After a career in the entertainment lighting business encompassing, sales, technical support, marketing, photography, and writing, I now manage and market veterinary hospitals.
A coup To create an oligarchy Or more accurately A plutocracy To end a democracy Already on its way to Idiocracy
And institute feudalism With a side order of fascism On the back of our information We will be categorized and conditioned If we are not Gilead or imprisoned
All under the watch of the weak And the sex offenders The racists and the anti-transgenders
Our only hope That their stupidity and incompetence Is greater than their hate, their ignorance And weaker than our resistance
These has-beens With their learning machines And anti-vaccines Parading around in their limousines
Are not as strong as the blades of our guillotines.
You know how I know this is a giant Ponzi scheme? Because you are endorsing it Selling a future you don’t even believe in Trying to make other people feel stupid By pretending you are smart That you understand You are not that clever
If it does not make sense, guess what? It does not make sense To get in early, is to get out early Before the rubes realize there is no product Just the illusion of something for nothing You’ve taken a not too well thought out idea And turned it into a cesspit for grift
To make matters worse You add to climate change The energy requirements for mining crypto Are more than equal to solar power production And for what? A tool that lets you buy drugs on the dark web anonymously And since the FBI are now able to trace blockchains You suck at that too
Name all the arenas you want Misuse the internet famous and exploit their 15 minute adoring fans
It feels like the end of days It keeps feeling like the end of days I think about the meaning of life What if it has no meaning? No purpose, no greater goal
Enrico Fermi was a physicist who worked on the first atomic bomb In 1950 he asked the most obvious of questions “Where is everybody?” If there are billions of stars, some much older than ours Where are all the ancient spacefaring civilizations? Why are we alone?
Astronomer David Brin postulated a solution to the Fermi Paradox in 1983 The deadly probes hypothesis – more commonly known as the dark forest theorem That the universe is a dark forest full of dangers and dangerous hunters To make oneself know in the forest by crying out Is to make oneself vulnerable to those dangers Game theory suggests in this situation it is best to shoot first and ask questions later And to not cry out
As bleak as this theorem is There is something worse That all civilizations follow a similar path That they mine their ecosystems for industrialization For the fuel of technological growth That they create weapons of mass destruction to protect themselves from those they disagree with That they value their short-term economic goals Over the environment they live in
And therefore, they destroy themselves
That life just doesn’t get to create the stuff of science fiction The road to industrialization Is the road to self-destruction That life never really survives the industrial revolution
As author, Bill Bryson says “Life, in short, just wants to be. But, …it does not want to be much”
Except we had to have agriculture We had to have industry We had to have a Cybertruck on Mars
There is a strong argument that plants domesticated us Not the other way round Bending us to their will Shaping our society to their needs Put a monkey on a treadmill and they will jump off But not us We keep going Chasing a fantasy Chasing a science fiction
If we have the capability and knowledge to colonize Mars We have the capability and knowledge to save Earth And as much as it grieves me to say it My visions of spacefaring into the future Are destined to remain fictions of science We are going nowhere The problems too great The benefits too few Too many hard steps To the step to colonize Mars or anywhere else Too many steps to a Cybertruck on Mars Let’s face it It’s too many steps to a working Cybertruck on Earth
Space won’t save us anytime soon And the universe is telling us something
It is telling us to stop.
Image unashamedly stolen from the Tesla website and used under fair use for criticism, comment, or news reporting.
