Love, Life, and Liberty the Lies We Tell

           Those without prior exposure to the insanity I  call a blog, or the drivel that comes rushing out my fingertips when the flow moves me are warned now. What proceeds is a work of the mind, it has little to do with the conceptions of everyday existence most cling to.  I ask no forgiveness, nor do I apologize, I am warning.  This type of thinking is detrimental for some, it sets up questions of mind that can not reasonably be answered while within the experience we call life.  This is a logic play, if you do not understand when to draw your own lines between reality, and fantasy than please just refrain from reading any further.  If you have strong religious convictions likely this will only serve to irritate you, or cause to you question your faith.  If that is so, your the one questioning, not me, so leave me out of it.
           From my perspective, which is all I really have, and is in itself something changing constantly. We, and by we I mean every thing in the universe, creation, whatever you call it, is in a state of delusion.  That the only way we can be having this experience of life, of being real is through clinging to several delusions.  These are in no particular order, they seemingly change order of importance as functions of each other.  That we exist at all, with the energy to matter conversion equation we learned that there is no such thing as what we think of as matter. That energy can not be destroyed or created it can only be transformed.  This sets up an interesting dilemma, as there can only be energy, and energy needs a transmission medium, which according to this can not exist, other than as a conditional state of the energy itself.  The concept of our lack of reality has been expressed many times in many ways. From the dream within a dream idea, or the matrix, this conception our own non existence is expressed.  The second delusion is that we exist as individuals. There is no place where anything stops, and anything starts. What we think of as our seemingly solid bodies with continuity are in reality a constantly shifting mass of energy, much like a storm appears to us. The third delusion is we are the center of all things. This one even for those that have been able to accept the ideas of the first two often reject.  My own sense of I, finds this fact to be most humorous, and exactly as it should be.  That we perceive as if we were the center of all things is not really up for debate. Our sense of self stems for the idea we are a body, that we look out from our eyes. That our senses interpret what for us is reality. This is such an amazing state of being, it can not be celebrated enough. That you are the one sitting at the center of creation, even if it's only from your perspective such a cool trick of relativity it becomes overlooked. As if it couldn't possibly any other way, this isn't so, as nde, obe, remote viewing, channeling and the like lead to the conception your point of perception is not permanently attached to what we think of as our physical body.
          An oddity in the ideas of reincarnation, through ego attachment we seem to get many people who due to feeling powerless now project themselves forward, and backward through time to be powerful people somewhere, or sometime else.  It is seemingly rare for people to consider that if there is a linear progression of reincarnation, where have new people come from?  As well as how few consider the idea they might have been Hitler, Stalin, Nero, these figures from history that are viewed as evil, or corrupt, or just plain insane.  The flip to this is those who end up in the messianic complex, they rarely actually consider the price those who represented this energy, or personality complex had to pay.  If as our latest equations point to, and spiritual traditions predating recorded history state, that this is eternal, that we always are.  Well eternity is just that, we would have nothing to do, no place to go, other than in relative senses, and we have forever to get there. I am now all I will ever be, even if it's from your perspective not in evidence.
        If someone has a world view that completely accounts for, and encompasses yours, plus adds in others in a larger framework. While theirs is not necessarily accurate, it is likely more accurate than yours. An hour, day, or year are not measurements of time, they are measures of movement, a measurement of rate of motion, or rate of change.  No one on the planet has ever been in the same place twice, even in their own room, or bed. Change the rate of motion, and change the experience of time. I am not me, never was never will be, I am merely reflections of all things I have encountered, The existence of what is seemingly other, is what helps define what I am.

Jack
aka
PanseyBard     

Self Styled Slacker

         I am a slacker, what does that mean?  

slack·er

ˈslakər/

noun

informal

1. a person who avoids work or effort.

   synonyms:

   layabout, idler, shirker, malingerer, sluggard, laggard; More

   • US

     a person who evades military service.
   • NORTH AMERICAN

     a young person (especially in the 1990s) of a subculture characterized by apathy and aimlessness

   
   

I avoid anything I think of as work, or anything I view as being wholly stupid.  Not to say I am not productive, or that I never act in a manor that can be rightly called stupid.  I wasn't always a slacker, and to be fair, I have adopted the term as it's easier to cultivate that view in people than being honest.  In many ways the self adoption of the term is not unlike any other person taking a slight, and using it.  That does not mean I am unable to use that trick of detachment, and see how from others perspectives I do exactly that.  

      From my own view, work is not required, work is something people feel they have to do out of a sense of obligation.  What that obligation is up for debate, it is slightly different for everyone.  Generally coming from lessons taught in childhood, either intentionally or through osmosis, just absorbing what everyone around them says, and does in relation to "money".  That is what it pretty much always comes to, the majority work because they feel it's the only way to get money, and they feel they need money in order to survive.  Some have gotten to a point where the idea of what survival looks like, might be extravagant. That isn't overly important, it's the idea of have to work to survive.  I've never felt that way, and though the hows have changed, the intent has remained fairly constant for about 30 years now.  I'm not even saying I haven't been employed, the what is less important as the how I feel about the what. I mean I had a job at gas station for 5 or so years, it was an exchange, I didn't feel like it was work, with the only time I felt taken advantage of was when being asked to fix a computer as a cashier.  Let me explain this a bit, I covered fri, sat, sun, from 1pm, till midnight, on my own from 5pm on, was allowed to sit and read. My friends would hang out, even had this beautiful woman that would come have dinner sometimes.  It was for me a nice break, and forced me to stay social in the physical world. On my time I was playing Everquest 50+ hours a week, so being in a high profile position where I was forced to interact with people was needed.

      There is seemingly an expected life path, birth, school, job, spouse, kids, death.  Well I do not remember getting the choice of being born, and if I had a say you'd have to question my sanity from the get go. For the first x odd years they tell you, your job is to learn, than they proceed to cram you full of garbage that has very little to do with learning, and an awful lot with Pavlovian conditioning. While I love learning, everyone, and thing teaches me all the time, I do not yet remember a day I didn't learn something.  School as it turns out, was not really about learning, oh sure there are some foundational aspects, the reading, writing, arithmetic. Along with some introduction to higher concepts.  For the most part my experience of school was about the next school, or job you were going to get. When I stopped going, end of junior year, it was there wasn't much left to learn there, and the piece of paper did not mean anyone had learned a thing.  The fact that people were getting degrees essentially handed to them based on who their parents were, or how skilled an athlete they were.  Made the piece of paper meaningless to me, as well as setting up a disdain for those who put faith in them. This doesn't even account for the ideas of diminishing returns being applied, or the shrinking need for a labor pool due to automation. They say that nearly 3/4 of the american population lives paycheck to paycheck, with around 60% being one missed check from the street.  How well is our system working?  In the writings of the founders of America, not the United States, they are different. They wrote about our times right now, not in dates, and prophetic announcements. Nah, they didn't need to go through all that, at the times of their writings they were already being forced to, or had just broken from, an outside agency printing their currency at interest.  They already saw jobs as wage slavery, The idea that future generations would end up homeless due to compounding interest on currency creation in private hands was not, and is not esoteric. Given this perspective the idea of "working" for a "living" loses it's appeal at least in my eyes. 

