are my 'trusted information sources' - some moreso than others. But when I see certain Commenters on different SubStacks who faithfully write with the same sensibility, they've passed my litmus test.
This is not correct, that we need someone else's list.
We are obliged to CALIBRATE all sources of information.
Do you recall how difficult it was to reconcile quantum mechanics and relativistic physics in undergraduate science? Have some sympathy for Galileo's church judges who could plainly understand that the earth upon which they stood was stable, and the Sun, Moon, and stars passed overhead.
The real challenge is to be able to let go of preexisting positions (in medicine this is called confirmation bias and anchoring when clinging to an initially incorrect diagnosis) and integrate new facts.
The bad news is that this requires considerable time and effort.
A more efficient scheme is to sort out lies and liars by the criteria "intentional" or "ignorant."
In most courses 90% is a good mark, demanding 100% is damaging (requires too much agreement with authority.) Before the Vietnam War-induced American grade inflation 80% would have been an Oxford "First."
There are good courses online now for more relaxed and mature consideration, but it may still require a real human to teach these things.
They either make your brain hurt or expand your comprehension.
Best of luck! R
It still took me 30 years and a visit to a working lab to understand that the PCR and genomics stuff was not discrete but all statistical pattern matching.
Most of what we take for granted as discreet are actually probabilistic phenomena. I had this problem when trying to reconcile classical thermodynamics with statistical thermodynamics.
Pair that fraudulent edited version of the answer to the lambasting that CBS News management gave to one of their (respected) journalists to expose the bias of Ta-Nihisi Coates.
Pretty clearly, CBS News lacks credibility. Utterly.
I think a slogan from one of the two main characters of an old 2000AD comic has never been more apropos for the USA and the EU and the British rump-empire too:
"Be Pure! Be Vigilant! Behave!"
Of course, that character was the tyrant of the Human Galactic Empire and not above going around ordering people boiled alive for looking at him funny. . .
We also need to keep circulating "Kamala Unedited" versions of herself. It's another irony that throughout the last four years they claimed that the "Biden moments of incoherence" were the ones that were edited out of context.
The only truth you can ever be assured off is that which you directly experience. Everything else you encounter is problematical in the degree of truth it might contain.
"War is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength."
War is peace is intended to show the unity in hatred of an enemy. Freedom is slavery encourages members to find freedom in serving the party, because they will not find it on their own. Ignorance is strength encourages members to rely on the strength of the party because they cannot possibly know as much.
That's why I enjoy wearing this "Ministry of Truth" t-shirt everywhere I go! 👇
No, it's even worse than that. In practice, that means $60 billion of "loans" or outright grants ultimately paid by the American taxpayer. Where this money goes is largely unaccountable, but it's safe to guess most of it finds its way into the pockets of rich individuals, corporations and "friendly" (?) governments.
The 20 years of war in Afghanistan didn't end. They just took a short break and moved it to Ukraine. Now they are talking about opening a new location in the Middle East.
Even first-hand experience doesn't guarantee that one has found "truth." We are vulnerable to a number of pitfalls, whether at the physical level (e.g. an optical illusion) or more complex errors of thought. The best we can do is acquire a store of general knowledge that -- we hope -- is mostly "true" and also logical and other reasoning skills so that we can sort out information presented to us as best we can.
My wife watched the 60 Minutes-clip over my shoulder. Her comment on Harris way of expressing herself:
"She talks the same way an aged alcoholic does, same incoherent fumbling for words"
When she said it, I couldn't unsee/unhear it. Spot on, I think - I know the ravages of alcohol and drug use very well, having lost (as I'm aware of) six friends to that, all dead before age 30.
Could it simply be that Harris is showing the effects of alcohol-induced dementia?
I think it's just garden-variety nincompoopism though of course she may well have overdosed on precious bodily fluids during her rise in Democratic politics.
It is something how far the party loyalty can be pushed. It used to be that to be a successful figure head required some charisma. You may not agree with them, but JFK had charm, LBJ had a sharp wit, Jimmy Carter was...well an honest man, and despite all indications he's a terrible human, Bill Clinton had charm, charisma, wit and gave a great speech. Even Barack, in person, was charismatic and a good speaker. They all could sound intelligent, coherent and even rational.
Biden was never all that good in public appearances, and Kami has been kept out of sight for most of this administration's term. It's like the real rulers of The Party aren't even trying to pretend that the figure head has any power or expectations of being capable.
I sure disagree with you here. Even as an adolescent I thought JFK was not as sold. I think Bill Clinton has always been skeevy. I voted for Obama twice and by the second term the luster was seriously fading.
And Carter? He turned out to be a schmuck in the end too.
We were told there was charisma. All any of these guys attracted was campaign money and the lusts of the want-to-be-powerful who found a vehicle to jump on.
The real truth? All of these people are garbage. The biggest snow job in American history was that of the Kennedy mystique. Jackie was nothing but a hooker with a finishing school accent and you'd think two dead babies because of her husband's STDs would've been a financial arrangement too far.
I was over Obama by his first year. Thought he was a pu$$y. I stood in the cold at his first inauguration too. He let the banksters go scottfree. He didnt really end wars and now he’s got what he really wanted—immense wealth and puppet mastering fun. Among the worse of presidents.
I didn’t know much truth then. I live near Chicago. I should have known but I despised Bush and his warmongers. But , they never went away. Just squatting in place. .the democrats left me. I didn’t leave. Good riddance.
I enjoy disagreement and discourse, but I'm not really seeing the disagreement here. I think all your points are accurate.
The difference between those others and Biden or Harris is that they prior folks scrubbed up well, could follow a script, and had some kind of charm that people could feel. Bill Clinton was scum, no argument, but I attended an event at which he spoke and could feel his charm. He had poise and commanded the room. I didn't agree with what he said, but I could see why people had a positive emotional reaction. I've seen things with Obama pretending to speak "off the cuff" in which he is charming, even reasonable sounding, even as he speaks total nonsense. Even LBJ had a charm of sorts.
Carter was a different story. He was selected because he was seen (and presented) as an honest man. The Party capitalized on the successful scandal around Nixon, which tainted Ford. Carter was hard to like, easier to respect. Did not change the fact he made some tragic errors as CiC and his administration's policies were disastrous.
I've heard Biden speak. First in 2008. He may have once had something, but by 2008 it was gone. He was overtly corrupt and proud of it. His speech was offensive in content and poorly delivered. When he was selected by The Party in 2020 I was surprised. Then I thought this is a loyalty test - just how far can The Party push the faithful. The answer is now clear: those calling the shots see no limits. Proof: Harris. QED. If Biden surprised me, selection of Harris mystifies me.
I've often said that many of those faithful followers of The Party remain so because they believe in what the party once was. That is probably incorrect. They believe in what they think the party was. It probably never was what they believe, at least not in my lifetime.
The other difference is that with some of those I felt like they were part of the decision making process (maybe not JFK and Clinton). It is clear to me that neither Biden nor Harris has any role in setting policy or priorities.
My disagreement is on the charisma and charm and likeability of everyone you mentioned prior to Biden. Though for many decades I thought Carter was a decent and honorable man. I really could not stop myself from liking LBJ but this is a problem I have sometimes. I can't stop liking Mel Gibson, neither.
I agree with your conclusions about Biden and his selection, but he was always a miserable scumbag visibly proud of his nonexistent intellect. It's grimly hilarious that in all the Democratic howling about Justice Thomas, they omit we owe his seat to Biden.
Though I voted for Obama twice, every "folks" that dropped out of his mouth ate away at my initial enthusiasm and my second vote for him was really just to prevent Romney from becoming President. (Every time I see that man I think of Max Headroom.)
I was going to disagree with you about Romney, but, yeah, I see it!
I generally ignored Biden until 2008, but looking at some old clips, yup, what you said. Saying I could see why people were charmed by Clinton doesn't mean I liked or supported Clinton. I never voted for him. He was clearly scum, and Hillary anywhere near power was scary. I was over party loyalty before then. Likewise Obama: I could see the powers behind his figure-heading and knew the agenda. It was no worse than what I expected (which was plenty bad).
I think we may disagree on Justice Thomas. I supported his appointment and are mixed on his performance. I also supported the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor, and thought she might have some integrity and not just vote as The Party directs. On her, I admit I as wrong. But still I've found some of her writing interesting.
You're looking for character, when in truth they are just playing a character. The quality of their acting is the principle skill needed to get elected. I've gotten to the point where I don't really care about their persona any more, only that they enact policies that I support.
"I'm a patriot and I love my country and I'm for women's rights and I want prosperity and I'm for the Middle Class and the working man and ..."
"Yeah sure. Now shut up and get to work doing what you said you'd do".
The persona of Trump and Kamala are way beyond the bounds of normal, but at they made this election entertaining. They've directly caused the generation of more memes, jokes, and crazy narratives than I've ever seen in my lifetime.
Really? You know these politicians personally? Or can you determine that they are truly garbage by their appearances on TV? I for one would like to know this amazing method by which you can make these determinations with such certainty. It would be a boon to manking.
Given her nick-name "Kneepads" and her known affiliations with Willie Brown, the "overdosed on precious bodily fluids"-phrase gives rise to very unwelcome images.
She doctored in a traditional route of the untalented in any other art.
I will say though that there may also have been the unfortunately not-rare seeking of a parental figure too. In photos from those days she is really glowing when seen on Willie's arm. There was a very ugly custody battle during Kamala's parents' divorce.
I've said before that Kamala has no interior sense of identity. She did indeed decide to turn herself into an American black woman with an accent nobody in her birth family ever had and which was not of any common speech in Montreal where she spent her middle school years. She made a political and not a cultural choice and serving others has served her well so far.
It's possible, but she reminds me too much of the functional alcoholics that I knew. Same behavioral characteristics as when those people were on the sauce, and between binges. I wouldn't be surprised if her alcoholism was revealed by an insider in the future. In fact, I'm expecting it.
She still seems to have nice skin. I remember seeing a closeup photo of Hillary a few years ago and I was shocked that a woman with that much money couldn't manage to buy herself a good beauty cream. She looked dreadful and the spackling couldn't hide it.
Sometimes things are very simple. Kamala, like Obama, has no interior identity. And it often happens, sadly, that children of very smart capable people turn out to be dolts themselves. Genetics is a swamp.
So you take a woman who is herself deficient in any spark of individuality and only had a genuine physical prettiness when she was young; some serious father issues; the choice to become a Southern-inflected black woman when she is not even a black woman; and recruited as a useful political object who smacked up against her own utter total vapidity that a national spotlight stripped bare.
Of course she might start some heavy drinking now...
Based on her past associations, it's a given she participated heavily in California elite party culture. To what extent, we don't know. However, for those with no interior identity, drugs and alcohol can easily become a coping mechanism.
I'm thinking maybe you can put the period before "on" ;-).
I've spent some time around politicians in DC, and worked with some beltway insiders. In general I'm told, consistent with my own limited experience, none of these political folks are idiots, they just play idiots on TV. My insider contacts add "except for Maxime Waters, AoC and Kamala Harris - they're as vacant as they appear". I've not met any of those, but trust some folks who have. I had doubts about including Harris in that list, based on rumors of how she somewhat cleverly obtained "leverage" to progress her career, but the last month or so have removed my doubts.
They probably follow a normal curve for intelligence but they surely lack balance in applying it, in so many words most politicians have a mental disease in the same way that a criminal (indeed as a sociopath) may also be intelligent, perhaps even highly intelligent, but badly adjusted to the world. No one who wants to be a politician likely deserves to be. There's been a few, Massey, Ron Paul, who seem genuinely interested in being a public servant and feel compelled in a classical way. But even giving them the benefit of the doubt even the most principled and morally centered person has got to be revulsed by it all to stay more than one term. Maybe they think they really can fix it, can't understand their motivation. In any case, Kamala, I don't know, it's really tough to act that vapid all the time. Plenty of actors can do it but even they have to sometimes let their guard down and be themselves during interviews or in candid moments. She only seems dumber unscripted.
I've met some in DC who clearly do think they are superior to "commoners", especially in the staff of congress. From my observation and conversation with long time "inside the beltway" folks, things are changing. It used to be seen more as "the job" - playing the roll to the best of their ability following the script provided by the directors. Members of congress would take opposite sides in debate, often energetically, on the floor, but still be respectful, even friends. There seems much more zealots and intolerance today. Certainly the concept of ethics, honor and respect are far less reflected in the new breed of politician. Not that there weren't always zealots, sociopaths and a-holes but it seems like more often now that is expected behavior.
Modifying this: shortly after I wrote that, I was at a meeting in which AoC chose to bless us with her presence. Yup, exactly what I was told. Arrogant, rude, and not even trying to learn things.
It was also my impression the very first time I heard her talk 5 years ago, the exceptions being her acceptance speech and the debate (I don't want to imagine how much training/couching it took to achieve that). I totally agree with your wife.
Given her “routine” performance versus her performance on the debate stage, it lends a lot of credibility to the claim her earrings were Bluetooth earbuds.
Just to put in a word for aging boomers (of which I am one): I submit that a lot of us recall a different time. We read 1984 long before 1984, when many (if not all) journalists strove for a semblance of objectivity.
I refer to decades ago. We have had biased reporting forever; but during the Civil War for instance, there were opposing views, depending on the newspaper. I do trust my doctors, actually, recognizing that they too are human beings.
Do you think any of these three statements repeated by a retired doctor are something you would hear from your doctors?
