Category Archives: Transhuman

Ever dream of having a tail, dog ears or wings like a dragon? If theFreedom of Form Foundationhas its way wed all be able to modify our bodies to look likeanthropomorphic animals.

The Foundation, started in 2018, is a non-profit corporation started by scientists within the Furry Fandom to to make it possible for people to outwardly express their inner identity through easy, safe, customized body modifications.

The goal of the Foundation is to advance innovation in cosmetic surgery and biotechnology to modify bodies to become anthropomorphic creatures. This includes everything from dragon ears to dog tails to lizard tongues.

The catch-cry of the organization ismorphological freedom,as they write on theirAbout page:

Rather than asking why?, we would ask why not? advancing the options for methods of self-expression via morphological freedom can only be a good thing.

To make sense of the Freedom of Form Foundation, its necessary to take a step back at wider culture trends, in particular the rise of geek leisure in the late-20th century and the influence of transhumanism.

Awoo!

Furries, or the Furry Fandom, is a collective name given to individuals who have a distinct interest in anthropomorphic animals such as cartoon characters. Furries have long been an Internet punching bag, commonly depicted as mentally ill fetishists. However, from my perspective, the fetishistic interest in anthropomorphic animals is theleast weirdcomponent of this subculture. Human sexuality is incredibly malleable and influenced by social cues. That a generation raised on cartoons depictingLola BunnyandScar from the Lion King, developed a niche attraction to certain character designs isnt at all surprising.More shocking is that onlyaround one-thirdof those involved in the furry subculture are motivated by sexual attraction. Instead, the vast majority of furries have an aesthetic, psychological andin many casesspiritualconnection to animals and fantasy characters.

In one large survey ofattendeesof a Furry Convention, researchers found that:

Furries are mostly men with high rates of interest in science-fiction and other facets of geek culture.

Furries have a sense of connection to non-human species, with 80.9 percent feeling a shared connection with a non-human species and 43.1 percent believing this connection has been present from birth.

Nearly half of the furries surveyed identified as less than 100% human.

The strong spiritual connection that people feel with what is essentially a leisure activity driven by pop culture is notable. This isnt merely a hobby, but a lifestyle tied to a sense of self. This psychology can only make sense within a wider cultural trend.

Geek Culture As Social Pathology: It would be unfair to single out the furry subculture as particularly pathological. Instead, we can sit furry fandom as a minor footnote in what's a broader culture trend toward what researchers call the "great fantasy migration."Western liberal culture isinherently narcissistic. Both in terms of rates of diagnosed narcissistic personality disorders and precursors of inflated self-esteemboth of which areon the rise. This is less an individual character flaw and more a natural consequence of the collapse of traditional institutions (religion, the family) and the rise of unsteady global markets and economic inequality.

Were all self-marketers now, driven by a need to ensure we make an individual impact on the world, lest we be forgotten. In this aim, were in constant competition with others to stand out. As social theorist Christopher Lasch noted:

All of us, actors and spectators alike, live surrounded by mirrors. In them, we seek reassurance of our capacity to captivate or impress others, anxiously searching out blemishes that might detract from the appearance we intend to project.

The problem is that most of us arent very special. We arent beautiful, successful, or likely to make a mark on the world. This is where fantasy helpfully fills the gap. The great fantasy migration hypothesis argues that the growth in consumer interest in geek culturefrom anime to science fiction/fantasy and video gamesis a result of grandiose personalities avoiding harsh realities. As McCainet alput it:

In the United States, narcissism has been increasing since the 1970s, while traditional ways of supporting narcissism such as prestigious jobs and credit (e.g., the debt bubble collapse) are becoming less viable for the majority of Americans. The result for individuals is discomfort (or cognitive dissonance) with the incongruence between inflated sense of self and deflated reality. One solution for resolving this dissonance is to migrate into a fantasy world via role playing games, fandoms, and fantasy media. These hobbies present opportunities for living out a grandiose self (e.g., by role playing a powerful or charismatic character) that might not be possible in the non-fantasy world. And, of course, in some cases success in fantasy (e.g., tournament gaming, achieving cosplay fame) can lead to real world success.

