-
15 Minutes (of Fame or Failure)
One significant difference between humans and machines is that whereas machines need not cope with the “real” world (e.g. “bugs”), humans indeed do need to cope with whatever happens.
I experienced this recently when a “bug” in one of my healthcare providers’ system (of machines) caused a failure in the information I received, leading to many more failures throughout the healthcare industrial complex … and I still have to deal with the repercussions, even though I have already spent hours on the telephone (just in order to establish the correct facts). All in all, I expect that solving these problems will require at least a full working day (if not even more).
I also expect that my laments are not exactly unique but rather quite commonplace. Every now and then I hear them. Actually time and again. Maybe even “nearly all the time”.
One thing many people have probably also heard before is that famous quote by Andy Warhol regarding “15 minutes of fame”. I find this concept of 15 minutes is fairly simple. Simplicity can be a very good thing, and I want to focus on this notion of “15 minutes” as a construct that is easy to grasp, easy to use, and also easy to successfully build upon.
I guess Mr. Warhol was sort of an expert in commonplace things — maybe they even call them “commonplaces“? In contrast, my own work focuses on extraordinary skills — extraordinarily high levels of literacy and publicacy (see “Literacy & Publicacy” and “What is Publicacy + Why does it Matter?“). I fully realize that my work is intended to help and support mainly some of the most highly skilled people on the planet.
At the same time, I am also concerned about the “Rest of the World” kind of people — people with less advanced skills. [1] I wonder what might motivate a relatively unskilled person to make such a substantial investment in themselves — especially since it would probably require a significant amount of time and effort before achieving a justifying “return on investment”?
This week, I may have found a small piece of an answer to that question:
“You will get through these 15 Minutes, and the next 15 minutes after that.”
Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk Memorial Service (relaying the message given to her by Usha Vance)This type of logic is apparently also commonly used in groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous. When we face a formidable challenge, it is easier to overcome what seems like a large hurdle by simply taking one step (or perhaps just one small leap) at a time. Likewise, it is also helpful to recognize our own character, convictions and similar traits in the first place — in order to realize our own limitations and to work on ourselves (and to invest the time and effort required to improve our own capabilities) accordingly.
People who have little knowledge or interest in acquiring literacy and publicacy skills seem (to me) to be oblivious about their own “sucker” behavior. [2] Fortunately, there are more and more people (besides just me) drawing more and more attention to the dangers of falling for propaganda. Yet as long as the most powerful corporations and governments continue to manipulate the masses, the prospect of an enlightened “critical mass” of people resisting or rejecting manipulative powers — in one fell swoop — remains dim. Therefore, I continue to work towards enlightening more and more people, such that these people become more and more aware that they need to work on their own skills in order to become more and more liberated from manipulation and propaganda through self-enlightenment.
No one needs to give up irrational media overnight. People can simply test the waters step by step — and I expect that the rational media space will continue to grow as more and more people come to realize that irrational media are unreliable compared to vastly more reliable rational media sites. [3]
In the long run, I expect that as people become more and more comfortable with developing more and more of their own literacy and publicacy skills, they will also become increasingly rewarded by expanding the linguistic communities they participate in size, intensity, depth and so on.
[1] Note that I am rather skeptical about the so-called “digital divide” story — which posits that literacy (and publicacy) and similar skills depend in large part on the influence of national governments (and the corresponding levels of national economic development). My experience is rather that people everywhere are able to acquire skills, if only their own interest in acquiring such skills is strong enough. Although I wrote a little bit about the “Rest of the World” concept last week (see “It should be a wake-up call for everybody“), I think I will also write more about it next week.
[2] I have written extensively about suckers right here on this blog. See especially “There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute” and also other articles linked with the “sucker” and/or “suckers” tags.
[3] See “Rational Media” [ https://phlat.design.blog/2024/01/14/rational-media ]
-
It should be a wake-up call for everybody
People are so divided in this country — they’re so divided … and there’s so many people that love it, they love that we’re divided and they profit off it — off that division … and they stoke the fires … and they do it for their own profit … and it’s so fuckin’ gross.
Joe Rogan Experience “#2378 Charlie Sheen” [ 2:37:07 – 2:37:25 ]Yes! Joe Rogan seems to be incessantly spot on, at every moment, time and again he hits the nail on the head.