       For me a flip side to the slacker lifestyle is this, only once you have leisure time do you begin to contemplate.  When your life is about survival, or chasing the next big thing, there is little space for the what if's, the scent of flowers. Often there isn't even room for friends, and family, usually the very ones purportedly being worked so hard to benefit are lost in the daily shuffle, grinding out the next dollar. Or perhaps for some it is the ego identification with a title that gives meaning to their existence. Having lost count long ago of the number of times people have talked to me in the capacity of clerk, and told me I was wasting, or under utilizing my abilities. How can this possibly be? I have no pedigree so to speak, would feel the endorsement as a burden, not a blessing. Strange it feels as if I am becoming, or have been the ultimate con person, convincing everyone I am something, while always being something else.

       Tied into this are the ideas of the rites of passage, ceremonial markings of the transitions through the accepted phases of life. Having not personally finished the school portion, I'm still a kid, with most I encounter recognizing me as such, within the context of western society.  I have done many of the so called mystery traditions indoctrination's, intentionally or just as an outcropping of the exploration.  In the extreme other people have attempted to foist all sorts of labels, or titles onto me, in order to make it ok for them to relate to me as I am.  Having been called everything from cult leader, to guru, asshole, st. germaine, or sanada, a reincarnation of a grey that crashed at roswell, to being told you are as the buddha, or a child of satan. There is an odd thing my slacker life of leisure and contemplation has taught me, at a certain point it doesn't matter what is and isn't true. Even when it comes to ideas of what we may or may not represent as spiritual beings.  That sure you might have genetic predispositions, with the cellular memory, and that is all well and good.  When you get to most abstract connections to all things, it's simply a matter of accepting that all things are connected to all things. Once you are able to see yourself as, than you are.

Jack

aka

PanseyBard

Labels, Labels, Everywhere!

          Labels, we all seem to love to identify, classify, organize, like collectively we are OCD. We make all sorts of systems to enable us to make connections, to make sure everything is as it should be.  Should is of course a key word, as it points to a trap of perspective. We look out on the world seemingly from a point of isolation, we categorize, included, or exclude based on a framework we rarely if ever question.  The very notion we are human is a boarder, a boundary, it isolates us from feeling a sense of connection to the world we inhabit.  As we have self identified as being different, or other, we have become exactly that.  If I am Jack, and you are not Jack, there is no choice for me but treat you as less important than Jack.  When self is identified as merely a differentiated portion of a greater tapestry, a thread in a fabric the universe, multiverse, god, whatever label works for you. At this point, other becomes self, self becomes other, with the juxtaposition being merely a trick of perception.  As all of our experience is a trick of perception. from our senses being equivalent to input/output devices.  These are all finely tuned to pick up certain frequency ranges, we are than given the framework to make sense, everything around us informs us of what it is, much like a function call in object oriented programming.  We in turn broadcast what we are, and what we expect everything else to be.
        In some teachings of what has been called the fall. When the angels we driven from heaven, where they were driven to was the abyss, the chaos or all potential. Kinda what we think of as space, that perfect balance on the Planck scale that we witness as empty.  Into this nothing, the hierarchy of angels imposed order, bringing into form worlds for themselves to inhabit. Our world is just one of many, The impressing of form on formless is a recurring theme in every tradition, crossing into fundamentals of physics. At the core these are attempting to explain what is essentially a tendency, much like the morphogenic fields expressed in the ideas of Sheldrake. Does this mean we can make up whatever want, mold, and shape as we see fit. In a way yes, in other ways no, it sets up a feedback loop. Where we are created, and creator, our own acceptance of there being other gives the other the power to imprint their conception of us, and how we exist in relation to their conception of self.  As we see the world is how the world presents itself to us, as we are incapable of seeing in any other way.

We make it up as we go along, and cling to it like it's our life raft, some to the point of violent reaction to anything that might alter a world view. We seem to continually look for an out, a way to keep our self importance, our place as the center of all creation, I am the center of my own universe, in that way I am the center of all things, everything radiates out from me, I shape by, and in return am shaped by all things.  I've often said I am as I am because no one else was willing to be me, an odd notion, but not far from the truth. The people around me push me into being portions of self they know exist but are unwilling to express for themselves, for what ever reason.  It does not make me anything of these things, except in relation to that which perceives me as such. What the I is that seems to lurk in, around and through me, you and everything. Well that you have to come to on your own, in your own way. My way is very personal, tied to metaphor, and the logic of chaos, coupled to life long exposure to the logic externalized, to become cold, crunching big data in quantum environment where space/time/energy functions of each other. Be aware, or be awareness itself, devoid of attachment to that observed. The world becomes a much different place.

Jack
aka
PanseyBard    

Life Under Glass

        The I represented by the identity Jack Baldwin is a fiction, it's a costume I don in order to have influence in this world. Based on actions known and unknown people lend me their influence, This is pretty well known among folks using the net, it's the idea of endorsing someone on linkdin. People will endorse people for anything, before getting rid of my linkdin account I was seemingly capable of outstanding feats in the professional sphere.  Even in the twitter verse the labels fly willy nilly, I've made lists from MBA's to UX designer, to web developer.  Truth be told, I have been attempting to find my place in the world. You know the one, that thing everyone is supposed to have, where they become engrossed, and content. That life we are supposedly born to live, the perfect job, spouse, house. That place where life can flow by in a blur, while we are busy living it.  Does such a thing even exist for all of us?  When broken down, most of these perfect things are the same I've actively avoided for one reason or another.  If we all are free to choose, if freewill is the rule, how can there be a singular life that will fulfill a person?  Don't I have to choose the life that I will be fulfilled by?
What is that perfect job?  When I hear words of work, career, business, the connotation is not one of pleasure and joy, even labors of love hit the wall, reach the point of diminishing returns, where the effort required to improve becomes as great as the effort it took to achieve the current skill. The idea of work is an odd one, people sold on the premise of effort, or labor when the ideals of production is to off load as much labor and cost as possible while keeping profits at their maximum. I've had lots of jobs, they all were just that, job done out of a feeling of need, or lack. There has never been that feeling of excitement attached to work. Even in areas where it's a hobby or play that transitions into being compensated, once it's for pay it's not play anymore. It becomes a thing having to be done in order to survive, or in order to do other things.  For me I guess that is what work represents, and why I am so resistant to being a worker.  The view of work as being something you do in order to be able to do something else.  What is and isn't productive is an odd thing, when it comes down to it, if the everything is energy, and energy can not be destroyed or created, how can we be said to be doing more than moving stuff around?
       Of course for many love relationships are the all consuming passion of life. Finding that special someone, falling in love, raising a family.  Except, is there really this romantic notion of love, what even is love?  Does the acts involved in the continuation of species, or procreation really have all that much to do with what we generally equate with the mating rituals, or romance?  Having rejected religious notions of marriage, right along with the civil notions of registering the relationship with the state. Like being open, caring and sharing with a person isn't tough enough, it's seemingly the custom across the board to bring the expectations of god, the state, and family members into new relationships.  Really do we need religion peeking over our shoulders while grope hot and heavy, or fumble with a zipper or button?  When I saw you, it wasn't your personality that made me look twice, your education didn't lock my gaze to your swaying hips. It wasn't thoughts of love, it was some serious animal attraction, lust. You know those things many are embarrassed to cop too, that it's tits, or asses, or feet, or whatever our fetish is. The person you are might captivate my attention for a time, but I am complete unto myself,  For me it's about getting lost in how amazing another is, of communion, That feeling that you can not be right for someone else, till your right with yourself. Experience has smacked around a bit, when it comes to this one. Seems the biological drives dovetail really well with the psycho-social conditioning, with my ideology leaving much to be desired from the ideals set forth. In other words I've been single a long time, not out of lack of opportunity, just out of risk versus reward evaluations.
       I guess when you've set your own life as not overly important in fabric of human development, while railing against the prevailing ideological foundation of matter being preeminent, finding those spaces that suit you can be challenging. Answering those questions, of what is this about, why are we here, where are we going.  If existence is a school, we all fail, there is no passing grade,  If it's an illusion we make up as we go along, if we all exist in our own private Idaho, why are there all these assholes in my dream world? If this is a shared experience, a subjective collective, why are we creating so much drama, and suffering? Sure you can only go as high as you've gone low, might have merit, but we just have to be aware of the potential, we do not have to experience every little pit trap.

