QUOTESSAYS

 Finally a political development where we can all agree, come together as a country, and sit around the campfire holding hands and singing Kumbaya. Trump haters can celebrate his conviction on all 34 counts. As can Trump supporters, at least those who understand the psychology of the man and how he thrives on chaos and attention. The only thing better for Trump's election prospects would be if he was jailed. Remember Hitler spent a year in a German prison and came back stronger and darn near conquered the world.   

  A Theory of Reality as More Than the Sum of Its Parts | Quanta Magazine Yep, that old 'The Hard Problem of Consciousness' is a bitch they just can't quite put down. Everything we know, or think we know, is still a product of our consciousness at the end of the day. Whatever theoretical house of cards we build is pretty flimsy at the edge of the Universe I am betting. As a person who has lived his entire life in a state of 'Causal Emergence', I am a big fan of Hoel's Theory. It has sure worked out great for me, though I like to think of it more in terms of 'Casual Emergence'. The first thing I do when I get up in the morning is have a pep talk with all my atoms and make sure we are all on the same page and committed to having a great day! 

  I have now reached the age where I do crossword puzzles. It's the law. I bought this puzzle book on Amazon. Right off the bat I noticed something was off with it. 'Loiuqrds' with the clue being 'Bequest', 'Oiyrgbe' with the clue being 'Valleys', 'Pqiurtedsba' with the clue being 'Whiskey'? I looked all those words up just to be sure, but my basic command of English had already told me something was very wrong with these puzzles. Plus, the puzzles themselves were put together very awkwardly. The first thing I noticed was the book had no company name with regards to publishers. It just said it was made in Coppell, TX in 2023. Then I noticed this message at the bottom of the first page in the book. Kind of says it all. I am guessing this was either made by people whose first language was not English or was generated by AI and the program has some glitches. Either way, it is kind of amazing it got all the way to market. Back to the good

  Consciousness, Artificial Intelligence, and Our Search for Meaning: Oliver Sacks on ChatGPT, 30 Years Before ChatGPT – The Marginalian Oliver Sacks was of the 'Aren't we just special' school of the study of human consciousness. I will give the 'poetic neurologist' his due though, as he approached the subject scientifically, had his academic chops down, yet took a shitload of speed and acid in his early days to leaven it all out. But at the end of the day Oliver was just one of the smarter ants in the colony, yet he was still just an ant scurrying around trying to figure stuff out.  I believe from here on out human consciousness will be so heavily dependent on AI as to be a hybrid product. No big loss if Facebook gives us a clue, keeping in mind the most likes I ever received on a post was a kitten climbing out of a pumpkin on Halloween. You can't lose with kittens. 

  If there was a bookend to the legend of Billy the Kid, it would be this man, Jesse Evans. Now I could not verify if there were any real photos of Jesse, but this seems to be the official one that pops up the most. Even if it isn't Jesse I will give it props for being one of the best gunfighter photos of all time. His expression and his lady friend holding the gun is just too perfect. Jesse's background, like with so many of these guys, is pretty vague. Born around 1853? in either Missouri or Texas and was supposedly half Cherokee. I even read one biographical note that said Jesse was a graduate of Washington and Lee University! He was arrested along with both of his parents in 1871 for passing counterfeit money in Elk City, Kansas. At least he was raised right to be an outlaw. Jesse showed up in the New Mexico Territory the next year in 1872. He worked as a cowboy for John Chisum, and ironically rustled cattle from him too. Jesse drifted down to Las Cruces and Mesilla where h

 I gave up trying to find any external, prepackaged meaning to life many moons ago. Religion was the first to go. No matter how you approach religion it requires a faith that I just don't have at the end of the day. That is why the word faith is used every other word in any religious tract. Add guys in robes that are holier than thou and know stuff you don't and I'm out of here. I actually envy people who have a strong, simple faith. It must make life simpler and easier to live, but I would be faking it, and God would hate that. Anyone who tells you they know what happens after you physically die is either lying or guessing. Period. End of story. Politics was next to go. All political theory has basic, contradicting flaws. Looks like the best we can do is a constitutional republic and rule of law, and even they have a limited shelf life and tend to devolve. Large groups of not very bright people tend to choke on freedom and express it in all the wrong ways. But at least it

