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  2. Recommend watching BLACK MIRROR TV series episode S02E01 to see Mr. Global’s future lifestyle vision.

  4. Re: control and interdiction

    Turning anything (cars, payments, phones, internet, food, energy, air travel) off = expensive calls to customer support, escalation to legislators, social media video complaints.

    Non-replicable “glitches” on the other hand, could be attributed to … just about anything, i.e. they are deniable. How many glitches are enough to discourage someone from using a specific service, i.e. self-censoring?

    From a karmic point of view, it’s preferred for a target to constrain their own actions as a “freewill choice”. Intrusive surveillance enables higher-quality simulations of randomness. Deniable “glitches” can nudge “self” acceptance of constraints and service-level reductions.

  5. Some comments…
    1. You don’t come out and say it, but it’s kind of glaring that Ukraine may be a safety valve for Israel; indeed it may be after all some lebensraum for Zionism.

    2. Isn’t it possible that the described phenomena of India, China, and Russia all standing up against the bullying nature of US foreign policy is an opposite face of the same coin that has the silent but sure opposition of the people of the USA and its own government? If you look at it, they are all being exploited by a pattern of policy that has no decency to regulate its rapaciousness.

    3. As you correctly point out, student loan forgiveness is like partial mitigation, not forgiveness at all. Clearly it is intended to schmooze the indiscriminate voter, but the loan remains like the sword of Damocles hanging above each debtor. It can be forgiven or not, and doubtless be a function of the assigned social score. It keeps the weak loyal, while attracting the destitute to the fold of socialism. After all, it is the schools who have unjustly profited from student loans, and they have done this by massively improving their physical plant, even as they dumb down their educational offering, and the result is illustrated by The Idiots Guide To Student Loans, the article in the Wall Street Journal.

    4. Actually, I have not used my radio per se in any of my vehicles for the past 15 to 20 years, due to the repetitious nature of most radio broadcast entertainment. However, I will say that I listen to things such as Solari podcasts and the like while driving. So, with convenience comes surveillance. I do think you will find that more expensive cars tend to offer the feature of additional personal intrusion compared to more utilitarian vehicles. I also think that electric vehicles will have additional features that will keep them from overloading the grid, as will be necessary as more of them are on the road.

    5. I think you can tie in the Sick Codes story with the foregoing in this fashion: people are bound to want lower surveillance vehicles, whether they are on road or off-road. Even as California intends to forbid the sale of anything but electric vehicles in the future, they will not likely forbid the traversing of their roads by vehicles registered out of state, or existing internal combustion motor vehicles. This harkens to a long-term cottage industry beginning with pioneers like Sick Codes. More advanced hacking will provide “clear” signals to the surveillance network, even if the vehicle is not in compliance. This will probably be illegal and cost as much as $3,000 per conversion, but people are ingenious. If you recall The Sopranos, Tony had to have his car specially “tuned up” before he drove it. Many have remarked about the high resale price of used cars, and this may have much to do with it.

    6. As has been noted above, push back is growing, not only from rival nations but from citizens. Still, the monopoly that is maintained by the US government on violence remains quite fearsome. I think John was considering The Amish Option, but I can tell you that here in Ohio, there is a rising crackdown on Amish food sales by FDA types who want to add regulation. One bit of good news in that sphere is that they have a clear mandate from their religion and could invoke the first amendment to maintain their folkways.

    Finally, if the blinkers are going off, be prepared for government mandates requiring New Reformulated Blinker Fluid refills and boosters for all citizens.

  7. Catherine, you mentioned something, “are those earnings real” and it made me think of a startup I tried to help in the Bay Area and how a VC company from Boston gave two young people who just graduated from Stanford, $30 million to start a company and of course because they had next to no experience, they were not doing so well, losing people, like myself, firing people after I had warned them not to hire those people. What kind of company gives $30 million to people with no experience? Is that money real? Where does that money come from?

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