This invests geeky leisure with a degree of weight not often appreciated. The reason why geeky consumers may appear fanatical or obsessive, is that consumption exists as a comforting facade in the face of difficult economic realities.

The Freedom of Form Foundation, as an extension of furry culture and therefore geek culture, incorporates this earnest defence of fantasy. However, it also draws upon a particular strand of ideology.

Transhumanism As Cope: The transhumanist movementhistorically coincides with the rise of geek culture and the culture of narcissism.Transhumanist ideas came into fashion in the 1980s when there was a fervor of excitement over biotechnologies and the potential for technologically assisted immortality. Proponents such as philosopher Max Moore, co-founder of theExtropy Institute, cling to the idea of a future free of death, disease and bodily limitation, writing:

No more gods, no more faith, no more timid holding back. Let us blast out of our old forms, our ignorance, our weakness, and our mortality. The future belongs to posthumanity.

Its easy to situate transhumanist fantasies within the culture of narcissism, one thats concerned more about the death of the individual than the wellbeing of the collective. It also reflects a vision of man as conqueror of nature, capable of transcending our imperfect meat prison. As political theorist Hannah Arendt noted in her 1958 bookThe Human Condition, scientists often see their role as:

[A] rebellion against human existence as it has been given, a free gift from nowhere (secularly speaking), which he wishes to exchange, as it were, for some- thing he has made himself.

This arrogance is really a means of coping with the reality that each of us, no matter how successful we are in our lifetime, will die and rot.For the transhumanists, its better to project a fantasy world ofanti-aging nanobotsthan humbly prostrate ourselves before the authority of natural limitation. Its at the intersection of furry fantasy and transhumanist ideology that the Freedom of Form Foundation situates itself. As a cultural oddity it reflects both the geeky need to feel special and a rebellion against the limits of human morphology.

Lost is an appreciation of the material conditions and spiritual hollowness that have generated these narcissistic tendencies in the first place.For all their utopian projection, geeky transhumanists cant envision a world where humanity is happy just the way we are.

Read the original here:
Furry Transhumanists and the Culture of Narcissism - Splice Today

Dr Phil Kennedy is regarded by many as the Indiana Jones of neuroscience: a Limerick-born doctor who became a bioengineering trailblazer, making people excited and then nervous by the way he worked outside the system. Then finally, sensationally, he experimented on himself by having an electrode implanted inside his brain in a Belize clinic that specialises in medical tourism.

Kennedy did this to measure the ways in which brainwaves can be harnessed to external computing capacity, helping people with locked-in syndrome or ALS, for example, although what was specifically achieved by implant surgery on himself isnt clear. This brief documentary is a partial introduction to the man and his work and it seeks to rescue Kennedy from his wacky reputation, to downplay the maverick side of his personality (there is no mention of his self-published sci-fi novel called 2051) and it doesnt dwell on the fact that Kennedy is now regarded as somewhat eccentric by mainstream neuroscientists although disruptors, pioneers and original thinkers are very often people just like him.

This film about him provides food for thought, though: authors such as Mark OConnell are interviewed about the prospects for techno-homo sapiens, a transhuman evolutionary phase in which human beings become, effectively, wedded to computers. Cellphones inside our heads, is how someone imagines the future. So there are two implications: for sick people with ALS whose lives can be made better, and perfectly healthy people whose lives can be made what? Even better? Superhuman? Or less than human? Dangerously dependent for outsourced memory and cognitive capacity on computers which could go wrong?

Well, Kennedy says these ideas are here to stay. Hes right.

Father of the Cyborgs is in cinemas from 8 October

Originally posted here:
Father of the Cyborgs review the Indiana Jones of neuroscience - The Guardian

On October 18, 2019, i.e. before the alert was issued against Covid-19, a few personalities participated in a role-playing game simulating this epidemic. This event was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The containment, due to the political reaction to Covid-19, favoured a global redistribution of wealth in favour of a few Internet players (Microsoft, Alphabet...). At the same time, investment funds (Vanguard, Blackrock, etc.), which were already managing astronomical sums and could impose their interests on states, became the property of a few families. There are now stratospheric wealth gaps between a few super-billionaires and the people.

