*** begin quote ***
Pareidolia is the term for seeing a familiar pattern in a random or ambiguous visual stimulus, like seeing faces on toast or a potato chip that looks like Darth Vader.
*** end quote ***
Why does this harmless emoji make ChatGPT lose its mind?
By Amir Bohlooli
Published 5 hours ago
<< EDITOR ADDED DATE 2025-11-15>>
*** begin quote ***
Despite all that, the emoji never existed. This is the Mandela effect. A shared false memory. The term came from researcher Fiona Broome, who clearly remembered Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 1980s — only to realize Mandela became president and died in 2013. She could even recall the funeral coverage. When she found many others with the same false memory, the term “Mandela effect” was born.
*** end quote ***
I wonder how much of “history” is nothing more than a “shared false memory”. And, if written “history” is a false memory, then what is oral “history” passed down through generations?
So it sounds like that JoHari window quadrant IV (i.e., what we both can’t see) is suddenly HUGE!
Now with “AI”, whatever that is, with its “hallucinations” and fake video creations, make even more “evidence” unreliable. The legal system has proven that “eyewitness” testimony is very fallible. And, even forensic “evidence” has to be suspect.
What can we “know” or “believe”?
— 30 —
*** begin quote ***
Why does the Mandela Effect happen?
Arlin Cuncic, a psychologist and author based in Canada, said the Mandela Effect is ‘unreliable and not infallible’.
She points to a memory error called confabulation – where the brain fills in gaps that are missing in your memories to make more sense of them.
Another factor is the information we subsequently learn can change our memory of the original event.
‘This includes event subtle information and helps to explain why eyewitness testimony can be unreliable,’ she said in a piece for Verywell Mind.
Also, the role of the internet in ‘influencing the memories of the masses should not be underestimated’.
‘It’s probably no coincidence that consideration of the Mandela effect has grown in this digital age,’ Cuncic said.
Another theory for the basis for the Mandela effect relates to the idea that rather than one timeline of events, alternate realities or universes may be taking place and mixing with our timeline.
This far-fetched idea continues to gain traction among online Mandela effect communities but is closer to the realm of science fiction.
*** end quote ***
— 30 —
https://www.boredpanda.com/offensive-things-people-say-to-women/
*** begin quote ***
Tempest 8 minutes ago
I remember a comment somewhere from some time ago which renamed mansplaining as “correctile dysfunction” and I’ve never forgotten it. Waiting for the day I’ll get to use it!
*** end quote ***
Pretty funny.
Never thought of it this way.
Some of the others are amazing as well.
—30—
World’s 5th richest man Bernard Arnault coins new phrase for being fired: ‘Promoted outwards’
By Shane Galvin
Published Jan. 29, 2025, 11:55 p.m. ET
*** begin quote ***
Arnault came up with the eye-roll-worthy corporate jargon Tuesday during an investor call for LVMH, the parent company of Louis Vuitton, Sephora, Dior, Fendi, Tiffany & Co, and several other luxury brands.
The French billionaire made the “promoted outwards” comment while discussing social media company META’s decision to lay off low-performing employees, according to Fortune.
Arnault, 75, claimed that those who lost their jobs are actually being “promoted” to better jobs at different companies.
*** end quote ***
I agree with him. I’ve been ‘promoted outwards’ five times and, in four of those five, I got a better job rather quickly. In the fifth one, I decided that I’d had enough of “employment” and retired. My fiancé and friends gave me a nice surprise party to celebrate. While I regret “retiring”, (Retirement is boring), I didn’t work myself to the grave for the benefit of a sow soulless enterprise that lost its way. (That is you AT&T!).
Sigh! Unfortunately I was born after the gold watch era was ending and before “your own business” became the way to FU money. But, all in all, I survived it all even if “I didn’t do it MY WAY”.
Each era has its own challenges.