1. Total risk of at least one chronic condition after the age of 18 in the vaccinated is now over 60%. TRUE total baseline risk for those who have never once been exposed to any vaccines and those who've also avoided the "vitamin" K shot, is 2.64%. Take your pick. - Joy Garner
2. The biggest problem that all of this comes down to is the refusal of most people to believe that people in power wish them harm, actively want to do harm to them. This is the hardest thing for most people to accept. - Bob Moran
3. Autism: The rate of autism in entirely unvaccinated individuals with no exposure to the Vitamin K shot or maternal vaccines was 0%, compared to the national rate of 2.79% in 2019 and 3.49% in 2020. – The Control Group Survey
I trust that doctors that I see now. I have been to doctors whose opinion didn't make sense to me. Never went back to them. I don't trust the doctors who want the money and/or the limelight. In 'Anytown, U.S. A.' where I live, most ppl are just regular Janes and Johns.
I think you must have meant "illusion" in place of "semblance". Perhaps the bias has shifted from our youth. I remember when defending free speech, denouncing censorship and protesting war were things endorsed by "the left."
When was in my early 20s I realized that every time I read a news story about something of which I had actual knowledge, they got most of it wrong. I attributed this to laziness. Only latter (early-mid 80s) did I see the political patterns. But then looking back, I could see it (clearly) in the older media reports.
Around 1983 or so a local paper ran the headline "Biker murders disabled man in [name of city]". The actual story was: A mentally ill person, who was known to frequent the neighborhood, broke down the 60 year old man's door, beat him, and brandishing a weapon threatened him and his wife, demanding money and valuables. The man complied, the AH left. Later that night, remembering that the man had a collection of valuable shot guns, he again broke into the house and demanded that the man go to his safe, and retrieve his most valuable shot gun. The man complied, thus ending the confrontation.
The "biker" came from the fact the 60 year old man owned and rode a Honda Goldwing. For those not familiar with 80s motorcycles, this is the luxury land yacht of the 2 wheeled world. Not exactly what most think of when hearing "biker". And of course self defense is not murder.
Later the pattern as clear: this paper had joined the civilian disarmament agenda, was intentionally portraying anyone who used a firearm as the criminal fringe. The truth did not play well into their agenda so they altered it.
That's really interesting... What it might mean for kids to read 1984 today. If you're married to the title it might be difficult to suspend your disbelief if the settings don't seem familiar.
I read it in the mid 60s. It was required reading in high school. I thought of it as sci-fi and 1984 seemed so far off. I didn't realize that some readers thought it was a user manual.
In 1715, The Royal Society (like a retreat for the best minds in Western Europe to find wealthy patrons to fund their research) were convened to decide whether Light is composed of Particles, the view championed by Isaac Newton, or Light is a Wave Phenomena as promoted by Dutch Astronomer Christian Huygens.
TL;DR - Big Hitter, the Newton. So he and his posse basically second-classed all the Wave People. And the patrons stopped funding Wave Theory Research. For 100 years, until _Sir_ (as he came to be known later) Thomas Young demonstrated that the Wave Nature of Light via his famous Double Slit Demo.
It wasn't until Einstein explained the Photoelectric Effect as a evidence of the Corpuscular/Particulate Theory of Light in 1905 (Al had a real good year in '05) that Light was _finally_ accepted being a bunch of teeny tiny little pieces parts.
The Dissenting view, a crucial step to understanding Quantum Mechanics, was smothered for a century because Newton was basically a Big Weanie. For real.
Back when I was a gradual student, I was working with an optics guy, combining holographic optical elements with solid state image sensors, both of which were very new technologies. We were explaining our work to a bunch of other gradual students. One asked if we were using wave or particle models for light and the optics guy (who was really smart) said "that depends upon who you ask!". To him, the optical guy, it was about bending and manipulating waves. To me, my sensors basically captured and counted photons. He bet them and directed them into buckets, I counted what was in the buckets. Both models worked well enough to be useful, though we knew then neither was the actual truth.
That's the point - it is both, or neither, use whichever model works for what you are trying to do at the moment. Filtering and refracting are wavy things. Counting is easier with particle like things. We needed both models to make something useful.
In my youth studying particle physics, some folks were pretty divided on some things, almost like B & Cs. But in a more "I'll erase your equations if you don't accept my derivation" kind of way ;-).
Hey, Pi Guy, if you're gonna go all Sheldon Cooper in here - at least throw us Pennys a bone about what the 'Corpuscular/Particulate Theory of Light' & 'the Wave Nature of Light via his famous Double Slit Demo' ARE. 😉
I'm no physicist, but I do know it's a rather lengthy answer you're asking for. There's a good Britannica-article on it (free to read) though, much better than Wikipedia:
More importantly (from my angle) is that it gives the historical background necessary to understand how Newton and Huygens and others could get their ideas in the first place, since science is like building pyramids.
I was just scrolling down the thread (shouldn't that be Tom Petty-song?) and the ole' teacher's reflex kicked in.
Heh, if we want a real dissertation on it, we could ask Rudolph Rigger of Substack Riggery Pokery, as he is an actual professor of physics and researcher in Quantum Theory to boot.
Dude... Julie opened a door that y'all might never want opened again. And I apologize for cluttering up the Gatosphere.
But, man, I really love this stuff and you didn't step on nuthin. Chime in.
I've joked before that, "Hey, Baby - you ever meet a guy who's found closed-form solutions to Navier-Stokes Equations? *big toothy Happy Hour smile*" isn't the great pickup line I'd hoped so, when a woman says, "Hey, Pi - can you tell me how magnets work?" I jump in.
But, in truth, Magnets is how I won over Mrs. Pi. True story. She still has that napkin in her main purse, I think - fields, force lines, Maxwell's Equations...
My first GS advisor was a professor of quantum physics. If you greeted him in the morning with something mundane like "good morning" he would respond with something like there is a finite probability that in some reference frame it is morning and good, but there is a finite probability that the universe as we perceive it will dissolve in an instant leaving us non-existent, which wouldn't be so good and of course neither "good" nor "morning" would exist. This often lead to an in depth discussion of the precise meaning of "good" or speculation on how we would make such a determination if we did not exist...all before I could get to the coffee ;-)
Ok, just read the article - still in the dark (see what I did there 😁) about the principles involved. But I DO appreciate the help. I AM fascinated by the interplay of the characters of Newton & Huygens and how one maneuvered to get his theory accepted.
You may well be familiar with the Edison/Westinghouse/Tesla clash but a similar thing happened with them >>>> "Feeling threatened by the rise of AC, which could be distributed over long distances much more economically than DC, Edison launched a propaganda campaign to discredit AC and convince the public it was dangerous."
I am familiar and almost mentioned it in the comment as an analog but I was writing a lot already.
Like Newton, Edison had tremendous stature in the community and Tesla was an unknown compared to Huygens - basically the Second Best Physicist of his Time after Netwon - until he convinced Westinghouse that he had something worth investing in. Cha-ching.
Edison and JP Morgan still made out pretty okay, too.
Optics, loosely the Study of Light, is one of the oldest "sciences" in that we so many observations of its behavior. Light, that is. Think Rainbows, or for that matter, just colors; those blurry wavy things you see when you look at your buddy Oog over a hot campfire; that scene in Forest Gump where he's looking at the reflection of an entire mountain, clear as day, on the lake between them so that there are 2 mountains, one on top of the other, inverted; Heck, just think about Shadows. And, in fact, that's a great place to start.
If you're outside in the sunlight, you can see the ground all around you fully illuminated, and in the region on the ground that blocks the sun, there's "no light" there. A Shadow, or Umbra. But there's not really "no light" there. You can still see what's there and, in fact, the division between Good People and Death Eaters isn't distinct. It's not just a lighted region then darkness. There's also a sorta fuzzy region which is, depending on the strength of the source, between those known as a Penumbra. (I ask that you suspend a little disbelief, let's ignore that a bunch of that light behind you is reflected from all over, to make the analogy a little better)
So, curious people - let's call them Scientists - were curious about the cause of this Penumbra and the behavior and composition of Light. And two bodies of thought emerged dominant: The Wave Theory and The Corpuscular Theory.
PARTICLES, CORPUSCLES (also PHOTONS, QUANTA): It's kinda easy to tell the story that Light is made up of a bunch of Teeny Tiny Little Particles - in modern physics we call these Photons; 1 Photon = 1 "Quanta" of Light - like a bunch of pebbles flying as if they were thrown from one hand, or the little pellets, Shot, that are blown out of a shotgun shell. At the right scale, and simple conditions, Light behaves much like these Particles.
We have examples of how WAVES work from tossing a stone in a pond (or maybe two? hehe) to things like the Doppler Effect - the way the pitch of a fast-approaching train rises until it passes you, where the pitch falls off as it pulls away. And I had all sorts of ideas of what I would Word Out when I know 1 Picture = 1 Kiloword https://youtu.be/egRFqSKFmWQ?si=i-j7mRdQL8cFmaqW
, but the important Wave Property here is called Superposition. Basically, when two waves cross paths, the total Amplitude (height/swell) is just the Amplitudes of the two constituent Waves.
Maybe it's better said like this: (1) When two Crests meet, you get DoubleCrest. A Big Wave. (2) When two Troughs meet, you get a DoubleTrough. A Deep Hole. (3) If a Crest and a Trough love each other very much, you get... Nothing. Total Amplitude = 0. They literally cancel each other out. This is used in Noise Cancelling applications from some kinds of headphones to super HiFi systems on military helicopters: mic all the noise, feed it back into a Super HiFi system exactly half a cycle out of phase - Crest + Trough and reduce some of the noise.
This is a wall of text already so I'll seal up here a bit and come back. I haven't even gotten to the Exciting Part yet!
So to swing back into the Royal Academy story, after Newton bullied scientist into assuming that Light is Corpuscular, ie Made up of Particles, research focused on experiments intended to bolster the Pieces Parts side. But experiments didn't well confirm that hypothesis, or didn't rule out Waves as a (the?) best explanation. Some guys Shaving named Occam. So, after much wailing and gnashing, Thomas Young thought, "What the heck?" and set up a light source in front of a screen with two closely spaced, narrow parallel slits that let light pass through. The screen was opaque so no light gets through there. Maybe looked like this (work with me) where the Xs are screen and the Os fill the space betwen the slits | | :
[XXXXXXX| O |XX| O |XXXXXXX]
So, if Light is a bunch of little marbles, when we shine light on the screen, we would expect the Shot Pattern to look like this:
[XXXXXXX| ::: |XX| ::: |XXXXXXX]
where the : represent the Illuminated Regions. Or without the screen, this:
[ ::: ::: ]
But that isn't what Young observed. Instead, he saw this:
[ . : :: ::: :::: ::: :: : . ]
The Lighted regions showed up in bands, stripes of decreasing intensity with the Region _between the slits_ the most well illuminated, and each subsequent band less bright as you move toward the edges. Just like the Waves in the Double Slit Demo from the Wave Tank Video from previous comment.
LIGHT IS A WAVE!!! And there was much rejoicing.
So by about the mid- 1800s, physicists figured they had pretty much all of Physics sewed up. There a few questions in Thermodynamics, especially nagging explanation for why metals that were illuminated by x-rays re-emitted didn't behave they way we expected. The current thinking was that, the Brighter the Light you shone on the target, the greater the emitted radiation would be. This is known as The Photoelectric Effect, and it defied explanation.
A couple of world-class scientists, Lord Rayleigh and Sir James Jeans, published their findings, the summary of which came to be known as The Ultraviolet Catastrophe. Basically, the old theories worked well enough when the beam's wavelength (dang it - this is supposed to be a Particle explanation!) was long, or conversely its frequency was short. So Radio, Infrared, and most of Visible Light behaved as The Rules said they would.
But, as the Impinging Illumination's frequency approached Ultraviolet with its higher frequency, the re-radiation was much much more intense then it should be as predicted by the models. Physics hit a lull punctuated by the discovery of the Electron by JJ Thompson in the 1890s: he found a Particle where most scientists expected something Wavy. The Plum Pudding Model was the previous explanation - that the Electrons were just some Sweet Goo around a bunch of Raisins standing in for Atomic Nuclei. But Max Planck demonstrated that the Energy was definitely being chunked upon emission - there are no Half-Chunks, or 1.34 Chunks. Just 1 or 2 or 7 and so on. The Energy itself can only be emitted in chunks. It is Quantized. *spooky music*
The Denouement goes like this: Einstein got together with a bunch of his other Mediocre Physics Friends to drink brandy and smoke cigars and be nerds. He figured, "What if it's not that the Energy is merely emitted in chuncks like Planck suggested. What if the actual Light Energy itself is just a bunch of Chuncks? And the Chuncks themselves... wait for it... have Wavelengths. He called them Light Quanta and we call them Photons now. But he did some math, published the paper in a prominent Physics Journal, and the world went absolutely ape$#!+.
The only explanation, therefore, is that Light is Both - or some say Neither - a Wave or Particle but some kluge of Wavicleness depending upon how we set up our experiment, how we choose to observe it. And this Wave-Particle Duality is the foundation of Quantum Mechanics, which has over the course of just about a century has been found to explain an incredible amount of phenomena culminating in such useful things as Transistors, Cryptography, Lasers**, and famous safe-cracker and bongos player Richard Feynman.
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**Crazy Parting Thoughts: Einstein was a big hitter and also posited the concept of Stimulated Emission that led Charles Townes to create the first Maser [microwave laser, if you will] in a different paper published in 1905. Plus an explanation for the Brownian Motion of Atoms on the surface of electrically-conducting materials. No one had figured that out either.
Did I mention that he also published _another_ paper in that same year? Something about... Relativity. I seem to recall that it was a pretty big hit, too.
Well, now I can see why Mrs. Pi still has that napkin! Your explanation to a Penny was very good - scientifically, historically and non-condescending.
Might I enquire if the Thomas Young you mentioned is the same Thomas Young of the Young-Helmholtz Trichromatic Theory of Color Vision? I am familiar with him so at least I'm in the same ball park with you - 'cept your seats are right behind the plate & I'm up in peanut heaven.
