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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 8/27/24 11:06 AM, Marcus Daniels
wrote:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Simply
having interests, or the courage of your convictions is
immune evasion, if I understand. The problem with news,
social media and many kinds of communication is that they
risk decreasing social entropy. People become too similar.
People stop trying because they feel pressured to conform
or feel superseded and redundant. Antidepressants to the
rescue..</span></p>
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<p>I have become rather enamored of Michael Levin's work, a recent
talk he gave emphasizing the depth (cellular up through
multinational organizations) and breadth (human across
mammal/vertebrate/multicellular/colony/single-cell/synthBio/organoids)
"apex" of self-organizing systems helps *ME* to think about the
well-made point you have here (having interests is immune
evasion).... <br>
</p>
<p> I (want to?) believe that "enlightened self interest" can be
expansive enough to span these scale and exoticism spectra? Allow
a more measured "immune response" rather than the cytokine storms
and anaphalaxis we court all the time? <br>
</p>
<p>Must *I* storm the capitol if one (or several or many)
legislators-en-residence don't attend to my personal-petty
preferences (interests) well enough? Some say yes, but I think
they just like storming and tearing down any symbols of
"governance" (except their own rebel/nazi flags/armbands?). Must
I occupy/capture a city block (or more) and demand total
eradication of the immune system (defund the police) because in
fact the immune system can be pretty damned discriminating in it's
also-indiscriminateness?<br>
</p>
<p>Re: antidepressants: If TV was the opiate of the masses, modern
streaming shite in it's myriad forms is the Meth (or Fentanyl or
maybe PCP?) of modern internet culture? I'm at least
half-hooked... and on a good day it makes me think I can fly! Or
not.<br>
</p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">From:</span></b><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">
Friam <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:friam-bounces@redfish.com"><friam-bounces@redfish.com></a> <b>On Behalf Of
</b>steve smith<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Tuesday, August 27, 2024 9:53 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:friam@redfish.com">friam@redfish.com</a><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [FRIAM] on government<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p>No News == Good News<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>I'm inclined to agree with this. In my
analogical/metaphorical style I think of "News" as being
something like "Inflammation" in an organism or tissue.
Inflammation has a role... to warn the organism (or coupled
systems) that something is out of "healthy operating
range". <o:p></o:p></p>
<p>I was just listening to congress grilling the Project 2025
architect and it felt *very much* like inflammation (as does
most every deliberation of every committee?). Is P2025 not in
fact the 'publicans (or more apropos, MAGA) attempt to
establish or move to their idealized form of "governance"? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p><off on a RANT> <o:p></o:p></p>
<blockquote style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-bottom:5.0pt">
<p>Glen has referred to collective humanity as being more like
a slime mold than any other "superorganism" (correct me here
because I'm sure I am wrong) but I think we (collective
humanity) are on the verge of (years, decades?) new level of
organization which reflects the global scale of our reach
and coupling along with some sense that we have "tried a lot
of forms of self-organizing" through alternatively
government (nation-states), religion (with global reach),
multi-national corporations (starting with Dutch East India
and Hudson Bay? ...) and the philosophical underpinnings
which inform (sorry Nick) and shape all of the former.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>I see why many whose personal and in-group identity is
aligned with a specific religion/politic/branding/etc are
offended/threatened by anything "global" scale... to them it
can only feel like being over-run by "other" when in fact,
they are the "other" who has been doing lots of
"over-running". Renormalization and subsumption and
merging (emergently) is very scary and threatening stuff and
maybe is indistinguishable from being invaded by hostile
powers?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>Evolution is notoriously "inefficient" and even "brutal" by
many measures. I don't know (EricS might, others might?)
know what experiments in multi-cellular life and the
emergent specialization of the individual (cell) into
tissue/organ types must have looked like, but I"m guessing
there were a lot more failed than successful experiments?