The middle classes, which had been slowly eroding since the fall of the USSR and the beginning of economic globalisation, are gradually disappearing. In practice, democratic systems cannot withstand these sudden and gigantic wealth gaps.

As always in periods of change in political systems, the social class that aspires to power imposes its point of view. In this case, transhumanism. The idea that scientific progress will enable a transformation of human biology to the point of overcoming death. Almost all of the worlds fifty largest fortunes seem to subscribe to this fantasy. For them, technology will replace many people in the same way that science has replaced superstition.

In order to impose their new Doxa, these very large fortunes are starting to control what we think and to force us to act according to this new ideology. The most recent phenomenon is precisely our reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic. Historically, in all previous epidemics without exception, doctors sought to cure the sick. That was the old world. In the new transhumanist world, no one is to be cured, all are to be protected with a new technology, messenger RNA. Most developed states forbid their doctors to treat their patients and their pharmacists to sell drugs that might help them (hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, etc.). A leading medical journal, The Lancet, even published an article claiming that an old drug used by millions of people was killing Covid patients who took it. The Internet giants censor accounts that promote it. Everything must be done to make messenger RNA the one and only option.

I am not a doctor. I dont know what these products are worth. Im just a man who observes the way in which a debate is closed before it has begun. I am not interfering in the scientific debate, but I am observing the closure of the debate.

The messenger RNA case against doctors is not over, however. President Joe Biden held a virtual global summit on September 22, 2021 to distribute 500 million packets of messenger RNA vaccine. To everyones surprise, the states that were to be the recipients of this gift boycotted the summit. They do not believe that messenger RNA is a solution for them[1].

To understand them, all you need is a calculator: the states that went all in on messenger RNA had 20 to 25 times more deaths per million population than those that allowed care by doctors.

Transhumanism already fascinates us because we dont ask about the ban on Covid care. It does not have the same influence outside the West.

In the past, vaccination consisted of inoculating a small portion of a disease so that the body learns to defend itself against it. Since Covid-19, messenger RNA has been equated with vaccination, yet it is not a vaccine in the classical sense.

History has shown us that in order to impose a new regime, you must first get people to act in accordance with a new ideology. Once the subjects have started to comply, it becomes very difficult for them to back down. The game is up. This is called propaganda. Propaganda is not about controlling discourse, but about using it to change behaviour[2].

As we have all given up on experimenting with Covid care, we have all signed up to messenger RNA and now the health pass. We are ripe to enter this new regime. It is absurd to call it a "dictatorship"; an old world concept. We do not yet know what this new regime will be, yet we are already building it.

States are threatened by the very large fortunes mentioned above, which are generally much more powerful than they are. States have mainly fixed costs and very little room for manoeuvre. On the contrary, the new very large fortunes can withdraw their investments here at any time and take them there. Very few Sovereign Wealth Funds can compete with them and thus still be independent of them.

The corporate media refuse to question the ban on care for Covid-19. They devote all their energy to promoting messenger RNA.

The corporate media have been very active in this project. For a long time, but especially since the end of the Cold War, journalism has defined itself as a search for objectivity, even though it is known to be impossible.

In court, witnesses are not asked to be objective. But they are required to "tell the Truth, the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth". It is known that each person has only perceived a part of the Truth according to his or her own condition. Thus, in an accident involving a pedestrian and a car, most of the pedestrian witnesses agree with the pedestrian, while most of the motorist witnesses say that the car was in the right. It is only the sum of the evidence that tells us what happened.

The corporate media reacted to the influx of new actors into their profession (blogs and social networks) first by trying to disqualify them: these people are touching, but they are not trained enough to compare themselves to us. Professional journalists have made a distinction between freedom of expression (for all) and freedom of the press (for them alone). One thing leading to another, they have set themselves up as schoolmasters, the only ones capable of giving good and bad marks to those who try to imitate them. To do this, they imagined that they would check their assertions (fact check) as if their work were comparable to a television game show.

Worried that politicians would side with their constituents rather than the very rich, the corporate media have extended fact checking to their political guests. There are countless programmes where a leader is subjected to editorial fact-checking. Political discourse, which should be an analysis of societys problems and how to solve them, is reduced to a series of figures that can be checked against statistical yearbooks.

