Blog posts about open source software, statistics, history, and related topics. About me. Contact: email.
Chase Hughes argues why the (social) media is tribalizing people and who benefits from it: https://youtu.be/azE7nqqQMmo.
One commenter responded with:
I have found peace and I’m spreading this video every day. I am guilty. I have stopped following people. I will not let myself be coerced any longer. This video has changed my life and I will keep spreading your message Chase. God bless you.
Taking long quiet walks - without distractions- will make you more intelligent. We all have so much information in our minds, but the brain needs time to process it.
An interesting event in 1904-1905. From Wikipedia:
The 1904–1905 Welsh revival was the largest Christian revival in Wales during the 20th century. It was one of the most dramatic in terms of its effect on the population, and triggered revivals in several other countries. The movement kept the churches of Wales filled for many years to come, seats being placed in the aisles in Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Swansea for twenty years or so, for example. Meanwhile, the Awakening swept the rest of Britain, Scandinavia, parts of Europe, North America, the mission fields of India and the Orient, Africa and Latin America. The Welsh revival has been traced as the root of the megachurches in the present era.
“If the situation was hopeless, their propaganda would be unnecessary.”
A comment below British Ads Are Dystopian Propaganda.
The following is an AI-based method of converting a PDF to text. There is OCR software that can more or less detect symbols without AI, but I find that AI is typically more accurate and introduces fewer strange symbols.
To do this, first convert the PDF to images via
pdftoppm source.pdf source -pngThis will produce a number of PNG images. In my case, the numbers went from 001 to 304.
Next, I used the following shell script to run AI on each image. Here, I'm using gemma3:4b since it is a model with image input functionality and runs reasonably fast on my system.
A few weeks ago, I was reading about prince Bernhard (1911-2004), who is the grandfather of the current Dutch king: King Willem Alexander (born 1967). Going through Bernhard his history, one can't help but notice that he is very much German. His name is Bernhard von Lippe-Biesterfeld which means that he is from the Lippe-Biesterfeld family. Then I went through some other family of the Dutch royals. King Willem Alexander's father is also German: Claus-Georg Wilhelm Otto Friedrich von Amsberg (1926-2002). And the husband of his great grandmother was too: Duke Henry of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1876-1934). This region Mecklenburg-Schwerin is where the family of prince Claus was allowed to keep the royal predicate "von". So it seems that the royals have some strong ties to the Mecklenburg-Schwering area.
Recently, I had some realizations about social media that I think go to the core of the issue.
First of all, of course social media is not all bad. It can be really nice for example to find experts who discuss the news such as the blancolirio channel on YouTube, which is a channel by an experienced pilot discussing aviation crashes and accidents and what to learn from the mistakes.
What’s bad about social media is that it’s fake social. You usually don’t make real friends and if you do it could usually be done faster in real-life. For example, if you have spent 100 hours reading and interacting with someone’s social media posts. What is the chance that this person will do anything for you like watering your plans when you go on vacation? What is the chance if you would have spent 100 hours in real-life with a person?
While writing a book, I wanted to get some feedback from other people on it. To make the feedback process easy, I therefore ordered a few copies at a local printing house. This wasn't too expensive so seemed like a good deal. However, after having to wait a few days on the result, it all didn't seem like such a good deal after all. Having to wait multiple days is a waste of time, as is having to order a batch for a better price. That got me thinking whether it is possible to print a book at home.
After having looked at BlueprintDIY on YouTube, it turned out not to be difficult at all. I think this is pretty cool. Especially in the current day and age where everything on the internet moves at a breakneck speed, there is some peace in just printing things out. Put differently, what is the chance that your social media posts, your backup disk, or your website are still available in 50 years? Not so high I'd guess. Even with the Internet Archive, I'm just not so sure that your data will still be there in 50 years unless you put in a lot of work. On the contrary, a book will probably still be around in 50 years. Apart from floods or fires (which could also damage a disk), there is no virus or hack that is going to destroy or modify the data.
Whitney Webb wrote A Nation Under Blackmail, which exposed blackmail rings in the United States. She gave a great answer to the question on whether she now fears for her life:
I ultimately think, you know, to paraphrase a line from the sci-fi book Dune: "fear is the mind-killer." [...] I think fear is the ultimate tool that benefits [the elite] instead of us.
Full quote from Dune:
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
According to Chase Hughes, one of the best defenses against misinformation, psyops, propaganda, or whatever you want to call it is to be very good in spotting logical fallacies.
He reports that you should first remember that "emotional response suppresses critical thinking". So teach yourself to stay calm when you see the news. Furthermore, train yourself to spot the following fallacies:
Appeal to emotion. Our brain is more inclined to believe information if it looks scary. So be careful around scary looking pictures or words since they might override your rational brain.
Strawman Argument. This is misrepresenting the argument of the opponent. For example, summarizing the argument of a politician in a simplified way so that the argument makes no sense anymore.
Bandwagon Fallacy. This is claiming something is true just because everyone says it is.
False Dilemma. The world is very nuanced. With a false dilemma you pretend that you are right by claiming that it must be right because the opposite is wrong.
Ad Hominem. Attacking the person and not the argument. I see this all the time on Reddit. For example, Person X has said that we should buy more buildings because we have a housing shortage. Then a commenter says that is false because person X is just a ********.
Appeal to Authority. This is claiming something is true because an authority figure like a politician or scientist says it is true.
Slippery Slope. A claim that says "if we don't fix X now, then extremely negative outcome Y will happen". For example, if we allow this, we will lose all of our freedoms.
Hasty Generalization. Making giant claims from a tiny bit of evidence. For example, one athlete cheating doesn't mean all do. Another way to spot this is to remember "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".
Red Herring. This is when someone introduces a irrelevant topic or argument to divert attention away from the original issue.
False Equivalence. Pretending that two things are equal even when they are not. For example, both political parties have extremists so they are exactly the same.