The killing of a multi-millionaire CEO Rich on the back of claim denial How appropriate for American change to come from the barrel of a gun Rather than the killing of classrooms of children
The 1% of the 1% begged for forgiveness A realization that their oligarchy came from exploitation That the game was rigged in their favor And so we should all just stop playing The misery of the majority Fed on dreams of avarice While choking on propaganda and lies Of the American nightmare they dreamt of
So in fear of a tale of two cities Health care became universal The homeless housed through basic income Politics meant service rather than riches The soldiers laid down their weapons No longer the servants of hegemony The police upheld the law rather than enforced it A right to not get shot Rather than a right to shoot Renewables given the subsidies of the polluters Food became free of pesticides and price gouging Public transportation replaced road building
Power accountable to the powerless
A country for the people and of the people Became more than words of control The billionaires became millionaires Paying their fair share of taxes For the benefit of all
A bloodless revolution in how we all chose to live Started through the spilling of blood
The clown show has come to town While the bankers watch their children drown Led by a cruel and weak fool Unaware that he is being used as a tool Each clown has a singular trait With lies to flatter and obfuscate While the majority welcome this vacuous parade The different and marginalized look on afraid
If the clowns are not fed and suffer They will feed on each other A clown knows no loyalty Even to royalty Kings that are made Are just facilitating the charade
And the clowns like the cacophony With pretensions to theocracy They are singularly ill-suited For the what they have instituted And nobody is laughing At what the clowns are choreographing We are all just trying to hunker down When the clown show comes to town.
Ohio A shitty motel Worried about bedbugs The phantom itching of fears The lipstick on a pig of a renovated flop house While the rain pours down through dawn’s meager light Watching hope drain away on tv One state at a time The phantom fears of bitter disappointment Wondering what dissident means in an American oligarchy A country of inequality enshrined in court and law That respects neither
They lost because they believed in science They lost because they were of color They lost because they were a woman
I see a headline that says America has changed And I can’t help but feel that the only thing that has changed is that the veneer has been stripped away
This is not a country based on freedoms Those are the lies told to ourselves to sleep at night Like Santa Claus or recycling that works
This is a country that has returned to its roots A land founded by religious extremists pilgrims Not Pilgrims fleeing persecution But pilgrims seeking freedom to persecute One of our earliest cultural memories Burning women at the stake
A country built on the back of theft, genocide, slavery, and broken promises
And then arming ourselves to the teeth to protect against the coming retribution Even if it costs us our children
Choosing once was folly Choosing twice was choice
Driving through Michigan the day before the signs were all for her While in Ohio, it was all for him
Melissa says “do you really hate me that much,” a cry into the dark Alyssa says “I want to come with you to the UK,” only half in jest. Susan says “ don’t forget about your promise from the last time” referring to marriage and having a plan Sarah says “I don’t know how anyone can vote for her.” And I wonder if I know her at all
Driving through Kansas and then Tennessee the day after all the signs are gone Like tokens of shame and guilt Hidden away in the night the evidence of a hate crime And nobody seems happy in the gas stations and restaurants
Free books Books by the pound Great books for $2.00 Books by local authors Books by those who don’t get into bookshops
Art and tarot UFOs and weed Hunter and Burroughs Billy Bragg and H.L.T. Quan Zines and chaps Stickers and postcards Signed and rare The weird, the silenced, the banned, and the marginal
And poetry So much poetry Enough for a heart-full
A cultural nexus A haven and open to all Events, outreach, and selfless In a town that always has to fight for artistic recognition A town with an inexhaustible capacity to shoot itself in the foot In a country where the National Endowment for the arts is 0.003% of the federal budget A country that needs far more art and far less weapons
How to define a great bookshop? By how much it will be missed.
The Greek word Utopia was brought into common English usage By Sir Thomas Moore His 16th century book of the same name Described an idyllic island of equality A society run for the benefit of is citizens Utopia means literally “no place.” From there it was a hop, skip, and a jump To the word dystopia
How do we know when we are living in a utopia vs. a dystopia?
Can we agree that a minimum quality of any society Never mind a utopia Has to be that it is run for the benefit of its inhabitants?
Anyone feel like they live in a society that is run for their benefit?
If our society is not for its people Then what is it for?
What is the point?
Joseph Schumpeter was an early 20th century political economist He is responsible for the concept of the entrepreneur He also popularized the concept of “creative destruction” That new ideas would lead to the destruction of the old ways of doing things and that it was the driver of growth in an economy That capitalism was an evolutionary process However, he also believed the capitalism would eventually collapse Weakened by the very things that pushed it forward Ending in corporatism run by elites
How do we know when we are living in a utopia vs. a dystopia?
