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Waking Up to Basic Literacy Skills
A little over a week ago, I was yet again reminded of how poor the literacy skills of most people — even in some of the most “technologically advanced” countries on Earth — are. Indeed, this is perhaps best depicted in the movie “Idiocracy”, which I have often quoted on this blog already. [1]
My entire approach to information is very heavily reliant on literacy skills (sometimes basic literacy skills, sometimes somewhat more advanced literacy skills). There is little doubt in my mind that the apparently afflicted person lacking basic literacy skills in my most recent experience of this phenomenon would feel outright sanctified had her image appeared on the homepage of Google (or some other “prominent” or similarly “mainstream” irrational media website). [2]
Source: https://wants.blog/2026/04/01/the-moment-writing-starts-to-feel-like-an-obligation-rather-than-something-i-want-to-do-the-entire-exercise-loses-its-purpose In our times, “coming across” as literate oftens seems worthy of ridicule … most probably because such large portions of so many populations seem so severely lacking in such skills. Oddly, while the “cool” folks acknowledge that some of the most prominent leaders ever were undoubtedly among the most literate people ever … nonetheless they succumb to appealing to some Pope-like figure to absolve them of their own sins of illiteracy. [3]
Note, however, that even the Roman Catholic Church has resigned itself (at least for the time being) from its previous “infallibility” doctrine. [4]
Undaunted, the aspiring “tech giants” boldly continue to embark on missions to even greater heights, apparently making up their own laws along the way. And an ample supply of willing suckers line up to roll out their rugs and pay homage to the intimidatingly rising floods of AI slop at least 5 times a day (if not even 5 times a minute). [5]
[1] One of my most recent experiences of people lacking basic literacy skills is documented in “The moment writing starts to feel like an obligation rather than something I want to do, the entire exercise loses its purpose” [ https://wants.blog/2026/04/01/the-moment-writing-starts-to-feel-like-an-obligation-rather-than-something-i-want-to-do-the-entire-exercise-loses-its-purpose ]; for more about “Idiocracy”, see e.g. “More about Modes and Levels of Literacy“
[2] See “Rational Media” [ https://phlat.design.blog/2024/01/14/rational-media ] and also “Inter-Reliance, Self-Dependence & Responsibility“
[3] See “If Google is the Pope of the Internet, Then Who Are You & I?“
[4] For more about this aspect of “infallibility”, please see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infallibility#Christianity
[5] See also “There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute“
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Let Me Take You to the Beach
This is actually a song title of Frank Zappa’s — I can’t remember the lyrics right now, and I’m too lazy to go dig it up out of my archives … but I will say that I recall them as rather empty.
My mind is also sort of empty right now. The mainstream propaganda machinery is churning out such immense amounts of hogwash that there almost seems to be no alternative to tuning out (or whatever that Tim Leery phrase is).
Mainstream has an odd way of sounding significant. In reality it is about as significant as a hot air balloon, which seems like a rather timely metaphor as the whole world seems to running out of gas (or whatever).
I bet you, my dear reader, are becoming a little sick and tired of seeming this and seeming that, and you’re seemingly itching for some good old fashioned hard data. OK, here ya go …
Mainstream Media, Brought to you by Google This graphic might almost lead you to believe that “Black Out with My Rack Out” (see also “Black Out with My Rack Out” 😉 ) was being talked about [1] quite a lot before “Spring Break” … and it wasn’t until much later that the phrase made headlines in the mainstream news media — isn’t that odd?
That’s it for this week — Happy Holidays! 😀
[1] or at least “searched for” (albeit predominantly by people with rather limited literacy skills 😉 )
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“Black Out with My Rack Out”
Is “Spring Break” a rational or an irrational event? In any case, it almost seems to be a calculated irrational media event — and the quote in the title seems like a clever invitation to “click here”. [1]
Source: https://torontosun.com/news/world/reporter-digs-up-most-clueless-spring-breakers-in-bewildering-beach-interviews One thing that I believe Milton Friedman may have overlooked in his “Free to Choose” analysis, is that choosing is never completely free … because such freedom requires a sort of “cognitive tax” to think (i.e., to invoke rationality). For example, if I were to want to drink only the best mineral water, then I would need to apply some sort of algorithm in order to determine which water is actually “best” … and indeed: in different circumstances, this might even require various different measurement criteria.