*beams* Awesome. It's harder to explain without the math. Math is like a picture - it's worth a whole lot of words, too - so I'm glad you liked it.
And at first I almost said 'Yes' to the 'same Thomas Young' because I knew Helmholz was of the same era and, knew it was Young and Helmholz who contributed the Trichroma Theory (basically the RGB controls we use in, say, PowerPoint to pick colors) and Color itself is a pretty fascinating subfield with a lot of explanations - like, why do computer screens use Red-Green-Blue combos and printer inks use Cyan-Magenta-Yellow mixes? - but did a little Google Fu to verify it.
Smart People sometimes run in families and wasn't sure if maybe Young had a famous son or brother. But one and the same.
The aforementioned JJ Thompson won a Nobel for his discovery of the Electron - The Particle... - and his son George won a Nobel in the '30s for discovering the _Wave_ Properties of the Electron. One pre- and one post-Quantum Explanations (I didn't intend to go Wave-Particle there but it presented.
And there are a mess of Bernoullis in Math and Science. The most famous, Daniel, contributed to Fluid Mechanics. Bernoulli's Principle explains why an airfoil lifts an aircraft when it's forced through air. And one of his uncles, Johan, is famous for his contributions to Integral - or Summartorium - Calculus along with Leibniz - Newton's foil in the "Who discovered Calculus First?!" - and some guy named *checks notes* Christian Huygens.
Btw, have you read the book, "1666 : Plague, War, and Hellfire" by Rebecca Rideal. Fascinating look of that year in England. Here's how one person reviewed it: "Historical detail rubs up against historical colour so that we are offered factual accounts of the Plague's grim impact and the extent of the Fire's damage alongside the diary recollections and eye-witness accounts of Pepys, John Evelyn, William Taswell and others."
Only thing is I read this book and I thought for sure that Newton was discussed in it. It's STILL a good book. Perhaps just having a 'matriarch moment'. 🤷🏻♀️
I have not heard of that. The plague itself is why Newton was not in Oxford and was on a farm when, as fate would have it, an apple fell from the ground. And he asked the question, "Why did it not fall some other direction than down?" And the rest is history.
It's not often that we can find a silver lining in a third of your population contracting Y. Pestis but, if not for it, who know how long it would've taken for some other lesser mind(s) to discover Differential Calculus, study Opticks (the title of his own book on the separation of colors; these guys were all giants in multiple fields), and his Magnum Opus, the Theory of Gravitation. He basically fleshed out a theory of Calculus to explain his Gravitation problem.
Have you read anything about his personality? I read somewhere - I THOUGHT it was in this book! - that he was prone to be a volatile, hermit-like guy who always wanted the glory.
Short version: in some situations it can be shown that light behaves as if it is comprised of discrete particles (photons). This was the accepted model until someone was able to observe behaviors of light that did not fit the particle theory. This led to a lot of other cool observations, new theories, and a new branch of study on wave theory and behavior, which led to cool and useful things like radio. Which led to stuff like the wireless technology you are probably using as you read this :-0)
This is how real science works: we don't know truth. We know theories that explain plausibly what we can observe. We treat theories like truth while this is useful, but eventually we then we observe things not explained by our theories, so we develop new theories. People being human, many cling to old theories and resist change and even get hostile towards those making the observations that don't fit the old theories. It can take many decades to move forward. A friend of mine puts it this way: "old theories never die, but eventually, the people who cling to them will".
Absolutely true. Or relatively true? Or probabilistically true?
[sorry, physics humor]
In the field of physics, breakthroughs happen as observation gets better, and what we observe isn't what we predicted, but only when this leads to questioning and revising the models we hold. Without challenging what we "know" there is no progress; inquiry is essential to useful science.
In the area of solid state physics, where we've seen rate of change much greater than in other fields of physics, we routinely break the "impossible". Each theoretical limit on how small we can make a transistor has been blown through. If the boundaries were not challenged, they could not be revised, and we'd not be posting our views on pages like this using personal computers, and the plethora of solid state physics that goes into communicating over great distances.
Your ability to view cat videos on your favorite cat video site happened only because physicists were allowed to challenge what was known, and technologists realize there are few absolute rules. The two absolutes live by:
1. Everything you knew yesterday is valid yesterday.
2. It's only impossible until you've done it.
Question everything, reevaluate assumptions frequently, and cling only to those two fundamental principles above.
Advancements are kind of a Branches of Government thing but with the three being Science, Math, and, as a super over-general term, I'll say engineering but technology might be right too.
So the Science Guy goes out and sees some stuff. Then he sees more stuff. A handful more stuff-seeing events and the Science Guy says, "Hmmmm... I think I see a pattern." Then he shares his findings.
Math Guy says, "You know, when I started with Basic First Principles, rearranged the terms, cancelled out all the non-magnetic electrically neutral terms... and what is _this_ term for."
Science Guy's all "Mean culpa - I didn't see that!" Then they both look over at Engineer Guy and he's all, "*thumbs under suspenders* I can make one of those." So he measures once and cusses twice but eventually ends up with a pretty banging _this_ Detector. "But it's a little wide-spectrum. Keep an eye out on the edges."
So Science Guy goes back into the lab, now able to Really See Some Stuff. And he says, "I see _this_ all righty! But... what those two _thats_ over there. And is that a Big Whoa Nelly?"
And Math Guy ... Well, it kinds just repeats over and over like that until they run out of funding.
LoL! So here is how I learned that I was not a physicist.
Working on particle physics in a famous university. Tasked with designing and building a new detector, and integrating it into a data acquisition system (to the physicists this was one step above floor sweeping). So the experiment starts running, and after a day or two one of the physicists runs into the room excited with a stack of print-out (how we viewed data in those days). He'd circled several things on the paper; all the physicists gathered around and started to ooh and ah getting more and more excited. I leaned over to my advisor/boss and asked "what are we excited about?" He said "that young man is something no human has observed before. We have advanced human knowledge by this much" (holding his fingers very close together to indicate a small but significant thing). Wow, I thought, that means the stuff I built actually worked. Relaying the story later to my dad (an engineer), he smiled and said "there you go, you are an engineer, not a scientist".
Which was quite a major realization. Also a significant change in my life's trajectory, but that's another story.
I remember one of my sons coming home from high school after having listened to a few weeks of history lectures on pre WW2 era, saying, "God, I HATE the progressives!" That history teacher is one of a kind.
It made the agony of starting two schools in which we were able to hire our own teachers worth the effort.
I had the same reaction when I was taught about the "progressive" era. That was before the leftists (at least as far as my kiddo brain knew) had begun referring to themselves in that way. They were still calling themselves liberals then, as far as I can remember, even though they were (then as now) anything but.
"Roosevelt himself called Mussolini “admirable” and professed that he was “deeply impressed by what he has accomplished.” The admiration was mutual. In a laudatory review of Roosevelt’s 1933 book Looking Forward, Mussolini wrote, “Reminiscent of Fascism is the principle that the state no longer leaves the economy to its own devices.…Without question, the mood accompanying this sea change resembles that of Fascism.” The chief Nazi newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter, repeatedly praised “Roosevelt’s adoption of National Socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies” and “the development toward an authoritarian state” based on the “demand that collective good be put before individual self-interest.”
"social media is the defense against this dark art."
I can find no way to object to this statement. It is a way, perhaps THE way, for those whom are not pushing The Narrative or other officially approved thoughts to be heard, to give lie to the false statements of the promulgators of The Narrative, and to get the truth out there when those charged with that responsibility "politely" decline to do so.
I have always shunned social media. I hate what it has done to society, to young people who would rather sit side by side in silence furiously thumb-typing messages to one another over some data-slurping service than actually be with one another. It has shortened attention spans, caused endless scores of people to become addicted to the instant dopamine hit of some random person hitting "like" on their latest vapid, pointless prattle about what they had for dinner, only to leave them depressed and jonesin' for another hit in seconds.
I used to blame smartphones for this, but I have come to realize that smartphones minus social media would be far more benign than they actually are. Social media by itself, sans smartphone, which means it would have to be done via computer, would also be relatively harmless. It's the combination of social media and a computer that is always on, and always with you, that is the threat.
Social media, in many ways, resembles the legacy media. If you read the New York Times, watch CNN or MSNBC, or tune in to your local network news, you're getting a curated, slanted sample of "news" that is designed to elicit leftist behaviors from you. If you get your news from Facebook, you get the same exact thing. If you Google Kamala Harris, you get fluff pieces on how great she is, with the negative stuff well hidden way down the list. If you Google Donald Trump, you get that he's "literally Hitler," with the actual story way down the list, or omitted completely.
If you ask Alexa for reasons to vote for Harris, it gives you a bunch. If you ask Alexa for reasons to vote for Trump, it says it does not want to delve into politics. But if you ask for reasons NOT to vote for Trump, why, you get a ton of 'em!
Alexa and Google search are not social media, per se, but they are information media, and you get the same as with news media... leftist propaganda.
This monopoly has been broken with Twitter X now, though. Previously, in the bad old days, Twitter was just one more social media source of the leftist talking points and nothing else. Conservatives, and conservative messages, would be filtered out, shadow-banned, and actually banned.
What a difference an eccentric billionaire makes.
Musk is not perfect by any means, but he has certainly opened up a channel for previously "too inconvenient to allow" voices to be heard. And with that being the case, I have to agree with the wise gato once again.
Time will tell whether other social media will serve a similar purpose. As long as they remain curated by leftists, for leftists, nothing will change. Facebook in particular is a source of "news" for many people, and if Zuck is serious about wanting to get out of the leftist propaganda game, Meta could become a second channel for free expression to reappear. No counting the chickens (or eating them, as cats would do) before they are hatched, though.
Don't hate. Don't blame things for how people act.
What a difference an eccentric billionaire makes. Ironic. I remember when tech billionaires were the upstarts, the nemesis of traditional billionaires who owned newspapers and television networks, banks and so on. Now the tech billionaires have "matured" into the folks they used to challenge. Circle of life?
I remember many years ago in a discussion forum (yes, face to face), with a speaker who summed up the emerging public internet and world wide web as a fundamentally new mass communication model. Mass communication media was a few to many: a few people controlled what was communicated to the many. He who controlled the printing press controlled the content printed. Radio and TV followed this model. The alternative was public assembly - where one or a few could address a few and two way communication was possible. All you needed was a space and a voice. But scope of impact was limited.
The WWW introduced a many to many model: now anyone, and everyone, could communicate with millions. Millions to millions communication. The barrier for mass communication was lowered to ground level - you needed knowledge and awareness (more than today).
One speaker noted that this new model would, ultimately, overwhelm all others. It would become the greatest human achievement towards securing and preserving freedom, an uncontrolled medium with equal access to all. That voice was one of the founders of google...so thar you go ;-).
It is not a bad thing to have contempt for the contemptible. There are many things worthy of our contempt (the word "hate" being too loaded to get near safely), and we do ourselves no favors by not having appropriate contempt for that which has earned it.
I do not truly blame the social media themselves, as they are intangible collections of code running on tangible servers who have no opinions about anything, but it's a bit of shorthand to blame the social media when one means to impugn the people who run the social media companies. I do blame them for how people act, because they are designed to make people act that way.
Social media deliberately sow the seeds of envy, "FOMO," negative self-worth, and discomfort, which compels people to spend more time on the platform to get that brief respite from a dopamine hit. Nearly everyone uses them, but few actually like it. It's an addiction, and it is meant to be by those who create it. For those who are not personally addicted, they are drawn into it because the people they care about who are addicted won't communicate with them in any other way. They aren't enjoying it either. It's a weird and destructive ritual that nearly everyone does, but that nearly everyone hates too.
Human nature was the same before smart phones and social media as it is now, but there is a marked difference in how humans behave in each instance. We're not as "free" to act out our "free will" as people think. While each person's program is slightly different, for most people, they are closely related to the programs of those surrounding them, and these programs have reacted to smartphones and social media in a fairly consistent way across various cultures. There are marked differences between cultures of, say, China, Korea, and Japan, and the western countries, yet all of them react in much the same way to social media, viewed through the small screen of an always-on smartphone.
Without the invention of smartphones, this change would not have taken place. While there are some benefits of smartphones we'd be poorer for having foregone, most of the change would be positive if they had never been invented.
Social media are marketed as being "free," but the real price is all of your privacy and personal info, which social media users gave up on before anyone really understood the implications, or how deep the rabbit hole went. When we as a species collectively did begin to understand those implications, the "your privacy for our product" transaction model was already a fait accompli, and the majority responded with a collective shrug. As a result, several generations of people (millennials forward) now think that privacy is futile, and thus pointless to even worry about. They enable the "surveillance capitalism" that drives much of the tech world by not objecting to it en masse, which makes it that much harder for those of us who do object to get by without giving away all of our privacy too.
Some fascinating points, for sure. Don't read my "don't hate" wrong: I agree completely that there are things that deserve and demand contempt. There is evil, I've seen it (and faced it). Contempt for the contemptable is a reasoned, rational thing. Hate creates blindness. Hate is a tool of those who seek to control people: it's the most history proven way to get reasonable people to do unreasonable things. So when i say "don't hate" I mean don't be manipulated, controlled, do keep your wits and critical thinking sharp. Hope that's more clear.
Social media is for me a choice. The addition assessment is thought provoking. I have personal experience with addiction in my lilfe. For the addict, it is not a choice. I understand the difference. I can see social media addiction (now that I'm looking - thanks).
I choose forums where I can enjoy the discourse. I avoid those that are not fun. I use different platforms differently. I'm not present on many. I avoid expressing political opinions on some platforms (e.g. FB), just as I do in some other real-world contexts. I choose forums where I can have conversations (like this) with people who may not completely agree but who enjoy the conversation. I consider, perhaps more than most, what I post and what parts of my life I choose to expose. I understand the business models - nothing is free so if you're not paying with $$$ you're providing something else of value. I try to educate others when I can so they can understand, and make their own choices.
