In farewell speech, Biden rails against the tech industrial complex, disinfo dismantling democracy US President Joe Biden gave his final address to the nation on Wednesday, and said America was visibly sliding into an oligopoly aided by a flood of online disinformation. In a farewell bid, he cited President Dwight Eisenhower's famous 1961 speech warning of the "military industrial complex," and said today we face an "tech …
Calling it now: America will one day have its first female president, and she will be a Republican.
For the same reason as the UK has now had three female Tory prime ministers, but Labour has yet to have a female leader. (Or, for that matter, a Jewish, Muslim or Hindu leader - the Tories have had two of those.)
Although shared earlier elsewhere, here it is also APTly* appropriate ..... and surely undeniably honestly true and therefore more likeable than not. Or would you disagree?
amanfromMars [2501161625] ...... makes an alternate play on words on https://www.zerohedge.com/political/farewell-address-biden-brags-unity-warns-oligarchs-abuse-power-tech-industrial-complex with .....“Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation, enabling the abuse of power. The free press is crumbling. Errors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact-checking.”What Joe Biden should have said, rather than reading out the few sentences shared above, in order for his farewell address to the US to have been a true reflection of the current state of present affairs is ..... “Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation, enabling the abuse of power. But the propaganda is crumbling. Errors are appearing. Social media is giving up the facts and evidencing the acts.”
APT* ..... Advanced Persistent Threat/Treat
"Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation, enabling the abuse of power." when the Whitehouse staff all said Biden was mentally and physically capable of being POTUS when he was obviously a sick, frail, mentally challenged old man and lied to everybody to ensure the unelected elitist shadow government, maintained power!
"oligopoly aided by a flood of online disinformation" isn't totally a new phenomenon, back in 1948 the "eccentric" (he was insane) aviation millionaire Howard Hughes bought the media giant of the day, RKO (co-founded founded by J.P. Kennedy). The out-of-touch nutcase Hughes set about purging the organisation of anyone he suspected of being a communist sympathiser, and ran it into the ground, selling the business at a loss in 1955. Hughes did his best to control the American population by controlling the media of the day, he was a big driving force behind the injustices and corruption of the McCarthy purges.
The difference today is that Elon Musk has managed to purchase a perhaps more effective tool of mass manipulation that the old-fashioned movie and radio studio RKO. Incredible wealth sends people out of touch with reality (especially when combined with senility), destroys their judgement, distorts their perspectives, and gives them the means to cause enormous harm. Oops.
So a very rich person owning media is a bad thing?
George Soros' Soros Fund Management is the majority shareholder of the second largest radio network in the US, Audacy. Fast tracked by the FCC in 2024.
Michael Bloomberg has his own TV and radio media empire.
Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post and no-one really cared.
Even Microsoft was in on the TV news for a while.
I'm sure there are more.
But y'all have a meltdown over one social media platform bought by a memelord....
"Incredible wealth sends people out of touch with reality"
It certainly paints a target on their back to the point where they need to hire over 100 security people, according to Errol Musk. Elon can't live in the real world and should have somebody around to slap him around to remind him of that so he isn't constantly going off on subjects he can't understand.
something about it during his 4 years but didn't. Bernie Saunders has been warning about Oligarchy since 1993 but no one was interesting in stopping Trump. The GOP have just seen his power and decided to drop all their morals and grab on. Hoping that while he's around they can exploit the power. Once Trump The Felon has gone, watch the GOP implode (hopefully they implode before his 4 years are up).
He tried. You do know the U.S. is not a monarchy nor dictatorship, right? Or that the Democrats have never had a large enough majority to stop the GOP, right? And that the Supreme Court now has at least two confirmed bribe-takers? And all regulatory agencies, including the DoJ has been underfunded for decades, right?
One does not undo 50 years of skullduggery and sabotage in 4 years.
There should be more of it, in the right places of course but times like this do rather make mortality appear to be a gift of God which I don't doubt it is even if I have my doubts about the donor. :)
Even on the gallows the condemned can look his executioner in the face and claim I no more than precede you which might be why the victim is hooded at that point.
Can someone help me here. I don't seem to be able to find any IT/Tech content from the commentards in this topic. .... Will Godfrey
The remote capture of broken hearts and feeble minds by IT and Tech covering media content is clearly evidenced on this thread, WG, which more than just suggests everything and IT and Tech covering media content is working just fine and dandy.
Yeah, I think the bulk of the comments are related to the skidding of dysfunctional governance into authoritarianism, likely followed by fascism (and generally, away from freedom of choice and activity). In culture, the resulting social system is frequently represented metaphorically by some form of unstoppable machinery that seeks to achieve a simple insane goal: the marching hammers in Pink Floyd, the Daleks in Doctor Who, the Borg in Star Trek, ... Many are awed by the wondrous tech, oblivious to the bent crease of a reality distortion field it ceaselessly pile-drives unto their appreciation of reality, morality, humanity, and fair play, as long as they can get another dose of reward dopamine, without exertion or thought, further enshrining the banality of evil as it were.
The contemporary subtext seems to be that the combination of "AI" with the Pavlovian algorithms of social media echo chambers has the greatest potential to get us there faster, more thoroughly, at a lower price of entry, and in a way that we readily enjoy ... but the hangover will be beyond massive if we ever awaken (not to mention withdrawal symptoms, DTs, ...). These dynamics look to be at play across much of the World as we speak (imho).
Quite so, AC, and beautifully succinctly described too ....... with my only differing being the might and application of Maslowian raather than Pavlovian algorithms of social media echo chambers in combination with AI having the greatest potential to get us to wherever we want our needs and feeds and seeds to be faster, more thoroughly, at a lower price of entry, and in a way that we readily enjoy.
A few remaining hanging questions then to ask for an answer would be ....... Who/What be us and we and where are we going forward or going back to ... and would it be for a future home in an old haunt or a simply complex never-ending journey experiencing a series of mega metadata betatests and excursions with Novel NEUKlearer AIded Adventures to Exploit and Export in Surreal Alien Places and Live Operational Virtual Environment Spaces ....... and would you want its Enjoyment to Hellish or Heavenly if you are either able or enabled to both choose and deliver all of the above aforementioned ‽ .
Is it being realised yet by Earthly Systems Administrations that is where AI is taking y’all ........ on a Veritable AIMagical Mystery Tour Bus Journey?
Pavlovian and Maslowian aspects work in concert imho, to produce the observed phenomenon here -- we are Animals after all (some more Artificial than others, some more Anonymous, and in a day of RotM triumph we might consider AAAA: the Alcoholics Anonymous of Artifical Animals, as needed).
But Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a bit too pyramidal for my taste ... I see them more as simultaneous needs, pursued at varying intensity levels by different individuals, especially once basic physiological needs are satisfied sufficiently for survival over a day or so, the rest is commercial mercantilism (selling needs and nurturing brand-loyalty addictions). Mostly harmless on an individual basis, but socially hazardous when mass adopted as a result of effective automated marketing and product conditioning through "Artificial Intelligence", especially when you are the product, trapped in an emotional positive feedback loop that adapts to your every actions and reactions.
Trick-cyclists should eventually have their work cut out for them with this ...
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