Trevor Paglen: Society of the Psyop, Part 1: UFOs and the Future of Media. Generative AI, Adtech, recommendation engines, engagement economies, personalized search, and machine learning are inaugurating a new relationship between humans and media. Pictures are now looking at us looking at them, eliciting feedback and evolving. We’ve entered a protean, targeted visual culture that shows us what it believes we want to see, measures our reactions, then morphs itself to optimize for the reactions and actions it wants. New forms of media prod and persuade, modulate and manipulate, shaping worldviews and actions to induce us into believing what they want us to believe, and to extract value and exert influence. (more)

Brainwashing is the controversial idea that the human mind can be altered or controlled against a person's will by manipulative psychological techniques.[1] Brainwashing is said to reduce its subject's ability to think critically or independently, to allow the introduction of new, unwanted thoughts and ideas into their minds,[2] as well as to change their attitudes, values, and beliefs.[3][4] The term "brainwashing" was first used in English by Edward Hunter in 1950 to describe how the Chinese government appeared to make people cooperate with them during the Korean War.

An unidentified flying object (UFO), or unidentified anomalous phenomenon (UAP),[a] is any perceived airborne, submerged or transmedium phenomenon that cannot be immediately identified or explained.[2] Upon investigation, most UFOs are identified as known objects or atmospheric phenomena, while a small number remain unexplained. While unusual sightings have been reported in the sky throughout history, UFOs became culturally prominent after World War II, escalating during the Space Age. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidentified_flying_object (more)

see psyops

see surveillance state, surveillance capital....

Third Way is a Washington, D.C.-based public policy think tank founded in 2005.[3] It develops and advocates for policies that it says represent "modern center-left ideas".[4] It is described as a centrist think tank for moderate Democrats,[5] while critics see it as neoliberal[6] and “the turning point in which… parties abandoned their traditional tenets and working-class constituencies in favor of… Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.”... In its review of the 2016 and 2020 elections, authored alongside The Collective PAC and Latino Victory Fund, Third Way called for the Democratic Party to focus on becoming the Jobs Party to voters... The majority of the think tank's funding comes from individuals with close ties to the banking industry and its board of trustees consists mostly of investment bankers... In 2017, the Third Way think tank conducted a listening tour in rural Wisconsin as part of its research to understand the results of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. This tour was the focus of an article in The Atlantic, where reporter Molly Ball observed many focus group participants expressing strongly politically partisan views that challenged Third Way's ideology that political partisanship was not most people's primary concern... An eighty-minute call organized by Third Way, with recording obtained by Semafor, detailed the Third Way's effort to suppress third-party candidates or groups who support them and their ballot access for the 2024 U.S. presidential election. The call included plans to threaten donors and potential candidates of repercussions should they get involved with or support third party groups or candidates seeking ballot access. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Way_(United_States)

Restaurants in the East Village NYC I like (roughly by street, not preference) (Restaurant Review): (more)

Chester James Carville Jr. (born October 25, 1944) is an American political consultant, author and occasional actor who has strategized for candidates for public office in the United States and in at least 23 nations abroad.[1] A Democrat, he is a center-left leaning pundit in U.S. elections who appears frequently on cable news programs, podcasts, and public speeches. Nicknamed the "Ragin' Cajun",[2] Carville gained national attention for his work as a lead strategist in Bill Clinton's winning 1992 presidential campaign.[3] Carville also had a principal role crafting strategy for three unsuccessful Democratic Party presidential contenders, including Massachusetts Senator John Kerry in 2004, New York Senator Hillary Clinton in 2008, and Colorado Senator Michael Bennet in 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Carville

A Wardley map is a map of the structure of a business or service, mapping the components needed to serve the customer or user. Wardley maps are named after Simon Wardley who claims that he created the technique at Fotango in 2005 having created the evolutionary framing the previous year.[1][third-party source needed][2] The technique was further developed within Canonical UK between 2008 and 2010[3][third-party source needed] and components of mapping can be found in the "Better For Less" paper published in 2010... Each component in a Wardley map is classified by the value it has to the customer or user and by the maturity of that component, ranging from custom-made to commodity. Components are drawn as nodes on a graph with value on the y-axis and commodity on the x-axis. A custom-made component with no direct value to the user would sit at the bottom-left of such a graph while a commodity component with high direct value to the user would sit at the top-right of such a graph. Components are connected on the graph with edges showing that they are linked... Much of the theory of Wardley mapping is set out in a series of nineteen blog posts written by Wardley[5] and a dedicated wiki called Wardleypedia.[6] As use of the technique has broadened to new institutions and been used to map new things the application of the technique in practice has drifted from the original vision. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardley_map (more)

David Hyatt (born 28 June 1972) is an American software engineer and a Shadowrun game expansion author. Employed by Apple starting in 2002, he was part of the Safari web browser and WebKit framework development team. He also helped develop the HTML 5, XBL, and XUL specifications. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Hyatt

Blake Aaron Ross (born June 12, 1985) is an American Software Engineer who is best known for his work as the co-creator of the Mozilla FireFox internet browser with Dave Hyatt. In 2005, he was nominated for Wired magazine's top Rave Award, Renegade of the Year, opposite Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Jon Stewart. He was also a part of Rolling Stone magazine's 2005 hot list.[1] From 2007 (after they acquired his Para Key venture), he worked for FaceBook as Director of Product until resigning in early 2013. Ross took a job with Uber in August 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blake_Ross

fork of Mozilla from 2002 which is browser-only (no email), faster (more)

Franciscus Bernardus Maria de Waal (29 October 1948 – 14 March 2024) was a Dutch-American primatologist and ethologist. He was the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Primate Behavior in the Department of Psychology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory,[1] and author of numerous books including Chimpanzee Politics (1982) and Our Inner Ape (2005). His research centered on primate social behavior, including conflict resolution, cooperation, inequity aversion, and food-sharing. He was a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frans_de_Waal

purveyor of free kids toys - I think they sell some food too (more)

The Political Geniuses Have an Idea: Do the Thing They Fought Against for a Decade. Longtime Democratic strategist James Carville published a piece in the New York Times on Thursday about why he thinks Kamala Harris lost the presidential election and what Democrats should do next. His take: In order to win back voters who are dissatisfied with the status quo, the party needs to get more “populist” on economics. (more)

The “Make Me Do It” Myth. In early 2009, as Barack Obama prepared to move into the White House, a particular historical anecdote rapidly gained in popularity. FDR listened to their position and considered the demands they presented. Then he replied, “You’ve convinced me. I agree with what you’ve said. Now go out and make me do it.” (more)

Drew Austin: Halfway to a Third Place. In 1989, Ray Oldenburg coined the term “third place” to describe something that had already existed for a long time: social settings other than home and work (the first and second places), such as cafes and bars and community centers (more)

Runzhe Yang and Karthik Narasimhan: The Socratic Method for Self-Discovery in Large Language Models. In this blog post, we explore three key aspects that hold immense potential in unleashing the capabilities of Language Model models (LLMs): (more)

Scale-free may refer to: Scale-free ideal gas; Scale-free network; Hoover’s scale-free forecast accuracy metric MAD/MEAN

Dan Davies: areas under a curve, and other useless things. The Lorenz curve is a way of plotting an income distribution... so that a perfectly equal society would plot as a straight line at 45 degrees. (more)