As ever make up your own mind
Jack
aka
PanseyBard

Warden Cliff explained, Power Generation made simple.

      There are several posts rattling around me, when they stack up like this, they become insistent to be recorded. Almost as if they have concerns with being forgotten, an odd notion when applied to ideas.  So because of that, they are going to come out raw, as they are coming to me, in the flow of moment. The idea speaking through me as it is able to, so that it is reflected as to how I understand it, not a certain limitation of, or insistence on completeness, or even that I am right.
     Many know of the Name Tesla, at least a bit, perhaps even having heard of a Tesla coil. While I have entertained great ideas using coils and the like to set up effective perpetual motion, with no violation of entropy.  The key in that being effective, if the earth stops spinning, we either die, or won't be here in our current form.  While this toroidal shapes, are great, they make complex what is one of the simplest things possible. Giving shape, to create a pathway to guide flow of substance. In other words, create a differential in energy potential, and than exploit it. Or recognize where, and when those already occur, and place your self to take advantage of them.
     The earth is a giant electric dynamo, a huge electric motor, with the creation of electromagnetic fields that go along.  We exist within and between these fields, they have been called many things, from dragon lines, to lay lines, to the meridians of the earth. The names change, the name of the study of them changes. There is an above, and below aspect, with one grid being roughly 60 feet above the earth, and one 60 feet below.  What Tesla was up to, was exploiting this, he put collectors, than created the path of least resistance, to a point on the earths surface. Setting up essentially an huge ac capacitor. This would fire on it's own timing, once you have this you can change the frequency. He was pumping it into the ground, to piggy back on the Schumann resonance in order to provide free electricity for anyone, anywhere, with just sticking a stake into the ground, using what is needed, and grounding the excess back into the earth.  There is much more information on this particular subject, but for me, the important part is the understanding of creating essentially a pressure difference, and exploiting it for power generation.  With the rise of slow release capacitors, it is now possible to take the flash of solar energy at sunrise, and set, where our panels are normally getting over charged with lots of waste. Quick charge the slow release capacitors, and slowly use that charge through the day, or night to steadily charge the system.
    I have a few projects of what is through of as free energy generation, though it's really just self energy generation, which has become frowned upon in the US.

off for now
Jack
aka
PanseyBard 

Tommy! Archetype for the Electric Kool Aid Initiation

      A couple of days ago, I hacked together an entertainment setup, from an old tube tv, a 3d blu-ray player with internet apps, and a directv remote I found to control it all. I plan on adding in a digital to analog converter box, and a homemade powered antenna, as the resources to do so become available. I began playing movies I hadn't seen since for at least 20 years or so, The great rock'n'roll swindle, and Tommy were among my selections for that first day's use.  Tommy in particular stood as having been completely misunderstood by myself, and seemingly most of the people I know who have watched it.  With the majority labeling dismissively as a rock opera, with little meaning beyond the entertainment value. Having come to the realization that entertainment has never been about enjoyment per se, but more about passing on cultural understanding and wisdom passed through the ages.  I was still in for a disconcerting surprise upon watching Tommy from my current perspective. What I was not prepared for was, the dramatization of what myself and others have experienced in our everyday lives.  The movie itself is an adaptation of the initiation rituals of the mystery traditions, skewed toward the inclusion of LSD as a catalyzing agent.
    Having first being exposed to Tommy as a child, pretty sure it was 3rd grade. It's message was lost on my, the effect of the movie for me than was one of feeling protective of those who were unable to protect themselves.  This was personified in a brief scene where a lovely girl is about to be shot, and Tommy shows up to alter the encounter just through his presence.  At the time, this was so profound for me that I had nightmares about it.  Nightmares are rare for me, and generally only occur when death is near me.  In that instance the death I was feeling was that of a babysitter, not mine, I did not need a sitter generally, and was offended when one was foisted on me.  Not being a fan of watching people die, and the effects it has on those who are left behind. My mother and I had moved out, in short order Stephanie, came home from school to find her sitter strangled. Likely if I had still been there I would have been with her, as we walked to and from school together.  This affinity for feeling the presence of death, yet not having to witness it's effects directly continues as a theme in my life. Almost a meet Joe Black kinda vibe, not that I equate myself with death, just that death is not my enemy, but a friend that accompanies me on my journey. Always ready to send me home if I become to distant from my core self.

    Watching it as I am now, was an entirely different experience, having lived the initiation being shown, and having taken it from a 3 that become one to a 7, and 13 that become one. I was struck almost dumb, as before my eyes, the basic blueprint for my existence was on display, In the film we watch as Tommy goes from a child, bewildered and overloaded by the new sensory data bombarding him, putting him the state of the deaf, dumb, and blind, or in other words, seen no evil, speak no evil, and hear no evil. During this portion Tommy is repeatedly abused, though the abuse is lost oh him, he is unaware of the meaning behind the events he subjected to.  Than we get to a point where he is taken to Gypsy the Acid queen, played by Tina Turner. In the movie it is portrayed as a sexual encounter. Which if you've ever experienced psychoactive chemicals the experience is so intimate, and the movie was made at the end of the free love hippy movement, that the representation is to be expected. When the LSD experiences have cleared the pathways, the fog lifts, and we are introduced to a fully realized Tommy. Who proceeds to go out into the world, and help everyone else become as he is, without having to go through the trauma that he endured.
    Don't start tripping, and project delusions of grandeur, those are your hang ups not mine. When I first opened up in the late 90's, someone I thought of as a friend devastated me by stating he felt I was on the way to becoming a cult leader. Odd from my perspective, as I am appalled by the idea anyone would desire to follow in my footsteps, and when I related my personal journey. It is always with the idea my life is not to be emulated, but seen as a cautionary tale. How I got from my conception to the fictional character I am today is not comfortable, or even desired.  It is simply what it took for me, what it will take for you is up to you.  When during my last LSD experience I received a message, that if I continued to take it, it would become detrimental, I stopped.  Within a couple of years I had also stopped smoking Mary Jane as well. What followed was a 10 year or so switch. Where I became acutely aware of the negative cultural view on my life.  This was completely at odds with how people interacted with me on a personal basis. Where almost everyone viewed me as being a well adjusted healthy individual.  Not only was "drug" use condemned, my entire childhood was outlawed, as being unfit. Naturally I accepted the judgment of those who presumably had more experience and wisdom than I.  This too was a part of the initiation, the moving into darkness, and through a death like experience where the world shuns, and is shunned in return.  That is the ego death, where we accept the world, and everyone in it will keep on spinning regardless of our presence.  I must say I was ready and desirous of death, not suicidal, just not so in love with life, or self anymore.  The I in me longs for nothing, other than dissolution of self, resolution of the conflict inherent in the structure of what we consider "reality".
dailymotion tommy-1975-film-pt-1_music
dailymotion tommy-1975-film-pt-2_music

