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Page added on April 8, 2018
First they locked up the Knowledge
“Putting food under lock and key was one of the great innovations of your culture. No other culture in history has ever put food under lock and key — and putting it there is the cornerstone of your economy…. Because if the food wasn’t under lock and key, Julie, who would work?”
— Daniel Quinn, My Ishmael
Some years ago, game makers found a way to suck you into to playing online games for free and still make money. Like Amazon, Facebook and YouTube, they set special features behind paywalls. You could only reach the higher levels of play if you were willing to shell out hard cash.
It wasn’t long before most of the reputable scientific journals latched onto the same model to monetize their websites. Tease you with free summaries or the occasional open article (and sometimes authors can pay to permit that) but then lock up the hard science unless you can shell out hard cash.
Recently Nature Geoscience received correspondence from some leading IPCC climate scientists including Michael Mann. The letter was published online under the title, Interpretations of the Paris climate target. The editors solicited a response from ten other IPCC scientists and published that as Reply to ‘Interpretations of the Paris climate target’.
Staying true to game theory, in both cases the journal published only the title of the letters. If you want to actually read the letters, you need to shell out $59. Each. For those of us who try to stay abreast of developments in climate policy, or the UN structured expert dialog that is taking place per the Paris Agreement, that paywall is a poke in the nose and the bum’s rush.
We have been watching Bitcoin for a while and have decided it is pure evil. Sorry about that, Max and Stacy. We were glad to hear that Google banned all cryptomining extensions to the Chrome app.
It is not that we don’t like the blockchain, but Bitcoin is based on the Etherium backbone which uses far too much energy — at current rates of growth, all the world’s energy by 2020. Bitcoin could switch to Hedera very easily but doesn’t. That’s evil.
Current estimated annual electricity consumption for Bitcoin mining is 56.71 TWh. Twenty-eight U.S. households could be powered for 1 day by the electricity consumed for a single transaction. Bitcoin’s carbon footprint per transaction is 408.42 kg of CO2-e. That one transaction produces more greenhouse impact than the average Bangladeshi or Vanuatuvian do in an entire year. Bangladesh and Vanuatu are going under water and their citizens forced to relocate because Bitcoin gives no thought about where its computing power comes from. It is an externalized cost. Same for Climatecoin, or Nori — Silicon Valley techno-cornucopian libertarians with no concept of thermodynamic laws or biophysical ecology.
Analysts at Credit Suisse examined Bitcoin’s potential to consume all the world’s energy and concluded for that to happen the price of a coin would have to rise to $1.1 million. It could happen in 5 years, or next month, or later today.
The power demand of Bitcoining likely pales in comparison to the power demand of clandestine superpower cyberwars now underway. The reason the Empire came so hard after Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning was not because leaked videos of Apache helicopters strafing civilians or John Podesta’s emails were dangerous to HRC and her election rigging. It was the same reason they are still after Snowden. These people know too much, will tell all, and have too much of a following. If they can’t be decapitated, they can be isolated until they atrophy and die. Blame the rest of it on the Russians.
From their dim dungeons, Assange and Snowden accurately predicted Cambridge Analytica, which flipped both the BREXIT vote and the US election of 2016. They predicted the leaked NSA cyberwar tool, EternalBlue, allowing hackers everywhere to hold companies and agencies for ransom. They predicted the changes to be wrought by machine intelligence, well, at least some of them. Last year Stephen Hawking joined in when he said:
Unless we learn how to prepare for, and avoid, the potential risks, AI could be the worst event in the history of our civilization. It brings dangers, like powerful autonomous weapons, or new ways for the few to oppress the many. It could bring great disruption to our economy.
In 2017 he amended his prediction that humanity only had about 1,000 years left. He reduced the horizon by an order of magnitude — to 100 years unless we could arrest AI.
Consider this. If you were given the choice between continued life on earth and computerized devices and the internet, which would you choose? If you are like most of us, you will wait to give up the latter until forced to, and even then, not without a fight.
Call us neoluddite, but were our lives in the 1970s so primitive before the Mac, Windows and the World Wide Web that we would never want to give up what we have in 2018 and go back to that, even if to keep what we have comes at the cost of our own extinction?
We are just asking. And wondering why more people are not, also. Should it not, by now, be obvious what is happening? There is not a good ending to this.