Most modern search engines purport to resolve such complex issues by simply maximizing profit. As long as a sucker is willing to click on a result for which the search engine collects revenue (whether directly or indirectly), that result will probably “pass the test”.
In contrast, rational media involve the inputs of much larger communities of participants. All potentially interested parties engage with other participants by speaking the same language and employing rational behavior (which requires effort). They willingly do so mostly because the results are far more reliable than the results obtained from the far less intellectually taxing irrational media.
To pretend that the freedom to choose does not come at a cost would be very naive — perhaps even ignorant. It is far easier to simply consume a “mainstream” religion than to choose a belief of your own. [2]
In any case, if there is one thing I am fairly certain of then that is that the vast majority of people lack the literacy skills required to employ rational media as a method for acquiring reliable information. They did not learn them — whether in school, in college, at a university or any other educational institution. [3]
Therefore, I have chosen to begin work on devising some “training wheels” for people who seem rather clueless or simply unskilled or whatever (indeed, including most of my friends and family, who seem to feign stupidity or for some reason are simply not as literate as the thousands of people who follow my blogs and the many thousands more who simply come across them by applying rational media methodology).
This what I have come up with so far. I have created a site ( classified.news.blog [ https://classified.news.blog ] ) where people can promote different kinds of news, each according to their own preferred categories of information. For me the main categories of information are simply whether the information is of local or global relevance. Most of the information I consider to be important is global in nature — you can see the page I have set up for such “global news” @ https://classified.news.blog/classifieds/nmw-classification/nmw-global (this is just the beginning, I have many more sites to include … and at some point I may also create more categories).
If someone has any feedback (whether positive or negative — I consider it all to be constructive 😉 ), then please feel free to comment below!
Thank you for your attention to this matter!
[1] See e.g. Denette Wilford, “Reporter digs up most clueless spring breakers in bewildering beach interviews: ‘BLACK OUT WITH MY RACK OUT’ ” (Toronto Sun, 24 March 2026); For more about the distinction between rational media vs. irrational media, see “Rational Media” [ https://phlat.design.blog/2024/01/14/rational-media ]
[2] I have a hunch that very few researchers “freely” choose to apply scientific methods such as experimental designs or statistical analyses. My hunch is that the vast majority of researchers simply employ such approaches as “dogma”; See also “If Google is the Pope of the Internet, Then Who Are You & I?“
[3] For more about the complex sociological reasons behind the decrepit state of educational systems, please see “Human Brain Conditioner” (and other articles tagged “Human Brain Conditioner“)
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Nationalist Mainstreams
The degree to which other people might not be aware the things someone believes are central “mainstream” topics should not be underestimated.
For example, how many people in Iran actually believe that whatever a so-called “media outlet” in the United States matters to the reality of the everyday life of an ordinary or average (Iranian) human being? Probably nil. How many of the many billions of people worldwide (including Chinese, Russians, Ukranians, Africans, Europeans, Muslims, Buddhists and whatnot else) actually tune in to some such so-called “media outlet” in the United States on a daily basis? Or once a week? Once a month? Once a year? Or ever? The number “nil” might not be all too far-fetched.
Even more: who in their right mind would ever believe some person somewhere on Earth might tune in to this or that brand name media rag? Populist propaganda brought to you by your so-called “trusted news source“? Are you kidding me?
The United States of America, in particular is a special case world-wide. Unlike in the “Rest of the World”, in the USA the role of state-sponsored media is relatively small. On the other hand, in the wild west, advertising-sponsored media runs rampant. Although the propaganda machinery is likewise at work, the information flows are significantly different.
