Heartland

I think the biggest impact of technology, or at least the thing that annoys me the most, is that our lives' actions are now all stored on a database somewhere. Maybe I'm overreacting, but instinctively it does rather freak me out.

And of course the ever-increasing reliance on it. Turn the power off and surely there'd be chaos on the streets.

I think collectively people seem to choose the easiest route, which is the one presented by the guys making and selling the stuff. Break that cycle (how? dunno, short of compulsory mushroom / other potent psychedelic ingestion) and yes we probably could use technology in 'better' ways for the good of all, though I appreciate that viewpoint is easily countered by people saying 'but we love it this way' and who am I to tell 'em otherwise.

I find the phrase 'crafted thought trajectory' especially worrying. I don't doubt that how it works in many/most cases, but it's a horrible thought because it suggests people figure what they want to think / believe, and then refuse to veer from that ie stop learning from experience and adapting your behaviours / beliefs accordingly. How do you reason with a closed mind?

A couple of Hicksian comments spring to mind regarding all this, and I'd much prefer to finish this post on a lighter note. One, if you're in marketing, please, go outside and shoot yourself. And two, it's all just a ride.

Planet Dave wrote: And of course the ever-increasing reliance on it. Turn the power off and surely there'd be chaos on the streets.
.

Ah, then you doubt the power of the exploiters.

I can speak from experience on this one. Not sure if it’s made international news, but the power where I live is being granted or denied by the local gas and electric company. (Because they have bonused out profits rather than invest in infrastructure and now set fires every time the wind blows, but I digress.) Rest assured that, as cities burn under an orange, sunless sky and power is cut, people don their useless masks and make banal jokes and repetitive small talk.

You might enjoy The Machine Stops, if you’ve never read it. Free here: https://www.ele.uri.edu/faculty/vetter/ ... -Stops.pdf

I think about that story a lot lately.

Wow - amazing how a thread goes from politics to end of the world scenarios in less than two pages. (Politics does feel like that in the UK at the moment though 😂)

Chaotican wrote:You might enjoy The Machine Stops, if you’ve never read it. Free here: https://www.ele.uri.edu/faculty/vetter/ ... -Stops.pdf

Talking of The Machine Stops

There was a stage adaptation made and John Foxx wrote the music. I saw him perform it at the York Cold War Bunker.

How's that for end of the world?

Chaotican wrote: You might enjoy The Machine Stops, if you’ve never read it. Free here: https://www.ele.uri.edu/faculty/vetter/ ... -Stops.pdf

I haven't read that so I shall, cheers for the link. Unfortunately I shall now be reading it with 'UNDERPASSSS' echoing round my head, cheers fiendy

Chaotican wrote:

Planet Dave wrote: And of course the ever-increasing reliance on it. Turn the power off and surely there'd be chaos on the streets.
.

Ah, then you doubt the power of the exploiters.

I can speak from experience on this one. Not sure if it’s made international news, but the power where I live is being granted or denied by the local gas and electric company. (Because they have bonused out profits rather than invest in infrastructure and now set fires every time the wind blows, but I digress.)

Which they wouldn't have been able to do but for the decades of energy deregulation.

Bartek wrote: Nevertheless, far-right and far-left give me the same cold shiver. Now I'm gonna poke few eyes: both far-right and far-left are equal to themselve, one side is worth another.

I object to this argument because it is almost always being made by somebody on the right and that side stands to benefit by drawing a false equivalence. It's very reminiscent of the "fine people on both sides" comment by somebody whom I don't need to name.

As for Eldritch, I'm less concerned about what he specifically believes and am more concerned with the fact that he seems capable of making up his own mind. Never-the-less, it's nice to know that he and I are in the same general area in terms of political beliefs, though I know he and I wouldn't exactly align.

Alexey Fyodorovich wrote:

Bartek wrote: Nevertheless, far-right and far-left give me the same cold shiver. Now I'm gonna poke few eyes: both far-right and far-left are equal to themselve, one side is worth another.

I object to this argument because it is almost always being made by somebody on the right and that side stands to benefit by drawing a false equivalence. It's very reminiscent of the "fine people on both sides" comment by somebody whom I don't need to name.