I love this thread!! And agree with you in the numbing effect social media has on young people.
However, oddly enough, I have found in social media the circle of ALLIES required to feel understood in a world of shallowness. It was through private FB groups that I found moms of kids with sensory/visual/auditory processing issues that my son was experiencing. Our discussions led me to find novel treatments and therapies to help him thrive. It comforted me during a very dark time. Nowadays, it is through other private FB groups that I've found amazing support and valuable resources to fight an otherwise terminal condition.
I wonder IF the difference stems from lived experiences and the fact that I grew up (60s, 70s) without media for the most part.
I think many of us - inquisitive, curious, non-conforming types - cherish this type of honest and real connection in an increasingly materialistic and disposable world.
That said, kiddos should not have access to electronics through their elementary years. Their ability to experience humanity has been impaired, for sure. And the public school woke agenda is making it worse by discouraging intelligent dissent.
The Regime's demand for censorship amounts to an attempt at monopoly control of people's minds and thought itself. While all monopolies are bad for consumers, this is the absolute worst kind and must be resisted fiercely.
Orwellian doublespeak is the dominant way issues are framed today. Empirical data is treated as misinformation while blatant lies are presented as unquestionable truth. The easily manipulated are goose stepping to authoritarian tyranny.
Nearly three decades ago I gave up law and went all-in on the then-nascent internet, www and related technologies.
I saw clearly the promise and potential of a truly global, open mechanism to publish, share and widely disseminate information that nearly anyone could participate in, and as a life-long free thinker and skeptic of assumed authority, I found the call deep in my bones and utterly irresistible.
Those were heady days, a Gutenberg moment in society.
I believed then that sooner or later, the point would be reached where long-standing power structures would be seriously threatened by the free flow of information, given that history unequivocally demonstrates that the authority of States and governments is based entirely upon deceit: convincing the capite censi that being ruled is justified and that all the crimes associated with rule, particularly wars, conscription, and the taxation, debasement and other forms of mass theft that makes them possible are for the "common good".
We have reached that point. Regimes all over the planet are rapidly losing the ability to lie with impunity, and they rightly see it as an existential threat, and make no mistake, they will do whatever they deem necessary to attempt to stay in control.
If, as I hope and pray, we are living through the death throes of the most ancien régime of them all, then we are also living in very dangerous times, as it is certain that Leviathan will not slip gently into the night. Quite the opposite.
I have been preparing for years, and implore others to do the same. Times are likely to become more difficult, but stay focused on what the future could be once the dust settles and Leviathan's sarcophagus is sealed, and the freedoms out forefathers fought and died for can be won once again.
Well, TwitterX (think of it like gender-neutral Freedom Media) might be Freedom Media but over at GoogleBook, Big Sundar is watching and The Zuck has The Bucks to influence voter... behavior.
But Hilary says, "...we lose total control if we don't fully fund the Ministry of Truth and start busting Elon Musk's head!!!!! *spittle*" That's not verbatim. Don't quote me on that.
An interesting thing about this rant, er I mean, reasoned analysis, is that she's quoting (and seeking to remove) what is the foundation of net neutrality.
Dag. I didn't read all the way before commenting - these people paying me keep expecting stuff - and didn't realize Gato had posted this same clip in the article.
No way they are letting her roam free. That would ensure defeat. They are making sure she's scripted and rehearsed. Only allowing friendly interviews, pre-recorded and professionally edited. How that first clip got out is something I'm sure they're working to "fix".
OH Pi Guy! I use to live in Sparks! miss the crabcakes, utz, berger cookies, Rhebs candy and my neighbor. I now live in Texas, when I told them about the rain tax, they thought I was telling them a tall tale. When husbeast verified I was telling the truth, they just shook their heads and said Welcome to Texas/
Mrs. Pi's office is in Sparks! They don't call it Smalltimore for nothing!
Love crab cakes, ashamed of the rain tax. Current legal dimwitted Lawfare on the Locals is that Baltimore City just last night passed a bill to make Gas-powered Leaf Blowers illegal subject to a to-be determined fine. Because they're loud and they hasten the boiling of the atmosphere.
But the dirt bikes in the streets at all hours? They just let those go. *shrug* Unforeseen response expected to be that all landscape contractors use Gas-powered generators to charge the batteries for their electric leaf blowers.
So, besides the crab cakes, sounds like you've made a wise choice.
Yeah, Free Minds and Free Markets isn't exactly how MD Politics has ever rolled.
We're in a pretty rural part of North Baltimore County. Still close enough to cry at the actual stadium when the O's were eliminated from the playoffs last week, but no one stops you at the cornfield and the horse own corner with squeegee in hand.
But the costs have gone up under Gov Wes Moore. He's progressive even by MD standards.
Pbr and Pi Guy - Eek! I'm from York, PA where my now dead from the shot b-i-l used to talk about the Baltimorons moving in and snapping up the farms to farm no more.
I get crab cakes sent to New Mexico from MD. It's a little pricey, but what the heck? Most of them are pretty good. A New Mexican idea of a crab cake is something you really don't want to taste. But with enough green chile.......
Um....this Boomer knows tv news can't be trusted, no matter the source. I also have critical thinking skills. Perhaps the younger generations should utilize THEIR critical thinking skills. Oh. Wait.
I was an adult student (read: already a grandmother) in college. I was older than some of my teachers/professors. I saw the indoctrination first hand. Most were gracious when I countered their positions but one hated me. That didn't bother me because he was my son's age- wanna play me, kid?- but he WAS the department chair so I danced the dance and got through his course(s).
I wasn't aware as much of the indoctrination as an undergrad (late 1970s). I like to think it wasn't as overt or over the top as now, but in honest retrospective it was more about y lack of awareness of my youth. Also, the left to which the universities leaned was different than the left of today, which has adopted much of the platform that was back then "those darn republicans" like censorship. There was still some resistance to being told by the government what to teach and how. Oh how things have changed.
Kids today are trained from pre-school onward that obedience is more valuable than independent thought. History is recast of simply ignored. They are taught the agenda of civilian disarmament, dependence on governments, and the virtues of centralized government. The principles of our representative republic are not taught, the constitution not in the text books anymore. By the time they get to the university, or become university professors, the "correct think" is engrained. Basic values you and I grew up with, like self responsibility and the value of work, denigrated. Even basic concepts of community are corrupted. It's gone from "go along to get along (just for now)" to "stray too far and be eliminated".
@TIOK- Our granddaughter, 24 with a Masters and mother to a 7 month old, has all but eliminated us because our politics are too far apart. She thinks we're too far right (we are moderates- everything in life in moderation except coffee. Coffee gets a pass) but we feel she and her fiance are too far left to be productive members of society even though he works 2 full time jobs and is working towards his Masters. There's more to life than paying the bills and we're hoping they see that. Oh. And they're both products of private Catholic schools, elementary through post-grad. The university I attended is a Catholic one. Just throwing that out there.
It is sad (and wrong) when politics impact family. My wife simply forbids me to talk politics at family gatherings. Discretion being the better part of valor, or at least, keeping domestic harmony. We sent our son to private school from 5th grade onward, but found that it was only different, not really better. In California, the private school curriculum has to follow state requirements. The text books are the same. The "culture" where he went to school (Santa Cruz) is pretty far gone when it comes to basic values like honor and integrity. He learned those things from his parents, and scouting. He works hard, and gets stuff done, and makes us proud. his path is different than mine - which was different than my parents - so that's a family tradition of sorts.
Perhaps a Catholic school was quite different. Still, if you have a grandson in law who works 2 jobs to support his family (and a grand daughter who chose him), that's not doing so bad. at 24 learning to pay bills through hard work is a good thing IMO. Their priorities may shift as they gain some experience in life - and that 7 month old becomes a toddler (and so on). I know that happened to me.
Sadly, the lesson that CBS will learn from this event is to not release previews of interviews. Without the original preview, we would have never known that they hot swapped the answers.
indeed. and therefor the lesson that we must learn from it is "never trust CBS" and the more widely we may spread that lesson, the better off we all shall be.
Do you have a link for that video? Is it on YouTube.
It's just too good not send around
link is in the stack
My bad.
If you're talking about the 60 minutes video that Maze made, it's here:
https://x.com/mazemoore/status/1843664856446316758
I'm trying to sort out the editing. It is so creative I'm wondering if it's not actually Kamala Harris but a deep fake...can I use "deep" in the same context as Harris? I guess it's more of a shallow fake?
It's an answer to an entirely different question.
That is actually my first guess, as 60 minutes is famous for this trick. They do it a lot. So much it's not even subtle. Just good entertainment.
AI??
Oh thx man.
https://x.com/mazemoore/status/1843664856446316758
Here's the original. You can hear where they got the clips to parse together the fake.
After their "creative editing" with DeSantis and Publix, Stahl's apologia for the Biden laptop, and the Dan Rather follies, why would anyone trust CBS and 60 Minutes?
The first fraud of which I was aware was the editing of Gen. Secor (sp?) in the 80s to make his answers the opposite of what he really said, intended to torpedo his run for public office (it did); he sued but because he was seeking public office, the courts ruled against him - free press protected the network - but that judge wrote pages and pages of searing condemnation of what CBS had done, declaring it unethical and immoral while upholding the 1st amendment protection. Then CBS lied about what the judge wrote.
More recently there was the Chevy trunks a few years ago, where it failed to explode in a crash so the had Hollywood special effects guys rig it with explosives, Mythbustesr style, and showed that claiming it just happened. GM actually prevailed in court on that one.
To call that show and the network pond scum or swamp slime is an insult to scum and slime.
The list of fraudulent stories and doctored interviews is extensive!
Not to defend 60 Minutes, but the fraud involving the trucks was Dateline, not 60 Minutes. At least they are innocent of that one.
Anyone who thinks 60 minutes or the network worthy of respect are madly disconnected from reality. 60 minutes in particular has decades (at least 4) of repeated fraud. Editing interviews to misrepresent what was said, such as editing a "no" when the interviewee said "yes", is standard procedure. Public admissions and court records are full of examples. I laugh out loud when someone says something like "I trust CBS and 60 minutes" and starts me thinking about selling them a bridge or beach front property in Nevada.
At least we can hope Killifornia slides off into the Pacific and Nevada becomes beachfront property. 🤔
It's like we need an "Angie's List" of trusted information sources.
But then would we call it the Ministry of Truth?
Hey - If you'd like, I can make a list.
You can trust me. I like numbers and stuff.
The Commenters on SS are my 'trusted information sources' - some moreso than others. But when I see certain Commenters on different SubStacks who faithfully write with the same sensibility, they've passed my litmus test.
This is not correct, that we need someone else's list.
We are obliged to CALIBRATE all sources of information.
Do you recall how difficult it was to reconcile quantum mechanics and relativistic physics in undergraduate science? Have some sympathy for Galileo's church judges who could plainly understand that the earth upon which they stood was stable, and the Sun, Moon, and stars passed overhead.
The real challenge is to be able to let go of preexisting positions (in medicine this is called confirmation bias and anchoring when clinging to an initially incorrect diagnosis) and integrate new facts.
The bad news is that this requires considerable time and effort.
A more efficient scheme is to sort out lies and liars by the criteria "intentional" or "ignorant."
In most courses 90% is a good mark, demanding 100% is damaging (requires too much agreement with authority.) Before the Vietnam War-induced American grade inflation 80% would have been an Oxford "First."
Sadly, I fell by the wayside at "how difficult it was to reconcile quantum mechanics and relativistic physics in undergraduate science?"
There are good courses online now for more relaxed and mature consideration, but it may still require a real human to teach these things.
They either make your brain hurt or expand your comprehension.
Best of luck! R
It still took me 30 years and a visit to a working lab to understand that the PCR and genomics stuff was not discrete but all statistical pattern matching.
What a very interesting topic "reconciling quantum mechanics and relativistic physics"
Reminds me of the work of Prof C K Raju who raises excellent points about the History of Mathematics and how it is taught.
It’s a bit long so make popcorn sit back and prepare to be impressed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm6d-bUmmGg
Most of what we take for granted as discreet are actually probabilistic phenomena. I had this problem when trying to reconcile classical thermodynamics with statistical thermodynamics.
Hey, Hillary - HERE'S your deep fake that you are so worried about. Guess CBS will be at the top of your list to control.
I don't trust any of the dinosaur media.
I refer to them as “See? BS”
Pair that fraudulent edited version of the answer to the lambasting that CBS News management gave to one of their (respected) journalists to expose the bias of Ta-Nihisi Coates.
Pretty clearly, CBS News lacks credibility. Utterly.
Well said.
TV is for entertainment and selling prescription drugs. The "news" programs maintain the same purpose and follow the same scripts.
i am not entertained.
(flexes like maximus)
Nor am I. (relaxes minimus, but strains piriformis)
Funny. But not if you have a permanently strained piriformis.
🤣
Lmao
"What we do in life, echoes in eternity."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDpTc32sV1Y
It's going to get worse...and so will the tantrums.
"The tantrums will continue until morale improves"?
It's truly remarkable.
Literally Orwellian.
Fact checking now equals censorship.
They are, quite literally, keeping facts in check.
Quote from Dr. Jack Kruse I heard this morning: " "Facts" don't have to make sense, fiction does."
That's brilliant, actually.
Sounds like something a political Commissar would say.
That's pretty good.
ah...but...oh never mind.
LoL
Asking questions is heresy.
Suggesting alternatives is apostasy.
Saying "No thanks" is treason.