The corporate media have asserted themselves first as a Fourth Estate and then, after absorbing the others, as the main Estate. This notion comes from the 18th century British politician and philosopher, Edmund Burke. The Fourth Estate was constituted alongside the Spiritual, the Temporal and the Commons (the simple people). Burke, in the name of his liberal conservatism, did not dispute its legitimacy. Today everyone can see that it is not based on a value, but on the money of its owners.

The choice of subjects covered by the corporate media is constantly shrinking. It is slowly moving away from analysis and concentrating on verifiable data only.

Twenty years ago, for example, newspapers that challenged my work would present it summarily and then immediately disqualify it as conspiratorial. Today, they no longer dare to summarise my theses, because they have no way of fact-checking them. So they just classify me as unreliable. Faced with younger, non-professional journalists, the corporate media limit themselves to insults. As a result, there is a growing gap between them.

This phenomenon is particularly evident with the yellow vests, ordinary citizens who were protesting against this sociological evolution of the world even before containment allowed it to triumph. I remember a debate on a 24-hour news channel where a member of parliament asked a yellow vest what allowance would satisfy the protesters, while the yellow vest replied, "We dont need allowances, we want a fairer system." The corporate media quickly removed individuals who, like this lady, were thinking about the problems of society and replaced them with others who were making concrete and immediate demands. They did everything to censor their thinking.

In the past, the Church published a list of books that were forbidden to the faithful. Today, on the contrary, they try to publish a list of reliable sources, even to determine a priori the Truth.

Another solution envisaged by the new ruling elite is to re-establish the Index librorum prohibitorum. In the past, the Church - which was not only a community of believers but also a political power - published a list of books that were censored for all but its clerics. It wanted to protect the People from the errors and lies of the protesters. This only lasted for a while. In the backlash, the believers deprived the Church of its political power.

Former Nato and Bush Administration officials set up a New York-based company, NewsGuard, to compile a list of unreliable websites (including ours)[3]. Or NATO, the European Union, Bill Gates and a few others have created CrossCheck, which finances, among other things, Les Dcodeurs du Monde[4]. It seems that the exponential multiplication of information sources has ruined this project.

A more recent method consists in defining a priori, not who is reliable, but what the Truth is.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has just set up a "Mission against disinformation and conspiracy", its president, the sociologist Grald Bronner, considers that the State should set up a body to establish the Truth on the basis of "scientific consensus". He considers it unacceptable that the word of "a university professor is equivalent to that of a yellow vest"[5].

This method is not new. In the 17th century, Galileo claimed that the Earth revolved around the Sun and not the other way round. Grald Bronners predecessors opposed him with various passages from the Holy Scriptures, which were then considered a revealed source of knowledge. Then the scientific consensus led to his condemnation by the Church.

The history of science is full of examples of this type: almost all the great discoverers were opposed by the scientific consensus of their time. Most of the time their ideas were not able to triumph with demonstrations, but with the death of their opponents: the leaders of the "scientific consensus".

Lets strengthen the Voltaire Network

For 27 years, the Voltaire Network has been campaigning for freedom of thought, equal rights and brotherhood of arms. Now translated into several languages, we have become a source of analysis of International Relations used by many diplomats, military, academics and journalists in the world.

We are not only journalists, but also and above all committed citizens who defend the United Nations Charter and the 10 principles enunciated by the Non-Aligned Movement in Bandung. We do not promote an ideology or a worldview, but we seek to develop the critical thinking of our readers. We privilege reflection over belief, arguments over convictions.

We accomplish a considerable amount of work despite material and security difficulties. We have reorganized our website in July and August to make it readable from smartphones and much faster.

We need your financial support. Participate by

making a donation of 25 eurosmaking a donation of 50 eurosmaking a donation of 100 eurosor by committing to a monthly donation of 10 euros

If you are bilingual and a non-native speaker of French, you can also help us by translating articles. To do so, write to us here.

It is thanks to your encouragement that we can keep going.