67 Comments on "First they locked up the Knowledge"
Steve on Sun, 8th Apr 2018 12:43 pm
Paine’s movie, available for free streaming until Sunday night, looks at how machine intelligence has become a pervasive part of everyday lives. http://doyoutrustthiscomputer.org/watch
Outcast_Searcher on Sun, 8th Apr 2018 12:51 pm
Yes, let’s pretend there is no solution to this…
Taking critical infrastructure off internet access to prevent attack would be a good start. Of course, it might cost a bit more, but isn’t security worth it?
So public utilities, for example, as a good start. Meter reading via WIFI and the net is nice, but is it worth the grid being attacked by the likes of Russia or Iran?
Far better encryption policies and strict enforcement with draconian fines might be another.
So, for example, no way should 50 million plus Home Depot CC’s be stolen by one hack. Or over 100 million chunks of credit report data.
One way might be requiring the main databases be kept offline for ANY batch access applications.
If the hackers have to try to steal information which is heavily encrypted, and one person’s data at a time, that should slow them down a LOT.
Again — this might be inconvenient and/or have a cost. But so it goes with seatbelts, airbags, side door beams for cars, guard rails, traffic lights, etc. and yet we’ve managed to do things like that.
The real question is how bad do the effects have to get before the public DEMANDS it be done, and start throwing politicians out of office and/or refusing to do business with the worst culprits?
As someone who has never used things like FB, seeing the likely problems given the character of Zuckerberg and his antics with security in the past — I’m stunned that far more people aren’t deleting their FB accounts, or example.
I guess most sheep must wake up naked and cold before they realize something can happen to THEIR coat.
peakyeast on Sun, 8th Apr 2018 5:30 pm
@steve: Thanks a lot. It was a very nice documentary.
Jef on Sun, 8th Apr 2018 6:50 pm
No what Hawking warned of was capitalism.
Doesn’t matter what innovations occur the trend “because capitalism” is the end of life on earth.
Go ahead and throw up your lame ass arguments as we continue to watch it all happen in real time.
Boat on Sun, 8th Apr 2018 7:00 pm
Jef
Just because capitalism allowed humans to eat better and live longer does not mean the world had to jump into prolific sex and baby making.
deadly on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 4:36 am
A landline and over the air tv will spell the end of the world as we know it, nobody will know what to do. Civilization will be paralyzed, an anaphylaxis. It will be hopeless.
People living up in the expanses of Siberia won’t be much affected by a collapse of civilization. If you are in the almost frontier of the Urals, you will probably be ok.
Syria is a different story.
It is the end of civilization there for some, complete collapse, ending in war.
People living in the far away stretches of Outer Mongolia will probably not feel the effects of civilization collapse.
If you are living a primitive existence in a mud hut along the Amazon, life will go on without a glitch. You are too far flung from where the collapse occurs, not much is going to change for you. You’ll be able to fish all day long and then at night, have your daily catch of the day. That’s life for you.
Not everybody is going to die and humans go extinct. As long as there is a resource base to be exploited and the weather remains tolerable to inhabit environments, human life can survive. You can go out into the forest and chop wood, have a reindeer to pull the sled to haul the wood. Go home, have some caribou vittles. Home is where the heart is. Especially when it is minus 50 C. lol
Right now, outside, the temperature is fifteen above zero Fahrenheit, too cold for green and growth without a greenhouse and electricity.
A coal-fired heating plant can deliver enough heat to cover five acres of greenhouses, then you will survive.
Thousands will visit your sales floor and you will have a million dollar business, easy.
Capitalism done right works. You get to have a civilization, done all wrong, it is a different story.
Fake capitalism that involves bombing of cities, death and destruction, zombified people, then capitalism isn’t capitalism, it is pure evil.
Always more hell to pay one way or the other. It just never stops.
makati1 on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 5:39 am
But, but, where does the coal come from?
deadly on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 6:09 am
The Carboniferous Period laid down a lot of coal and I see it here and there in veins all around me, hither and yon, wherever I go, I can find some coal. It will maybe take three hours or so to load a ton of the stuff and it will heat the house for a good long time. I can probably have it done in an hour, not a problem, when I finally get there and I know where to go to get some coal.
Don’t really have to do that, there is a delivery service and the cost is far less than to spend the money on electricity.
Not to mention the plentiful wood supply out in the trees.
If I dig down about 200 feet, I’ll probably have natural gas, not a problem there either.
Survival of the dumbest and all of that nonchalant jazz.
Stupid Americans are so stupid, they know how to survive come what may. God Almighty, they are just the stupidest people on God’s green earth.
Dumber than dirt. They’re just plain stupid and that is that.
Dumbest people on the planet. How they can remain alive is a mystery only God knows.