Success for your generation is: (1) ruthless financial discipline — no bad debt; (2) a life long interest in learning — education — a degree — they can’t take it away from you; (3) a NON-OFFSHORABLE white collar job in order to save big bux; (4) a blue collar skill for hard times — never saw a poor plumber; (5) one or more internet based businesses — your store is always open; (6) a free time hobby that generates income; and (7) a large will-maintained network of people who can “help” you.
I’ve blogged it before many many times and I think it’s still true.
—30—
Beware ‘future-faking’ — this common relationship behavior is actually narcissistic manipulation: expert
By Eric Todisco
Published Jan. 12, 2025, 12:49 p.m. ET
*** begin quote ***
Partners who do this should be left in the past.
Los Angeles-based psychologist Dr. Ramani Durvasula made a YouTube video with a dire warning about “future-faking,” a common manipulation tactic used by narcissists in romantic relationships.
Future-faking involves a person making promises to their partner that they have no sincere intent on making true.
*** and ***
She noted that society “didn’t talk about narcissism until relatively recently in the way that we do now,” so many people who are in their 40s and older “are tolerating toxic relationships but didn’t have any word or model for it.”
*** end quote ***
Interesting that not having word or model for a behavior prevents humans from recognizing it. Never thought of that concept. It’s like another “window” in the Johari window Quadrant 3 — “what I can’t see that others can”.
Have to think about that?
—30—
https://mailchi.mp/tomwoods/20243-9250479?e=39307912ab
*** begin quote ***
For instance, I know a guy who worked at a record store (remember those?) who used to feel oddly guilty about his job, because he couldn’t shake the idea that the store was somehow taking advantage of consumers.
Then he read Murray Rothbard’s discussion of “demonstrated preference” — which means that both parties to a voluntary transaction are made better off (ex ante), or the transaction would not have occurred.
*** end quote ***
This insight is one reason for a completely voluntary society. If everyone is free, then no one can be “exploited”.
Dona Nobis Pacem
—30—
If you think Bitcoin is on fire, just wait for the natural gas boom
by James Hickman
on November 12, 2024
*** begin quote ***
So, wind and solar are somewhat price competitive. But they carry a security risk: do you really want China manufacturing your entire power grid? Is it possible they built a kill switch in their software?
More importantly, they’re not terribly reliable. There are times (like night!) when the sun doesn’t shine. Germany (which generates nearly 60% of its power from renewable energy) recently experienced yet another dunkelflaute, i.e. a foggy, doldrum period in which there is neither sunshine nor wind.
*** end quote ***
Thanks Schiff Gold we know have another “loaned-word” from German. Akin to a portmanteau, English is not afraid to borrow good words for a unique description.
In this case, what is wrong with wind and solar power — dunkelflaute!
—30—
The big idea: should we be thinking about luck differently?
David Spiegelhalter
Mon 7 Oct 2024 07.30 EDT
*** begin quote ***
Luck has been called “the operation of chance, taken personally”.
Luck comes in three main flavours. Philosophers have identified “circumstantial luck”, meaning being in the right place at the right time, or the wrong place at the wrong time – such as Stephen’s family taking that particular flight. Then there’s “resultant or outcome luck”, where in a particular situation some people have good and some have bad outcomes due to factors beyond their control. Stephen had the good resultant luck of surviving.
But perhaps the most important is “constitutive luck”, which covers all the fortunate or unfortunate circumstances of your very existence; the period of history in which you were born, your parents, background, genes and character traits. So where was Stephen’s constitutive luck? He told me that his father’s experiences in the RAF led him to insist that the family sat at the back of the plane – and the only survivors were seated at the back. He had the right parents.
*** end quote ***
A very philosophical view of luck.
How does that jibe with my experience?
My sainted passed wife of 40 years was always “lucky”. Especially in things with wheels or balls. I, otoh, was always “unlucky”. She used to tell me to “Go away and take your bad luck with you”! And, I did. She’d hit more often than not.
I always felt she had “precognition”. She would get upset before bad things happened (i.e., father’s death; car accident; my trip ’n’ fall).