And that’s why time and again people keep listening to whatever he says. He simply has impeccable media savvy — to the point where you almost think that he must have some sort of “perfect” algorithm wired into his reflexes.
That said, I myself have become increasingly concerned with the difficulty of getting through with my own wake-up call … to everybody (see also “Everywhere Plans for Everybody“).
Source: https://wants.blog/2022/01/07/everywhere-plans-for-everybody I think I have written about this quite often already (see also “Sensationalism, Individualism, Mainstream Media Bait & Switch Tricks” + “My No-Know Freeze-Frame World“). It has everything to do with the dichotomy naturally created between what we understand as “self” versus everything else. In economics, you sometimes hear the term “rest of the world”). Likewise, I am not really interested in the entire universe … although perhaps I should be? (see also “If Google is the Pope of the Internet, Then Who Are You & I?“). Instead, I am most interested in what I wish to refer to as my community.
To some degree, I am free to choose my own community. I can make it as narrow as my own family (perhaps I can make it even so extremely narrow as to focus entirely on myself??), or I can widen it out to include a variety of “social groups”. As my perspective broadens, so does my mind — and this is most clearly represented in my own language (or languages). [1]
My “broader” (or even “broadest”) view of language is the frontier where my own understanding reaches its limits (this is essentially one of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s most often quoted observations). [2] I experience this as my “world” — in particular, the world in which “my community” understands my own use of language … pretty much the same way as I do. (cf. also description of “pattern recognition” in “All Your Data Are More Free to Us“)
I view myself as existing within a (widest) community in a “widest world” extending out throughout time and space via the wonder of written language. [3]
Just as many (if not even most or even all) people have freedom of expression (as a “natural” right), they also have the freedom to express (and “formulate”) their expressions as they choose — in whichever modes and technologies they wish (and are “available” to them).
Personally, I feel particularly good about using so-called “open source” technologies (for more about that, see also “Google can’t answer question about using Google (or NOT)“). In contrast, I am also very “concerned” about people with less “advanced” literacy and publicacy skills (see also “Literacy & Publicacy“).
If someone puts all their content on one website, then they seem to be getting everything they want or need from that one website. Likewise, if they only use a few websites, then there must be something particularly satisfying about those few websites. Let me offer an example, in order to make it more clear what I’m talking about.
These days, a lot of content gets uploaded to youtube.com — so what does youtube offer which might make it worthwhile? Some people might argue that youtube is “free”, but such suckers do not realize that youtube spies on its users and sells that information, which then undoubtedly influences the type of propaganda such suckers consume on a daily basis (most of which is consumed via so-called “search results” — i.e. predominantly via google.com )
Of course many people use many websites for many different reasons (obviously, “few” and “many” are relative terms; for more about the scales of these terms on the Internet, see also “Introduction” [ https://phlat.design.blog/2024/01/14/introduction ] ). [4] Some people get paid to “produce” content for websites which use this content as a front to sell advertising. Some people pay with their own (behavioral) information, which is tracked by a wide variety of spyware websites (including not only well-known sites such as google.com , facebook.com , amazon.com and many others, too) and then sold to the highest bidders in clandestine marketplaces (well-known mostly to traders in such industrial espionage operations).
You are free to choose (e.g. whether to use “rational media” vs. “irrational media“; see also “Rational Media” [ https://phlat.design.blog/2024/01/14/rational-media ]). [4] And if you haven’t gotten killed yet, then you also remain free to live with your choices.
[1] I have quite often pointed out to my own “friends and family” that people actually speak different languages with each of their counterparts (which might be a rather commonplace observation to so-called “socio-linguists”); I believe this often overlooked “fact” alone would probably revolutionize linguistics at least as much as another one of my colloquial observations, namely that language can be viewed quite broadly to include all exchanges of information (even as miniscule as “genetic” information, for example).
[2] This quote is often translated as “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world”
[3] Note that many “written” languages exist — some are relatively transient (such as the bits sent back and forth during telephone calls, or also the genetic information noted in the previous footnote) and others are relatively permanent (such as the Code of Hammurabi — written in stone and currently stored in the Louvre)
[4] These edits (the parenthetic statements) were made two days after publishing this post
-
Political and Industrial Institutionalisation of Publicity
Even if men and women alike are not born, neither are babies born free nor do children usually grow up in free markets. All of evolution follows in the footsteps of their predecessors, their environments, and find their more or less appropriate milieus.
