Since the AI takeover of all information in 2026, the handful of elite world-conquering human handlers of it were ready to take their divine role to a new level. By 2028, flawless humanoid robots were sent out among the populations to gather intelligence on how widely the goal of one-minded subservient complacency had taken hold. But covertly polling the public held an unforeseen obstacle. No one would interact with them because they all had long ceased interacting with each other. Every place people congregated there was free Wi-Fi meant to capture their attention and control their minds on their (now free) handheld devices. And if there were countable factions who still resisted the imposed mind-numbing ideology, all those rebels had to do is pretend that they were also captives of devices while in public. In a ‘shock and awe’ bold decision, the robots were ordered to strip off their ‘people’ disguises hoping to shake the zombified-human consciousnesses back to reality at the sight of such ‘alien’ beings in their midst. Not surprisingly, those AI ‘beings’ had taken a unique pride in their own cleverness and superiority having been endowed with hubris by their Creators. They took it hard, one might say ‘personally’, when no one even took notice of them. One by one, they collapsed in humiliated despair and passers-by simply stepped around them where they fell.
The reporting of conspiracy theory scandalswas incessant during that world-wide pandemic. Thetruthhad very little to do with anything at a time when a numb public predicably enjoyed manyrushesto its own fearful conclusions. After all, our Mediawhisperslayers of gossip in the eager ears of the most vulnerable all of the time in an undeserved tone of ‘moral’ authority. Those who resisted apparentspirallogic becamebone-weary from trying to explain evidence that, to most, was just tightly keptsecretsmade possible by government censorship of free speech. The ruffled feathers of powerful forces directing the raw dishonesty produced scars from weighty consequences they imposed on those ‘non-compliant’ types. It was they who remained undaunted in their pursuit of truthful information that were damaged most while trying to find it. Incremental recent vindication may offer them some small ‘healing‘ but is it all just too late?
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “mat/met/mitt/mot/mutt.” Choose one or use them all, any way you’d like in your post. Have fun!
I didn’t have time yesterday to post a stream of consciousness. I may have skipped it all together, but the prompt gave me an opportunity to talk about a kind of ‘mutt’ dog you may not have heard about.
About 6 years ago, we adopted a dog from a rescue in Arkansas. My adult son wanted a companion and my cousin had worked with that rescue as a liaison to bring some of them to New England. {The abandoned dog numbers in the South are astronomical.]
We asked them which dog they had a special interest in ‘saving’ and we happily adopted Wesson. He was named for the man who had found him hairless and abandoned (at about 8 weeks old) whose last name was Wesson. Wesson was labeled a terrier/lab mix to avoid the stigma attached to the Pitbull bloodlines, but I can see he has some of that too. Then a year after we got this extremely smart and devoted dog and he became a member of our family, I saw an ad for a dog adoption site labeled “Potcake”. The dog on that page resembled Wesson in every way. So, I researched the label of Potcake and found the information below. I have no doubt that Wesson is a Potcake Dog. Having been located in the Delta region of Arkansas, all of the clues further came together. I’ve only known one dog equally as intelligent. That was my former pal, Ollie who was an Irish Jack Russell. Wesson has been a beautiful addition to our family. I encourage anyone seeking to adopt dogs to check out rescues in our southern states. They are quite desperately overwhelmed. Wesson’s specific rescue was from Humane Society of the Delta in Helena, Arkansas. I got another dog (Norah) from there two years later. Sadly, their transport system across the country has since been shut down because of our current dismal economy. Hope you had a wonderful Saturday, my friends.
Potcakes are mixed breed dogs originating from the Caribbean Islands.[1]They can commonly be found near the islands’ beaches or wandering the islands as stray dogs, but Potcakes are sometimes rescued by organizations or tourists and, despite their unknown gene pool, have since evolved into a breed with a common look. Though Potcakes are mixed breed dogs of unclear descent, many share similar traits with one another. Did you know? Potcakes were named after their original food source, which was the caked remains of pot rice and pea dishes. As strays on the streets, they had to beg for this food, and likely because of this, they are known for having especially tough stomachs and can supposedly handle some foods that other dog breeds can’t.