So, I’m not sure how to define “luck” but I know I don’t have that “magic touch”
—30—
Mark Davey’s Post
Content, Metadata profiles and AI – New Paradigm
*** begin quote ***
Narradigm: A Brief Explanation
#Narradigm is a portmanteau of “narrative” and “paradigm,” representing a new model of storytelling that integrates advanced technologies, such as #AI, with traditional #narrative techniques. This concept goes beyond conventional storytelling by leveraging data-driven insights, interactive elements, and immersive experiences to create dynamic, multi-dimensional narratives.
*** end quote ***
I found it in:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2024/07/no_author/hard-about-aye/
Hard About Aye! Who pulled the lever?
Radio Far Side
July 18, 2024
*** begin quote ***
But something happened. Biden refused to quit (and they can’t shove him out), and Trump not only refused to get dead, but earned his god-king crown.
The pre-planned narradigm was supposed to rouse fear and anger toward an impotent and ineffective Biden presiding over a rudderless ship of state (see what I did there?), while stirring up sympathy and anger over Trump being horrifically and publicly cut down. Both events were to happen between the end of the primary cycle and before the conventions began, thus causing unbelievable amounts of chaos as both parties and the general public pointed fingers of blame, while trying to figure out who would replace the candidates.
*** and ***
As mentioned in my last screed, Biden was clearly set up to fail, and in the most recent episode, Trump was clearly meant to die. The lack of “security” on rooftops, the Keystone Kops Secret Service DIE hires, the waving flag in the background as a wind sock…it was a setup from the word GO.
*** end quote ***
So here we have a word for a prepared narrative that is carefully produced to get the desired effect.
—30—
https://www.ft.com/content/6fb1602d-a08b-4a8c-bac0-047b7d64aba5
‘Enshittification’ is coming for absolutely everything
The term describes the slow decay of online platforms such as Facebook. But what if we’ve entered the ‘enshittocene’?
Cory Doctorow — February 8 2024
*** begin quote ***
Last year, I coined the term “enshittification” to describe the way that platforms decay. That obscene little word did big numbers; it really hit the zeitgeist.
The American Dialect Society made it its Word of the Year for 2023 (which, I suppose, means that now I’m definitely getting a poop emoji on my tombstone).
So what’s enshittification and why did it catch fire? It’s my theory explaining how the internet was colonised by platforms, why all those platforms are degrading so quickly and thoroughly, why it matters and what we can do about it. We’re all living through a great enshittening, in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit. It’s frustrating. It’s demoralising. It’s even terrifying.
I think that the enshittification framework goes a long way to explaining it, moving us out of the mysterious realm of the “great forces of history”, and into the material world of specific decisions made by real people; decisions we can reverse and people whose names and pitchfork sizes we can learn.
Enshittification names the problem and proposes a solution. It’s not just a way to say “things are getting worse”, though, of course, it’s fine with me if you want to use it that way.
*** end quote ***
AKA ENTROPY?
Just as things like uranium moves to lead, so to do all human systems.
Decay and death.
Sigh!
—30—
https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-march-of-dimes-syndrome
John Tierney
The March of Dimes Syndrome
*** begin quote ***
In the spring of 1979, a few weeks after the partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, more than 65,000 people marched on the United States Capitol chanting “No Nukes, No Nukes.” As a young reporter at the Washington Star assigned to cover this new movement, I interviewed march organizers and noticed that all of them had previously organized protests against the Vietnam War. This struck me as curious: How had they suddenly become so passionate and knowledgeable about nuclear power?
I later learned that a term exists for this phenomenon—the March of Dimes syndrome—and that the tendency affects many other movements, too. Why, last year, did the Human Rights Campaign declare a “national state of emergency” for LGBT people? Why was the election of the first black American president followed by the Black Lives Matter movement? Why have reports of “hate groups” risen during the same decades that racial prejudice has been plummeting? Why, during a long and steep decline in the incidence of sexual violence in America, did academics, federal officials, and the #MeToo movement discover a new “epidemic of sexual assault”?