I think a slogan from one of the two main characters of an old 2000AD comic has never been more apropos for the USA and the EU and the British rump-empire too:
"Be Pure! Be Vigilant! Behave!"
Of course, that character was the tyrant of the Human Galactic Empire and not above going around ordering people boiled alive for looking at him funny. . .
I don't remember much about that one...was the tyrant named "Hillary" by any chance? Oh wait, no, that was back in reality....
Doctor Evil?
Hehe, no I'm afraid not - the comic premiered in 1980. "Nemesis the Warlock" by Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill.
Nope, it's the other Mike Meyers character.
No - the _other_ other Mike Meyers character.
https://youtu.be/qybaIYP6eHc?si=asICA8eYkLN7dhDK&t=18
I keep telling y'all, Orwell was a time traveler. He was here. That's how he nailed 2020-2024 so exactly - he took good notes!
Or what is past is future.
*String Theory had enters the chat*
The "Now" has been now for years...now.
Or... do you mean Now?
I agree. No need to bring up whining Yankee fans in this thread, though.
LOL
*remembers he's donning an Orioles cap, shrinks back into hedges all Homer-like*
Whining Yankee fans wish they had the KC pitching staff.
Lolol. You beat me to it.
Costas is awful as well.
I can't figure out why we're supposed to think Bob Costas is a good play-by-play guy?
He's used to be decent. I think he's going senile
Such a great thread!
Are you subtly hinting at his Covid shots?
We also need to keep circulating "Kamala Unedited" versions of herself. It's another irony that throughout the last four years they claimed that the "Biden moments of incoherence" were the ones that were edited out of context.
https://makeagif.com/i/MqduUc
Yes, but if the original is then leaked, they'll be done, stick a fork in them.
The lie was not the sin, getting caught lying was the sin.
The only truth you can ever be assured off is that which you directly experience. Everything else you encounter is problematical in the degree of truth it might contain.
Remember this:
From Orwell's 1984:
"War is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength."
War is peace is intended to show the unity in hatred of an enemy. Freedom is slavery encourages members to find freedom in serving the party, because they will not find it on their own. Ignorance is strength encourages members to rely on the strength of the party because they cannot possibly know as much.
That's why I enjoy wearing this "Ministry of Truth" t-shirt everywhere I go! 👇
we-the-people-are-pissed-off-2.creator-spring.com/listing/mof2
also remember:
the war is not meant to be won. the war is meant to be continuous.
Remember that $60 Billion in aid to Ukraine means $60 Billion in stuff sold to the American government… minus expenses 🙄
No, it's even worse than that. In practice, that means $60 billion of "loans" or outright grants ultimately paid by the American taxpayer. Where this money goes is largely unaccountable, but it's safe to guess most of it finds its way into the pockets of rich individuals, corporations and "friendly" (?) governments.
Professor Moriarty knew where it was at.
The 20 years of war in Afghanistan didn't end. They just took a short break and moved it to Ukraine. Now they are talking about opening a new location in the Middle East.
boom!
Time is money, money is opium...
Even first-hand experience doesn't guarantee that one has found "truth." We are vulnerable to a number of pitfalls, whether at the physical level (e.g. an optical illusion) or more complex errors of thought. The best we can do is acquire a store of general knowledge that -- we hope -- is mostly "true" and also logical and other reasoning skills so that we can sort out information presented to us as best we can.
Even the truth you directly experience may not be accurate. We are often deceived by our own perceptions.
My wife watched the 60 Minutes-clip over my shoulder. Her comment on Harris way of expressing herself:
"She talks the same way an aged alcoholic does, same incoherent fumbling for words"
When she said it, I couldn't unsee/unhear it. Spot on, I think - I know the ravages of alcohol and drug use very well, having lost (as I'm aware of) six friends to that, all dead before age 30.
Could it simply be that Harris is showing the effects of alcohol-induced dementia?
I think it's just garden-variety nincompoopism though of course she may well have overdosed on precious bodily fluids during her rise in Democratic politics.
"garden-variety nincompoopism"
😂🤣
is that a clinical term?
if not...should be.
It is something how far the party loyalty can be pushed. It used to be that to be a successful figure head required some charisma. You may not agree with them, but JFK had charm, LBJ had a sharp wit, Jimmy Carter was...well an honest man, and despite all indications he's a terrible human, Bill Clinton had charm, charisma, wit and gave a great speech. Even Barack, in person, was charismatic and a good speaker. They all could sound intelligent, coherent and even rational.
Biden was never all that good in public appearances, and Kami has been kept out of sight for most of this administration's term. It's like the real rulers of The Party aren't even trying to pretend that the figure head has any power or expectations of being capable.
I sure disagree with you here. Even as an adolescent I thought JFK was not as sold. I think Bill Clinton has always been skeevy. I voted for Obama twice and by the second term the luster was seriously fading.
And Carter? He turned out to be a schmuck in the end too.
We were told there was charisma. All any of these guys attracted was campaign money and the lusts of the want-to-be-powerful who found a vehicle to jump on.
The real truth? All of these people are garbage. The biggest snow job in American history was that of the Kennedy mystique. Jackie was nothing but a hooker with a finishing school accent and you'd think two dead babies because of her husband's STDs would've been a financial arrangement too far.
I was over Obama by his first year. Thought he was a pu$$y. I stood in the cold at his first inauguration too. He let the banksters go scottfree. He didnt really end wars and now he’s got what he really wanted—immense wealth and puppet mastering fun. Among the worse of presidents.
It turns out that negligent parenting is bad for all of us.
Even though I campaigned for him, Obama lost me when appointed the Chicago criminal Rahm Emmanuel as his chief of staff. That was about day 1.
I didn’t know much truth then. I live near Chicago. I should have known but I despised Bush and his warmongers. But , they never went away. Just squatting in place. .the democrats left me. I didn’t leave. Good riddance.
I enjoy disagreement and discourse, but I'm not really seeing the disagreement here. I think all your points are accurate.
The difference between those others and Biden or Harris is that they prior folks scrubbed up well, could follow a script, and had some kind of charm that people could feel. Bill Clinton was scum, no argument, but I attended an event at which he spoke and could feel his charm. He had poise and commanded the room. I didn't agree with what he said, but I could see why people had a positive emotional reaction. I've seen things with Obama pretending to speak "off the cuff" in which he is charming, even reasonable sounding, even as he speaks total nonsense. Even LBJ had a charm of sorts.
Carter was a different story. He was selected because he was seen (and presented) as an honest man. The Party capitalized on the successful scandal around Nixon, which tainted Ford. Carter was hard to like, easier to respect. Did not change the fact he made some tragic errors as CiC and his administration's policies were disastrous.
I've heard Biden speak. First in 2008. He may have once had something, but by 2008 it was gone. He was overtly corrupt and proud of it. His speech was offensive in content and poorly delivered. When he was selected by The Party in 2020 I was surprised. Then I thought this is a loyalty test - just how far can The Party push the faithful. The answer is now clear: those calling the shots see no limits. Proof: Harris. QED. If Biden surprised me, selection of Harris mystifies me.
I've often said that many of those faithful followers of The Party remain so because they believe in what the party once was. That is probably incorrect. They believe in what they think the party was. It probably never was what they believe, at least not in my lifetime.
The other difference is that with some of those I felt like they were part of the decision making process (maybe not JFK and Clinton). It is clear to me that neither Biden nor Harris has any role in setting policy or priorities.
My disagreement is on the charisma and charm and likeability of everyone you mentioned prior to Biden. Though for many decades I thought Carter was a decent and honorable man. I really could not stop myself from liking LBJ but this is a problem I have sometimes. I can't stop liking Mel Gibson, neither.
I agree with your conclusions about Biden and his selection, but he was always a miserable scumbag visibly proud of his nonexistent intellect. It's grimly hilarious that in all the Democratic howling about Justice Thomas, they omit we owe his seat to Biden.
Though I voted for Obama twice, every "folks" that dropped out of his mouth ate away at my initial enthusiasm and my second vote for him was really just to prevent Romney from becoming President. (Every time I see that man I think of Max Headroom.)
I was going to disagree with you about Romney, but, yeah, I see it!
I generally ignored Biden until 2008, but looking at some old clips, yup, what you said. Saying I could see why people were charmed by Clinton doesn't mean I liked or supported Clinton. I never voted for him. He was clearly scum, and Hillary anywhere near power was scary. I was over party loyalty before then. Likewise Obama: I could see the powers behind his figure-heading and knew the agenda. It was no worse than what I expected (which was plenty bad).
I think we may disagree on Justice Thomas. I supported his appointment and are mixed on his performance. I also supported the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor, and thought she might have some integrity and not just vote as The Party directs. On her, I admit I as wrong. But still I've found some of her writing interesting.
You're looking for character, when in truth they are just playing a character. The quality of their acting is the principle skill needed to get elected. I've gotten to the point where I don't really care about their persona any more, only that they enact policies that I support.
"I'm a patriot and I love my country and I'm for women's rights and I want prosperity and I'm for the Middle Class and the working man and ..."
"Yeah sure. Now shut up and get to work doing what you said you'd do".
The persona of Trump and Kamala are way beyond the bounds of normal, but at they made this election entertaining. They've directly caused the generation of more memes, jokes, and crazy narratives than I've ever seen in my lifetime.
I disagree.
Really? You know these politicians personally? Or can you determine that they are truly garbage by their appearances on TV? I for one would like to know this amazing method by which you can make these determinations with such certainty. It would be a boon to manking.
Given her nick-name "Kneepads" and her known affiliations with Willie Brown, the "overdosed on precious bodily fluids"-phrase gives rise to very unwelcome images.
It's like she doctored in strange love, no?
She doctored in a traditional route of the untalented in any other art.
I will say though that there may also have been the unfortunately not-rare seeking of a parental figure too. In photos from those days she is really glowing when seen on Willie's arm. There was a very ugly custody battle during Kamala's parents' divorce.
I've said before that Kamala has no interior sense of identity. She did indeed decide to turn herself into an American black woman with an accent nobody in her birth family ever had and which was not of any common speech in Montreal where she spent her middle school years. She made a political and not a cultural choice and serving others has served her well so far.
That was a very insightful and thought provoking analysis. But what my brain retained is that you called politics an art. lol.
It was sexual servicing I was calling the art, though.
🤣
lol.
It's possible, but she reminds me too much of the functional alcoholics that I knew. Same behavioral characteristics as when those people were on the sauce, and between binges. I wouldn't be surprised if her alcoholism was revealed by an insider in the future. In fact, I'm expecting it.
She still seems to have nice skin. I remember seeing a closeup photo of Hillary a few years ago and I was shocked that a woman with that much money couldn't manage to buy herself a good beauty cream. She looked dreadful and the spackling couldn't hide it.
Sometimes things are very simple. Kamala, like Obama, has no interior identity. And it often happens, sadly, that children of very smart capable people turn out to be dolts themselves. Genetics is a swamp.
So you take a woman who is herself deficient in any spark of individuality and only had a genuine physical prettiness when she was young; some serious father issues; the choice to become a Southern-inflected black woman when she is not even a black woman; and recruited as a useful political object who smacked up against her own utter total vapidity that a national spotlight stripped bare.
Of course she might start some heavy drinking now...
Based on her past associations, it's a given she participated heavily in California elite party culture. To what extent, we don't know. However, for those with no interior identity, drugs and alcohol can easily become a coping mechanism.
"When she said it, I couldn't unsee/unhear it."
Neither can I now. It's totally on target.
It's just that she cannot think on her feet.
I'm thinking maybe you can put the period before "on" ;-).
I've spent some time around politicians in DC, and worked with some beltway insiders. In general I'm told, consistent with my own limited experience, none of these political folks are idiots, they just play idiots on TV. My insider contacts add "except for Maxime Waters, AoC and Kamala Harris - they're as vacant as they appear". I've not met any of those, but trust some folks who have. I had doubts about including Harris in that list, based on rumors of how she somewhat cleverly obtained "leverage" to progress her career, but the last month or so have removed my doubts.
Cunning is not a synonym for intelligent. There's no depth to them. They just hate losing and will do anything to avoid the horror.
They probably follow a normal curve for intelligence but they surely lack balance in applying it, in so many words most politicians have a mental disease in the same way that a criminal (indeed as a sociopath) may also be intelligent, perhaps even highly intelligent, but badly adjusted to the world. No one who wants to be a politician likely deserves to be. There's been a few, Massey, Ron Paul, who seem genuinely interested in being a public servant and feel compelled in a classical way. But even giving them the benefit of the doubt even the most principled and morally centered person has got to be revulsed by it all to stay more than one term. Maybe they think they really can fix it, can't understand their motivation. In any case, Kamala, I don't know, it's really tough to act that vapid all the time. Plenty of actors can do it but even they have to sometimes let their guard down and be themselves during interviews or in candid moments. She only seems dumber unscripted.
I've met some in DC who clearly do think they are superior to "commoners", especially in the staff of congress. From my observation and conversation with long time "inside the beltway" folks, things are changing. It used to be seen more as "the job" - playing the roll to the best of their ability following the script provided by the directors. Members of congress would take opposite sides in debate, often energetically, on the floor, but still be respectful, even friends. There seems much more zealots and intolerance today. Certainly the concept of ethics, honor and respect are far less reflected in the new breed of politician. Not that there weren't always zealots, sociopaths and a-holes but it seems like more often now that is expected behavior.
Modifying this: shortly after I wrote that, I was at a meeting in which AoC chose to bless us with her presence. Yup, exactly what I was told. Arrogant, rude, and not even trying to learn things.
🤔😂
There has been a LOT of smoke around that suggestion.
They've been saying the last few days that the bag of coke in the WH was hers. How about that.
It was also my impression the very first time I heard her talk 5 years ago, the exceptions being her acceptance speech and the debate (I don't want to imagine how much training/couching it took to achieve that). I totally agree with your wife.