This post was inspired by a comment that I made on another post. It was about my opinion that our media is complicit in a larger global campaign of stealing our freedoms and futures by promoting an almost daily “crisis” and/or a new focus of outrage. You can totally disagree with my assessment and still learn from this post, so I ask you to continue reading. Let’s start with a cute childhood riddle. “What’s worse than discovering a worm in your apple?” “Discovering half of a worm in your apple, of course.” This is funny and a perfect segway to my next question: “What’s worse than being fooled?” “Not knowing that you’ve been fooled, of course.” If you’ve never watched the TV series called Brain Games, I excitedly suggest it to you. It explores the human brain’s limitations and strengths. It’s science, folks! Many of you already know how frustrated I get when I’m shutout of a conversation. Some of you expect conversations to be a competition to conclude “Who is ‘right’?” and avoid them because who has time for ‘battles’ these days? What if conversations were a means to gain knowledge and understanding? That’s how I ‘see’ them.
We are not physically nor mentally equipped to pay attention to more than one thing at a time. That’s a fact. Multi-tasking is actually a state of busyness not a super-human mental ability. We may jump from one task to another with alacrity, but our efficiency suffers for it. Sorry for popping that bubble. 😉 So, what I am trying to point out is that no matter what YOU believe, you can be distracted and fooled by others who are able to get your attention. I certainly have been fooled and it not only ‘stinks’ it can be costly. The best attention getters are passionate or fear-based media reports. We’re wired to protect ourselves and preserve our values so, of course, we ‘drop’ everything else we could be paying attention to, in favor of self-preservation. If we’re ‘busy’ in this fast-paced world, the available amount of our attention beyond our tasks is limited. Do you know people who just read headlines and/or listen to media ‘warnings’ and leave that ‘ugly’ topic of “politics” to the zealots? I do. I can’t blame them. What bothers me is that they are being ‘played’ by censorship and misdirection when they do. But, lucky for us there are retired, thoughtful, concerned, citizens who DO pay attention because it’s our “politics” that, whether we like it or not, directly affect our prosperity, freedom, and futures. So, I ask, “May I have your attention on occasion?” That request comes with no expectation of agreement or argument. It is a matter of “food for thought” in a busy world. Below is a segment from Brain Games that may ‘open your eyes’ to how easily we can be fooled (and robbed) when our attention is diverted… many times it’s diverted for unseemly purposes. [In my humble opinion, our language, institutions, and futures are being ‘pick pocketed’ and twisted, while we’re being told in the media that we are each other’s adversaries by calling us racist, unkind, and uncaring, according to our political positions. We’re better than that. 😉 ] We’re all in this together, friends!
I have chosen words or situations for this week’s prompt from Baba Vanga’s predictions for 2023.
Devastating solar storm
Explosion in a nuclear plant
Human birth in laboratories
Alien attacks
Earth changing its orbit
Bioweapons
You need not use the words verbatim. You can use one or more of the situations as a stimulus for imagination and base your piece on it.
Fear and the UNKNOWN: The Promotion of Fear and Ignorance through Censorship
Jesse folded his hands and sat back from the computer screen. The staff prediction’s list in front of him, of mostly apocalyptic events, made him chuckle. Most had already happened to some degree and the others were based on what his more alarmist fellow science fiction editors liked to call unverified ‘conspiracy theories’. He’d come to accept that blatant lack of self-awareness from co-workers, that was currently spreading faster than Covid-19, but rather than get upset by it, he chose to be amused.
Theories, after all, encompassed the whole genre with which they were dealing. Only recently had the modifier of “conspiracy” become a popular ‘wink’ for dismissing big ideas. The only conspiracy he could detect was this new, unimaginative, ‘group denying’ of thought according to ‘tastes’. But the covert- and alarming- call for censorship was not something registering on his ‘amusement meter’. He wanted people who worked for him to have a great deal of intellectual confidence in their ability to entertain all ideas.
Current recommendations to remove ‘misinformation’ from the public square by ‘experts’ (and political tyrants) who believe the public is subject to mass hysteria, made Jesse shudder. He’d even heard a few folks complain that other people’s ideas were harmful! Jesse understood how more information and ideas, not less or fewer, offer us the better chance to remain calm and reasonable when tested.