If something is bad for people working in an economy But good for the economy
What is the point?
Who is the economy for?
In the middle of the 20th century, mathematician and, considered by many, the inventor of the modern computer, Alan Turing, proposed the imitation game More commonly known as the Turing test The imitation game was a test for a machine to fool a human into thinking that the machine was human
We are in the midst of the great AI revolution With its promise of freedom from drudgery, and a new generation of tools and productivity
However, art was first
Art the refuge Art the joy bringer Art the context giver
Whose drudgery and productivity is this AI revolution for the benefit of?
How do we know when we are living in a utopia vs. a dystopia?
Technological improvements that don’t bring improvements but just destruction of the things that we most value
What is the point?
There is a surprising lack of reverse Turing tests in this AI revolution A test to separate what is machine regurgitated rather than human created The lack of footnotes with generative AI would seem to be useful addition for a “tool” Stimmed by over protection of algorithmic secrets Or perhaps potential evidence in copyright infringement lawsuits And then there is the insistence on the marketing friendly term “A.I” Rather than the more accurate machine learning
Machine learning is what humans have previously created Scraped from the internet Stuffed into a blender And output to decent summarization engines and lukewarm guessing machines without a thought to copyright and intellectual property
We will sleepwalk into AI invading the workplace Learning from us Getting better because of us Replacing us because it is cheaper But eventually failing because of a lack of new data
We are the Ouroboros The snake eating its own tale From the ancient Egyptian “Enigmatic Book of the Netherworld” From the tomb of Tutankhamun A funerial text of prescience From a people long gone
How do we know when we are living in a utopia vs. a dystopia?
Sam Altman, is the CEO of OpenAI, originally a non-profit focused on AI safety But now a for profit company, that is most widely known for ChatGPT, And the internal infighting over the lies and riches of temptation Altman has said multiple times onstage and in his own blog “AI will most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there will be great companies created with serious machine learning.” When Michael Crichton wrote “your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” He was talking about bringing dinosaurs back from the dead, not making poor people poorer and rich people richer.
Tech Bros can’t even make a printer that works
What is the point?
The Artificial Intelligence apocalypse Will not be killer robots who look like Arnold (a lot less of those kinds of movies of late for those not paying attention) The Infopocalypse will be algorithmically incoherent An internet of machines talking to machines Manipulating and obfuscating to the highest bidder “Alexa, “should I leave my wife” Answered by averages and random chance The opinion of machines more important than the opinions people The death of the internet as a tool is probably already here With Reddit the default result on Google for almost everything Since when did Reddit become the arbiter of truth?
How do we know when we are living in a utopia vs. a dystopia?
According to Greek myth When Pandora opened a box in the care of her husband All the evils of the world were released Slamming it shut too late she trapped hope in the box
We live in a world of technologies that are artificially limited Or forced into failure For the benefit of “society” rather than the people in that society Copyright only seems to matter to those who can punch downwards Your iPhone can’t have a headphone jack So we can sell you Bluetooth headphones for hundreds of dollars Our books, movies, and music are not owned But at the whims of a subscription model and changing licensing agreements Cloud based document sharing to put paid to paper And those pesky printers Selling ink that costs more than the printer was just not quite good enough
The promise of lies The lies of promise
What is the point?
If we can limit and implement technology for benefit of corporations, billionaires, and the status quo it can be limited and implemented for people
Are we in a pot of slowly boiling water?
The fable goes, that a frog will jump out if placed in a pot of boiling water But will be slowly cooked alive if placed in cool water that is incrementally heated However, what actually happens if you place a frog into boiling water, is that it dies And if you place a frog into cool water, it jumps out because it can
Can we jump out of the pot, or have we already been dumped into the boiling water? Not using AI will require the courage of our convictions That being creative does not always have to be destructive That moving fast and breaking things just leads to broken things That societies should be for the benefit of all the people inside them And that we all get to decide what the point is
Batman, Luke Skywalker, and James Bond are sitting in a bar discussing terrorism
““The Oxford dictionary definition of terrorism is;
“the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.”