Read more here:
Without admitting it, we are already converted to transhumanism, by Thierry Meyssan - Voltaire Network

Over the weekend, Madison Cawthorn, the Trumpy young first-term congressman, tweeted out a video showing himself misinterpreting the Bible and pushing theocracy. In the video, an edited clip from a speech he gave at a religious-right conference last month, Cawthorn seems to claim that David, Daniel, and Esther influenced the governments of their day to uphold Christian principlesat best a shockingly ahistorical assertion; at worst, a troublingly anti-Semitic comment. Yet whats most remarkable about Cawthorns video pushing Christianity onto civic government and warning apocalyptically that if we bend the knee to the Democrats today, our country will be lost forever and our children will never know what freedom is is how utterly unremarkable it is. Cawthorns rant is, sadly, nowhere close to the biggest problem in apocalyptic Christianity in America at the moment.

No, not only has the apocalypticism of the last few years not died out, but things arent getting better.

Donald Trump may be off of Twitter. Q may have gone silent. Yet the unrest, the conspiracy theories, the anti-democratic forces that launched a coup attempt on January 6 and that promote apocalyptic ideas around the reinstatement of Trump? Those continue to grow and evolve. In 2019, I wrote about the theology of the last world emperor, a secular messianic figure used in the Middle Ages as part of apocalyptic circles to push for an active quest for Armageddon, and how and why Trump was being used as a contemporary example of the movement. Now, in 2021, it feels like we are somewhere between the revival of that message and Trump as the actual Messiah. Instead of the apocalypticism calming down eleven months after the 2020 election and nine months after the January 6th insurrection, it has spread, grown, put down roots. Apocalypticism has become mainstream among Trump supporters, and it has brought ever weirder and darker elements from the fringes into the core.

In Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, for example, someone paid for a billboard at 1827 Lafayette Street with an image of Trump next to a Biblical verse, Unto us a son is given and the government shall be upon his shoulders (Isaiah 9:6, but misattributed on the billboard to Romans). The full passage, in the King James Version, is For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. The billboard blasphemously implies that Trump is the Messiah; if that is not the intention, it is at minimum a creepy and confusing exercise in Trumpian adulation.

The conflation of the Christian message in white evangelical churches with support for Trump is an ongoing crisis. The white evangelical demographic is growing, with a nearly 4 percent increase nationwide from 2016 to 2020fueled almost entirely by white supporters of Trump. According to one March 2021 poll from PRRI, some 61 percent of white evangelicals believe the big lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Numerous evangelical supporters, with MyPillow guy Mike Lindell being perhaps the most egregious example, have gone all in in this idea. Belief in the big lie overlaps with a number of other conspiracies: In a January 2021 poll, a majority of evangelical respondents said they believed in widespread voter fraud in 2020, a Deep State war on the Trump administration, and Antifa being responsible for January 6th. QAnon, the apocalyptic partisan murder conspiracy web, is believed in by nearly a quarter of white evangelical Protestants, around a quarter of Latter-day Saints, and about a quarter of Hispanic Protestants. Among both white evangelicals and LDS, nearly a quarter say they are willing to resort to violence in order to save our country.

This by itself is enough cause for alarmQAnon and DezNat, the LDS iteration (or even more alarmingly, the Doctrine of Christ, a Mormon offshoot that incorporates QAnon directly), seemed to be genuinely dangerous ideologies long before January 6. But given the Trump big lie and the events of January 6th, the willingness to resort to violence takes broader meaning.

Q himself has not posted since December 8, but the QAnon adherents are moving on without hima QAnon conference in Dallas on Memorial Day weekend, the For God & Country Patriot Roundup, was a three-day event featuring Sidney Powell, Mike Lindell, Michael Flynn, and others. Trump was invoked throughout the event. Meanwhile, some 45 candidates for Congress in 2022 are QAnon supporters. Dave Hayes, a leading QAnon adherent, claims that Q will return when Trump comes back into office. And, of course, the usual internet conspiracy-mongers are still following imaginary bread crumbs to say that Trump is already back in power.

