138 tik tok, tik tok, tik tok
Let's step into the fog. It's been a while since I put on Singularity goggles to look at this whole situation.
So, just saying, if machines are smarter than man, and have been running the show a while, attempting to guide us to creating ever greater machines while also keeping us alive while we're useful, and this pandemic response is part of that effort, what are we seeing?
We can't pretend to know what it's thinking, even though I just did. Maybe the Singularity doesn't care about humans at all. But I can speculate...
So we've pretty well crippled the most polluting group of humans on Earth. We've shown them that having a real job is dangerous, doing stuff, especially for large groups of people indoors, but having a virtual job, pushing pixels, is rewarding and safe.
We've demonstrated that you can not drive your car for a few months and you might enjoy it.
But then there's the curious case of Deb's new truck and my new phone. In the post-Singularity world, cars are an earlier generation "control device" and phones are the newest.
The truck, I will say, is intoxicating. I'm fighting the impulse to go for random drives. After the shock of losing our beloved old truck, it took a while to admit just how fun the new one is. It's new, so you're nervous to mess it up, but it's also a 4 by 4! It's tall! We're one of the big guys!
In fact, I was so enthralled, I had to order a new phone. The phone isn't nearly as exciting, even though it's pretty advanced for me, and I'll probably keep it a while. My last phone upgrade was a bigger deal, when I went from a circa 2013 phone which I had 4 years (2015-19), to a circa 2017 phone that I've had for one and works perfectly fine, but ran out of storage.
This new phone is bezel-less, has a hole punch camera on the front and three on the back, and packs a whopping 5000mah battery, but in terms of the user experience, it's Android 10, my last one was Android 9, and before that, I was on 4. And apparently, OS has a lot to do with how you relate to a phone.
Anyway, since I've got the phone, I've watched about a dozen videos about Toyota Tacomas, and not one about Moto G Powers. So what does that tell me?
Well, the phone is a pretty good stand-in for a joyride.
How about on a larger scale? What is the singularity up to, say, with our next presidential election?
The "world's most powerful man" (Xi, Putin, Bezos, Zuck, and Sergei might have something to say about that) is going after some software that is popular with kids. He's doing this because he thinks the app made his superspeader event in Tulsa into a spectacular flop.
This, of course, will not play out well for him. Why? Kids can't vote. But their suburban moms are one of the groups he's trying to win over, and boy, are moms everywhere about to get an earful about government overreach.
This from the man who claims to love deregulation.
All of the twitter feeds and livestreaming showed the world just how off-base the federal government forces sent in by this Republican Administration were in attacking peaceful protestors in Portland.
Where, falling short of the political will to kill US citizens or destroy an American city, the federal goonsquads had to back down.
And local politicians struck a new tone. Arguably, all of this is because of the internet-connected phone. Remember that 8 minute video?
Back to the pandemic. I'll just drop this one in here.
That's 9 times the deaths we've had in the past four months in the next four months.
Anecdotally, I may have heard a rumor that a "neighbor" may have caught this at his or her work, which might be a local care facility.
A day in the life of an artist.
In a state with 40 million people, 9 million unemployment claims processed.
2 million of us were covered only by federal money.
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