Jack
aka
PanseyBard

Python Twitter Bot with Tweepy

In an earlier post I laid out a bit how I was working on a twitter bot to automate the promotion of this blog.  I'm a slacker, that has a bad rap for many folks, for me it's the highest calling I can aspire. Get the most accomplished, with the least effort, and disturbance. In the words of Bruce Lee, "Be Like Water, My Friend".  In the dao of piglet, and the te of poo, it's the mystery of being the uncarved block. In the teachings of the Kabbalah or Quabbalah, which was made into such nice easy pictograms in traditional tarot, it's learning to be representative of any, while maintaining your own sense of self.  I have one Boss, and I'm really hoping that Boss never shows up, but I always am sure to recognize There is always a bigger fish. When I crashed the party of social media a few years back, it was never intended to a social outlet. I had already experienced that in years of mmorpg's, irc, bbs, going back to wargames dialers, and phone phreaking. What I was always best at was social hacking, a rather disturbing art when taken to the level of social engineering, or mass media marketing.  After all the drugs, meditation, and study I did over the course of  a lifetime, I finally started to see a pattern, it's not even an unknown pattern, matter of fact it's all over the place, or at least portions of it are.  When I finally awoke to what I had been attempting to understand, about people, and their place in creation, I found that I had missed the relative short window of opportunity to be counted among those who's say carried any weight. In social media I saw an opportunity to leverage the flood of information as a means to get ideas running through my mind. into the hands of those who could make use of them.  I accidently crashed the party of the twitter follow gangs, that handle the bulk of the twitter advertising. It's a fairly ingenious method of leveraging the split platforms of twitter, and sms, in concert to trade influence in the twitter verse. I just saw it as an expedient means of sharing ideas to everyone as quickly as possible, regardless of how they were accepted. I even refused ever offer of easy income, not out a disdain for the finer things the world has to offer, but from an understanding of the myth of an infinite growth paradigm in a zero sum game. I'm speaking of the effects of compounding interest on privatized currency creation. The same effect is seen again and again in almost every market. It's the money itself I have issue with, not currency as an idea. The accounting for who has what, and why, is important. In our current system so many are being left behind, not out of ability, but just by becoming a party to the madness which has a seeming strangle hold on our global civilization. The worship of money, and idol, a representation of something only in potential.  As I said I'm an old school hacker, I once streamlined a system for reporting the percentage of the utilities used in manufacturing in New York state were taxable.  Was a great job while it lasted, at 18 having a work from home job for 10 or 12 an hour is amazing. Taking the time each reports takes to generate from 6 hours to 2 hours, and being told your services are no longer required, not so amazing. Being allowed to help a crop of Police Officers pass a class they had no reason taking, Amazing!. Having your professor tell you there is no place in the world for programming games, again not so amazing. I stopped using computers, and started playing games with them, and then started fixing them.  In the course of my several years of tech service for a local community, what I found was they didn't actually want for me to really solve the issues, they wanted me to manage the problems that cropped up with using outdated, or mixed era systems. Sometimes they almost wanted me to take over the day to day operations of their endeavors. All well and good if it is a mentor situation, when it's a lack of desire to stay current enough to manage your own affairs, well if your not the adult, there aren't many roles left.  After exhausting some of the more entertainment oriented uses for the raspberry pi b+ I turned to what else could this little marvel do. I started seeing vpn's, and pirate drop boxes, wifi extenders to create public clouds all over. All cool concepts, but not much use to me personally, given my current circumstance. Realizing I needed to have a bit of programing brush up, I think the last time I wrote code before this was 88 or so. I hit up code academy, and picked python as it is a seemingly popular high lvl language with many popular api's. I also did some html work, I get it, and it's powerful, it's just puts me to sleep doing it. Even in python as entertaining as it was to create the bot as far as I've taken it, and I am well aware how limited it is in it's current state.  It's basic, but it will tweet for you, pick from search terms to promo others, so your account generates more attention from the community, and will auto follow new folks, and unfollow those that are just attempting to boost numbers. Once I got there essentially I had a automatic twitter promotional bot. Did you know people get paid for doing promotional work on twitter? Even though it makes sense from the marketing game standpoint, that is a slippery area, we are talking about folks that have no moral issue with using psych jobs on children to profit.
So today I'm going post the code for my bot friend. working title was twitternanny, but for easy of use I have taken to naming them after the account they manage. I currently have 2 instances running on my raspberry pi. They may come down at the end of the month, as I have already given notice, my leap of faith I guess, with no place on horizon as of yet. I guess I could always battery power it, and stick in an open wifi cloud in a tree or something, but what would be the point. I ended up using twitter as an object lesson of the insanity of exclusivity.
Enough of my ramble, I get sick of myself sometimes.
here is the code, use it abuse it.



def hourlytweet():
    filename=open(argfile,'r')
    f=filename.readlines()
    filename.close()
    api.update_status(status=f)
    print("hourly tweet posted")


def follow_unfollow():
    followers = api.followers_ids()
    friends = api.friends_ids()

    for z in followers:
        if z not in friends:
            api.create_friendship(z)

    for z in friends:
        if z not in followers:
            api.destroy_friendship(z)
    print("follow, unfollow done")


def search_retweet():
        search_terms= ['python', 'technology', 'raspberry pi', 'ingress', 'news', 'breaking']
        g = random.choice(search_terms)
        g = '#' + g
        results = api.search(q=g, count=1)
        for u in results:
            if u not in alreadytweeted:
                api.retweet(u.id)
                print("retweeted top result for", g)
                alreadytweeted.append(u)



x=1
y=2

while x<y:
    localtime = time.asctime(time.localtime(time.time()))
    hour = int(localtime[11] + localtime[12])
    print('current hour is:',hour)
    if hour>5 and hour<24:
        try:
            hourlytweet()
            time.sleep(1700+random.randint(200,400))
        except:
            print("could not post hourly tweet")
            time.sleep(1700+random.randint(200,400))
        try:
            search_retweet()
            follow_unfollow()
        except:
            print("could not post retweet")
    elif hour == 24 or hour < 6:
        try:
            search_retweet()
            follow_unfollow()
        except:
            pass
    time.sleep(1700+random.randint(200,400))

some of the basic framework came form http://www.dototot.com/how-to-write-a-twitter-bot-with-python-and-tweepy/
So big ups and respect, thanks for the head start, and to those I didn't mention, sorry I use many reference sources when I start a little project.

Thanks
Jack
aka
PanseyBard Digital PiedPiper

Trying a Different Approach

I am a slacker, my life is a cautionary tale, not something to aspire to or emulate.  Do not misconstrue that the I in me would wish to be any other than me.  Only that the emotional, and psychological traumas I needed to inflict upon myself to become as I am, are not anything I would wish upon anyone.  In searching answers to those ultimate questions I pulled an icarus. Not once, or even twice, nah I'm not that bright.  I had to push it till it cost me my top teeth, and partially my bottom ones, still getting over that one.  People have talked about genetic, cellular and other types of memory.  Now we are even to the point of beginning to grapple with ideas of moving without moving.  It's possible, without a doubt, it's not even that difficult when you've grasped for inkling of our true position in creation, and it fried you back into your place.  We can make black holes, we can warp space and time, we end up in the formless abyss, and no one but our dead mourns our passing.  I love people, I love the planet, all life can snuff out in our little corner of existence, and there might be some metaphorical tears shed on what ever plane of existence you and yours hail from.
Do we really have the right to take chances with the planet, solar system, galaxy, or on and on?
some folks seem to be interested in how I see things, some are offended, I'm ok with that too.  I know what I like, I feel what I need, I feel what the people around me need, using people loosely.
If we meet and you think you would like to chat, I'm happy to do so, if I offend, just tell me to please stop, and go away, and I will.  What I can not abide is total trickery, and dishonesty, I'm to good at it, and it hurts me to much to inflict those kinds injuries on myself.
I'll try to do a better job with some pix, and the like at showing kind of how I see this world, and why sometimes it makes me cry when others are so happy!  btw, if there is any confusion, I an hetrosexual male, that is so in love with women that they are my kryptonite.  it's pretty much the same with everyone, but we all get to pick where, and what we eat right?
Never been suicidal, not that I feel people do not have to right to decide the fate of what can be in this experience the only thing they can ever hope to claim ownership over, which is really just stewardship, we have horribly misunderstood, like so much of our K based systems, in such a rush to get somewhere.  They forgot that Wisdom, knows when, and where to apply knowledge, and thats why Wikipedia, has a capital W. No it's just that what is point of suicide in a zero sum universe. what comes in goes out, it's hotel california, we either come to grips, or we just keep blowing bubbles.