*** end quote ***
One really doesn’t think that a “charity” can go out of business? Like the Red Cross and United Way that have all those high paid executives! The Salvation Army doesn’t over pay its leadership; why should other charities?
—30—
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/06/11/tim-cook-apple-interview/
Opinion
How will Apple’s new AI change your phone? I asked Tim Cook. In an interview, Tim Cook explains how Apple’s new AI will enhance your work and life, with guardrails.
By Josh Tyrangiel
June 11, 2024 at 5:07 a.m. EDT
*** begin quote ***
Apple Intelligence will not hallucinate?
*** end quote ***
Kinda like following GPS directions from Google or any other source and you winding up on a Forrest Service road up to your eyeballs in snow.
Or worse.
So, now we are going to have to be skeptical on what the “computer tells us”.
Caveat Emptor.
—30—
I discovered the Word of the Day from Dictionary.com, and I wanted to share it with you. https://www.dictionary.com/e/word-of-the-day/backronym-2024-05-31/
*** begin quote ***
an existing word turned into an acronym by creating an apt phrase whose initial letters match the word, as to help remember it or offer a theory of its origin.
EXAMPLES OF BACKRONYM
*** end quote ***
So how did “news” originate. Just “new items”?
I learned something from this.
—30—
https://www.curzioresearch.com/stay-away-from-these-trading-sardines/
*** begin quote ***
In 1896, the discovery of gold in Canada’s Yukon territory launched an era now known as the Yukon-Klondike gold rush.
Over the next two years, 100,000 miners flooded into the area in search of the next big gold strike.
But it was far from easy…
The trek was treacherous… The competition was fierce… And the weather was glacial.
During the winter of 1896–1897, the water around Alaska’s ports froze solid, which forced shipping to shut down completely.
The result was a major food shortage—and skyrocketing prices for the little amount of available supplies.
In the most isolated regions of Alaska, a single can of sardines—which cost $0.10 in New York—sold for many times that amount. And thanks to the demand from starving miners, the price kept rising.
Legend has it that one miner, desperate for a meal, bought a can for $100.
But when he went to open it, the fish was rotten.
He tracked down the seller, demanding his money back.
The seller was confused—asking the buyer why he would open the can in the first place.
He told the miner, “Those are trading sardines, not eating sardines.”
This piece of market lore is a commonly cited metaphor for speculative trading, where an asset can keep rising… and traders—suffering from FOMO (fear of missing out)—keep bidding the price higher. Meanwhile, the asset is—from a practical standpoint—worthless.
*** end quote ***
A shrinking life: Why some Asian youth withdraw from the world
By Jessie Yeung, Sophie Jeong, Carlotta Dotto, Woojin Lee, Kenneth Uzquiano and Saki Toi
Published May 25, 2024
*** begin quote ***
Like many hikikomori, he would sleep all day and wake at dusk. Then at night, when his family went to bed, he spent hours scrolling on his phone.
*** end quote ***
Like Howard Hughes?
—30—
Precarious: One Misfortune Away from Insolvency
By Charles Hugh Smith
OfTwoMinds.com
May 16, 2024
*** begin quote ***
As a result, a significant percentage of households that are considered middle-class are one misfortune away from insolvency.
We can summarize the changes in our economy over the past two generations with one word: precarity, as life for the bottom 90% of American households has become far more precarious over the past 40 years, despite the rising GDP and “wealth” as measured in phantom capital.
This reality is expressed in the portmanteau word precariat, combining proletariat (someone whose livelihood comes from their labor) and precarious: outside of government employment, work has become far more precarious. Where it was still common 40 years ago to work for a company for much or most of one’s career and have a private-sector pension, now private-sector pensions have vanished, replaced by self-managed 401K funds, and private-sector work is characterized by a series of not just job changes but career changes.
*** end quote ***
I blame this phenomena on the Gooferment. Specifically, the Federal Reserve System.