I also see petrified stumps of trees unearthed by erosion to a depth of less than twenty feet, probably are thousands if not millions of petrified tree stumps for hundreds of square miles.
Climate change a long time ago.
What are Americans going to do? They’re running around like chickens with their heads cut off, just like the rest of the world.
lol
makati1 on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 8:03 am
deadly, you assume that coal will be delivered after? How? No trucks. No trains. No local coal mines.
“…wherever I go, I can find some coal. It will maybe take three hours or so to load a ton of the stuff…”
You do know that it takes tons of coal to warm a small house in an average winter. I know. My grandparents heated their small (600sf) house with coal when I was a kid. Several tons every winter in PA. Good Anthracite, not lignite.
“If I dig down about 200 feet, I’ll probably have natural gas, not a problem there either.”
Do you know how much human energy it takes to mine a ton of coal and move it to the place of use? Try it sometime. Easier said than done.
Have you ever dug a hole 200 feet deep? Try it sometime. Make sure you have plenty of shoring and strong ropes to lift the 500+ tons of rock out of the 6’x6′ hole or it will be your grave.
You make Boat look like a genius, deadly.
deadly on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 10:59 am
You’re kind of stupid, madkat. Well, not kind of, just plain stupid.
You are dumber than I look.
DerHundistlos on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 6:08 pm
Boat-
If, as you believe, capitalism is a panacea, then why does communist Cuba have a longer life expectancy and lower infant mortality than USA?
http://ais.paho.org/chi/brochures/2012/BI_2012_ENG.pdf
http://www.fightbacknews.org/2014/1/7/cuba-s-infant-mortality-rate-lowest-history-better-us
makati1 on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 6:13 pm
Are you another Davy clone, deadly?
Boat on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 7:18 pm
DerHund
Their prisons serve vegetables. A low mortality rate is your version of population control. No wonder the population is in overshoot.
Google ….. don’t throw the baby out with the bath water origin.
MASTERMIND on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 7:44 pm
The Collapse of Civilization Manifesto
https://imgur.com/a/pYxKa
Boat on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 8:00 pm
DerHund
The reasons are obvious. Baby morality for the poor are high. Life expectancy for the poor is much shorter. Solution to beat Cuba? Quit subsidies for having children. Instead reward the poor for not having children.
Anonymouse1 on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 8:05 pm
What a retard
GregT on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 8:07 pm
“Google ….. don’t throw the baby out with the bath water origin.”
What does slavery have to do communist Cuba Boat?
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/dont-throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater.html
MASTERMIND on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 8:35 pm
Two-thirds of Americans see docs who got paid by drug companies
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170306114211.htm
MASTERMIND on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 8:45 pm
Madkat
China central bank chief warns of ‘Minsky moment’
https://www.ft.com/content/4bcb14c8-b4d2-11e7-a398-73d59db9e399
There goes your future! LOL
Boat on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 8:59 pm
Families at one time were large. 95 percent were farmers. Because of the work load older siblings were more valued. So Dad bathes first, mom, eldest son, etc, etc, baby bathes last.
The idea was authoritative countries choose for you what is important. The American farmer was more practical when it came to mortality.
GregT on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 9:40 pm
Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water
“Sadly, any discussion of the origin of this proverb has to refer to the nonsensical but apparently immortal email that circulates the Internet ‘Life in the 1500s’ (or 1600s, as some variants have it).
“One of the claims in one version of that mail is that “in medieval times” people shared scarce bathwater and by the time that the baby was bathed the water was so murky that the baby was in danger of being thrown out unseen. Complete twaddle, of course.”‘
“‘Throw the baby out with the bathwater’ is a German proverb and the earliest printed reference to it, in Thomas Murner’s satirical work Narrenbeschwörung (Appeal to Fools), dates from 1512.”
I can assure you Boat, that any normal well adjusted mother, would never allow her baby to be bathed in water that the rest of the family had already bathed in. Babies do not have the same level of immunities that either children or adults do.
MASTERMIND on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 9:44 pm
How GE Went From American Icon to Astonishing Mess
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-02-01/how-ge-went-from-american-icon-to-astonishing-mess
America’s oldest gunmaker Remington files for bankruptcy after 200 years in business
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/remington-bankrupt-gun-maker-rifles-us-oldest-gun-control-florida-shooting-a8273751.html
Gibson guitar company facing bankruptcy after 116 years
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/19/guitar-company-gibson-reportedly-facing-bankruptcy.html
MASTERMIND on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 10:16 pm
This Is the Year China’s Economy Passes the Eurozone
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-07/this-is-the-year-china-s-economy-passes-the-eurozone
makati1 on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 10:22 pm
MM, that ‘minsky moment’ going to happen in the Us first. The rest of the world will adjust. You won’t.