As for Eldritch, I'm less concerned about what he specifically believes and am more concerned with the fact that he seems capable of making up his own mind. Never-the-less, it's nice to know that he and I are in the same general area in terms of political beliefs, though I know he and I wouldn't exactly align.

i know the 'if 2 sides conflict and one side is nazis, anyone who says both sides are as bad is a nazi' argument but i know Bartek's previous reasoning on this debate and i'm happy to stand foir him not being a nazi. he's Polish for starts and the shadow cast across that people by natioal socialism is a dark and nasty one.

Chaotican wrote: (Because they have bonused out profits rather than invest in infrastructure and now set fires every time the wind blows, but I digress.)

Honestly, while that is the official reason given for the imposed outages, I've wondering how much truth there is to that. I remember a fire chief a few years ago during another such destructive fire season having to correct some misinformation being spread (by somebody whom, again, I don't have to name) about the origin of the fires by stating that they are mainly urban/nature interface fires having to do with routine activity by humans on the border of fire-prone areas. One of our large recent fires here was started by trash igniting inside of a waste-disposal vehicle and then being dumped by the roadside. Another one started yesterday apparently originated in one of our countless homeless encampments. The fire season seems to be going very strong even without the help of poorly maintained electrical transmission infrastructure. Climate change is no doubt exacerbating these problems by facilitating the weather conditions in which these fires easily ignite and spread.

eastmidswhizzkid wrote: i know the 'if 2 sides conflict and one side is nazis, anyone who says both sides are as bad is a nazi' argument but i know Bartek's previous reasoning on this debate and i'm happy to stand foir him not being a nazi. he's Polish for starts and the shadow cast across that people by natioal socialism is a dark and nasty one.

I'm definitely not trying to accuse anybody of being a Nazi! I apologize to Bartek for having made it sound like that. I probably should have worded what I said differently.

Alexey Fyodorovich wrote:

eastmidswhizzkid wrote: i know the 'if 2 sides conflict and one side is nazis, anyone who says both sides are as bad is a nazi' argument but i know Bartek's previous reasoning on this debate and i'm happy to stand foir him not being a nazi. he's Polish for starts and the shadow cast across that people by natioal socialism is a dark and nasty one.

I'm definitely not trying to accuse anybody of being a Nazi! I apologize to Bartek for having made it sound like that. I probably should have worded what I said differently.

I should have used to, so shall I.
I'm not as red as you wish, but not a bit brown as some want to see me. I'm dirty organge.

It's kind of making my point right - sectarianism.

I'm not sayin that both sides are equal in terms of ideology, nor towards people out of this division, but towards people form far-right and far-left craving physical contact with people from other village.

I will never justify killing people because of their religion, ethnicity, color of skin, what they're eating, with whom they want to sex with (as long as there's a consent, if child or animal was hurt, if there was a rape, code of conduct binding in prisons is fine by me), or thickness of their wallet. Never ever.

@eastmidswhizzkid: You'd be surprised to know that in Poland are some f**king dumb idiots like Neo-Nazi's. Yes, here where few millions of people were killed by actuall Nazists and ideology spread by this corporal form Austria and his German friends.

On a slight tangent, really weirdly i got threatened last year by an organisation apparently close to the Polish government because somebody in one of my magazines (who was actually Polish) used the phrase Polish death camps in a story. Three words out of 3000 in a WW2 story. Apparently they have bots that crawl the web for what they consider historical inaccuracy that harms as they consider it the Polish state! I thought it was just spam but googled them and they were harassing journalists and the like. Proves there is always somebody watching. In the end the author changed the words. Don't like getting bullied but only right fights you can win etc. 😳

Because if you read it out loud you may get the point.
Hint: these camp were located on teritory before and after WW2 Polish state, yet had nothinig to do with Poland nor Polish state. So yes, it's kinda sensitive here.
Even I don't like this phrase, and I'm not the sensitive one on all that national cases. Some people may associate this phrase to Polish state forgotting facts (both good and bad for Polish people and state).

I am not that familiar with Polish history so will bow to your better knowledge but I think it is a bit sinister for a government to harass journalists and historians. It is fair enough to point out hate speech etc but from what I gather they have been trying to revise history especially that of the war period.