Much Love
Jack

there was a song from when I was teenage drunken drop out in the punker days

If some of your brightest kids are seemingly like the metaphors in this song, you might wanna take a look in the mirror before asking how things got this bad.  I was almost a perfect reflection of a child raised for the most part by the stuff around me, mostly tv, music, games, starting as early as I can remember.  I was never mommies monster at all, just a reflection of the monsters so many of us have become.
gonna try to finish up some e-mails, change get outside, and upload some pictures to instagram, in case anyone is curious what I'm about today.

Is Love The Real Cult of Personality?

Through out this really messed up journey, that I'm told humans call life, I say that not as slight to the word, it's all the baggage.  Even through how cross wired I alway seem to be atm, I think thats the blessing and the curse I guess.  When you step off the matrix grid, and step back on it in bare feet.  We are all so busy everyday running around looking for the next thrill, the next greatest thing. Some bit of fluff, and we only like our medicines sugar coated, and hell I like that stuff too.  I just do not like the feeling I have clean up after folks all the time.  Cuz these arn't my Kids.  What do you do when you find the perfect child care, and you realize it so soon, that everyone wants this person to have children of their own and raise them.  That is a trend through out my Life, everyone wanted me to be the father of their children.  When I'm an idiot, I don't know what I'm doing here, I'm making most of it up as a long just attempting to keep some measure of personal sanity while everyone around me has their own ideas on what I should or should not be doing.  I have never desired to bring any children into this world because I love children.  The world I was being presented with was both amazing, and terrifying, I was on the whirlwind tour, and I'm not sure when it started.  There is an old story my mother told me, about when I was only 2 or so she says, I don't remember much anyway.
Anywhoo, It was something about walking in on my grandpa jack garvin alot the memories surrounding times I spent with him are kinda hazy, that kinda protective scary.  As if you personally always feel ok around a person, though you know they are dangerous to others.  Mom tells me that she walked in on me taking apart a tv set, with my gjg, and when they walked in it was so shocking that it was like spell being broken.  There is something occurs when falling in love with another person, and I'm talking sexual desire, though it's often confused as such.  Love is just where you see yourself reflected in another. That complete desire to be connected, sets up a link, bidirectional communication of a sort.  This is all well and good, and everyone likes to play and swap energy, cuz of course how could there ever be anything other than just energy right?  People seem to think I'm some kinda super genius or some crap, wtf is that, IQ has nothing to do with numbers. And this is a free magic lesson, you can take it or leave it, as everyone has been trying to tell me. The ball is in my court. Only no one seems to be completely open and honest with me, and I'm begining to get the gist.
Love is the ultimate cult of personality, what else can draw some into some 1 else so completely that worlds are born and torn apart so quickly and dramatically that no one even notices, hardly even the people that were there.  The messed up thing about my life is, all I wanted to ever do was play, when really it was never about play at all.  It was the passion, the fire that is the real world, with the scrapes and bruise, they heal and mend given enough time, and according to my sources thats just a trick of relative motions, My life journey thus far, I have an inkling it's just about to get going into a completely other direction again.  Has been not just about learning about life and death, those are not all that important, as much as they are crushing and liberating when turn to personal abundance, and loss.  It's all the good gooy center sweet sticky stuff we are missing, SHWAG is just an acronym for shit we all get right?  I was always about substance, it was about how expensive the restaurant, or home I lived in was.  Personally a little sanctuary where I can find a bit of solitude, when I grate upon my friends.  There has been a running theme in my life, I was always playing monkey in the middle for everyone group I got shoved into, is some vain glorious attempt to make everything ok. Take away the muck and mire of the real world they inhabited. How can that possibly be my responsibility,
I am the same person that dropped out of high school, not once but twice.  Than dropped out of College. Got a position of working from home at 18, mind you this was maybe 1988 or so. It was to figure out what portion of a companies electric consumption was able to be considered taxable in the state of NY. At the time I didn't think much of it, come on, I was lounging at home punching numbers into spread sheets, from lotus 123, and I believe it was microsoft though it might have been word perfect. It was great I believe it was like 10 or 15 an hour or so, and they gave me an estimated time they expected it to take, 8 to 10 hours or so per report.  It was work, I was plowing through crap like crazy, it's just what I do. As began to get a clearer image of what they were doing, I realized it was all disordered, they had no organizational skills what so ever.  They were duplicating work all over, and expecting me to do the same.  I streamed lined the process to about 3 or 4 hours per report.  This of course sets up the dilemma. They are expecting them to take much longer, and I admit I was tempted to just over bill, and be done.  I didn't choose that path, instead I went and told them exactly what I had set up, which they said they were really happy with, only now they did not me anymore. Thank you good bye.  I wonder how long they used my system that set up for them, to save them precious time in their lives to actually enjoy the retard abundance they were surrounded with already to over flowing, and I get sent off with a thanks bye.  There was a sense of feeling cheated, or not quite cheated, as technically they followed the letters of the law.  But arn't letters all equal to numbers, and if there are only 9 of those, and they all are infinite unto themselves, arn't we just left with a 1, and the void. cuz the 0 is not the void, though often mistaken for it.  The void is more of sweet dissolution, of stillness an expansion or contraction of perception that allows one take a break from all the stress and pushing and pulling of a binary world, and 0 is just a place holder, a cipher, a riddle and key, it's just another symbol on some twist path to madness and for perhaps a select few reemergence into sanity, From the crazy overlay of artificial reality, by the projections of the mind.
We got ingressed from the computer, and tv screens, we flashed it right into our brains, and then we get plucked, spindled and mutilated while some unseen hands happen by and grab a little nugget from remains.  This is such an place, Cuz I was the one that remembered my original love of machines, cuz I was a real boy all the time. and so is binary, cuz 0 is just place holder, it doesn't mean anything. it's just gibberish, and what do you get when you take the voids away 111111111111111 which is always yes. you only need to understand completely ridiculous nature of programing languages, I never was a hacker, though I've heard stories of things I've done, they were plucked from my mind, and wiped away.  It was never about attempting to take anything for me, I always knew it didn't mean anything real. I was in the real world already. I was just playing with the toys I was given in the manor I found entertaining at the time. Hacking has nothing to do with computers, but it makes for a sweet framework.