The flailing humanity has been doing in this regard (for
5-15k years) seems like it has gone on forever and has tried
"damn near everything" but my suspicion is that before
information processing technology emerged
(Cuneiform/Gutenberg/Enlightment/Babbage/Telegraph/Enigma/Cybernetics/Iliac-Eniac-Maniac/IBM/Internet/Cray/TMI/Clusters/Mobiles/Clusters/IoTs/BlockChains/LLMs/Autonomous
Vehicles/?? we had hardly scratched the surface (or barely
begun to tangle our webs?).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>We will either become a functional super-organism which is
copacetic with the existing biosphere/Gaia which is the
substrate from which our open-ended, wild-ass,
radical-nonsense has emerged or we will crash ourselves on
top of it or perhaps crash it, bringing our own selves down.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>30-40 years ago I thought Climate Change and even Species
Collapse and Sweeping Environmental Disruption was a
"Liberal Hoax" or at least an indicator of our collective
hubris... thinking we puny little humans could crash a
multi-billion year old planetary-scale evolved complex
system in (dynamic) homeostasis with nothing more than a few
thousand coal fired power plants and a few billion internal
combustion engines, etc. Now I'm pretty sure we've already
tipped a lot of systems with an inertial vector sure to take
us past some if not all of Rockstrom's Planetary
boundaries... and meanwhile most of us fiddle away,
re-arranging the seats of congress (or parliament) or maybe
try to sneak some extra supplies into a lifeboat
(survivalist hoarders).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>So do we die of an inflammatory/allergic/anaphalactic
reaction to our own bad behaviour or are we recapitulating
what we call "Cancer" in an organism but in the global
noosphere/politicsphere/technosphere/even-biosphere?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>So much of our civilizational/political/economic/religious
development seems parallel to Cancer:<o:p></o:p></p>
<blockquote style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-bottom:5.0pt">
<p>oncogenesis: socio-political-economic-religioius
"experiments"<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>tumor-development: urban/industrial sprawl<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>metastasis: colonialism/missionary-work<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>angiogenesis: infrastructure development<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>genomic instability: techno-political-economic innovation<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>immune evasion: organized crime, cartels, terrorist
networks<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>clonal evolution/epigenetic alterations: left to the
reader<o:p></o:p></p>
<p>apoptosis evasion: Life extension
tech/medicine/lifestyle<o:p></o:p></p>
</blockquote>
<p>I started consuming news really for the first time maybe
8-10 years ago and I now live on a diet of Junk News (when
I'm not ranting here) and it keeps all my systems inflamed
in the same way a diet of Doritos, Mountain Dew, Alcohol,
Tobacco, Methamphetamies and Candy Bars might. Even the
best the news-stream has to offer feels like eating every
meal from a fast-food drive through... Maybe Tom J (and
others) can help me think/feel better about this... maybe
prescribe a Paleo/Keto diet for the mind and soul? I know
people who claim to *only* consume long-form journalism,
seems wise. I at least don't let any social media in
directly (only the back-scatter off the mainstream Junk
News?)... <o:p></o:p></p>
<p>I worry (suspect) sometimes that my posts are little more
than an an indiscrimanatory release (expression according to
Nick?) of cytokines. ...buh...<o:p></o:p></p>
</blockquote>
<p></endRANTforNow><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal">On 8/27/24 8:10 AM, glen wrote:<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<blockquote style="margin-top:5.0pt;margin-bottom:5.0pt">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt">How
Telegram's Founder Pavel Durov Became a Culture War Martyr <br>
<a
href="https://www.404media.co/how-telegrams-founder-pavel-durov-became-a-culture-war-martyr/"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://www.404media.co/how-telegrams-founder-pavel-durov-became-a-culture-war-martyr/</a>
<br>
<br>
Mark Zuckerberg says White House ‘pressured’ Facebook to
censor Covid-19 content <br>
<a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/aug/27/mark-zuckerberg-says-white-house-pressured-facebook-to-censor-covid-19-content"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/aug/27/mark-zuckerberg-says-white-house-pressured-facebook-to-censor-covid-19-content</a>
<br>
<br>
What does it mean to "govern"? I frequently hear things like
"Democrats actually govern" in contrast to culture warring,
grifting, personal branding, etc. I mean, I welcomed Biden's
very boring tenure. I'm hoping Kamala is elected and that
she'll be as boring as Biden. If I don't hear from someone,
it prolly means they're working ... doing their job. No news
is good news. But even if Durov's arrest is solely about his
complicity by association with the app and his lack of
governance of that as a platform, I still kindasorta think
the French prosecutor (prosecutors?) is doing a good job of
governing in assigning him that agency, his share of the
blame. <br>
<br>
Sure, JD Vance is in Thiel's pocket. But most of our
neoliberal Democrats are also in the pockets of large
corporations or rich vampires. Can it be any other way? Can
an American politician *actually* govern? Or is it all smoke
and mirrors? <o:p></o:p></p>
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