The Federal Reserve Bank is a misnomer. IT ain’t “federal”. It reserves nothing. And, it ain’t a “bank”. It is a private cartel of the elite banks run for their benefit and that of the entrenched politicians.
The Gooferment’s politicians and bureaucrats spend far more than we can afford and the Fed borrows and “prints”.
“Money is a matter of functions four, a medium, a measure, a standard, a store.” He repeated that four times like poetry. “Six Characters in Money: Portable – Durable – Divisible – Uniformity – Limited Supply – Acceptability.” — CHURCH 10●19●62 (Vol 1) 978-0-557-08387-9 page 110
Unfortunately, it is no longer a store of value and hasn’t been since the 1970’s or maybe 1913.
“The gold standard did not collapse. Governments abolished it in order to pave the way for inflation. The whole grim apparatus of oppression and coercion — policemen, customs guards, penal courts, prisons, in some countries even executioners — had to be put into action in order to destroy the gold standard. Solemn pledges were broken, retroactive laws were promulgated, provisions of constitutions and bills of rights were openly defied. And hosts of servile writers praised what the governments had done and hailed the dawn of the fiat-money millennium.” — Ludwig von Mises
Penny candy, Nickel cigars, Dime store comics, and Quarter a gallon gas.
Are all indicators of how much the value of the U$D has been devalued.
Remember that on payday, Election Day, or any other day.
—30—
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2024/01/22/sheeples-or-comfortable-wolves/
Sheeples or Comfortable Wolves?
Guest Post by Mary Christine
*** begin quote ***
The American Heritage Dictionary defines sheeple as:
People who unquestioningly accept as true whatever their political leaders say or who adopt popular opinion as their own without scrutiny.
Maybe it is derogatory but the definition fits.
*** end quote ***
It describes way too many people.
Argh!
There is no cure except maybe when they realize that they have been totally screwed by “the system”!
Sigh!
—30—
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/11/restoring_public_trust_in_doctors.html
November 17, 2023
Restoring Public Trust In Doctors
By Deane Waldman, M.D.
*** begin quote ***
After unaffordability, inaccessibility is another compelling reason for distrust. What good is an assigned physician if I can’t get to see the doctor? Before the Affordable Care Act (ACA, 2010), the maximum average wait time to see a primary care physician was 99 days. After ACA went into effect, wait time increased to 122 days, causing death-by-queue. Cutting wait times requires reinserting free market forces into healthcare so that clinicians are incentivized to provide timely service and can afford to do so.
*** end quote ***
The only solution is to get Gooferment and Big Insurance out of health care.
—30—
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/09/21/american_pandemic_samizdat_149787.html
American Pandemic ‘Samizdat’
COMMENTARY
By Jay Bhattacharya
September 21, 2023
*** begin quote ***
Censorship existed even before literature, say the Russians. And, we may add, censorship being older, literature has to be craftier. Hence, the new and remarkably viable underground press in the Soviet Union called samizdat.
Samizdat – translates as: “We publish ourselves” – that is, not the state, but we, the people.
Unlike the underground of Czarist times, today’s samizdat has no printing presses (with rare exceptions): The K.G.B., the secret police, is too efficient. It is the typewriter, each page produced with four to eight carbon copies, that does the job. By the thousands and tens of thousands of frail, smudged onionskin sheets, samizdat spreads across the land a mass of protests and petitions, secret court minutes, Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s banned novels, George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and “1984,” Nicholas Berdyayev’s philosophical essays, all sorts of sharp political discourses and angry poetry.
*** end quote ***
Had the experience in typing school
— My sainted Mother’s idea to keep the “idle hands” from being the Devil’s workshop one summer when I was to young to get a real job and too old to be left alone without getting into trouble. It included: business accounting, shorthand, composition, and letter writing. Argh! And you wonder why I hate schools?) — were we had timed typing tests with only three pages of onion skin and carbon paper. If we corrected a mistake, the carbon copy made it obvious. I still remember minus five points for a mistake on the original and minus one for a correction. When I complained, my Mom sat down at an old manual we had at home a pounded out the test page at an amazing WPM without a single mistake. Then she turned to me and asked: “Now want to complain about shorthand?” I knew to shut my mouth because she had her secretarial school medals in her “hope chest” when she was best of class in various disciplines. Guess the genes failed because I never was as good as her in those skills. Sigh! Sadly —
Have to admire the dedication to the produce the manuscripts. Like the Irish monks duplicating texts by hand during the Dark Ages.
