Category Archives: Musings

Let’s Eat

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Mariner hasn’t posted since the three-horse series (except for a quickie about undetectable spyware on smartphones; mind your personal pornography). Dealing with negatives without a break isn’t fun – noting public polls express the same sentiment when stating a significant drop in news broadcast viewership.

Of immediate concern is this matter of inflation. It is insidious. Today’s reports show inflation at 9.1 percent for the nation and over 10 percent in Baltimore, Houston, Miami and Seattle. One can say, “It’s only a dime out of a dollar” but the same math says, “It’s only $100 out of a thousand”. A typical salary may be around $3,000/month – that’s a cut in income of $300 to cover the monthly budget. Add to that the fact that wage increases lag behind inflation by more than 2 percent.

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Starvation is by far the greatest uncovered news story in the world – including the United States where poverty is growing rapidly. Insufficient wages alone can bring down a nation; in the news at the moment, consider Sri Lanka and Madagascar. It’s a plight the world around: falling populations (Australia), collapsed labor markets (dozens of countries in Africa, South America and Middle East) are causing government instability.

Yet these tragic conditions, which are responsible for 36 million people dying from hunger this year, do not get press. In the United States, the richest nation in the world, 1.6 people in 200,000 die from starvation and 41 million suffer lack of access to minimally adequate food.

True, these are turbulent times in the world today. The US is no exception having to deal with Covid, Trump, shooting children, runaway capitalism and no national identity . . . small potatoes compared to the issue of poverty and starvation. The struggle is one between critical judgment and compassion. Compassion loses every time.

Ancient Mariner

A Public Service

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The public service is to keep the reader informed about violations of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution which states:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Below is an excerpt from Politico’s tech newsletter:

Mobile phones are becoming more essential and more powerful. But they aren’t keeping up with phone spyware, which is getting more aggressive and harder to detect.

As it does, an unsettling vision of the future is arising: One where we all carry surveillance devices without intending to.

It sounds dystopian, but that future is more or less arriving now. The mobile devices of politicians, human rights defenders, journalists, and other individuals have been compromised — all by so-called Pegasus spyware made by Israeli company NSO Group, which the Commerce Department blacklisted last year. This advanced spyware can be installed on devices through what are called “zero-click” vulnerabilities, where the spyware installs itself without the targeted individual clicking on a malicious link or doing anything to activate it. And once Pegasus has infiltrated a phone, there’s no easy way to tell it’s there.“

When someone steals your personal pornography or pants size, you ought to be reimbursed at market prices.

On other good news, three Gen Zers are running for Congress. It’s about time! One is a Trumper, two are progressives (Zs are born between 1997 and 2012).

Ancient Mariner

The Bigger Race

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You may have noticed a decline in the frequency of mariner’s posts. The truth is, his complaints, insights and speculations have become perpetually negative, repetitive and never have an opportunity to report progress.

Watching today’s borderless, endless dysfunction has way too many horses in the race, simultaneously using way too many tracks and is confusing because not all entrants are horses. So mariner has decided to keep track of a three-horse card on one track.

HORSE #1

Will the United States survive as one unified and principled nation? The nation stands at the same precipice it has in the past when it formed a constitution with multiple personality syndrome, as it fought over slavery, and as the nation drifts apart again over deep cultural differences between red and blue. The trophy is constitutional democracy.

HORSE #2

Will the United States be a strong world leader in economics and global communication such as to be one of the very few nations that will dominate the political and economic reality of a one-market world? The present state of human political life ignorantly is spinning into a near future of global starvation, greatly reduced farming capacity and collapsing natural resources. The trophy is international stability; how many nations will cease to exist or merge because of a permanently collapsed economy?

HORSE #3

Current odds make this horse the favorite: global warming AKA climate change. Will the planet, tired of the fickle and self-promoting behavior of Homo sapiens, cause so much damage at the level of continent behavior, weather, intense storms, tsunamis and flooding that Horses #1 and #2 will not be able to continue in their present political/economic relationships? The trophy is humanism.