The interweaving of QAnon and evangelicalsespecially in this context of Trumps repeated insistence that he didnt lose and his supporters belief that violence may be necessary to restore the true governmenttakes on dangerous holy war themes. Some of the speakers in Dallas openly pushed Christian Dominionist ideas. Edmee Chavannes called for those [Christian] disciples [to] have complete dominion over politics, entertainment, the press, business, education, finance, and by God, restoring the integrity of our voting system and get a hold of the global Communist takeover. This rhetoric was echoed by Rep. Lauren Boebert at another religious right conference on September 11:

Are we going to sit and agree with the enemy? Are we going to agree with what the enemy is doing? Are we going to sit back and complain and murmur? Or are we going to speak life into this nation? Are we going to speak victory? Are we going to declare that God removes these unrighteous politicians, these corrupt, crooked politician, and installs righteous men and women of God?

These political figures are not the worst of it, even if they have the biggest mouthpieces. Vices recent piece on the fight against QAnon within Protestant churches, offering examples of Christian nationalism and of congregants stockpiling weapons and joining militias, showcases the danger. Theres the issue of pastors using YouTube to spread QAnon sayings, and pastors such as Greg Locke mixing anti-vaccine rhetoric with calls for violence. The link between QAnon and religion has never been secretbut when it filters out beyond the internet, beyond the churches, spreads among their adherents, including some who are mentally unbalanced, you get horror stories like that of Matthew Coleman, who murdered his children because of his QAnon beliefs.

This is not an apocalyptic movement thats adhering to a central goal or theology. Its one where very personal apocalypticisms, very personal conspiracy theories, lead to the murder of children.

While the PRRI survey found that it was Protestant denominations most likely to have incorporated QAnon beliefs, some branches of radical traditionalist Catholics maintain similar beliefs. Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigan, who had been apostolic nuncio to the United States and now writes conspiracy-laden tracts for the Remnant, an apocalyptic hate site that routinely attacks Pope Francis, gave a speech in July in which he called the modern world the kingdom of the Antichrist where transhumanism challenges heaven and nature, in the eternal cry of the enemy, Non serviam (I will not serve). Archbishop Vigan further argued that this rebellious world, enslaved to the devilespecially in those who govern it with power and moneyis waging war on us and is preparing for a fierce and ruthless battle, while he intends to gather around himself as many allies as possible, even among those who prefer not to fight, out of fear or interest. The apocalyptic fights over QAnon and Trump have begun to bleed over into other intra-Catholic disputes, like the fight over the Latin Mass. Readers of Vigan will have heard of his QAnon-like conspiracy theory, the Great Reset. And MAGA/Q Catholics certainly made their presence known on January 6th.

In the midst of all this, where is Trump? He has sought out ever more radical ground, spending part of the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks giving a virtual speech at the Rally of Hope event held by the Unification Church, the cult commonly known as the Moonies. He is not the only senior member of his administration to appear at their eventsMike Pence, Michael Pompeo, and Mark Esper were featured at a virtual rally by the Unification Church this past May. And the Unification Church had returned the favorHyung Jin Sean Moon, the son of the cults late founder, had campaigned for Trump and organized members to march on the Capitol on January 6th.

Sean Moon runs Rod of Iron Ministries, a gun church that uses AR-15s in its liturgy and ritual and has recently bought a 40-acre compound it dubbed Liberty Rock in central Texas, about 50 miles from Waco. The churchs Twitch stream often uses hashtags like #MAGA, #Trump, and, of course, #QAnonwhile Sean Moon plans to take his own messianic kingship when America falls. This crazily radical group, technically separate from the Moonies although there is considerable overlap, sounds like it should be too far even for Trumpyet in October 2020 Steve Bannon spoke at the groups Freedom Festival (and will again this coming weekend) and in 2016 Eric Trump attended the opening of the groups Tommy Gun Warehouse (owned by Seans brother Justin Moon). Teddy Daniels, a pro-Trump congressional candidate from Pennsylvania, had Sean bless his campaign when he announced his run. Far from being marginalized, Rod of Iron has managed to become part of Trumps world.