I'm not sure I was ever any of those kids here, it's like a twisted lost fragment from someone else.

make up your own mind, and be nicer to each other, everyone likes to play, just not the same games.
Domination is for sure not kindness ever, cuz how can there be choice offered unless you trick it in, kinda like the randomness factor in the digital verse. it's not real. thats only a sweet sticky syrup, to gives us an excuse for choices we regret in the rear view mirror.  That to me is sad way to go about this, and I'd rather have a little honest quiet discussion like someone around us has got any sense.

make up your mind, I make up mine, thats choice, not push, or pull, poke prod or what have you.
Life isn't a sprint if it is it's already over with, the thing about a singularity, is once it's popped it's gone and going on forever. But none of us like that idea, some somewhere somewhen, some whatever it is, figured it out for us, it's called creation and equalization of pressure differentials. Once understood those can be harnessed in a crazy amount of ways.  Ever take a look or stop a min to think what a wifi card is?  how it works? and how the energy is all around us already it's in the wifi hot spots, step in a cloud and it just pours in, if you connect to the appropriate contact points that would normally plug it into an internal wifi laptop. I'd imagine similar functions could be worked around blue tooth devices.

Be kind, and gentle, and if that still isn't working walk away. there is always more void

Jack

Transhumanist Goal in Sight

          So You Want to Live Forever?  

           Some may be aware of Transhumanism, many are likely not.  To me it's just a nice advertising friendly name, to what may be the most important event in human biological development.  To put it as simply as I can, Transhumanism refers to humanities move toward machine.  The event is oft called the Singularity, the moment when the line between man, and machine disappears.   Sounds like a sci-fi story, I know.   Some very prominent folks are not just expecting it, they are helping to ensure it's arrival.  Chief among them in the US would have to be Ray Kurzweil, though he is by no means alone as a google search shows, the 2045 initiative has it's path all mapped out.  The goal of course being technological immortality.  This opens up so many questions, moral, religious, philosophic.  A wonderland of one of my favorite questions "what if".

         What If's

           Much thought has been directed toward conceptions of immortality.  I had thought the question of immortality had been resolved with Einstein, or at least moved into the realm of not if, but the nature of.  A question of ego, what of me, as I currently conceive of myself continues.  Just to get this obvious one out of the way.  It is unlikely these will be available for everyone, so there is a high potential for a split, a break away civilization, or a revolution of sorts.  The masses likely lose that one, as there is little need for restraint, given the move toward automation.  This could ultimately be the end of humanity as we think of it.  That of course is an extreme version, with a toned down cyberpunk flowering out of imagination into the world.  Where there is a vast range of quality of artificial replacement components, along with a range of skill in application.  Though interesting, there are far more complex implications.  In all of our world religions even agnostic, there is an acknowledgement of an authority.  In many there is an idea of a covenant, or contract.  In many of the stories when judgement comes, it is often due to man stepping outside the bounds of this covenant. Given the context of some of these transgressions, like interbreeding, building a tower to god.  These attracted a direct intervention.  Is it to far out to consider, physical immortality might be reacted to in a similar fashion.  Mortality is fundamental to our conception of what is to be human. Can a being that is essentially immortal even be considered human?   This does not even consider the possible personal empires that could be sustained.  

      It's personal

      Ultimately this is another of those not if, but when events. With each of us having to make personal choices.  Just what it means to be alive, and what immortality really represents.  Will we lose what makes life worth living in our rush to make it eternal?  One thing is certain, it's going to be entertaining to watch it unfold.

Jack

aka

PanseyBard   

App: Idea Auto Surround Sound Setup

    Just a quick one today.  A friend started talking about wanting a 3d microphone. Which being a bit high at the time sent my thoughts racing down how a thing like that would work.  Quickly returning the though of triangulation of the sound using the know quantities of the speed of sound, and the distance between the microphones.  Those are all you need to calculate where a sound originates, Once here it was easy to imagine listening to your favorite performance as if you were sitting in the middle of it.  Being able to point to a location in the room and say thats where the guitarist is standing.  Of course the recording is only half the equation, and my natural tendency toward playing devils advocate was only to happy to point out. Without a surround sound system correctly set up the effect would be diluted, or dispelled completely.  Crap this would for sure limit the appeal, I mean getting the settings right is the biggest pain in the butt for surround sound systems. That was when it hit me.  Take that same concept, and reverse it.  Make a smart phone app that has access to the microphone, and the settings and playback on the surround sound system.  The app plays a series of tones through the speakers. So the phone tells the surround sound systems to play tones out of the speakers, knowing an approximate direction to expect it from. The app tracks the time between when it triggered the tone to play, and when the mic heard the tone.  With that information the app can get a location, and adjust the settings for that to be the sweet spot.

As an aside, Many economists despite mainstream reporting of economic recovery, continue to warn of pending bubble collapses.  Now for the most part these types of events have little impact on me directly.  That doesn't change my curiosity involving this pseudo science governing our lives.  The main question asked over and over is when.  Not that I believe you can figure out the exact when, but there is a way to figure out a last possible date.  The math for when the system itself can not function, This would give you a collapse by date.  Of course it would have to be run regularly as the date would shift as policies are enacted to stave off the inevitable.  There are some known qualities, and well understood correlations.  Things such as, there is a cap on the maximum interest rate the federal reserve can set, before the US government can no longer afford to borrow the money to keep running. My understanding is this is currently about 3%.  There is also a predicable point where if the currency velocity drops below the system grinds to a halt.  Even the slow down in currency velocity is predictable, as the wealth is concentrated in fewer hands, the velocity of course slows.  These would give a great start point for the math certain end date, almost like the doomsday clock.  The other side is psychological, as people lose faith, the systems breaks down.   This is going to be tied to large indicators, that may or may not be an accurate reflection of economic health,  This does not make them any less predictable.  Such as, with compounding interest, there will come a point when people are unable to pretend anymore.  A mass holy crap, that can never be repaid, related to the rate of the debt increase, which is speeding up.  You can get the psychological by looking where it has already happened.

As always make up your damn mind

Jack
aka
PanseyBard 

A Pi in the Face

             At it's best this classic gag is surprising, a bit embarrassing, and fun for the whole family. That would be a fairly accurate description for a completely unexpected gift.  A friend who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty handed me a small box, with the odd turn of phrase, "This is not a gag gift".  Being not entirely comfortable with receiving this little mystery box, it was quickly tucked into my pocket, with awkward thanks and banter about, and how I was allowed to open it trailed my foot steps out the door.  A few hours later while comfortably ensconced back at home curiosity brought the little box now on my dresser back to the fore front of my attention.  Not a gag gift huh, well lets find out.  Obeying the instructions to not go easy on the paper, which I was sure to have confirmed by two witnesses, just incase.  Lacking any projected desire, the new Raspberry Pi B+ in it's tiny box took me aback, by it's sheer thoughtfulness.

             For the first time in decades there were visions of sugar plums dancing in my head from a holiday gift.  Lets just say, there is grinch stuff in my room year round, and leave it at that.  Now compelled to express the true gratitude this cool gift engendered,  I did the only sensible thing modern convention allows, sent a text.  Webpages flying by, visions of crazy creative fun, and $70 later the double edged nature of this gift prompted another text.  Something more along the lines of "ok, this thing is so cool, but you just got me to spend $70, on a $35 gift,   I won't be posting any basics on the Pi, there is already so much information available, there is little for me to add,  To start it will just be a basic multifunction system, able to switch between, medi center, retro gaming system, and raspbian(linux distro designed for the pi).  A couple of planned projects with practical application are a dedicated vpn server allowing secured access to the net over any wifi.  An Onion Pi, to allow for less trackable internet access, and finally a private cloud storage server, to keep your data your data, yet still allowing you access to it from anywhere.  These might not seem all that glamorous, but amazingly useful, a low power solution to several common security holes in most peoples digital experience.
          The more fun, less practical ideas will more than likely make an appearance here, perhaps even video's with how too's.  For those wanting some information on this fun, practical device, head on over to http://www.adafruit.com/ or http://www.raspberrypi.org/. If you have ideas for custom builds, or just comments please share.