Ancient Mariner

 

Dumb TV

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Mariner obtained a smart TV a couple of years ago. He and his wife should have spent that money on a TV tower so they could get local broadcasting. The streaming TV world is a lot like the metaverse; the past, present and future all are presented simultaneously – mostly the past and mostly over and over again. News broadcasts are verboten – even when rebroadcast over and over again. (When is new news not new anymore?)

Mariner and his wife are not movie watchers and the sitcoms have become irrelevant. There isn’t much except a few quite good documentaries and British detective mysteries. Now that we’ve worked out the plotline, the mysteries seem to be too long.

It has been one of very few recent research projects mariner has pursued, that is, the plotline of British mysteries. American detective mysteries have a tendency to introduce the guilty character as the third new character in the episode, often disguised as someone who will play a minor, innocent role later on. American mysteries frequently involve a time-sensitive chase scene at the end.

British mysteries, however, are much more convoluted. There are three components to a British mystery: Plot A, Plot B and an independent conclusion to the mystery.

The main purpose of Plot A is to discover the mystery. Do not look for clues – there aren’t any. Plot A introduces a general environment which typically has two politically divided factions. This bifurcation is unrelated to the mystery.

Plot B also has nothing to do with the mystery. Plot B is used as a time-flexible subplot to fill an hour or two. In this regard, Plot B often introduces secret romantic or business liaisons which are juxtaposed to Plot A’s bifurcation. [Aren’t big words neat?] The viewer knows they are in Plot B when irrelevant personal relationships pop up or a specified member of the permanent cast becomes the center of attention. Often, Plot B will add additional murders or misconduct to remind the viewer that an unsolved mystery is afoot.

The independent conclusion begins by adding a new dimension to one of the characters that has been hanging around since Plot A. Suddenly the viewer is presented with a list of unknown motives. This doesn’t take long, perhaps ten to fifteen minutes. The mystery is solved. Cut to commercial.

Ancient Mariner

Can you absorb each feeling?

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Sail on, silver girl, sail on by.
All your dreams are on their way, see how they shine. . .

Feels like home to me.
Feels like home to me.
Feels like I’m all the way back where I belong.

A charge to keep I have. A God to glorify . . .

I see trees of green, red roses, too.
I see them bloom for me and you.
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.

I love him. I love him. And everywhere I’ll follow.
I will follow him wherever he may be,
There isn’t an ocean so deep, a mountain so high it can keep me away.

A crash of drums, a flash of light
My golden coat flew out of sight
The colors faded into darkness
I was left alone.

May I return to the beginning
The light is dimming and the dream is too
The world and I, we are still waiting
Still hesitating
Any dream will do.

Compliments of mariner’s pop music GOAT.

Ancient Mariner

An unusual find

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Mariner often shares his father’s penchant for chopping human behavior into little pieces with simplistic names like ‘who people, what people and how people’ and of course the ultimate Myers-Briggs test – all grouped under the term ‘pop psychology’.

Whenever mariner uses these terms he warns that none of us are pure examples of any pop phrase and therefore do not be too judgmental nor, as many Myers-Briggs folks do, brag about one’s uniqueness. The best example in a long time that proves pop psychology terms may be a bit tongue in cheek and that culture may influence our identity more than we know is the contractor who just today re-shingled mariner’s garage roof.

He and his team of three stripped the roof in one long hot day and finished the job the next day by Noon. They did an excellent job! The team was comprised of lifelong laborers accustomed to working all day at notable speed; they were heavily tattooed and in physically toughened shape. From a distance of ten feet, the business owner-contractor also looked toughened and tattooed.

As the job neared completion, mariner and the contractor had a chance to talk. The contractor was proud of his family heritage when it came to being accountable for a sound work ethic. His grandparents had a farm where the entire family worked long days; his father, a laborer, preached responsibility and hard work to the contractor and he in turn has made sure that his two sons regularly do physical work.