Bartek wrote:
@eastmidswhizzkid: You'd be surprised to know that in Poland are some f**king dumb idiots like Neo-Nazi's. Yes, here where few millions of people were killed by actuall Nazists and ideology spread by this corporal form Austria and his German friends.

not at all surprised. but i know you're NOT fucking dumb.

abridged wrote:I am not that familiar with Polish history so will bow to your better knowledge but I think it is a bit sinister for a government to harass journalists and historians. It is fair enough to point out hate speech etc but from what I gather they have been trying to revise history especially that of the war period.

You are reffering to an act that was repealed, and provisions of that act was stupid and wrong. It may, indeed, end up very nasty as sort of censoring history.

Fight with phrase "Polish death camp" was not backed by Polish gov., at least not that I know, and by its nature it was aimed to revise history.

Both subjects - phrase case and this bloody stupid act - mixed together, yet phrase action was taken long before any legistlation maneuvers.

A hell of a lot of Polish people died in those camps. I'm not bloody surprised it caused offence TBH.

markfiend wrote:A hell of a lot of Polish people died in those camps. I'm not bloody surprised it caused offence TBH.

I think it was clumsy language I agree but people say the Irish famine instead of the famine in Ireland and we don't have shadowy government agencies threatening them. The thing to do is have open debate etc. What the Polish government were/are trying to do is actually rewrite history. For example some Poles helped the Nazis against Jewish people. Bartek might correct me here but I think the current government are trying to say that anybody who's suggesting that this actually happened is wrong and kind of defaming the state. They seem to be trying to control the narrative. Dangerous territory I reckon.

These are the people who came after me... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Le ... Defamation

abridged wrote:

markfiend wrote:A hell of a lot of Polish people died in those camps. I'm not bloody surprised it caused offence TBH.

I think it was clumsy language I agree but people say the Irish famine instead of the famine in Ireland and we don't have shadowy government agencies threatening them. The thing to do is have open debate etc. What the Polish government were/are trying to do is actually rewrite history. For example some Poles helped the Nazis against Jewish people. Bartek might correct me here but I think the current government are trying to say that anybody who's suggesting that this actually happened is wrong and kind of defaming the state. They seem to be trying to control the narrative. Dangerous territory I reckon.

Hard to not agree with facts, there were some people helping Germans, and it can't be ereased from history, as well there were a lot of people helping Jews.

If you don't see any problem with phrase Polish death camp, as something that might to some effect associating it to Polish state not III Reich German a culpirt of that, then is ... your problem. I used to have image that any people dealing with words on more deeper sense might have some sort of better judgement and sensitivity on matter of chosing words. But only used to have. Why it hurts so bad to use more accurate phrase? We tend to care so much about many other groups for whatever reason, yet some seem to be excluded from having right to feel offended.

But to back by the same source, wiki article is nice and cover whole area.

As I wrote before, bill that might end up as tool for censoring history was repealed, changed, or "soften" drasticly,[1] [2], and that was sure to press Polish gov.; even if it its idea it was pure, it was poorly written, but this is typical for this gov.

Then I apologize, I must have not cross information of ties to rulling/raging party.

Ah I agree with you. If there's a better phrase it should be used. And you're right of course lots of Polish people helped the Jewish people. I think my concern is just with people (and governments) using quite appropriate concerns as a shield for censorship and worse to bash other people/groups with. We see it on the Right in Europe and on the Right and Left (the banning of certain books and even pop songs) in America. I think we're in the same boat on this.

Bartek wrote:

Heh. Once got a kiss blown at me from in Dublin!

Alexey Fyodorovich wrote:

Chaotican wrote: (Because they have bonused out profits rather than invest in infrastructure and now set fires every time the wind blows, but I digress.)

Honestly, while that is the official reason given for the imposed outages, I've wondering how much truth there is to that. I remember a fire chief a few years ago during another such destructive fire season having to correct some...

I stand behind the reason for the *blackouts* being “to avoid downed power lines.�

I share your concerns regarding the homeless encampments. I do outreach to several and one of the most appreciated items are fire extinguishers. While arson is a reality, the humans who are living in squalid conditions in the middle of one of the wealthiest area in the USA are much more often victims than perpetrators. We fight those with diligence on the street, brush fires with quick response, and power line failures with blackout.

Chaotican wrote:You might enjoy The Machine Stops, if you’ve never read it. Free here: https://www.ele.uri.edu/faculty/vetter/ ... -Stops.pdf

If by some chance I'm not the last person on the planet to have read this, I can only recommend, with extreme prejudice, that you do. Mindblowing.