Source: www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/out-of-sight-out-of-mind.html -
Stages in the Transformation of Information from Writing Communities to Written Words
I acknowledge that the title I have chosen is rather broad. So I think I’d like to start off by sketching out the landscape, sort of painting a picture using very broad brush strokes … and then perhaps to suggest one case study in order to begin to flesh out more details.
The entire Internet (well, at least the Internet I am aware of) is governed by rules and regulations. Some parts moreso than others, but for every “user” the very first decision they must make is which set of rules and regulations to choose. For many decades, perhaps even ever since someone actually remembers making such a decision, this choice was rather simple and straightforward:
Always choose .COM
Advice repeated so often it ought make people sick to hear it yet againI will now jump to the chase and simply point out that many people similarly choose Google or Facebook or Youtube or Spotify or Microsoft or Linux or Grok or Anthropic or whatever other sort of “solution” to a rather complex set of issues to select an environment in which to engage … with a community of people who have made the same (or at least similar enough) choices to whatever they have chosen themselves … essentially “choosing a playing field”.
The playing field is essentially the environment for all interaction with information. Indeed, most people who are active at all will probably be active among many playing fields, and many if not outright most people will not even realize that each of these playing fields has quite restrictive limitations, and / or that none of these playing fields are equivalent to TEH INTERNET.
Now (as an example, and maybe also as the beginning of a sort of “case study”) I will focus on one such playing field: WordPress.
WordPress is probably the largest online community devoted to the written word. I am actually not sure whether the community is first and foremost about “open source” or whether the “open source” aspects or WordPress are the result of its community’s very strong enthusiasm for creativity and creative expression in any and all forms. At this point, the project seems so humungous, that saying almost anything about it reminds me of that image of a blindfolded scientist who is unable to tell whether they are touching an elephant’s trunk or tail.
Source: The blind and the elephant – Sketchplanations [ http://sketchplanations.com/the-blind-and-the-elephant ] My gut feeling is that whereas at least 99% of the users of WordPress use it to publish, at most 1% users of WordPress use it to read. I say that even though I know that WordPress content is actually dynamically “created” ever time someone enter the address to view content hosted using WordPress. In my humble opinion, that is roughly equivalent to pointing out that users of printed paper documents use a light source to read them. This distinction between literacy skills and publicacy skills is usually incomprehensible to most of my audiences. [1]
Even though I notice that some in the WordPress community are enthusiastic about their engagement and participation in the community, I also notice that the technological support for such communicative engagement and participation is luckluster at best and usually rather suboptimal and sometimes even quite shoddy. One good example of this is the way RSS feeds are propagated throughout WordPress’s own systems. Some RSS feeds seem to be updated more frequently than others, resulting in non-level playing fields among community members seeking to engage and participate level playing fields. Nonetheless, I am still optimistic enough to feel that when I am able to bring this (“bug”?) to the attention of people responsible for the regulation of WordPress technology, they will address the issue and maybe even fix it. 🙂
[1] In case you feel you may be a “special case”, please consider reading “What is Publicacy + Why does it Matter?” (and / or other posts tagged “publicacy“)
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Imaginary Relationships
I guess you could think of Bob Dylan’s “Every Grain of Sand” (which he played as an encore when I attended a concert of his just a few months ago) …
Photo by Kindel Media on Pexels.com As it is (IRL — more or less), I currently have Andy Summers’ album “The Golden Wire” (1989) playing in my headphones. 🙂
Whether sound files or image files or simply plain text or whatever else, all of the content you are currently consuming via this channel is more or less imaginary. It is “appearing” on your screen (or through the speakers, or headphones, etc.). In contrast, if we were at a real beach, we could watch every grain of sand slip through our fingers and fall to the ground, as we have once before. Or maybe twice. Three times? Thousands? Millions? … ?
Probably many times before. Iteration upon iteration. Repetition. More reps. Many many more reps. Each and every grain of sand left an impression. Grains of sand slip through the cracks, they all fall down to the ground. And we watch as they do so.