His conversation, however, told a different story. The contractor was erudite, showed interest in abstract issues, listened to podcasts, watched only selected news specials rather than daily news, understood the role of labor from an external perspective and otherwise demonstrated a mind that was interested in intellectual subjects. Yet he was a laborer by choice and belief and looked every bit a laborer. Mariner had to like him; he blames smartphones for the failure of work ethic in our society. He commented, “I can’t find any young help; two hours on the job and they quit!”

The insight mariner took from his conversation with the contractor, besides the unusual mix of a physical work ethic and an intellectual mind, was that everyone during their youth is shaped more by their culture/family than they may think. The contractor is in his mid-thirties; two generations before him were disciplined laborers; while financially stable, his family never had incomes that would suggest college and further could not allow time for college because there was work to be done. It is obvious in conversation with him that another profession is of no interest.

Mariner doubts the reader will run into the contractor in the metaverse.

By far the most important revelation that mariner took from his visit with the roofing crew is how important Labor is to a mature, sound and successful American society. Since the Reaganites dropped required underwriting of full retirement by manufacturing corporations, since the passing of the Great Society politicians (Ted Kennedy, Bob Dole, et al), since the continued disrespect by the electorate (mostly college snots) as one respectful element after another was cast aside – especially unions – Labor has suffered a forty-year history of disengagement from societal respect.

In fact, a laborer is as critical as a college professor. One is not better than the other. In fact, a laborer could no more handle the life of a college professor than a professor could handle the life of a laborer – let’s have some mutual respect here!

It is a familiar lesson. Every human being is a homo sapiens in good standing. Each is living, breathing, experiencing and surviving reality. No matter how different we may seem – each of us is the same, even identical in the larger measure of existence.

Ancient Mariner

Priorities

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In a recent post mariner wrote about the idea that democracy requires a start with the individual and an individual’s sense of what is real. Yet, our society, indeed every society today, is controlled top down – the individual is told what is real. Profit is more important than individual wellbeing; skin color and sexual behavior are more important than individual wellbeing; political allegiance is more important than individual wellbeing.

Mariner is reminded of a sermon he gave many decades ago. As was frequently the case, mariner drew his premise from the Synoptic Gospels, frequently referencing the Sermon on the Mount and appropriate explanations provided by Jesus in his travels. To reduce a 20-minute sermonesque monologue to a few sentences, he offers a truncated interpretation:

The one premise Jesus advocated – the ONLY PREMISE he advocated – was that the holiest thing in existence, and the number one interest of God, is a single individual’s soul. Jesus says as much in the beatitudes: The poorest, ignorant, lost person is the focus of God’s interest. One person at a time; every individual is supreme in their own existence as a child of God.

God rejects individuals who put their own interests first, even if they are sympathetic. Placing divine value in earthly values is a no-no. Reality is a one-person experience.

In short, a healthy, thriving society will always act for the betterment of every individual, every individual’s existential reality, and every individual’s need. God did not invent nor advocate groups, corporations, class discrimination or totalitarian interpretations of an individual’s sense of reality. It is the job of each individual to execute God’s will at a person-to-person level. Amen.

The leap into human tribal tendencies must always abide by a primary interest in every individual’s need. In politics, an individual’s perception of need comes before any organized presumption.

The need to vote begins at home for home’s sake.

Ancient Mariner

Quick

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SHOOTINGS. When there are 300 million people around, statistically a few thousand are crazy. That’s the way it is. The real problem is that there are way too many guns!

200 Mass Shootings in 2022

PUTIN. The Nordic nations have opted to join NATO plus a division of the Ukraine army pushed the Russians back into Russia plus world sanctions have plummeted the Russian economy plus Putin’s behavior has strengthened the West and has given it raisons d’être. Putin may not be winning despite war crimes. Today, bullet wars are too expensive.