Although there is no void, we are nonetheless more or less free to avoid the experimental laboratories of manipulative propaganda dished up to suckers as free offers of vacuous engagement aiming to tie us down with Pavlovian chains into bondage with fake news stories, narratives, and fictions instead of realities.
The “modern” and “western” world today enables a great deal of freedom, but it does not force freedom. On the contrary, most of the institutions used to govern the “public” sphere today have historically developed out of previous institutions devoted primarily to censorship, repression and regulation of thought and ideas. It was only long after several centuries of reformation and revolution that publishing and the public sphere gradually became transformed into the quasi-free market marketplace for content that its consumers are familiar with today, albeit still constrained by a legal framework controlled by an elite establishment class hell-bent on reaping monopolistic profits from their efforts to manipulate “public knowledge”.
Source: “Propaganda Information Technology vs. Indigena Information Technology — the Basic Idea” [ https://indigenous.news.blog/2022/05/07/propaganda-information-technology-vs-indigena-information-technology-the-basic-idea ] Suckers who fall for irrational media have (mostly, if not fully) themselves to blame. [1] Their own lackluster interest in self-enlightenment limits their own literacy and publicacy skills to the level of imbeciles. [2]
Irrational media are not public spaces, they are merely manipulation via proprietary brand names sanctioned by governments. These institutions, whether governmental or industrial corporations, are unreliable and distrustworhty (i.e., they are worthy of distrust). Their manipulative experiments rely on suckers willing to consume almost anything for free. Suckers do not realize that exposure to “free” propaganda is basically equivalent to bathing in filth.
Enlightened public communities will resist irrational media like the plague that it is. They have no inclination whatsoever towards consuming propaganda. Instead, they coalesce around indigena [3] and rely on the “Wisdom of the Language”, in other words: coherent rational thought and ideas based on natural language.
[1] See “Rational Media” [ https://phlat.design.blog/2024/01/14/rational-media ]
[2] See “Literacy & Publicacy” and also “What is Publicacy + Why does it Matter?“
[3] See “Propaganda Information Technology vs. Indigena Information Technology — the Basic Idea” [ https://indigenous.news.blog/2022/05/07/propaganda-information-technology-vs-indigena-information-technology-the-basic-idea ]
-
Relationships Among Local and Topical and Milieus
Over the past decade or so, I have been increasingly emphasizing that the languages we speak belong to the linguistic communities we participate in.
A few days ago, I was a little thrilled to be vindicated when Adam Curry declared what I wish to refer to as his cardinal rule of podcasting:
Be about your community.
No Agenda Show Episode #1795, 2:24:18 [ https://www.noagendashow.net/listen/1795/transcript?t=2:24:18 ]
Still image from “Jackson 5ive”, episode 1 (“It All Started With…”) I do want to acknowledge that Adam’s remarks were actually addressing what he refers to as “Hyper-Local podcasts”.
At the same time, I also want to acknowledge an observation about business communications made by a couple acquaintance(s) who told me (about 2 decades ago, so please forgive me for not recalling the exact words):
Local is no longer a term limited to the geographical conceptualization of location.
Jim Salmons and Timlynn Babitsky, somewhere on the Internet, a long time ago (for more information, please refer to http://www.sohodojo.com )Over the intervening years, I have become ever more of an advocate for this perspective … and I feel this is somewhat the perspective found at the intersection of three avenues of thinking arising from the views referred to as “local”, “topical” and “milieu”.
Let me try to elucidate how these three views are related by describing a situation we are all familiar with from our childhood (and also from early adult years). The scene is that of a school, or perhaps also a college or university. You are the pupil or student walking though a building towards the classroom of a class you’re enrolled in. As you walk, you pass other classrooms with other classes. Perhaps you hear a few words from inside — but since you have hardly any context, these words don’t really affect you in any way. You distinctly recognize that you do not “belong” to these classrooms. These rooms do not feel like home. The topics being discussed are relatively meaningless to you. If you do happen to spend some time following such a “foreign” discussion, it may seem odd or strange, perhaps even alien.