That was the world before the Internet. That’s still the world the way it is today. But something has also changed. Today, there is also this text, these images, these sound files, these updates, these algorithms, apps, … and lots and lots and lots and many more lots of ASS (artificially sentient slop). It’s like the slime oozing out of your TV set (as Frank Zappa used to say or sing or whatever).
Hundreds of years ago, Henry David Thoreau lamented that people lead lives of quiet desperation. I believe that’s no longer the case. I think we have moved on beyond such despair. Today (in so-called “advanced” economies), people increasingly lead lives of imaginary relationships. Many people can no longer identify when some content they are “consuming” is completely imaginary. The words and images and whatnot more they consume on a daily basis are often entirely fabricated and have no relationship at all to what we might have formerly referred to as “reality“.
An entire generation of largely illiterate youngsters bark into their so-called “smartphones” … and actually believe that what the device responds has something to do with “facts”, “the real world”, “logic”, “truth” or anything like that … besides making a buck off of these poor little suckers.
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The Struggle of Being Happy and Fulfilled by a Mediocre Life
I recall a few years ago as I was signing up to participate in a WordCamp event that while filling out the form I responded to a question about speakers I would appreciate at such events, I answered “Amanda Knox”.
Amanda, together with her life partner (and also “business” partner) Christopher Robinson, started a podcast about a half a year ago. I’ve checked out the first few episodes and have also contacted her (i.e., her “team”) about the way I perceive her situation in the “media landscape” (with respect to dependence / independence).
Without a doubt, her life experience so far has been much more “thrust” upon her rather than voluntarily chosen. Nonetheless, I feel she has very admirably chosen to cope with her very public stances by apparently facing them openly and without even just the slightest hint of resignation. I think I would place her intellectually as quintessentially existentialist.
Source: https://podcasts.video.blog/2026/03/01/i-have-deep-sympathy-for-people I also appreciate her apparently very healthy sense of humor with her conclusion (mentioned at the end of the quoted podcast episode) that in the end, “I’ll be dead (so I won’t care).”
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Decompartmentalization (From Individual Life Experiences Toward Cross-Cultural and Perhaps Even Universal Understanding)
This is without a doubt too much for one single post — so I will start off with a broad overview simply as an introduction to the topic.
For background, please consider what I have already written related to milieus (see e.g. articles tagged “milieu“). Let’s consider our lives as intertwined narratives created while moving through diverse milieus (or “compartments”). In each of these we tangentially touch and interact with a variety of groups also sharing the same milieu (or compartment) at the same time. The complete stories we create are nonetheless individual amalgamations forged according to our own individual life journeys.
Each of the groups we come into contact and interact with may only see one (or a few) of these chapters our entire story contains. Yet if we were to agree to a type of social contract to both reciprocally express (and likewise to follow) our links among the diverse chapters of our own (and each other’s) lives, we could perhaps expand our own horizons past only just our own life experiences towards the wider communities affected and involved with not just the direct experiences themselves but also the wider repercussions throughout society. We might even notice how an experience we have in one chapter (or compartment or milieu) might create repercussions which channel back in through another milieu (or chapter or compartment) in feedback loops we might otherwise not even be aware of if we had limited ourselves towards focusing only on our own direct life experiences.
While writing this I was reminded of a song by The Rainbirds titled “7 Compartments”. As you may recall (if you have followed some of the links in my writing), I attended a reunion concert the band gave in Düsseldorf a few months ago … where they also played this song — I wrote about it in “These will be the best Rainbirds there have ever been (Live @ ZAKK in Düsseldorf 2025-12-15)” [ https://events.music.blog/2025/12/19/these-will-be-the-best-rainbirds-there-have-ever-been-live-zakk-in-dusseldorf-2025-12-15 ]. Having picked up Katharina Franck’s book (“Momentausnahmen”, see also “Momentausnahmen — Katharina Franck (Rainbirds)” [ https://branding.photo.blog/2025/12/18/momentausnahmen-katharina-franck-rainbirds# ]), I now see the amazing breadth and depth of her (and her band’s) work. Having thought about the song in the context of writing this post, I feel my own horizons have been significantly expanded.