  Not Another Teen Movie - Dump on my chest - YouTube I learned all about 'Scat Play' as a cabbie in Hollywood, something I was not even aware of before as a wholesome young man with mid-western roots. I had a hooker tell me she had a John who she met with once a month simply so she could take a dump on him. They would go out to a nice restaurant, rent a room at the Beverly Hilton, and then she would lay a big 'Cleveland Steamer' right on his face.  This guy was a retired TV network executive and had big bucks and all the trappings of Hollywood success. I can only imagine the complex psychological issues that could stir up a sexual perversion like that. The hooker said she would rather shit on him then fuck him. She figured she had to shit anyway, so she might as well get paid for it. She told me she always knew about her date ahead of time and ate and 'prepared' accordingly with the proper laxatives timed just right. She said one good shit would pay her rent fo

  What Do Near-Death Experiences Mean, and Why Do They Fascinate Us? (getpocket.com) Another NDE article, this time featuring the ultimate expert on the subject, Dr. Bruce Greyson, who has dedicated his life to studying this phenomenon from a scientific perspective.  I am still of the belief that it is probably a chemical explosion in the brain at death that creates this experience, but I will gladly take it at the end. One of the nice benefits of an NDE is after people have one, they no longer seem to have a fear of death, though I am finding age has that same effect somewhat. When I was a CNA, I experienced the aftermath of one NDE and was able to talk to the recipient. When I asked him if he had come away with any new belief his one phrase stuck with me all these years: "You know, nothing really matters in this life. We make it all up." The second heart attack took him three weeks later and took away a way happier man I might add. I have lived my entire life pretty much ma

  Rep. Crockett ripped for hawking T-shirt based on feud with MTG: ‘Start by spelling your last name correctly’ (msn.com) The gift that just keeps on giving! One of the signs of a fall of an empire is when the satire can't keep up with the reality. "Idiocracy" has now morphed into a documentary.

  Five Ways Mindfulness Helps You Age Better (berkeley.edu) I can surely testify as to how mindfulness has made my aging a way better experience. Our attention is now a valuable commodity, and we are frantically bombarded with information 24/7 trying to hijack our attention. Mindfully unhooking from the technology for just 20 minutes and meditating right before bed has worked wonders for me. Having no TV or smart phone helps cut the tether too. I think I will make it through without them in the time I have left. I am no enemy of the technology though. I believe the pluses outweigh the minuses so far. I just have to figure out my own relationship to technology before it decides that for me. The part of this article that really piqued my interest was the mentioning of the studies on how mindfulness affects the immune system and illness in general. As I have brought up in the past, and no doubt will in the future, I was raised in a Christian Science household smack dab in the middle of th

  The U.S. is debating whether to adopt a digital dollar : NPR It is inevitable anyway. Ever since the first man decided that a pretty rock would represent value, money has been an abstraction that changes with the technology. Even though cryptocurrencies are nothing but a pyramid scheme presently, the seed has been planted. Fiat currencies can no longer ignore the writing on the wall. I can't recall the last time I paid for anything with a piece of paper anyway. A popular belief I see a lot lately is that 'Money is a myth'. The reality is everything you can't hit with a hammer in a culture and society is a myth. Politics, government, religion, philosophy, you name it. Mutual shared belief is the common theme. To paraphrase Einstein, money is an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. Part of that persistence is having a currency backed by governmental taxing authorities, a central bank, regulations, and armies.

  Marjorie Taylor Greene and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fight during House hearing (msn.com)  I thought this was a deleted scene from "Idiocracy" that I had never seen. Nope, it is from our very own Congress, the people that make and amend our national laws and who set the moral tone of discourse for our country. Instead, we get the verbiage of a cat fight in the girl's locker room after a high school PE class.  I propose a resolution where all such fights in Congress between females shall be settled with a bikini mud wrestling match. The winner will be decided by who pulls off who's bikini top first. In the case of males, we will return to pistol dueling. We might as well be entertained as our empire falls to ruin. Hey, it beats Nero playing a fiddle while Rome burned. 

  The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves from the apocalypse | The super-rich | The Guardian Though I am not too sure why a group of tech billionaires would feel the need to consult a Marxist media theorist for pragmatic ideas to survive the coming apocalypse, this article does kick up the dust on several of my own personal theories on technology and the future.   I think it is pretty obvious that the economic system as designed now probably isn't going to cut it going forward. There will simply not be enough jobs to do as technology replaces human labor. And I am pretty certain that if humanity has free time on their hands, they will not be using it to play harps and write poetry. It will be way closer to "Idiocracy". The bulk of humans will become modern Neanderthals and die off as a sliver of humanity will evolve and eventually leave the planet. Once they do, they will really start evolving fast as they adjust to new environmental conditions. No matter h

  Your attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen | Psychology | The Guardian The author brings up some interesting observations, but he exhibits a bit of generational technological Luddism too. The science is still out on a lot of his claims, but he did have the courtesy to bring that up in the article, much to his credit. The brain may be more adaptable to change than the 'experts' might lead us to believe. That is what brains do. There is no doubt in my mind that youth of today are being wired differently from exposure to the technology. It is neither good nor bad, it just is. It always makes me a little nervous when people start talking about censoring technology and communication for 'the good of humanity'. It won't work anyway. Whatever humans invent, they use.

