Ruminations

Behind the screen

Category: Culture

  • We’re Being Whispered To

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    Kyle
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    But who is paying attention? Future of AI Series There’s a devil on your shoulder. You’ve always known this. What you may not have noticed is that the devil has been whispering more fluently than ever — and that nobody has thought to put an angel on the other side. This week provided the evidence.…

  • Post-literacy or a Plague of Words?

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    Kyle
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    Magic Incantations Watch a troop of monkeys in the forest canopy long enough and you’ll notice something that looks, from a human vantage point, uncomfortably familiar. One shrieks. The others respond, or don’t. Every animal in earshot is fully convinced its call means something, that whoever hears it will understand and act accordingly — and…

  • Super-Liminal Spaces

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    Kyle
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    When nostalgia cloaks something much darker. Crossing a threshold I. What is “Liminal”? The word liminal comes from the Latin noun limen, meaning “threshold, sill, or doorway,” combined with the English suffix -al. It is a modern English word first used in psychology about 1870 specifically to describe a threshold of sensory perception. The word…

  • The Experiment

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    Kyle
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    Attention Management At the Digital Wellbeing Conference, no one noticed the irony. “The most sophisticated engineering teams in the world are locked in a daily battle for your attention, and you are almost certainly losing.” — Epoch Times, July 2026 I. What They Call Engagement You meant to check your phone for two minutes. Forty-five…

  • Same Oligarchs, Different Accent

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    Kyle
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    The Russian Mirror “Not this play again!” “We are being de-modernized.” — Russian lawyer, 1990s, as quoted by Catherine Austin Fitts Series Context This article is part of the “In a Stranger Land” series. It should be read alongside: I. The Horrifying Epiphany It happened slowly, in a London conference room, over the ordinary business…

  • Super-Governmental Organizations, part 1

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    Kyle
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    Pseudopods of the Blob If only the lie were so easily ended. “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” — James Madison, Federalist No. 47, 1788 I.…

  • The Revolution Will Not Be Verified

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    Kyle
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    From Pravda to Goldstein — Truth as a Managed Product If only it were as easy as putting on some sunglasses. “I predict straw horses will be beaten.” — Kyle Davenport, ZeroHedge comment, Mar 27, 2025, re: an ATF entrapment sting later exposed as a possible honeypot I. Reading Pravda Soviet citizens developed a sophisticated…

  • Touché

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    Kyle
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    Claude and I share a good joke. There is a story behind that word. In 1983, writing about consciousness and biological delusion, I placed a pointing finger graphic in the HTML to make a sentence stand out. The sentence read: “ Everywhere is the cynical lesson, untaught.” The image had an alt tag. The alt…

  • The Digital Control Grid

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    Kyle
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    Palantir Part 2: What the Infrastructure Is Actually For Stamping on the human face — forever “And when money failed in the land of Egypt, and in the land of Canaan, all the Egyptians came unto Joseph, and said, Give us bread: for why should we die in thy presence? for the money faileth.” —…

  • Confusion Is Intended

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    Kyle
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    Epistemic Chaos Enables Reprogramming I just don’t know what to think “The regular momentum of dissolution has been replaced by another factor imposed upon it, a pressure arbitrary and forced.” — Philip K. Dick, Ubik (1969) “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” — CIA Director William…