This alienation need not be strong, nor need it even be clear or obvious, but still it is completely clear that this is not “your” classroom. If for some reason the physical location of your classroom was different on some day, you would have no doubt whatsoever regarding where you belong.
You belong where your people understand you, speak the same language, are familiar with the same jargon. The location isn’t really important. What’s far more important is the community … and the fact that we feel we belong here is not just a matter of the linguistic community we are members of, our milieu is also the community we associate with, participate in activities together with, these are the people we “hang out” with, engage with, etc..
I also strongly feel that people generally belong to several milieus — even though many people might seem to behave as if milieus might be mutually exclusive. The irony of “mainstream” media is precisely that: in the mainstream attempt to speak to (i.e. “reach”) everyone, mainstream media lack the coherence with which a members of a linguistic community will engage with other members in the same milieu.
-
All Through Our Existence: The – A – My
I am somewhat surprised that what I intend to write about this week may indeed not be a HUGE leap from what I wrote about last week. Many things have been going through my mind — or maybe I should say: many influences.
When I finally came up with the title for this post, it was undoubtedly “under” the influence of The Beatles. I think my point today could have been a song the Beatles never got around to recording, but at some point may very well have done so. Obviously (to me at leat), the influence of their own song “I Me Mine”,
which they bellowed out atop that London rooftop (which was apparently their last “live” appearance on the planet)even though they apparently didn’t play this song during their rooftop concert, is (to me at least) undeniable.Yet again: although not completely different, I think today’s topic is different enough.
Source: https://www.montypython.com/film_Monty%20Python’s%20The%20Meaning%20of%20Life%20(1983)/17 Another influence is — up to this point — “only in my head”. That’s Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life” (1983). Lately, I have been pondering something like “The Meaning of Life” … I want to explicate this some more, but first I want to address something I find particularly curious about the exact wording of the title.
“THE“: is this the only definite article (in English)? The declares: there is one, there is only one and there is no “other“. Not “another” one. If there was an other, then English speakers would presumably be forced to use an indefinite article (of which I am only currently aware of “a” — and also the “an” variant). Now I wish to make my so-called “curiosity” fully clear: beyond the indefinite article, exists yet another thing English speakers use every now and then: My.
By the way: The reason I refer to these things as “curiosities” is because these (and many other similarly “curious”) observations can hardly be monetized. If something can’t be monetized, it also seems to be non-factual — instead: an opinion, or (perhaps even less than that) a mere curiosity.
On the other hand, I find it downright phenomenal that a phrase like “the meaning of life” would be so easily understandable. I mean: if someone were to attempt explaining “the meaning of life” to a living dog, I think the dog would probably cock their head to one side as if to say “come again?” [1] My hunch is that many or even most people will very easily think of the phrase “the meaning of life”, although what they have in their minds is much more akin to “my meaning of my life“.
[1] See also “Celebrity Talk Show“
-
Literacy & Publicacy
Literacy and publicacy go hand-in-hand.
The way I see the relationship between literacy and publicacy goes like this: Literacy is the ability to know what others have made public; Publicacy is the ability to know how to make something public.
I think eventually the Twentieth Century will go down in history as a strange time when the widespread trust in corporate progress created phenomenal brand-name behemoth corporations which wielded immense power over the “public psyche”. [1]
At some point, these fictional personas will eventually create such fantastic narratives in their attempts to win competitively versus their corresponding competitors, that the mesmerized populace will ultimately become sick and feverishly shake their heads, or perhaps even tremble and quake all over in a quasi-animalistic attempt to “shake it off” and free themselves from the psychological burdens of constant mainstream propaganda immersion.
Source: some popular video platform search result for taylor swift shake it off Yet this is the kind of yarn of my own which my mind creates on a typical Sunday morning when I let it run rampant. Let me try to bring it back down to Earth by mentioning something not completely different yet different enough to seem more-or-less rational.
Time and again I will receive comments on some of my blogs in which some youngster who is not well-versed in either literacy or publicacy skills will demand that I “take down” some of my own content — because I quoted something they have themselves published (and which they therefore feel they own, such that I must ask their permission in order to quote something they themselves have attempted to make public). [2] Never mind that usually these youngsters seem to have never ever before received any attention from any somewhat conscious life-form at all.