—30—
ROUGHLY QUOTING:
“Jurymandering” is moving the Trump Georgia trial to Federal Court because the State Court trial will draw jurors from a mostly Democratic voter pool where as the Federal Court trial will draw from a larger less Democratic pool.
— Robbie “The Fire” Bernstein
# – # – # – # – #
This was a very acute compact way to describe what was going on. I just wanted to capture it for posterity so proper credit can be given for the insight.
It makes the obvious point about a “fair trial” in a political Law-fare!
/3
Three Important News Items Most of the Media “Forgot” To Tell You About
By Chuck Baldwin
July 14, 2023
*** begin quote ***
Report Number Two: In less than 2.5 years, there have been 1,884 athletic cardiac arrests or serious issues with 1,310 of them dead.
Josu García de Albeniz (25) from Spain, a Karate Fitness Gasteiz Karate exponent collapsed from a cardiac arrest at the entrance of a music festival. He later died in hospital. Alia Zuidema (21) from Michigan, a former high school basketball player died suddenly after a “medical emergency.”
*** and ***
In Ukraine, a lawyer was killed in a “vaxxident.” In Odessa, the prosecutor suddenly died at the wheel. According to local Telegram communities, an uncontrolled car rammed several parked cars. The deceased is a high-ranking law enforcement officer of the city R. Bershavsky. No age or cause of death reported.
*** end quote ***
Seems like there are an awful lot of “vaxxidents” or maybe vaxxidental deaths!
—30—
https://www.boredpanda.com/boss-lunch-break-antiwork/
Work & Money
Employee Has Lunch Break At 12:40, It Renders The Boss Livid, Who Texts Them To Return
Robertas Lisickis
BoredPanda staff
*** begin quote ***
The issue here lies in what the policy is and if the boss isn’t pulling these requirements out of double-bun boulevard. So, this Redditor suggested checking the policy on lunch breaks and getting to the bottom of it. OP, however, doubts there’s one to begin with.
*** end quote ***
Very funny and polite way of saying “he pulled it out of his AQQ” or made it up on the fly.
—30—
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/corruption-potus-scotus-and-scrotus
The Corruption Of POTUS, SCOTUS, And SCROTUS
by Tyler Durden — Monday, Jun 26, 2023 – 04:20 PM
Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
*** begin quote ***
Then there’s SCROTUS: the Supremely Corrupt Royalty of the United States, the corporate bigshots, the lobbyists, the billionaires, the politically influential, the financially connected, and all the elites that are protected from consequence and therefore untouchable.
*** end quote ***
Thanks for another acronym that describes the opposite of us deplorables.
—30—
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/may/28/online-daters-say-getting-zombied-now-scarier-ghos/
Online daters say being ‘zombied’ is now scarier than ‘ghosting’
By Sean Salai – The Washington Times – Sunday, May 28, 2023
*** begin quote ***
Being “ghosted” on dating websites by wooers who abruptly vanish without a word may hurt, but matchmakers say the trend of being “zombied” is just plain scary.
*** end quote ***
An interesting phenom!
—30—
esthetician?
FROM GOOGLE
*** begin quote ***
The practice of Esthetics means providing services for a fee or any other consideration to enhance the appearance of the face, neck, arms, legs, or shoulders of a human being by the use of compounds or procedures including makeup, eyelashes, depilatories, tonics, lotions, waxes, or sanding and tweezing.
*** end quote ***
And, this is different from a “beautician” or “make up artist”?
I’d call it “word inflation”.
Argh!
—30—
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