  Writing, taking classes, working puzzles may reduce risk of dementia (msn.com) I figure I have the trifecta in writing, crosswords, and painting Guadalupes. Add to that my decade's long attempt at learning Spanish, and I think I am in pretty good shape as far as my neurons lining up in a row and holding hands. It would appear to make common sense that using the brain might help it function better.  I remember at the nursing facility we would wheel all the dementia patients into the 'TV Room' when they were acting up. That would usually calm them down and put them into a catatonic state. It never seemed to matter what they were looking at. Half the time the language was in French because the Haitian CNAs would be watching their favorite shows on their breaks. Sometimes I think our whole society is just one big 'TV Room'. 

  Is my phone listening to me? My story of the internet reading my mind. (slate.com) A long but meaty and well written article about how the internet has permeated our very psyche. I have noticed lately how much more sophisticated it has become. Now if I search a subject or read an article, I will get a barrage of links and pages devoted to whatever area of interest I was pursuing. That is not such a bad thing really. Mankind has been dispersing information for thousands of years. Printing presses and books for the masses was a pretty big deal too. It helped equalize the playing field. I do wonder at times what it would be like if the power grid collapsed and suddenly everyone would be standing around staring at the blank screens of dead smart phones. Would the present edition of our species be able to survive without technology? Have we crossed a line as far as being cyborgs dependent on said technology? If there was an energy collapse, I am sure some long forgotten survival skills wo

 Happy Mother's Day, mom, wherever you are. Thanks for being the fleshy, squishy wormhole I was pushed through and not squirting me out in a 3rd world country. You're the best.....

  Millennials aren't more ethical, they just want to be perceived as such - YouTube “They’ve spent their entire adult lives only 280 characters away from being tweeted into oblivion” What a great line from a show that I have never seen a full episode of it. The You Tube clips are complete in themselves. Actually, this is sale's 101 and I was taught it by my real estate broker in Detroit. I learned more pragmatic wisdom in that two-week seminar than I did in my whole history of public education. Listening to someone very carefully and then parroting back what they said, though perhaps not as directly as done this scene for comic effect, is a very powerful sales tool. Politicians and con artists, though I repeat myself, have been using this psychological trick for centuries. The 'yeses' start coming easier once they get acclimated to hearing their own ideas coming out of someone else's mouth. It feeds their ego and creates some emotional connection. Everyone trusts an

  The Significance Behind Each Bottle Of Bob Dylan's Whiskey Brand (msn.com) Well, I think this about wraps the 60's up.

The new science of death: ‘There’s something happening in the brain that makes no sense’ | Death and dying | The Guardian   I notice the closer I get to it, the more interested I am in the subject of death. This is a nice overview of the basic theories of the process of dying going around now. Again, the old problem of using the only tool we have, consciousness, to study consciousness. At least we can kick around the more mechanical aspects of death and see what pops up. I am pretty neutral personally. The one problem with Near Death Experiences is the people who have gone through them still haven't died. I always thought of it as like a household lightbulb. You turn it on and off hundreds of times until one time it burns out in one huge blinding flash of white light as the filament dies. To me that represents the flood that bathes your brain with vivid memories of your life, that last pop of super consciousness. Of course, it is all unknowable in the end. I just find that idea com

  Benefits of psychedelics: Can they teach us about the search for meaning in life? - Vox I come from the 'Wild West' days of psychedelics, where the emphasis was not so much on finding meaning in life as it was 'tripping balls' and seeing what happened. I can say I experienced Synesthesia, as in seeing the music of Hendrix pour out of speakers as waves of colors. Once I saw a flying saucer land in my backyard and aliens exit it before it flew away. Another time a friend turned into Christ with a burning crown of thorns on his head, though I have to admit he already looked like the blue-eyed, Aryan depiction of Jesus hanging in all the Southern Baptist Sundy School rooms, so that was just a semi hallucination. The main lessons psychedelics taught me was perception is fluid and funny, life is full of loopholes, and not quite as black & white as we are led to believe. There is a lot of space between and in them atoms. Taking a psychedelic is basically renting psychosi