Well, OK — that may be a rather extreme opinion of my own. And yet I find it quite difficult to fathom how shallow the world view that I might need to ask permission for me to simply make an observation about what I feel — from my own perspective — is going on somewhere in the world. About something that has been published. Made public (at least potentially). In the free and open marketplace of ideas which exists in the so-called “cyber-space” more commonly known as the WWW (world-wide-web), sometimes referred to (or “also known”) as THE INTERNET.
[1] Granted, this is (at best) little more than a hypothesis.
[2] See e.g. “I want to ease back in and see what I feel like doing or not, without stressing out about what I *should* be doing, but rather on what I *want* to do” [ https://wants.blog/2025/08/07/i-want-to-ease-back-in-and-see-what-i-feel-like-doing-or-not-without-stressing-out-about-what-i-should-be-doing-but-rather-on-what-i-want-to-do ]
-
Natural Orientation
Today nearly everyone is focused on living in the present. Presence is the place and state of mind in which many people want to be at all times.
That may very well be all good and fine, but still we should also keep in mind our orientation. Orientation is a word with very strong connotations. If there is such a thing as “originally“, then I guess it originally meant something like “facing eastwards”. Because it plays a significant role in many religions, it also has the corresponding religious connotations.
Yet the orientation I have in mind is whether we use our outlook from the present towards the future or towards the past. To me, it seems quite ironic that most scientific orientations look towards the past. The basic idea of science, after all, is that things will probably continue to happen in the future the way they have always happened in the past, and therefore if we analyze the observations from the past then we may be able to “predict the future” (I put that in quotes to pay homage to a scientist who has had a great influence on much of my own thinking — E.F. Schumacher, who published a series of essays a little over half a century ago, one of these essays being titled “A Machine to Predict the Future” [1] ).
Several decades ago I was very prone to alert many people I came into contact with that humans are the only species so far to produce vast quantities of plastic and nuclear waste. Try looking either of those processes up in some kind of historical tome that does not involve humanity! [2]
Focusing in a little more on humanity, let’s consider for a moment what motivates the actions we humans tend to get engaged in. For most humans, I guess, we are motivated by something like “optimization” of the rest of our lives. In general, thinking about the past seems like a waste of time. Our natural inclination is indeed even more future-oriented insofar as our own level of satisfaction is influenced by the level of satisfaction of our offspring. In many countries, it seems as if that “offspring-bonus” towards future orientation is currently waning — one might even argue: to an unsustainable degree.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Jackson_Turner Yet what I myself find most worrisome is an overall trend over the past few centuries, I think first succinctly identified by the historian Fredric Jackson Turner (which is now commonly referred to as Turner’s “Frontier Hypothesis”) — that the freedom experienced anywhere is the result of a frontier, which extends beyond civilization’s borders. In particular, I would argue that there is corollary to this frontier hypothesis, namely that the freedom experienced on the frontier usually leads humans to increase the rate of extinction there above the average rates of extinction at which humans destroy the natural environments surrounding what they call “home”.
[1] See the quite cheap paperback book titled “Small is Beautiful” (or also copies of it available online — see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful )
[2] Obviously, I am focusing on our so-called natural habitat, commonly referred to as “Earth”. I have very little idea what happens on other planets and / or other so-called “celestial bodies”
-
Every Point of View is Parochial
Nobody is “well informed“. If you believe to be well-informed and you are no longer a child, then it is now time for you to give up on that myth.
Many people seem to think they are well-informed on account of paying attention to mainstream media (see also “Mainstream Milieus“). Of course the spinners of the mainstream myth go up to people wearing fancy clothes and point their cameras at them and stick their microphones in their faces in order to appear as if they are providing their consumers with infomation — this is undoubtedly a hoax. Quite often when someone is standing on a stage or in front of a podium, with all the cameras and microphones pointed at them, they will say obvious bullshit — such as “we are doing everything humanly possible to assure the health, safety and well-being of [whatever social group they are purporting to be concerned about]” .. and this is obviously false. This is false because they do not say things like “we have sacrificed 10 lambs, and I have also personally sacrificed all of my own children [since that is what some hocus-pocus deity required]”. They aren’t doing everything. They aren’t telling everything. They are probably doing many things that they want you to ignore, and which they will not tell you about, and that you therefore remain uninformed about.