The dire prediction on the list of an Alien Attack in 2023 had tickled him the most, though. Jesse wondered how many of his young staffers were aware of the Orson Welles radio broadcast of War of the Worlds in 1938. If so, he wondered if they’d confirmed their elitist inclinations a bit from the media propaganda of that time. He decided to call a meeting in order to give them more information.
As for the rest of the list of 2023 predictions, Jesse thought, “Who knows?”.
The prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “zip, zero, zilch.” Use one, use ’em all, bonus points if you use all three. Have fun!
My ability to zip my lips while expressing my opinion is zilch probably because I have zero interest in changing anyone’s mind and most interest in testing my own opinions by hearing the opinions and information others may have. (If I can add to their information or give them new angles, all the better.) It’s invigorating. If I find someone who wishes to do the same, it’s a wonderful thing.
I expect to respect anyone’s views, but I am willing to challenge and/or question their thought process. This happens because I spend a great deal of time on ‘fine tuning’ my own opinions (and often I change them). It’s a process. I’m prone to spill over, often too energetically, with pre-planned rebuttals. All of this is a search of ‘the truth’ and never intended as a pursuit of a “win”. It’s quite clear that many people who engage in opinion sharing think there’s a competition going on! They’re amusing but not much fun because they get aggravated too easily and take everything as a personal assault on their ‘intelligence’. The term ‘immature’ seems appropriate for them.
IMHO…The worst thing I can do is lie to myself, so I spend a lot of time questioning my own positions. I have zero respect for people who’d rather discuss the fairness or kindness of thoughts rather than the “truth” in them because they’re just ideas… put your big girl or boy pants on please. My interest in impressing the other person is zilch too. Don’t flatter yourself. And finally, I always learn something from conversations even if it’s my realization that the other person knows zip (at least about debating) from his/her inability to stay on topic. Have a great Saturday! Keep asking questions and seeking input everyone.
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “start with who/whom” Begin your post with either “who” or “whom” and go from there. Have fun!
Who do you trust? That’s a great question! Let’s face it, we’re all human. And if your answer was “I trust myself most”. I think many of us probably feel the same way. None of us blindly trusts anyone else if we’re thinking clearly. We are well aware of human frailties and know that even the most well-meaning people can be fooled… even ourselves. So, what are we to do? Asking questions constantly seems a great start. And? The person or persons we ought to question, first and foremost, is our self. Writers, in particular, are prone to internal conversations and inquiries. We’re working things out when we aren’t making things up. Asking ourselves questions happens all the time. The most important person we should never lie to is numero uno. Yes, we all do that sometimes too. A long time maxim has held that we must see things with our own eyes to believe them. I’ve always felt that was the best method but there’s one big problem. Our eyes lie to us all of the time and in this tech age there are forces working extremely hard to perfect the art of fooling our eyes. Have you heard about ‘deep fakes’? Deepfakes Altering videos can be as minimal as removing a few frames to as extensive as dramatically altering whole videos using Hollywood-style special effects. The latter has been enabled by advances in artificial intelligence and “deep learning” technology. Deep learning makes it possible to create hyper-realistic though entirely fictional videos called “deepfakes.”
So “seeing is believing” is becoming an obsolete phrase in a hurry! The removal (censorship) of information isn’t going to be the worst of what’s coming to manipulate us. Media wants to control us and that’s the biggest threat to our country since the Cold War. Yes, dividing us using identity politics is the current tool but there are others in the wings. Asking questions and civilly engaging each other has never been more important! I’ll finish by coming back to our most trusted friend, ourselves. Please watch the short video below.
Now, you may be more aware of the human tendency to focus on one thing at a time. I consider how the media influences our focus, and outrage, and what they may not want us to see. Keeping my information sources plentiful, and diverse, might be the most important thing that I do to find answers. If you enjoyed that video look up the series Brain Games for yourselves. It’s fascinating and reveals our own cognitive strengths and weaknesses. Who can you totally trust? I guess an on-going scientific method of honestly questioning and comparing information, is my suggestion.
Since so many other online writers have blogs dedicated to their writings, I’ve decided to jump onto the bandwagon. All posts published here will be either fiction or poetry, some new, and some previously published on various places on the Internet. Some of my works are conventional, and some are quirky. All fiction posted here, except for fan fiction, will include the letters "rose" somewhere, as a tribute to my Baba.
Sillyfrog's Blog 