MASTERMIND on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 10:37 pm
Melania show us your papers! We have already seen everything else! LOL
https://imgur.com/a/kFOie
Cloggie on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 10:37 pm
“This Is the Year China’s Economy Passes the Eurozone”
Europe is bigger than the Eurozone.
And then there is Russia waiting in the wings.
“MM, that ‘minsky moment’ going to happen in the Us first. The rest of the world will adjust. You won’t.”
Millimind already announced he will commit suicide. I must note that Holland offers excellent euthenasia services. Glad to be of help.
makati1 on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 10:43 pm
Cloggie, MM could not afford to come to Holland, even if he knew where it was. A cheap 22 pistol is good enough for his purpose.
MASTERMIND on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 10:50 pm
If Trump attacks Syria it would technically be a war crime. Since Syria didn’t attack us and pose no threat.
https://imgur.com/a/gn1B3
MASTERMIND on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 10:56 pm
clogg
Europe is getting passed by China. And your country will be out of its leading export in the next decade! And will suffer a state collapse! LOL
MASTERMIND on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 10:58 pm
Cloog
Hail your new overlords!
https://i.imgur.com/OY70gdT.jpg
HAHA! wasting your time with stupid immigrants! While China takes your capital! Dumbshit!
Boat on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 11:18 pm
Mm
Here is the green light for US enemies.
https://www.state.gov/j/ct/list/c14151.htm
If your on this list billions of dollars are spent investigating, prepping and planning to stop your ass. Russia is working hard to be on it.
Cloggie on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 11:19 pm
Tony Blair fears new round of violence in Northern Ireland. UK and Eire joined the EEC in 1973. Core of the peacedeal of 1998 was an open border in Northern Ireland. That is now going to be closed.
The border was established by the end of the 17th century when Holland had invaded Britain and Ireland in order to rob its treasury so it could be used to keep Catholic France in check, while turning Britain into a decent Protestant country:
https://documents1940.wordpress.com/2017/09/26/bbc-british-biggest-fibs-the-glorious-revolution/
It was the beginning of Anglo-Zionism as tiny Holland could only defeat Britain, France and Germans with Jewish money, with “no strings attached”, other than ownership of the British central bank, a sort of Fed, avant la lettre.
Jews supported the Dutch invasion of Britain because they were interested in freedom of religion, a satanic invention if there ever was one. Currently half of London is Muslim, thanks to the scheming of that nice (((mr Jack Straw and mr Peter Mandelson)))
Would not have happened without the “Glorious Rebolution”. To be fair to the Dutch they had little choice as in 1672 Catholic British, French and Germans had attempted to annihilate the Protestant and capitalist and extremely successful Dutch Republic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rampjaar
Boat on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 11:23 pm
Clog
Russia can’t compete with California. All that land and all those resources and they live like Mexico with a coat.
MASTERMIND on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 11:38 pm
Stressed, Struggling, and Suicidal: America’s Farmers Are Begging for Mental Health Services
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/04/stressed-struggling-and-suicidal-americas-farmers-are-begging-for-mental-health-services/
Cloggie on Mon, 9th Apr 2018 11:44 pm
Russia can’t compete with California. All that land and all those resources and they live like Mexico with a coat.
Absolutely. The amount of gay porn these surfers are producing is astonishing. To be fair to Russia, they did kick your ass in Syria. The sport is now to provoke Washington to attack Iran, by I digress.
GDP/capita:
Russia $28k
Mexico $20k
Remains to be seen how high GDP/capita in California will be after the petro-dollar has arrived at end-of-life status and whites have meanwhile arrived at 38% and continuing to decline, but we keep our hopes high for the sunshine state.
GregT on Tue, 10th Apr 2018 12:03 am
“Russia can’t compete with California. All that land and all those resources and they live like Mexico with a coat.”
California’s days are numbered Boat. California is living far beyond it’s resource base. Russia will still be living like Mexico with a (mink) coat, for many decades to come.
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu
MASTERMIND on Tue, 10th Apr 2018 12:28 am
If you want to get around the paywalls for news sites. With Chrome, just right click on an article and select “open in incognito mode”…And it hides your cookies so you can read unlimited free articles.
GregT on Tue, 10th Apr 2018 12:30 am
“Here is the green light for US enemies.”
Interesting take Boat.