I became acutely aware of this phenomenon when about a week ago the information that “The Macrons” have decided to sue (and are now apparently indeed suing) Candace Owens. The details of the accusations being thrown in both directions across the pond need not concern us here, but I will say this much about it: a large part of the issues around the case seem to focus on whether particular pieces of information should be either publicized or kept private.
Source: https://candaceowens.com/about Personally, I feel I became aware of the case because of my interest in information (and therefore also in censorship-related issues). I regret to admit being “sucked in” to paying attention to what Ms. Owens and also many of her colleagues were saying about her “right” to express her own opinion. The reason why I regret it is because I normally do not pay attention to irrational media (which are based on brand names [1]).
Luckily, I can say now that I feel I have already recovered quite well from some of my worst experiences due to having exposed my brain to such a large amount of irrational media over the past week. 🙂
As alluded to above, I believe humans are very prone to being influenced by “milieu” effects, The most obvious “milieu” effect is certainly the language(s) we choose to use for communications. Yet I think there are probably many more. One which I personally find particularly intriguing is the “western” (and/or “capitalist”) concepts of production and consumption. I feel it is quite obvious that in this system “propaganda” and “well-informed” go hand-in-hand. [2]
[1] See also “Rational Media” [ https://phlat.design.blog/2024/01/14/rational-media ]
[2] See “What is Publicacy + Why Does It Matter?” and also “Propaganda Information Technology vs. Indigena Information Technology — the Basic Idea” [ https://indigenous.news.blog/2022/05/07/propaganda-information-technology-vs-indigena-information-technology-the-basic-idea ]
-
On the Internet …
One thing that irritates me time and again is when someone tells me they saw something “on the Internet”. It’s an insult to humanity to have such a low degree of literacy.
In order to begin to understand how absurd such a statement is, consider how you would feel if someone talked to you about something, and if you asked them to state the source of their information, then they told you “paper” … or “a piece of paper” … or anything like that.
I get it: Airheads exist. One of my high school history teachers was sort of hot, and also an airhead. She actually once divulged to the class that she had appeared on the TV program titled “The Dating Game”. I also recall that she mentioned my name in class every now and then — for example when she drew attention to me by comparing me to “Roundheads” (i.e. that I had a round head) — it actually never occurred to me back then to consider whether she might have had the hots for me! 😛
But I digress … .
When airheads say things like “on the Internet”, their completely lacking literacy skills scream out throughout the rooms wherever they are allowed to make such statements. Rather than put them up in front of a firing line, I suggest we should simply deny their apparent existence altogether. Such imbecilic statements are no more passable than the ASS their brains apparently feed on. Their sloppy diets cannot possibly nourish any signs of significant intelligence whatsoever. They might as well be 100% fake.
Source: https://www.imdb.com/video/vi3013264921/?ref_=nmvg_vi_t_5 -
To Go with the Flow OR To Swim against the Stream
Mob mentality is usually viewed with disdain. Gustave Le Bon, who was a pioneer in this field of study, painted the mob to be distinctly uncivilized … even sub-human.
Yet we ought to also recognize that the cornerstones of what we consider to be modern civilization are governments that were created out of protest, as revolutions which overthrew outdated technologies (of government).
When a technology does not serve us well, the we ought to reject it. If a technology is employed in order to exploit humans, then it becomes an act of patriotism to humanity to eradicate it from the face of the Earth.
ASS (artificially sentient slop) is one such technology, and it’s reassuring to see the first signs of rejection on the horizons. There have been brief and short-lived episodes of such neo-Luddism in recent years … and it yet still remains to be seen how much of the entire irrational media landscape will even be attacked at all. [1]
It might even be downright thrilling to watch humanity fight back against the apparent uprising commonly addressed as the “Zombie Apocalypse“.
Source: Michael Jackson, “Thriller” [1] See “Rational Media” [ https://phlat.design.blog/2024/01/14/rational-media ]
Social Business (WordPress weblog)
Socio Business blog 