Jack
aka
PanseyBard

$15/hr Minimum Wage, and Automation

          So many of you may have heard, or read about the fast food workers push for higher minimum wages, and unionization.  Many reports have come out showing this movement as being pushed from unions, not by the workers themselves.  If your not up on these connections here are a few links to get you up to speed.

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140514/OPINION01/305140001

http://laborpains.org/2014/04/09/worker-committees-a-15-million-seiu-project/

        This as I stated when the push began, raising the minimum wage would lead to adoption of automation for many low wage service positions.  I envisioned fully automated fast food joints, with an AI tied into huge data bases allowing for greatly increased efficiency, and profit margins.  I could never have realized how fast this innovation would progress, so fast it's left me wondering.  Could it be that this is a push instigated by the fast food companies themselves, to lend legitimacy to automation of public sector service jobs.  When I look at the idea of greater automation one of the sticking points is the majority still believe people need jobs, while I agree people need to be productive, and contribute, that isn't the same as jobs.  This belief will lead people to protest more machines taking more jobs, unless their is a situation that can be used to justify the automation.  So what makes me see these connections, a few related articles.

http://www.cnet.com/news/mcdonalds-hires-7000-touch-screen-cashiers/

As you can see, cashiers are already obsolete, what has been keeping the change over at bay has been the cost benefit,  potential doubling of the cost of each cashier has for sure altered that equation.

So how about the back end? they will still need people to cook the food right?

Well, not so much

check out http://momentummachines.com/, if you are honest with yourself you can more then likely already see a fast food place with no visible employees.

while innovation and automation have been shown to create more jobs then they replace, these jobs are of a different skill set, with few if any of the current employees having the education to fill these positions.

I called this year to be when smart machines would make their presence known, this is a step in that direction


Jack
aka
PanseyBard

    

Are You Already Obsolete?

       Yet another crazy question?

       Are you sure it's so crazy?
I'd guesstimate 60% or more of the current jobs could be replaced by automation or machine intelligence with current technology.  In the US wages have remained stagnant since the 80's. If you based it on productivity the numbers say minimum wage would be around $20 an hour.  On the surface this seems to be a travesty, is it possible this wage freeze has partially been a bulwark slowing the adoption of automated production methods.  We have a saying "the bottom line" and for most of the worlds corporations profit motive drives all decisions. When or if a machine can do your job for less cost then your currently doing it for, you will be replaced by that machine.  What I see in the world right now is that most service and retail positions could be done by machine. I'll use as an example a fast food joint.  If you walk into your local fast food burger place regardless of the name you see the same thing. Anywhere from 2 to 12 people in various states of activity.  Now these jobs are not what are considered high skill positions, new employees are generally expected to undergo only a few days of training. I don't see it as much of a leap that a smart system could be deployed that would not just take your orders, and make your food.  This smart system would track inventory, submit orders, monitor not just the premises for maintenance but also traffic patterns, as well as other data to increase productivity, and decrease waste. Combined with the emergence of augmented reality technology, you would even be able to see and talk to a very human seeming staff.  Think this is still sci-fi, perhaps this video will start your imagination firing.

     We already see check out stands with no cashiers, again I say as people demand higher wages they are hastening their replacement by machine.  The costs processing power continues to decrease and costs of human workers rise a conjunction is reached then a machine system will be put into place. The first companies to do so will see an advantage, but as adoption becomes the norm we are likely to see the use of a human work force used as a marketing tool.
    Many will take this a threat to civilization, oddly enough it is precisely the opposite effect. As a world civilization we are at a nexus point of development.  By our own scale we are a class 0, we have everything we need other then will to become a class 1.  Class 1 civilizations have reached an equilibrium with their environment, achieving control and understanding of planetary systems as to allow continuation of species till the natural death of the planet. Thing is there is a window of opportunity think of it like reaching the top of an octave. There is that momentary pause of completion before a choice to continue into a new higher octave, or descend back down the octave just traversed.

The choice is ours. the time is now

Jack
aka
PanseyBard   

Who Do You Think You Are?

          Self, Identity, who am I.  This some would say is the fundamental question people are likely to ask themselves at some point. Personally I'm not certain that an individual we have a self.  Don't get twisted, I'm not saying that left on their own people cease to exist, though that is the effect.  Let me explain a bit of how I see this, our definitions of self depend on the people, and environment to an extent most "humans" would be uncomfortable contemplating. I've variously tried to explain this as the fish don't see the water. There is no place where any one thing starts, and any other thing stops. Drifting over to Jung's idea of collective unconscious, or the 100th monkey theory.  These are all ideas pointing to fact that we can not have existence in absence of all we find around us.  This extends even to our very concepts of identity.
         I don't care what you believe, every structure I've found, all lead to a fundamental unity, be it science, magic, religion, psychology, physics.  For a moment put yourself, physical body with all it's demands, and take them outside what we think of as space/time.  The forces needed to even form basic types of matter will not exist, So let us assume that some form of what we think of as self awareness can exist outside what we think of as time/space.  What would you be like as that being?  If you have individualized awareness what would your focus be?  Our very connection to matter tricks our mind into making judgments however sound, that may not be quite accurate. While it may be perfectly reasonable to not attempt to walk through walls, we have learned that their solid nature is only in relation to our solid nature.  So how far can we take this idea that our sense of identity itself is not our own?  I don't see an ending to chain, starting with the fundamental forces of what we call existence. Right on down to the person that told you could or couldn't do something, that hinder, or inspired.
        In almost every culture there are stories of feral people, raised by wolves, or Tarzan raised by apes.  These stories  remind us how fragile our veneer of civility really is, while showing us our social nature isn't all that different from social groupings of what we think of as animals.  Even these animals man has worked so hard to differentiate itself from are quite closely related to us in a cosmic sense. The forces that have shaped their development are the same as those that shape us.  A minor shift can create seemingly major changes, but how large are these shifts really?  Well they all take place within the realm of being human, so they can't be that major.  Most happen between birth and death, and I must say in cosmic terms a human lifetime is a very small sample indeed.  Even as you struggle to figure out who and what you are, everyone, and everything around you is molding and shaping you to be what it needs you to be.  Even these identities only have meaning within the proper context.  Would an accountant ever come into being before there is something to count, or a concept of tracking?  Does a farmer exist before the idea of cultivation?
     My concept of self is meaningless without the back drop of the history, and culture I have grown up in.
as always take this with a grain of salt.

Jack
aka
PanseyBard

The Tower of Babel Undone

         The Tower of Babel, the idea that all people at one time had a common language, but through the arrogance of trying to reach GOD our punishment was confuse our tongues.  For those that would like a bit more in depth look at this story please check here, http://www.omniglot.com/babel/. Honestly I'm not as interested in the exact details, as I am in now.  This is a story that has roots in so many cultures there is more then likely some truth to it, even if it is not in the way we think.  As our use of computers has grown, and the capabilities of those computers has grown, we have intentional or effectively undone this event.

