Unseen

Those mystery science characters have more sense than most of us apparently. A buddy says he is down a quarter million already. I got mostly out of the stock market when the pumpkin head was elected.

Ah…but the leopards are just chowing on faces.

TheEncogitationer wrote:

And, of course, the part of Donald Trump’s brain that pauses between thought and speech and speech and action doesn’t work at all.

This is spot on, of course. But I’m worried, in spite of the obvious harm of Project 2025 (“P2025”) as it is executed, that perhaps irrepairable harm is the goal of wannabee oligarchs. Or, may…[Read more]

This is published by David McWilliams in an Irish broadsheet on Jan 4th 2025:

A country can threaten tariffs and talk tough when it is owed money. When it owes money, that’s a different story.

We are heading into a trade war. That’s what the United States wants and that’s what the world will get.

In 2025 it will become increasingly obvio…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:

A psychiatrist explains why Trump wanting a third term (and by extenstion of his logic, to never leave office) was inevitable from the start.

He also says that the 12th and 22nd amendments together prohibit a president from becoming a president a third time, but I saw an explanation, I forget from who, saying Trump might be able to…[Read more]

The tariff thing might be a way to gain control of taxation from congress for king tRump. Add tariffs as a tax, cause recession so billionares can buy up stocks, then be the hero calling for sweeping income tax reductions, stock market bounces back. Rich get richer.

Yeah, Pope…

It is dismal, so many people available for Trump to purchase. However, the grass roots rumblings have begun. When the recession hits, Trump is gonna need extra strength Depends ™.

Is this, or is it not outright corruption of our courts, legal establishment, and politicians in power? This explanation is from a Democratic senator.

14-1/2 minutes long

Yay, Rand Paul! I’d forgotten about him for a while.

1-1/4 minutes long

AI assisted sleep is an idea worth exploring. Assess physiology, cultural influences and give us what so many are missing. A good night of sleep! Not sure what AI can do for the waker uppers who have benign prostatic hyperplasia or a bladder that wakes us.

However imagine after an assessment one person gets that drumbeat rhythmic assist, another…[Read more]

Ah Enco, you conceive of receiving music from AI that might disturb you going to sleep. That would be untamed music

How far are we from asking AI to match our sleep phases and introduce sounds to encourage conscious dreaming, or to assist us as biological individuals to reach optimum rest. Perhaps using a device similar to a smart watch. It…[Read more]

The way I see it…in brief… (and very simplistically) is that human intelligence is a product of evolution. We started off with basic pattern recognition and cognitive functions that all evolved over time. Intelligence evolved and we began to “store” information. If we saw another person attacked by a lion, we did not make the same error. We refl…

[Read more]

Playing with words here, but I feel there’s a kind of fundamentalish link between my consciousness and rules of the universe, or even the life around me. My consciousness is my brain operating, fine tuned to adapt to the world and life in it. I see that as a kind of “fundamental link”.

But that doesn’t automatically lead to the conclusion that…[Read more]

I will start by saying that I would be in the Sean Carroll camp on this. One foot might cross over to the Christof Koch side at times, but only to hear him out and to think upon his ideas. I have a lot of respect for Koch and was fortunate to attend a few of his lectures over the years. But my instinct has been to step back into Camp Carroll and…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

What if Consciousness is Fundamental?

Sean Carroll also has a recent podcast with Christof Koch on this topic. When I heard Koch expressing support for panpsychism, it sadly felt like a nod to woo-woo. Fortunately, Sean kindly dissented. As much as I respect Koch, IMO, his view struck me as simply “reasoning” that…[Read more]

The video with Jason Stanley on Amanpour referred to a Guardian article on the topic of how the Trump admin wants to define university policies and practices. As Enco notes, they can do this when they have powers of the purse. (Yo MAGA, the left may have set the scene, but you made governmental interference inevitable.)

Excerpt from the…[Read more]