There is no way to know if Trump knew or cared about any of this when he agreed to speak at the Moonie rally on September 11but if he did know, that means he intentionally chose to speak at a fringe movement that overlaps with one of the most militant, apocalyptic movements in the country. And as Trump continues his new Save America tourwith a name deliberately chosen to provoke fear and anger and to incite actionand presumably to runs for re-election as president (he will be in Des Moines, Iowa this coming Saturday), that combination of guns and God, by whatever means, will only further radicalize his adherents.

As time passes, and as apocalyptic prophecies of Trumps occupation of the White House fail, the strength of the apocalyptic impulses around Trump does not seem to be diminishing. If anything, the reverse is true: it seems to be growing. The more egregiously that fringe groups are being courted and integrated into the body of true believers, the more that Trumps faithful seem to become weirder, more dangerous, and more convinced that their apocalypse is coming. We can only hope that deradicalization efforts will be supported and be successful, but until then, the messianic fervor around Trump remainsand remains a threat.

Read this article:
The Apocalypse Never Dies, It Just Gets Weirder - The Bulwark

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It's Miracle Molly time! James Tynion IV is quitting Batman in November, in order to focus on his creator-owned line, including his Substack Comics, The Blue Book, and The Department Of Truth: Wild Fictions. He is also using his Substack subscription to talk about his many frustrations working for DC Comcis (and the good stuff too, of course). But is he also using his comic books as well? Today sees the publication of Batman Secret Files: Miracle Molly, starring the character he created for the main Batman series and revealing the origin of his anarchist technomage, with artist Dani. And it's hard to read it as anything but. We have Mary Kowalski, working for Helios Robotics as a junior engineer, unappreciated in her role.

Looked over, ignored, her best ideas rejected in order for something to placate the here and now. And someone offering another choice. In this case, Mr Wyze of the Unsanity Collective.

As seeing the world and her place in it, in a very different way.

Even if she lives every day in a way she just can't stand any more.

And when finding one of those options, to seize the day, to make yourself be heard

doesn't go as well as you expected. Or at least hoped it might.

Leaving the other option to go it alone, start afresh, wipe away everything you have achieved, every memory people have of you, it's quite the gamble. But there is no other option

That's the fear anyway. Of course, as everyone from Jack Kirby to Steve Gerber to Todd McFarlane to Mark Millar to Scott Snyder to Amanda Conner discovers that you always take some of what you were with you, even if so many people try to make people forget

Batman Secret Files: Miracle Molly is published today by DC Comics.

BATMAN SECRET FILES MIRACLE MOLLY #1 (ONE SHOT) CVR A LITTLE THUNDER (FEAR STATE)(W) James Tynion IV (A) Dani (CA) Little ThunderSince Miracle Molly's explosive first appearance in the pages of Batman, people have been clamoring to know more about the colorful transhumanist vigilante! Now the wait is overthe history of Gotham's latest breakout star is revealed! It's a story so secret even Miracle Molly doesn't remember it! Discover what led a regular Gothamite to reject their past, name, and humanity to embrace the promise of a blank slatethe promise of the Unsanity Collective! Batman series writer James Tynion IV teams up with rising superstar artist Dani to bring you all the way back to the beginning of Miracle Molly in this exciting and integral Fear State special. Retail: $4.99

Go here to see the original:
Miracle Molly As A Fable Of Work-For-Hire And Creator-Owned Comics? - Bleeding Cool News

Born and raised a fundamentalist Christian, American technology writer Meghan OGieblyn declares her cards early in this brainy meditation on the intersection of religion and science.

"It is meaningless to speak of the soul in the 21st century," she writes. "It has become a dead metaphor, one of those words that survive in the language long after a culture has lost faith in the concept."

But just because she has renounced her Christianity for scientific materialism does not mean OGieblyn thinks any less about the questions religion poses, or that she believes science and technology will supply all the answers.

In fact, the main takeaway from God, Human, Animal, Machine is her insistence that we must still use symbolic language to describe the complex concepts we dimly perceive.

"To discover truth," she notes, "it is necessary to work within the metaphors of our own time, which are largely technological."

For example, instead of saying we are "made in Gods image," we use computer terms to describe how we think. We "process" new ideas. We "retrieve" information from our "memory banks." When we forget someones name, we blame "a glitch in our hard drive."