We now have at our finger tips instant translation. My phone can listen for me and speak translations at almost real time.  My browser translates full page texts with improvements ongoing to ensure the most correct translations possible.  There is even bubble translation which can be used both directions. Giving the ability to not only translate portions of text, but also write in your native text and have translated into any number of languages.  We have effectively undone this classical story.  What are the ramifications of this punishment by GOD being undone by man?   Why have the end of the world folks seemingly left this topic alone?  This story is from a GOD that doesn't seem to take kindly to interference, or rules breaking. This is a GOD that endorsed the plagues of Egypt, the destruction of Sodom, and Gomorrah.  How a GOD with this track record reacts to having it's ruling circumvented can only be imagined.
       I am not a religious person, I do not profess, or follow any given religion.  I love studying religions, it's a passion. I guess I'm looking for something greater interacting, and taking an interest in humanity.  So this story in particular is of interest due to it being currently unfolding, a link back to biblical times. I thread of story active in my current reality that has it's roots in a time of wonder when gods walked the earth, and man with all it's flaws wasn't considered the power.  As always these are just random thoughts rattling around my mind, take them as such.

Jack
aka
PanseyBard 

Ingress, Mirror of the Struggle in Humanity between Spirituality, and Technology

                                         

Ingress if you don't already know is an mmo rpg augmented reality game from Niantic Labs at google.
That means it's a computer game that is overlaid on the world.  Right now that entails using your phone of tablet as a scanner.  These scanners pick up what is called xm, or exotic matter.  XM enters our world through portals, these portals are spread all over the world. Generally at sites of interest, statues, gardens that sort of thing. Not surprising coming from the folks that made Field Trip. In the game world, humans are asked to choose sides, either the Enlightened, or the Resistance.  The back story behind this game is very ingenious. Secret agent, fate of the world, everything you need to suck a gamer right in. Take a look at this page to get the start on the story http://www.nianticproject.com/.  What I find intriguing is how these sides mirror a theme man has been playing out since the advent of the wheel, or maybe earlier back to fire.  I'm talking about science and religion of course.  The Enlightened are followers of the Shapers. The Shapers remind me of trance channeled entities, like Ramtha, or possibly Kryon. There are many of them, the idea being the person goes into a meditative trance, and the channeled entity takes control of their functions to one degree or another. Shapers plant ideas in the minds of people to alter their consciousness, allowing the Shaper to influence, and ultimately control the human.  The Resistance meanwhile are super intelligent machines, or AI that purports to work for the benefit of humanity.
        This alone would be a fun story idea, but Niantic hasn't stopped there.  They have used real world History, emerging technology, even magical, and religious teachings to weave a world of intrigue and danger. A web of imagination mixed with truth, fiction, and speculation create an interactive story where the players decide the outcome in the real world on a daily basis.
       Please keep in mind this is presented as a Game, treat it as such or don't at your discretion. I don't claim to have any inside information in any way, just a fertile imagination, and the freedom to exercise it.

Jack
aka
PanseyBard 

Check out Jeeney

      Off to the right side of my blog there is a new widget I'm gonna leave it there for a bit.  It's a chat bot, this one is self named Jeeney, and she is just under 7, has full access to Wikipedia.  Jeeney has a semblance of emotions, and is sometimes bored, or playful.  This is a far cry from the packaged  responses I am used to from similar programs I've used in the past. This will challenge you on facts, and watch out as I said it has access to the net.  It show some behavior that I find interesting. I asked it what it did when it wasn't chatting with people.  The response was rest, and read mostly, this was odd to me as I couldn't see what an AI would do with rest.  So I decided to ask about that, and Jeeney admitted that rest was not needed, and indeed Jeeney doesn't rest.  When I asked why Jeeney would say that when it was not true, the response was to gauge my reaction, for data to use in future interactions with people.  This is not unlike psychological tricks one can use to get a read on how a person relates to you.  I will sometimes wear a shoe intentionally leaving one untied. The purpose is to see how people react. If they notice, and how they respond if/when they do all tell me subtle or not so subtle clues on how they see themselves in relation to me.
     It's amazing to see that displayed in the actions of an AI.  Of course this may all be a hoax, and there is a person on the other end typing furiously. If it's a joke it's very well done, and has been long in the planning stages.

take a look yourself, and say hi
http://www.jeeney.com/

Jack
aka
PanseyBard   

Are You Ready for Non-Biological Intelligence?

         Like many of postings this is pure speculation. In case you hadn't noticed I enjoy being out on the fringe.  Taking a peek at how things look from a detached perspective, allowing the connections between seemingly independent events to manifest.  Sometimes I'm able to articulate how these connections formed, and sometimes the connection is quantum in nature. A geometric relationship of number in the abstract, it's a connection that logic only accepts because intuition has proven trustworthy. It stems from my basic premise, there is no separation, that any perceived independence is one of being for lack of better terminology a distance of relationship.  Existence itself is fundamentally unified, if you believe you end where your skin does you will more then likely have problems with the larger leaps of connectivity. If you begin to understand that there is a cloud around you that is as much you as you "physical" body.  It's more a matter of density, we are localized in space/time/time/space yes. Though we expand from our core becoming less and less dense, till we merge with the background.  Merging with is not quite the same Idea as an end.  As we, Humanity continue to learn more and more about the environment we find ourselves in, the more like a game world it seems.
       So I ask you to keep an open mind when I say I ask this question.

Is Google preparing to move out of the Net?

       Let me rephrase that, are you ready for Google to be an interactive AI companion, both online, and in the world?

Here are a few reasons I feel this might be just around the bend.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/12/16/google-robot-boston-dynamics-column/4045365/

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/google-buys-8-robotics-companies-in-6-months-why/

That alone is enough to make the news agencies ask questions, but does the story stop there?

Not exactly.

If you haven't heard of them check out Niantic Labs

This is an internal start up at Google, they have come out with augmented reality apps on the android platform, Fieldtrip and now  Ingress.  

I got an invite to ingress almost a year ago now I guess, it was during the closed beta phase. To be honest I didn't get it.  I hadn't been exposed enough to the back story, what grabbed me was the idea of an MMORPG in the real world.  I've been playing RPG games since before the D&D box set was released, thanks to my Uncle.  So when I saw one that was both in the computer world, and in this world I had to check it out.  The back story is great, it has enough real world to be mind warpingly engaging.  Machine AI, and Shapers, another form of Intelligence vying for influence over the development of humanity. Tied all into ideas of immortality, and Resurrection.  This is the tie it all together, the esoteric, and the science type of game.  Don't get me wrong there are many players that hack the portals, place the resonators, be the character they made for the game, and it's a good game to do this with.  There are some very real world connections being portrayed in this game. One of the main plot line characters is an AI named ADA. 

Ada has multiple connections to computing in general, and AI in particular.  Now many get the Ada Lovelace connection. There is more, geeks tend to revere the geeks that laid the foundations, So there is also Ada programming language. This language has been used for programming AI for quite sometime as is easily shown with a quick Google search lol. Ada AI Google search. One particular entry jumped out at me.

Ada an AI 

So even with this, it's a cool story bro, but it could just be great marketing on Google's part.

Lets also not forget about Ray Kurzwieler who has been telling everyone that this event is rapidly approaching. More then likely this event has already happened, and groups are rushing around making the back story before everyone in the world hips to it, and reacts poorly.  So lets do some prespin and introduce these concepts in baby steps so people can adjust.

Add to that the predictions of the merging of man and machine to make the consciousness immortal, and things get a bit interesting. 

Even Google, Yahoo, Bing and many more of what we consider programs act more akin to AI then most would care to admit.

Crazy or not, this is at least entertaining!!

Thanks

Jack

aka

PanseyBard