NORTH KOREA. Mother Nature has joined the fight against President Kim. The nation, not known for humanitarian aid, is under attack by Covid.

PRIMARIES. Five states vote next Tuesday: Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Idaho, Kentucky and Oregon. The mix is thorough with republicans, democrats and trumper candidates all in the mix. Watch for trends.

SOLAR SYSTEM. Mariner had a front row seat to a clear and unobstructed view of the solar eclipse of the Moon. The geometry between the Sun, Earth and Moon is impressive. What adds wonderment for mariner is the amazing speeds at which the eclipse happens. The Earth travels around the Sun at 67,000 miles per hour; The Moon travels around the Earth at 2,288 miles per hour; The Sun is moving through the Milky Way at 536,865 miles per hour. Catching that Moon eclipse is one hell of a cosmic selfie.

Ancient Mariner

 

Metaverse News

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Mariner just read that in the metaverse there is a clothing store that will sell clothing fitted to your avatar. Mariner weeps quietly as he remembers going shopping at the nearby discount department store – now closed.

He has conceded that the new culture is not interested in genuine human interaction. He is waiting for the metaverse to celebrate the first birth of a young avatar bred solely through avatars. Mariner speculates how many nanoseconds labor will last. Mariner understands that instinctively Homo sapiens knows the future doesn’t look bright for the species. The reader surely knows there is an active real estate market for metaverse property, right? Better bring your crypto coin with you – it’s a bull market.

There is a new application available through smartphones and Alexi that will provide psychological counseling. Mariner doesn’t understand this offer. Isn’t an avatar to the metaverse as a pinball is to a pinball machine?

Will the proprietors of the metaverse be able to move your property to a poorer neighborhood if you don’t pay your bills?

Will the metaverse provide pornographic services? Will there be vicarious human elation when the avatar has climax?

Good luck with Zuckerberg, folks. Mariner is going to see his Mother-Nature-approved pony.

Ancient Mariner

 

Who makes the decisions in your life?

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Lately mariner has been writing about truth – aka reality – especially as it applies to an environment of disbursed information not relative to local reality. Another form of truth-stealing is mariner’s old favorite, the search engines – everything from Alexi to Google to Amazon to Facebook. Mariner often has lamented the warping of reality such that we don’t control our own reality – the engines tell us what to think and even who we are or supposed to be. Fortunately, there are some government people that are taking on this world of subliminal trickery. Below is the beginning of an article published by Protocol, a tech newsletter:

 

The FTC is going after dark patterns. That’s bad news for Amazon Prime.

Companies’ favorite tactics for locking in subscribers are under scrutiny by government enforcers, and it could spell trouble for tech giants like Amazon that have huge numbers of customers paying up every month.

Dark patterns are design decisions or settings that nudge — or, sometimes, shove — consumers toward actions that companies want, even if customers don’t. These can include pre-checked permission boxes, autoplay, hidden fees, unexpected shifts in pricing and time-consuming processes for canceling recurring payments. Subscriptions are a fertile ground for dark patterns, and as tech goes all in on recurring payments, the nudges are popping up everywhere, from video games, streaming and travel sites to ecommerce and even financial products.

Enforcers, especially at the FTC, are concerned about dark patterns generally — and specifically, that these tricks undermine consumers’ ability to make their own choices and may run afoul of legal prohibitions on unfair or deceptive practices. [See complete article at:]

https://www.protocol.com/policy/dark-patterns-subscriptions-ftc-amazon

One quick example the reader may recognize. When you fill out credit data and mailing information, how many times has the reader overlooked that insignificantly placed little box with a checkmark already in it that says, “Send me information on sales and account opportunities” and failed to remove the checkmark? How many unsolicited email entries does the reader have to delete because of this one unwanted manipulation?

By the way, if the reader wants a refresher about how the web manipulates their thoughts, watch

https://www.pbshawaii.org/hacking-your-mind/  and

https://watchdocumentaries.com/the-social-dilemma/  (also on Netflix)

Ancient Mariner