Was couching a Freudian slip or purposeful? Funny.
Given her “routine” performance versus her performance on the debate stage, it lends a lot of credibility to the claim her earrings were Bluetooth earbuds.
That’s an intriguing thought!
Just to put in a word for aging boomers (of which I am one): I submit that a lot of us recall a different time. We read 1984 long before 1984, when many (if not all) journalists strove for a semblance of objectivity.
"Journalists strove for a semblance of objectivity" is what people tell themselves to make themselves seem coherent.
Do you trust any doctors now? After what we've witnessed this decade, do you think there was ever any reason to trust them?
I refer to decades ago. We have had biased reporting forever; but during the Civil War for instance, there were opposing views, depending on the newspaper. I do trust my doctors, actually, recognizing that they too are human beings.
https://robertyoho.substack.com/p/327-keeping-up-with-the-unbekomings
Do you think any of these three statements repeated by a retired doctor are something you would hear from your doctors?
1. Total risk of at least one chronic condition after the age of 18 in the vaccinated is now over 60%. TRUE total baseline risk for those who have never once been exposed to any vaccines and those who've also avoided the "vitamin" K shot, is 2.64%. Take your pick. - Joy Garner
2. The biggest problem that all of this comes down to is the refusal of most people to believe that people in power wish them harm, actively want to do harm to them. This is the hardest thing for most people to accept. - Bob Moran
3. Autism: The rate of autism in entirely unvaccinated individuals with no exposure to the Vitamin K shot or maternal vaccines was 0%, compared to the national rate of 2.79% in 2019 and 3.49% in 2020. – The Control Group Survey
I trust that doctors that I see now. I have been to doctors whose opinion didn't make sense to me. Never went back to them. I don't trust the doctors who want the money and/or the limelight. In 'Anytown, U.S. A.' where I live, most ppl are just regular Janes and Johns.
I think a copy of 1984 should be placed in every hotel room bedside table.
I think you must have meant "illusion" in place of "semblance". Perhaps the bias has shifted from our youth. I remember when defending free speech, denouncing censorship and protesting war were things endorsed by "the left."
When was in my early 20s I realized that every time I read a news story about something of which I had actual knowledge, they got most of it wrong. I attributed this to laziness. Only latter (early-mid 80s) did I see the political patterns. But then looking back, I could see it (clearly) in the older media reports.
Around 1983 or so a local paper ran the headline "Biker murders disabled man in [name of city]". The actual story was: A mentally ill person, who was known to frequent the neighborhood, broke down the 60 year old man's door, beat him, and brandishing a weapon threatened him and his wife, demanding money and valuables. The man complied, the AH left. Later that night, remembering that the man had a collection of valuable shot guns, he again broke into the house and demanded that the man go to his safe, and retrieve his most valuable shot gun. The man complied, thus ending the confrontation.
The "biker" came from the fact the 60 year old man owned and rode a Honda Goldwing. For those not familiar with 80s motorcycles, this is the luxury land yacht of the 2 wheeled world. Not exactly what most think of when hearing "biker". And of course self defense is not murder.
Later the pattern as clear: this paper had joined the civilian disarmament agenda, was intentionally portraying anyone who used a firearm as the criminal fringe. The truth did not play well into their agenda so they altered it.
That's really interesting... What it might mean for kids to read 1984 today. If you're married to the title it might be difficult to suspend your disbelief if the settings don't seem familiar.
Full Disclosure: I first read it sometime in the late '70s.
I read it in the mid 60s. It was required reading in high school. I thought of it as sci-fi and 1984 seemed so far off. I didn't realize that some readers thought it was a user manual.
Not to mention, lovely gato, that most scientific discoveries of significance came out of dissenting views!
Often after a century of ignoring the little guy.
In 1715, The Royal Society (like a retreat for the best minds in Western Europe to find wealthy patrons to fund their research) were convened to decide whether Light is composed of Particles, the view championed by Isaac Newton, or Light is a Wave Phenomena as promoted by Dutch Astronomer Christian Huygens.
TL;DR - Big Hitter, the Newton. So he and his posse basically second-classed all the Wave People. And the patrons stopped funding Wave Theory Research. For 100 years, until _Sir_ (as he came to be known later) Thomas Young demonstrated that the Wave Nature of Light via his famous Double Slit Demo.
It wasn't until Einstein explained the Photoelectric Effect as a evidence of the Corpuscular/Particulate Theory of Light in 1905 (Al had a real good year in '05) that Light was _finally_ accepted being a bunch of teeny tiny little pieces parts.
The Dissenting view, a crucial step to understanding Quantum Mechanics, was smothered for a century because Newton was basically a Big Weanie. For real.
"That would make him very popular" - Young Frankenstein. the movie
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/fd8601fb-88c5-4685-b3c5-41a8108f71dd
Back when I was a gradual student, I was working with an optics guy, combining holographic optical elements with solid state image sensors, both of which were very new technologies. We were explaining our work to a bunch of other gradual students. One asked if we were using wave or particle models for light and the optics guy (who was really smart) said "that depends upon who you ask!". To him, the optical guy, it was about bending and manipulating waves. To me, my sensors basically captured and counted photons. He bet them and directed them into buckets, I counted what was in the buckets. Both models worked well enough to be useful, though we knew then neither was the actual truth.
Or both? I've heard the phrase Wavicle before.
But it sure would make Physics seem a lot cooler if the Team Particle and The Wave Boys were more like Bloods and Crips.
Hell, even "Tastes great!" "less filling!"
But, no. They're all, "Hi, I'm Igon. What's your favorite Jovian Moon?!"
That's the point - it is both, or neither, use whichever model works for what you are trying to do at the moment. Filtering and refracting are wavy things. Counting is easier with particle like things. We needed both models to make something useful.
In my youth studying particle physics, some folks were pretty divided on some things, almost like B & Cs. But in a more "I'll erase your equations if you don't accept my derivation" kind of way ;-).
"I'll wipe your chalkboard!"
lol
Ok, now I give up.🙄
Gradual school. Hmm. How does that work?
According to Garp: That is where you gradually figure out you have had enough school.
From "The World According to Garp" (1982)
Hey, Pi Guy, if you're gonna go all Sheldon Cooper in here - at least throw us Pennys a bone about what the 'Corpuscular/Particulate Theory of Light' & 'the Wave Nature of Light via his famous Double Slit Demo' ARE. 😉
I'm no physicist, but I do know it's a rather lengthy answer you're asking for. There's a good Britannica-article on it (free to read) though, much better than Wikipedia:
https://www.britannica.com/science/light/Light-rays
More importantly (from my angle) is that it gives the historical background necessary to understand how Newton and Huygens and others could get their ideas in the first place, since science is like building pyramids.
I'm no physicist, but I do know it's a rather lengthy answer you're asking for.""
I'm not a physicist but I have played one for the Department of Defense.
And I meant to actually start my answer to Julie with this quote of yours.
Ooops! Didn't mean to cut in front. ;)
I was just scrolling down the thread (shouldn't that be Tom Petty-song?) and the ole' teacher's reflex kicked in.
Heh, if we want a real dissertation on it, we could ask Rudolph Rigger of Substack Riggery Pokery, as he is an actual professor of physics and researcher in Quantum Theory to boot.
Plus real funny.
Dude... Julie opened a door that y'all might never want opened again. And I apologize for cluttering up the Gatosphere.
But, man, I really love this stuff and you didn't step on nuthin. Chime in.
I've joked before that, "Hey, Baby - you ever meet a guy who's found closed-form solutions to Navier-Stokes Equations? *big toothy Happy Hour smile*" isn't the great pickup line I'd hoped so, when a woman says, "Hey, Pi - can you tell me how magnets work?" I jump in.
But, in truth, Magnets is how I won over Mrs. Pi. True story. She still has that napkin in her main purse, I think - fields, force lines, Maxwell's Equations...
I'll be in my bunk.
My first GS advisor was a professor of quantum physics. If you greeted him in the morning with something mundane like "good morning" he would respond with something like there is a finite probability that in some reference frame it is morning and good, but there is a finite probability that the universe as we perceive it will dissolve in an instant leaving us non-existent, which wouldn't be so good and of course neither "good" nor "morning" would exist. This often lead to an in depth discussion of the precise meaning of "good" or speculation on how we would make such a determination if we did not exist...all before I could get to the coffee ;-)
Hey, I'll take all the resources I can get. Pi Guy is pretty cool. I'm sure he didn't mind.
Now you're doing something to help me.
Ok, just read the article - still in the dark (see what I did there 😁) about the principles involved. But I DO appreciate the help. I AM fascinated by the interplay of the characters of Newton & Huygens and how one maneuvered to get his theory accepted.
You may well be familiar with the Edison/Westinghouse/Tesla clash but a similar thing happened with them >>>> "Feeling threatened by the rise of AC, which could be distributed over long distances much more economically than DC, Edison launched a propaganda campaign to discredit AC and convince the public it was dangerous."
https://www.history.com/news/what-was-the-war-of-the-currents
I am familiar and almost mentioned it in the comment as an analog but I was writing a lot already.
Like Newton, Edison had tremendous stature in the community and Tesla was an unknown compared to Huygens - basically the Second Best Physicist of his Time after Netwon - until he convinced Westinghouse that he had something worth investing in. Cha-ching.
Edison and JP Morgan still made out pretty okay, too.
re: "Light = Waves and/or Particles"
Optics, loosely the Study of Light, is one of the oldest "sciences" in that we so many observations of its behavior. Light, that is. Think Rainbows, or for that matter, just colors; those blurry wavy things you see when you look at your buddy Oog over a hot campfire; that scene in Forest Gump where he's looking at the reflection of an entire mountain, clear as day, on the lake between them so that there are 2 mountains, one on top of the other, inverted; Heck, just think about Shadows. And, in fact, that's a great place to start.
If you're outside in the sunlight, you can see the ground all around you fully illuminated, and in the region on the ground that blocks the sun, there's "no light" there. A Shadow, or Umbra. But there's not really "no light" there. You can still see what's there and, in fact, the division between Good People and Death Eaters isn't distinct. It's not just a lighted region then darkness. There's also a sorta fuzzy region which is, depending on the strength of the source, between those known as a Penumbra. (I ask that you suspend a little disbelief, let's ignore that a bunch of that light behind you is reflected from all over, to make the analogy a little better)
So, curious people - let's call them Scientists - were curious about the cause of this Penumbra and the behavior and composition of Light. And two bodies of thought emerged dominant: The Wave Theory and The Corpuscular Theory.
PARTICLES, CORPUSCLES (also PHOTONS, QUANTA): It's kinda easy to tell the story that Light is made up of a bunch of Teeny Tiny Little Particles - in modern physics we call these Photons; 1 Photon = 1 "Quanta" of Light - like a bunch of pebbles flying as if they were thrown from one hand, or the little pellets, Shot, that are blown out of a shotgun shell. At the right scale, and simple conditions, Light behaves much like these Particles.
We have examples of how WAVES work from tossing a stone in a pond (or maybe two? hehe) to things like the Doppler Effect - the way the pitch of a fast-approaching train rises until it passes you, where the pitch falls off as it pulls away. And I had all sorts of ideas of what I would Word Out when I know 1 Picture = 1 Kiloword https://youtu.be/egRFqSKFmWQ?si=i-j7mRdQL8cFmaqW
, but the important Wave Property here is called Superposition. Basically, when two waves cross paths, the total Amplitude (height/swell) is just the Amplitudes of the two constituent Waves.
Maybe it's better said like this: (1) When two Crests meet, you get DoubleCrest. A Big Wave. (2) When two Troughs meet, you get a DoubleTrough. A Deep Hole. (3) If a Crest and a Trough love each other very much, you get... Nothing. Total Amplitude = 0. They literally cancel each other out. This is used in Noise Cancelling applications from some kinds of headphones to super HiFi systems on military helicopters: mic all the noise, feed it back into a Super HiFi system exactly half a cycle out of phase - Crest + Trough and reduce some of the noise.
This is a wall of text already so I'll seal up here a bit and come back. I haven't even gotten to the Exciting Part yet!
Hey, I'm lovin' it.
Last Licks on The Wave-Particle Duality
So to swing back into the Royal Academy story, after Newton bullied scientist into assuming that Light is Corpuscular, ie Made up of Particles, research focused on experiments intended to bolster the Pieces Parts side. But experiments didn't well confirm that hypothesis, or didn't rule out Waves as a (the?) best explanation. Some guys Shaving named Occam. So, after much wailing and gnashing, Thomas Young thought, "What the heck?" and set up a light source in front of a screen with two closely spaced, narrow parallel slits that let light pass through. The screen was opaque so no light gets through there. Maybe looked like this (work with me) where the Xs are screen and the Os fill the space betwen the slits | | :
[XXXXXXX| O |XX| O |XXXXXXX]
So, if Light is a bunch of little marbles, when we shine light on the screen, we would expect the Shot Pattern to look like this:
[XXXXXXX| ::: |XX| ::: |XXXXXXX]
where the : represent the Illuminated Regions. Or without the screen, this:
[ ::: ::: ]
But that isn't what Young observed. Instead, he saw this:
[ . : :: ::: :::: ::: :: : . ]
The Lighted regions showed up in bands, stripes of decreasing intensity with the Region _between the slits_ the most well illuminated, and each subsequent band less bright as you move toward the edges. Just like the Waves in the Double Slit Demo from the Wave Tank Video from previous comment.
LIGHT IS A WAVE!!! And there was much rejoicing.
So by about the mid- 1800s, physicists figured they had pretty much all of Physics sewed up. There a few questions in Thermodynamics, especially nagging explanation for why metals that were illuminated by x-rays re-emitted didn't behave they way we expected. The current thinking was that, the Brighter the Light you shone on the target, the greater the emitted radiation would be. This is known as The Photoelectric Effect, and it defied explanation.