That makes you both terrorists.”
says James Bond
“Why “unlawful”? Are violence and intimidation ever lawful? Planting bombs in people’s devices and blowing them up by remote control is not terrorism? But planting bombs on yourself and blowing up yourself and other people is terrorism?”
questions Luke Skywalker
“If the state does those things, it is lawful. A license to kill, don’t you know.”
responds 007 sipping his martini
“But what about Justice – right and wrong. Invading a country, destroying its infrastructure, and murdering its people is not terrorism according to you. But planting an improvised bomb by the roadside to blow up the vehicles of the invaders of your land is terrorism? One can be right, yet still be unlawful.”
says Batman
“So,”
says a confused Luke Skywalker.
“Dropping bombs on poor people from airplanes or directing missiles through a home’s window from warships is not terrorism; however, taking over an airplane and flying it into a building is terrorism?”
“I think you are on shaky ground there kid,”
says the Dark Knight finishing his 3rd glass of Prosecco and raising it in the air for another
“Freedom fighters are not terrorists”
says Mr. Bond
“But I’m a freedom fighter – a leader of a rebellion against an unjust empire”
ventures Luke
“you are part of the rebel alliance and a traitor…”
says Bond with a smirk
“If you are part of a uniformed military unit then perhaps you would not be a terrorist”
he continues
“So if I have money backing my actions I’m ok even my actions could be considered wrong?”
says the farm boy from Tatooine, drinking and leaving himself with a blue milk mustache
“Yes of course, I like beating up poor people who are wrong and instilling in them a sense of fear. Who doesn’t!”
Growls Batman
“Running around inside the Death Star shooting at Stormtroopers is terrorism. But blowing up the Death Star, using a squadron of X-wing fighters, killing everyone inside is not”
responds Bond
“That makes no sense,”
says the destroyer of the Death Star
“Welcome to the Justice system”
says Batman
“Next you’ll be saying that placing landmines all over the countryside so that they kill and maim farmers for years after a conflict that has otherwise left their land is not terrorism”
states Luke
“It’s not” says James fiddling with the olive in his martini.
“You kill people for a living, I have a code”
Batman says
“And who elected you?”
Retorts Bond
“Just because you are a billionaire does not make the world your playground to do with as you wish. The laws still apply to you. If you want to make a difference, get involved – not hide out in a cave. Be a good example for your peers and those that look up to you. Work for the people and the society you are so determined needs change but only on your own terms.”
From the other side of the bar comes a voice;
“The solution to terrorism is to stop committing it.”
Noam Chomsky continues
“Or at least admit that terrorism is what we call it when it is done to us. Just not when we do it to others.”
“SHUT UP”
says Batman, Luke Skywalker, and James Bond in unison
The three men’s only point of agreement of the evening as they continue drinking themselves into oblivion without resolution.
Pictures of old girlfriends I put them in a box The relationships and my emotions about them The photos hid in a computer folder Indexed and catalogued A box of ones and zeros
Just because you close a wound Does not stop it hurting Memories jostling to be ghosts or the moved on But memories are scabs Always ready to be picked over To bleed Never allowed time to turn into scars And pictures just seemed like a bad idea
Do faces in those old photographs Taken to immortalize a moment in time Think about what was? Do they have their own scabs to pick over Or are there just scars Memory of time passed and little else
But maybe it’s time to let go Time to put down the carried torches Extinguish the flames that were once fuel
So now the pictures are in frames Hung on walls They are my scars And if thoughts linger too much… there is pain But doesn’t that validate what we once had? Memories of the good and the bad
Running away was always cowardice Hiding not that much better So it is time for the pictures to see the light of day For my acknowledgement of their part In my story And if it hurts The melancholy is to be treasured Like the faces on the wall.
Word Outlet 