Source: https://events.music.blog/2025/12/19/these-will-be-the-best-rainbirds-there-have-ever-been-live-zakk-in-dusseldorf-2025-12-15 -
That’s Entertainment — But It’s Not Amusing!
I have a friend who keeps informing me about minute details from blockbuster movies — and I guess perhaps I also sometimes note some noteworthy piece of history in music. We are always attempting to trump each other’s facts about which morsel of information is more essential towards a well-balanced liberal arts education.
Which brings me to another fine piece of ASS [1] crap:
WordPress AI prompt: “Donald Trump as Gladiator Maximus from the movie Gladiator (2000) screaming “are you not entertained?”” I may be entertained, but I don’t find it particularly amusing.
Today, ASS is little more than a tell-tale sign of laziness, lack of thought, dearth of reflection, decimation of intellect and all-around dullness.
Introducing ASS into intellectual conversation is nothing less than simply an insult.
[1] See “ASS: Artificially Sentient Slop” also other posts tagged with “ASS” and/or “Artificially Sentient Slop“
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Self-Expression vs. Consumerism
The World is My Medium
analogous to expression “The World is My Oyster”Whereas “the world is my oyster” acknowledges the world as a set of conditions which creates a result, “the world is my medium” conceptualizes the world as a canvass upon which the self expresses itself.
From this point of view, one way the self could express itself would also be to consume the world (much in the manner that an embryo normally consumes the amniotic fluid within which it is nurtured towards [much later] life after birth) — yet whereas of course in the natural world evolutionary development (also) optimizes for conditions after birth, in modern societies across the globe the world-as-medium is commonly viewed as disposable, if not even completely ignored altogether. [1] From this point of view, perhaps the only way the world is recognized at all is as a population of (potential) consumers of the self’s own expressions.
Indeed: In contrast to the relatively decentralized natural evolution, since economic evolution and global competitive markets have lead to ever decreasing marginal profits, relatively centralized and extremely large (“global player”) corporations increasingly develop technologies optimized towards economies of scale. Also, improvements in Human Brain Conditioner technology in the modern era also increasingly optimize towards increasing consumerism and thereby maximizing profits by optimally maximizing consumption.
Let me give a concrete example of how this plays out “In Real Life” (“IRL”). This week, I discovered an apparently widely popular article published about a decade ago, yet which proposed a business plan which was shown to be faulty only just a few months ago (see “Ask them to convince you and mean it” [ https://fuckwith.news.blog/2026/02/03/ask-them-to-convince-you-and-mean-it ] ).
In this case, Human Brain Conditioner technology presented one person (“the speaker”) with a stage in front of a large audience of adolescents, many of whom had most probably consumed vast amounts of media which promote consumption via various forms of advertising (including presumably a significant amount of propaganda promoting the use of weapons as a means to engage in acts of heroism such as “vigilante justice”). Likewise, Human Brain Conditioner technology also provided easy access to potentially lethal weapons with such high levels of accuracy that it was possible for one member of this large audience of adolescents to use the event as a stage of his own to practice vigilante justice as an act of heroism by brutally killing the speaker.
Many modern institutions are involved in such events and business activities — indeed, they’re widely interwoven throughout the fabric of many modern societies. Yet despite the diversity of instantiations, I nonetheless (believe to) clearly see one monolithic result — namely the transition from living in the world the way an oyster lives in its habitat to living in a world in which our self-realization, our self-actualization and similar further extensions of our “self”-concept are increasingly becoming viewed as disposable products and services which are increasingly being consumed according to some more or less shady algorithms fewer and fewer people have chosen themselves.
Source: https://wants.blog/2026/02/05/i-want-the-privilege-to-be-reckless-i-want-the-privilege-of-spontaneity [1] yet: contrast this point of view with the conclusion in “Inter-Reliance, Self-Dependence & Responsibility” [ https://socio.business.blog/2022/12/03/inter-reliance-self-dependence-responsibility ]
Social Business (WordPress weblog)
Socio Business blog 