A couple of world-class scientists, Lord Rayleigh and Sir James Jeans, published their findings, the summary of which came to be known as The Ultraviolet Catastrophe. Basically, the old theories worked well enough when the beam's wavelength (dang it - this is supposed to be a Particle explanation!) was long, or conversely its frequency was short. So Radio, Infrared, and most of Visible Light behaved as The Rules said they would.
But, as the Impinging Illumination's frequency approached Ultraviolet with its higher frequency, the re-radiation was much much more intense then it should be as predicted by the models. Physics hit a lull punctuated by the discovery of the Electron by JJ Thompson in the 1890s: he found a Particle where most scientists expected something Wavy. The Plum Pudding Model was the previous explanation - that the Electrons were just some Sweet Goo around a bunch of Raisins standing in for Atomic Nuclei. But Max Planck demonstrated that the Energy was definitely being chunked upon emission - there are no Half-Chunks, or 1.34 Chunks. Just 1 or 2 or 7 and so on. The Energy itself can only be emitted in chunks. It is Quantized. *spooky music*
The Denouement goes like this: Einstein got together with a bunch of his other Mediocre Physics Friends to drink brandy and smoke cigars and be nerds. He figured, "What if it's not that the Energy is merely emitted in chuncks like Planck suggested. What if the actual Light Energy itself is just a bunch of Chuncks? And the Chuncks themselves... wait for it... have Wavelengths. He called them Light Quanta and we call them Photons now. But he did some math, published the paper in a prominent Physics Journal, and the world went absolutely ape$#!+.
The only explanation, therefore, is that Light is Both - or some say Neither - a Wave or Particle but some kluge of Wavicleness depending upon how we set up our experiment, how we choose to observe it. And this Wave-Particle Duality is the foundation of Quantum Mechanics, which has over the course of just about a century has been found to explain an incredible amount of phenomena culminating in such useful things as Transistors, Cryptography, Lasers**, and famous safe-cracker and bongos player Richard Feynman.
---
**Crazy Parting Thoughts: Einstein was a big hitter and also posited the concept of Stimulated Emission that led Charles Townes to create the first Maser [microwave laser, if you will] in a different paper published in 1905. Plus an explanation for the Brownian Motion of Atoms on the surface of electrically-conducting materials. No one had figured that out either.
Did I mention that he also published _another_ paper in that same year? Something about... Relativity. I seem to recall that it was a pretty big hit, too.
Al had a real good '05.
Well, now I can see why Mrs. Pi still has that napkin! Your explanation to a Penny was very good - scientifically, historically and non-condescending.
Might I enquire if the Thomas Young you mentioned is the same Thomas Young of the Young-Helmholtz Trichromatic Theory of Color Vision? I am familiar with him so at least I'm in the same ball park with you - 'cept your seats are right behind the plate & I'm up in peanut heaven.
*beams* Awesome. It's harder to explain without the math. Math is like a picture - it's worth a whole lot of words, too - so I'm glad you liked it.
And at first I almost said 'Yes' to the 'same Thomas Young' because I knew Helmholz was of the same era and, knew it was Young and Helmholz who contributed the Trichroma Theory (basically the RGB controls we use in, say, PowerPoint to pick colors) and Color itself is a pretty fascinating subfield with a lot of explanations - like, why do computer screens use Red-Green-Blue combos and printer inks use Cyan-Magenta-Yellow mixes? - but did a little Google Fu to verify it.
Smart People sometimes run in families and wasn't sure if maybe Young had a famous son or brother. But one and the same.
The aforementioned JJ Thompson won a Nobel for his discovery of the Electron - The Particle... - and his son George won a Nobel in the '30s for discovering the _Wave_ Properties of the Electron. One pre- and one post-Quantum Explanations (I didn't intend to go Wave-Particle there but it presented.
And there are a mess of Bernoullis in Math and Science. The most famous, Daniel, contributed to Fluid Mechanics. Bernoulli's Principle explains why an airfoil lifts an aircraft when it's forced through air. And one of his uncles, Johan, is famous for his contributions to Integral - or Summartorium - Calculus along with Leibniz - Newton's foil in the "Who discovered Calculus First?!" - and some guy named *checks notes* Christian Huygens.
"Penny's" *snicker*
I would love to. I didn't think anyone would really care.
To be continued...
Btw, have you read the book, "1666 : Plague, War, and Hellfire" by Rebecca Rideal. Fascinating look of that year in England. Here's how one person reviewed it: "Historical detail rubs up against historical colour so that we are offered factual accounts of the Plague's grim impact and the extent of the Fire's damage alongside the diary recollections and eye-witness accounts of Pepys, John Evelyn, William Taswell and others."
Only thing is I read this book and I thought for sure that Newton was discussed in it. It's STILL a good book. Perhaps just having a 'matriarch moment'. 🤷🏻♀️
I have not heard of that. The plague itself is why Newton was not in Oxford and was on a farm when, as fate would have it, an apple fell from the ground. And he asked the question, "Why did it not fall some other direction than down?" And the rest is history.
It's not often that we can find a silver lining in a third of your population contracting Y. Pestis but, if not for it, who know how long it would've taken for some other lesser mind(s) to discover Differential Calculus, study Opticks (the title of his own book on the separation of colors; these guys were all giants in multiple fields), and his Magnum Opus, the Theory of Gravitation. He basically fleshed out a theory of Calculus to explain his Gravitation problem.
Have you read anything about his personality? I read somewhere - I THOUGHT it was in this book! - that he was prone to be a volatile, hermit-like guy who always wanted the glory.
Oh, no, wait - that was Klaus Schwab. 😉
Short version: in some situations it can be shown that light behaves as if it is comprised of discrete particles (photons). This was the accepted model until someone was able to observe behaviors of light that did not fit the particle theory. This led to a lot of other cool observations, new theories, and a new branch of study on wave theory and behavior, which led to cool and useful things like radio. Which led to stuff like the wireless technology you are probably using as you read this :-0)
This is how real science works: we don't know truth. We know theories that explain plausibly what we can observe. We treat theories like truth while this is useful, but eventually we then we observe things not explained by our theories, so we develop new theories. People being human, many cling to old theories and resist change and even get hostile towards those making the observations that don't fit the old theories. It can take many decades to move forward. A friend of mine puts it this way: "old theories never die, but eventually, the people who cling to them will".
Long. Gunga Galunga!
"He said, 'On your deathbed, you shall receive total consciousness.' So I got that going for me. Which is nice."
Isaac also lost his shirt in the South Sea Bubble: https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/article/73/7/30/800801/Isaac-Newton-and-the-perils-of-the-financial-South, perhaps he should’ve stuck to improving the quality of the Pound at the Mint vs. investing and directing “Science”? ;)
Absolutely true. Or relatively true? Or probabilistically true?
[sorry, physics humor]
In the field of physics, breakthroughs happen as observation gets better, and what we observe isn't what we predicted, but only when this leads to questioning and revising the models we hold. Without challenging what we "know" there is no progress; inquiry is essential to useful science.
In the area of solid state physics, where we've seen rate of change much greater than in other fields of physics, we routinely break the "impossible". Each theoretical limit on how small we can make a transistor has been blown through. If the boundaries were not challenged, they could not be revised, and we'd not be posting our views on pages like this using personal computers, and the plethora of solid state physics that goes into communicating over great distances.
Your ability to view cat videos on your favorite cat video site happened only because physicists were allowed to challenge what was known, and technologists realize there are few absolute rules. The two absolutes live by:
1. Everything you knew yesterday is valid yesterday.
2. It's only impossible until you've done it.
Question everything, reevaluate assumptions frequently, and cling only to those two fundamental principles above.
Advancements are kind of a Branches of Government thing but with the three being Science, Math, and, as a super over-general term, I'll say engineering but technology might be right too.
So the Science Guy goes out and sees some stuff. Then he sees more stuff. A handful more stuff-seeing events and the Science Guy says, "Hmmmm... I think I see a pattern." Then he shares his findings.
Math Guy says, "You know, when I started with Basic First Principles, rearranged the terms, cancelled out all the non-magnetic electrically neutral terms... and what is _this_ term for."
Science Guy's all "Mean culpa - I didn't see that!" Then they both look over at Engineer Guy and he's all, "*thumbs under suspenders* I can make one of those." So he measures once and cusses twice but eventually ends up with a pretty banging _this_ Detector. "But it's a little wide-spectrum. Keep an eye out on the edges."
So Science Guy goes back into the lab, now able to Really See Some Stuff. And he says, "I see _this_ all righty! But... what those two _thats_ over there. And is that a Big Whoa Nelly?"
And Math Guy ... Well, it kinds just repeats over and over like that until they run out of funding.
LoL! So here is how I learned that I was not a physicist.
Working on particle physics in a famous university. Tasked with designing and building a new detector, and integrating it into a data acquisition system (to the physicists this was one step above floor sweeping). So the experiment starts running, and after a day or two one of the physicists runs into the room excited with a stack of print-out (how we viewed data in those days). He'd circled several things on the paper; all the physicists gathered around and started to ooh and ah getting more and more excited. I leaned over to my advisor/boss and asked "what are we excited about?" He said "that young man is something no human has observed before. We have advanced human knowledge by this much" (holding his fingers very close together to indicate a small but significant thing). Wow, I thought, that means the stuff I built actually worked. Relaying the story later to my dad (an engineer), he smiled and said "there you go, you are an engineer, not a scientist".
Which was quite a major realization. Also a significant change in my life's trajectory, but that's another story.
That's a good story.
I thought I was going to do Condensed Matter Research. Now I'm some sort of Utility Player at an e-commerce outfit that's keeping me off the streets.
The only science modeling I do these days is Acoustics. That is, I do a couple or three Open Mics a month.
Keep up the acoustics. Support live music!
I remember one of my sons coming home from high school after having listened to a few weeks of history lectures on pre WW2 era, saying, "God, I HATE the progressives!" That history teacher is one of a kind.
It made the agony of starting two schools in which we were able to hire our own teachers worth the effort.
I had the same reaction when I was taught about the "progressive" era. That was before the leftists (at least as far as my kiddo brain knew) had begun referring to themselves in that way. They were still calling themselves liberals then, as far as I can remember, even though they were (then as now) anything but.
"Roosevelt himself called Mussolini “admirable” and professed that he was “deeply impressed by what he has accomplished.” The admiration was mutual. In a laudatory review of Roosevelt’s 1933 book Looking Forward, Mussolini wrote, “Reminiscent of Fascism is the principle that the state no longer leaves the economy to its own devices.…Without question, the mood accompanying this sea change resembles that of Fascism.” The chief Nazi newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter, repeatedly praised “Roosevelt’s adoption of National Socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies” and “the development toward an authoritarian state” based on the “demand that collective good be put before individual self-interest.”
~ http://reason.com/archives/2007/09/28/hitler-mussolini-roosevelt
"social media is the defense against this dark art."
I can find no way to object to this statement. It is a way, perhaps THE way, for those whom are not pushing The Narrative or other officially approved thoughts to be heard, to give lie to the false statements of the promulgators of The Narrative, and to get the truth out there when those charged with that responsibility "politely" decline to do so.
I have always shunned social media. I hate what it has done to society, to young people who would rather sit side by side in silence furiously thumb-typing messages to one another over some data-slurping service than actually be with one another. It has shortened attention spans, caused endless scores of people to become addicted to the instant dopamine hit of some random person hitting "like" on their latest vapid, pointless prattle about what they had for dinner, only to leave them depressed and jonesin' for another hit in seconds.
I used to blame smartphones for this, but I have come to realize that smartphones minus social media would be far more benign than they actually are. Social media by itself, sans smartphone, which means it would have to be done via computer, would also be relatively harmless. It's the combination of social media and a computer that is always on, and always with you, that is the threat.
Social media, in many ways, resembles the legacy media. If you read the New York Times, watch CNN or MSNBC, or tune in to your local network news, you're getting a curated, slanted sample of "news" that is designed to elicit leftist behaviors from you. If you get your news from Facebook, you get the same exact thing. If you Google Kamala Harris, you get fluff pieces on how great she is, with the negative stuff well hidden way down the list. If you Google Donald Trump, you get that he's "literally Hitler," with the actual story way down the list, or omitted completely.
If you ask Alexa for reasons to vote for Harris, it gives you a bunch. If you ask Alexa for reasons to vote for Trump, it says it does not want to delve into politics. But if you ask for reasons NOT to vote for Trump, why, you get a ton of 'em!
Alexa and Google search are not social media, per se, but they are information media, and you get the same as with news media... leftist propaganda.
This monopoly has been broken with Twitter X now, though. Previously, in the bad old days, Twitter was just one more social media source of the leftist talking points and nothing else. Conservatives, and conservative messages, would be filtered out, shadow-banned, and actually banned.
What a difference an eccentric billionaire makes.
Musk is not perfect by any means, but he has certainly opened up a channel for previously "too inconvenient to allow" voices to be heard. And with that being the case, I have to agree with the wise gato once again.
Time will tell whether other social media will serve a similar purpose. As long as they remain curated by leftists, for leftists, nothing will change. Facebook in particular is a source of "news" for many people, and if Zuck is serious about wanting to get out of the leftist propaganda game, Meta could become a second channel for free expression to reappear. No counting the chickens (or eating them, as cats would do) before they are hatched, though.
Don't hate. Don't blame things for how people act.
What a difference an eccentric billionaire makes. Ironic. I remember when tech billionaires were the upstarts, the nemesis of traditional billionaires who owned newspapers and television networks, banks and so on. Now the tech billionaires have "matured" into the folks they used to challenge. Circle of life?