So are you saying that you personally have over 145 million enemies, or do you consider yourself to be a separate individual from the warmongers in DC, the US State Department, and/or the US military industrial complex?
A couple more quick questions for you Boat:
Do you believe that the US military would be justified in murdering another few million or so more innocent people? If so, what do you think would be the most humane way of slaughtering them? Missile strikes from distant warships? Drone strikes carried out from an air-conditioned office somewhere in an undisclosed location in the US? Or just pull out all of the stops and nuke them terrorists all back into the stone age?
MASTERMIND on Tue, 10th Apr 2018 12:50 am
Greg
Save your self rightious bullshit for the church! If the US wasn’t doing it somebody else would..Its just human nature.
The “coalitional killing” of members of neighboring groups occurs regularly in humans, wolves and chimpanzees.
https://www.scribd.com/document/375842373/Evolution-of-Coalitionary-Killing
GregT on Tue, 10th Apr 2018 1:05 am
“The “coalitional killing” of members of neighboring groups occurs regularly in humans, wolves and chimpanzees.”
I’m sure glad that you aren’t my neighbour then MM. I’d prefer not to “coalitionally kill” you first in self defence, but I’m far more than ready, willing, and capable of doing so, if need be.
Davy on Tue, 10th Apr 2018 5:06 am
“To be fair to Russia, they did kick your ass in Syria.”
Nonsense, Syria is destroyed nobody has one. That conflict is not over yet.
MASTERMIND on Tue, 10th Apr 2018 5:08 am
From 2007 to 2016, productivity in the U.S. grew at about 1 percent—a historically low
https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2017/labor-productivity-growth-since-the-great-recession.htm
https://imgur.com/a/pYxKa
GregT on Tue, 10th Apr 2018 9:43 am
“Nonsense, Syria is destroyed nobody has one.”
Another “Mission Accomplished”
I wonder, which sovereign nation could possibly be the next mission for destruction?
GregT on Tue, 10th Apr 2018 9:47 am
I’m betting that it won’t be that shining beacon of human rights violations, and state sponsored terrorism, Saudi Arabia, or her little pet pit bull, Israel.
GregT on Tue, 10th Apr 2018 9:51 am
On a more positive note, I hear the Saudis are thinking about actually letting women drive cars.
Cloggie on Tue, 10th Apr 2018 2:44 pm
“Nonsense, Syria is destroyed nobody has one. That conflict is not over yet.”
Meathead still hopes that Syria will be added to the empire, some day.
Dream on.
Assad won’t go any time soon, against my original expectations. For me the Russian intervention came out of the blue and its success was even more of a surprise.
Finally a European power that successfully stands up against the Great Satan and boy does it taste like more!
You are probably not going to believe but I am dreaming not only of liberating Europe from ZOG, but additionally European-America as well!
Wouldn’t that be nice, meathead, millimind? No?
MASTERMIND on Tue, 10th Apr 2018 3:12 pm
Clogg
Its all falling apart now isn’t it? LOL Deep state can’t be touched! That is your problem with your populist movement! You are all a bunch of broke neckbeards! You need money to have power! Animal Asaad is going to get it now! Putin next!
Cloggie on Tue, 10th Apr 2018 3:33 pm
“Its all falling apart now isn’t it? ”
You mean ZOG-USA? Absolutely!
https://www.rt.com/news/387313-us-losing-leadership-eu-mogherini/
No signs that Merkel intends to let herself being sent into a war with Russia:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davekeating/2018/04/10/angela-merkel-may-be-souring-on-russias-nord-stream/#fd0a4717cf80
Deep State my foot.
MASTERMIND on Tue, 10th Apr 2018 5:03 pm
US, France and Britain agree to respond to Syrian gas attack
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/apr/10/theresa-may-to-chair-security-meeting-over-syrian-gas-attack-uk-response-chemical-weapons
Davy on Tue, 10th Apr 2018 5:13 pm
“Meathead still hopes that Syria will be added to the empire, some day. Dream on.”
Ah, you got references where I said that because I don’t think I want anything to do with Syria.
“Assad won’t go any time soon, against my original expectations. For me the Russian intervention came out of the blue and its success was even more of a surprise.”
Russia is now stuck in a destroyed country subsidizing Assad to keep him afloat. I hardly call that victory.
“You are probably not going to believe but I am dreaming not only of liberating Europe from ZOG, but additionally European-America as well!”
You and your Jew baiting ZOG illusions. The Jews are only part of the powers to be in DC. Simpletons like you don’t understand that. Extremist always look for an imaginary enemy to fixate on.