I remember many years ago in a discussion forum (yes, face to face), with a speaker who summed up the emerging public internet and world wide web as a fundamentally new mass communication model. Mass communication media was a few to many: a few people controlled what was communicated to the many. He who controlled the printing press controlled the content printed. Radio and TV followed this model. The alternative was public assembly - where one or a few could address a few and two way communication was possible. All you needed was a space and a voice. But scope of impact was limited.
The WWW introduced a many to many model: now anyone, and everyone, could communicate with millions. Millions to millions communication. The barrier for mass communication was lowered to ground level - you needed knowledge and awareness (more than today).
One speaker noted that this new model would, ultimately, overwhelm all others. It would become the greatest human achievement towards securing and preserving freedom, an uncontrolled medium with equal access to all. That voice was one of the founders of google...so thar you go ;-).
It is not a bad thing to have contempt for the contemptible. There are many things worthy of our contempt (the word "hate" being too loaded to get near safely), and we do ourselves no favors by not having appropriate contempt for that which has earned it.
I do not truly blame the social media themselves, as they are intangible collections of code running on tangible servers who have no opinions about anything, but it's a bit of shorthand to blame the social media when one means to impugn the people who run the social media companies. I do blame them for how people act, because they are designed to make people act that way.
Social media deliberately sow the seeds of envy, "FOMO," negative self-worth, and discomfort, which compels people to spend more time on the platform to get that brief respite from a dopamine hit. Nearly everyone uses them, but few actually like it. It's an addiction, and it is meant to be by those who create it. For those who are not personally addicted, they are drawn into it because the people they care about who are addicted won't communicate with them in any other way. They aren't enjoying it either. It's a weird and destructive ritual that nearly everyone does, but that nearly everyone hates too.
Human nature was the same before smart phones and social media as it is now, but there is a marked difference in how humans behave in each instance. We're not as "free" to act out our "free will" as people think. While each person's program is slightly different, for most people, they are closely related to the programs of those surrounding them, and these programs have reacted to smartphones and social media in a fairly consistent way across various cultures. There are marked differences between cultures of, say, China, Korea, and Japan, and the western countries, yet all of them react in much the same way to social media, viewed through the small screen of an always-on smartphone.
Without the invention of smartphones, this change would not have taken place. While there are some benefits of smartphones we'd be poorer for having foregone, most of the change would be positive if they had never been invented.
Social media are marketed as being "free," but the real price is all of your privacy and personal info, which social media users gave up on before anyone really understood the implications, or how deep the rabbit hole went. When we as a species collectively did begin to understand those implications, the "your privacy for our product" transaction model was already a fait accompli, and the majority responded with a collective shrug. As a result, several generations of people (millennials forward) now think that privacy is futile, and thus pointless to even worry about. They enable the "surveillance capitalism" that drives much of the tech world by not objecting to it en masse, which makes it that much harder for those of us who do object to get by without giving away all of our privacy too.
Some fascinating points, for sure. Don't read my "don't hate" wrong: I agree completely that there are things that deserve and demand contempt. There is evil, I've seen it (and faced it). Contempt for the contemptable is a reasoned, rational thing. Hate creates blindness. Hate is a tool of those who seek to control people: it's the most history proven way to get reasonable people to do unreasonable things. So when i say "don't hate" I mean don't be manipulated, controlled, do keep your wits and critical thinking sharp. Hope that's more clear.
Social media is for me a choice. The addition assessment is thought provoking. I have personal experience with addiction in my lilfe. For the addict, it is not a choice. I understand the difference. I can see social media addiction (now that I'm looking - thanks).
I choose forums where I can enjoy the discourse. I avoid those that are not fun. I use different platforms differently. I'm not present on many. I avoid expressing political opinions on some platforms (e.g. FB), just as I do in some other real-world contexts. I choose forums where I can have conversations (like this) with people who may not completely agree but who enjoy the conversation. I consider, perhaps more than most, what I post and what parts of my life I choose to expose. I understand the business models - nothing is free so if you're not paying with $$$ you're providing something else of value. I try to educate others when I can so they can understand, and make their own choices.
Thanks for choosing to converse on substack!
I love this thread!! And agree with you in the numbing effect social media has on young people.
However, oddly enough, I have found in social media the circle of ALLIES required to feel understood in a world of shallowness. It was through private FB groups that I found moms of kids with sensory/visual/auditory processing issues that my son was experiencing. Our discussions led me to find novel treatments and therapies to help him thrive. It comforted me during a very dark time. Nowadays, it is through other private FB groups that I've found amazing support and valuable resources to fight an otherwise terminal condition.
I wonder IF the difference stems from lived experiences and the fact that I grew up (60s, 70s) without media for the most part.
I think many of us - inquisitive, curious, non-conforming types - cherish this type of honest and real connection in an increasingly materialistic and disposable world.
That said, kiddos should not have access to electronics through their elementary years. Their ability to experience humanity has been impaired, for sure. And the public school woke agenda is making it worse by discouraging intelligent dissent.
> the woman is as vapid as she is incoherent.
That is as concise a description as I've heard
The Regime's demand for censorship amounts to an attempt at monopoly control of people's minds and thought itself. While all monopolies are bad for consumers, this is the absolute worst kind and must be resisted fiercely.
I postulate two mitigations to thwart the mind control attempts:
1. Think for yourself
2. Challenge everything (especially, question authority)
3. don't shut up
That's right...3...no one expects the Spanish inquisition (gratuitous python reference)
Not to mention a gratuitous Timothy Leary reference.
Spot on
Orwellian doublespeak is the dominant way issues are framed today. Empirical data is treated as misinformation while blatant lies are presented as unquestionable truth. The easily manipulated are goose stepping to authoritarian tyranny.
That sure sounds Double Plus Ungood if you ask me.
Nearly three decades ago I gave up law and went all-in on the then-nascent internet, www and related technologies.
I saw clearly the promise and potential of a truly global, open mechanism to publish, share and widely disseminate information that nearly anyone could participate in, and as a life-long free thinker and skeptic of assumed authority, I found the call deep in my bones and utterly irresistible.
Those were heady days, a Gutenberg moment in society.
I believed then that sooner or later, the point would be reached where long-standing power structures would be seriously threatened by the free flow of information, given that history unequivocally demonstrates that the authority of States and governments is based entirely upon deceit: convincing the capite censi that being ruled is justified and that all the crimes associated with rule, particularly wars, conscription, and the taxation, debasement and other forms of mass theft that makes them possible are for the "common good".
We have reached that point. Regimes all over the planet are rapidly losing the ability to lie with impunity, and they rightly see it as an existential threat, and make no mistake, they will do whatever they deem necessary to attempt to stay in control.
If, as I hope and pray, we are living through the death throes of the most ancien régime of them all, then we are also living in very dangerous times, as it is certain that Leviathan will not slip gently into the night. Quite the opposite.
I have been preparing for years, and implore others to do the same. Times are likely to become more difficult, but stay focused on what the future could be once the dust settles and Leviathan's sarcophagus is sealed, and the freedoms out forefathers fought and died for can be won once again.
We are the ones that will make it so.
Just so.
I hereby refer to social media as "freedom media". The rest? "Legacy lies".
Well, TwitterX (think of it like gender-neutral Freedom Media) might be Freedom Media but over at GoogleBook, Big Sundar is watching and The Zuck has The Bucks to influence voter... behavior.
But Hilary says, "...we lose total control if we don't fully fund the Ministry of Truth and start busting Elon Musk's head!!!!! *spittle*" That's not verbatim. Don't quote me on that.
https://youtu.be/csSph593QcE?si=qmjSsv3TUg2BmV0T
If Trump wins I would honestly pay to see her head explode on live TV, Scanners-style.
"Scanners-style"
Meh - that's just one exploding head. Think BIG!
https://youtu.be/qsc-mA7J2DU?si=AhpOdS_XD5CPD4HL
An interesting thing about this rant, er I mean, reasoned analysis, is that she's quoting (and seeking to remove) what is the foundation of net neutrality.
Dag. I didn't read all the way before commenting - these people paying me keep expecting stuff - and didn't realize Gato had posted this same clip in the article.
A thousand pardons, Señor.
it's ok it was so good it is worth repeating ;-)
Do you think the Harris campaign is in trouble? Why else would they let her roam free?… And, is MSM as stupid as all that?
Oh , wait….. of course they are !
No way they are letting her roam free. That would ensure defeat. They are making sure she's scripted and rehearsed. Only allowing friendly interviews, pre-recorded and professionally edited. How that first clip got out is something I'm sure they're working to "fix".
They stole an election from out of the WH, imagine now that they are in the WH. No trouble for Kamala.
Once more, you get to the heart of the matter. I have been lurking here for years, and only recently became a subscriber. Thanks for what you do.
Welcome. Ride deep and dig in your spurs. It gets spicy around here.
"It gets spicy around here."
That's what the Lime Crema is for.
Welcome.
Clear your calendar for this weekend and I'll have you a t-shirt whipped up in a jiffy.
Meet me behind the Arby's Drive-thru on York Rd in Hunt Valley Sunday at 3:07am and you can grab you schwag and I'll show you the Secret Handshake.
I'll be the guy in the "My other ride is The Tardis" car.
OH Pi Guy! I use to live in Sparks! miss the crabcakes, utz, berger cookies, Rhebs candy and my neighbor. I now live in Texas, when I told them about the rain tax, they thought I was telling them a tall tale. When husbeast verified I was telling the truth, they just shook their heads and said Welcome to Texas/
Mrs. Pi's office is in Sparks! They don't call it Smalltimore for nothing!
Love crab cakes, ashamed of the rain tax. Current legal dimwitted Lawfare on the Locals is that Baltimore City just last night passed a bill to make Gas-powered Leaf Blowers illegal subject to a to-be determined fine. Because they're loud and they hasten the boiling of the atmosphere.
But the dirt bikes in the streets at all hours? They just let those go. *shrug* Unforeseen response expected to be that all landscape contractors use Gas-powered generators to charge the batteries for their electric leaf blowers.
So, besides the crab cakes, sounds like you've made a wise choice.
I am part of the middle-class that is leaving because Maryland is no longer affordable and basic rights were being eliminated.
Yeah, Free Minds and Free Markets isn't exactly how MD Politics has ever rolled.
We're in a pretty rural part of North Baltimore County. Still close enough to cry at the actual stadium when the O's were eliminated from the playoffs last week, but no one stops you at the cornfield and the horse own corner with squeegee in hand.
But the costs have gone up under Gov Wes Moore. He's progressive even by MD standards.
But I think we're staying.
Pbr and Pi Guy - Eek! I'm from York, PA where my now dead from the shot b-i-l used to talk about the Baltimorons moving in and snapping up the farms to farm no more.
I get crab cakes sent to New Mexico from MD. It's a little pricey, but what the heck? Most of them are pretty good. A New Mexican idea of a crab cake is something you really don't want to taste. But with enough green chile.......
Is the Milton Inn still in business in Sparks?
Um....this Boomer knows tv news can't be trusted, no matter the source. I also have critical thinking skills. Perhaps the younger generations should utilize THEIR critical thinking skills. Oh. Wait.
You seem to fully grasp the purpose of governments controlling education.
I was an adult student (read: already a grandmother) in college. I was older than some of my teachers/professors. I saw the indoctrination first hand. Most were gracious when I countered their positions but one hated me. That didn't bother me because he was my son's age- wanna play me, kid?- but he WAS the department chair so I danced the dance and got through his course(s).
I wasn't aware as much of the indoctrination as an undergrad (late 1970s). I like to think it wasn't as overt or over the top as now, but in honest retrospective it was more about y lack of awareness of my youth. Also, the left to which the universities leaned was different than the left of today, which has adopted much of the platform that was back then "those darn republicans" like censorship. There was still some resistance to being told by the government what to teach and how. Oh how things have changed.
Kids today are trained from pre-school onward that obedience is more valuable than independent thought. History is recast of simply ignored. They are taught the agenda of civilian disarmament, dependence on governments, and the virtues of centralized government. The principles of our representative republic are not taught, the constitution not in the text books anymore. By the time they get to the university, or become university professors, the "correct think" is engrained. Basic values you and I grew up with, like self responsibility and the value of work, denigrated. Even basic concepts of community are corrupted. It's gone from "go along to get along (just for now)" to "stray too far and be eliminated".
@TIOK- Our granddaughter, 24 with a Masters and mother to a 7 month old, has all but eliminated us because our politics are too far apart. She thinks we're too far right (we are moderates- everything in life in moderation except coffee. Coffee gets a pass) but we feel she and her fiance are too far left to be productive members of society even though he works 2 full time jobs and is working towards his Masters. There's more to life than paying the bills and we're hoping they see that. Oh. And they're both products of private Catholic schools, elementary through post-grad. The university I attended is a Catholic one. Just throwing that out there.
It is sad (and wrong) when politics impact family. My wife simply forbids me to talk politics at family gatherings. Discretion being the better part of valor, or at least, keeping domestic harmony. We sent our son to private school from 5th grade onward, but found that it was only different, not really better. In California, the private school curriculum has to follow state requirements. The text books are the same. The "culture" where he went to school (Santa Cruz) is pretty far gone when it comes to basic values like honor and integrity. He learned those things from his parents, and scouting. He works hard, and gets stuff done, and makes us proud. his path is different than mine - which was different than my parents - so that's a family tradition of sorts.
Perhaps a Catholic school was quite different. Still, if you have a grandson in law who works 2 jobs to support his family (and a grand daughter who chose him), that's not doing so bad. at 24 learning to pay bills through hard work is a good thing IMO. Their priorities may shift as they gain some experience in life - and that 7 month old becomes a toddler (and so on). I know that happened to me.
Substack needs a love button