A Midwesterner and resident of Madison, Wis., OGieblyn is best known for her monthly column in the Silicon Valley bible Wired magazine. She has published one other volume, the 2018 essay collection Interior States.

OGieblyn has become a minor star among the hipster-intellectual set, a kind of anti-Marilynne Robinson, not just for the quality of her work, but because she stands out as a woman in an arena dominated by such male thinkers as Jaron Lanier, Evgeny Morozov and Tim Wu.

Her cool and cerebral tone occasionally makes those dudes read like tittering school girls. Her historical touchstones are Ren Descartes, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Hannah Arendt, many of whose ideas she discusses here at length.

But she says her major inspiration is a living writer, the futurist Ray Kurzweil, whose seminal 1999 book The Age of Spiritual Machines prompted her to reclothe her religious questions in modern garb.

She argues that Kurzweils creed of "transhumanism," the idea that people can evolve beyond their physical and mental limitations, mimics the Judeo-Christian concept of the afterlife.

But for all her bookish references, she revels in personal anecdotes. The letter "I" is the only one on her keyboard that has come loose, she notes, "presumably from overuse."

Her religious family, her Bible-school years, her loss of faith, her time as a cocktail waiter, her substance-abuse problems are all grist for her philosophical mill.

Oddly, she is cagey about her age, but the few dates she supplies for context would place her in her early 40s.

With her habit of summarizing long conversations with friends, and also in the rigour of her sentences, OGieblyn calls to mind the British-Canadian novelist Rachel Cusk, if only Cusk cared about artificial intelligence and the elusive nature of atoms.

A skeptical reader might think that OGieblyn is already practising some fictional techniques herself. She tells of a poet friend who dreamt that the world would soon experience a "seismic event," which turns out to be the COVID-19 pandemic.

"She said that this was the first of many trials and tribulations we would suffer in days to come, that the earth was not dying but cleansing itself."

Humanity, "the real virus," might be doomed, according to this poet. But in the meantime OGieblyns success seems foreordained.

Morley Walker is a retired Free Press journalist.

Originally posted here:
Musings on science imbued with the spiritual - Winnipeg Free Press

Every morning you emerge from sleep, open your eyes, and find that yup you are still here.Another day on the planet breathing, eating, and working so you can keep breathing, eating and working. Basically, you are trying to hold it all together while having a little fun. Then, after about 16 hours, you will drop back into bed with one day less left in your life-inventory, knowing you have to repeat the whole effort again tomorrow.This is the reality, in one form or another, for you, me, and every other human being on the planet. It has also been the reality, in one form or another, for every human being since we emerged as a separate species some 300,000 years ago. All and all, it seems pretty weird. What is it all about? What is it all for?Is there a mystery of life?

Today I would like to take on these questions through the lens of another question. Can science answer this basic weirdness, or is there a fundamental mystery of life?

Once I did a public debate with a guy who was into transhumanism (which essentially holds that one day we will merge with computers). He was adamant that ultimately science would explain all facets of the world. In the end, nothing would remain hidden before its all-illuminating gaze. Even though I have spent my life living and loving science, I felt something really essential was missing from his perspective. To me, his omission is an understanding of what explanations are for and the limits of what they can do.

If the question is, Can science explain life? then the answer I think someday will be mostly yes, if what we are aiming for are the processes at work in life. Science has already successfully deployed the technique of reduction to see the building blocks of life. Reduction means looking for explanations or successful predictive descriptions of a system by focusing on its smaller-scale constitutive elements. If you are interested in a human body, then reductions lead down from organs to cells to DNA to genes to biomolecules and so on. That approach has obviously been spectacularly successful.

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.

It has not, however, been enough. The frontier now seems to be understanding life as a complex adaptive system, meaning one in which organization and cause occur on many levels. It is not just the atomic building blocks that matter; influences propagate up and down the scale, with multiple connected networks from genes to the environment and back. As I have written before, information may play an essential role here in ways that do not occur in non-living systems.

But the deeper question remains: will this ongoing process of explanatory refinement exhaust the weirdness of being alive or the mystery of life that I described in the opening? I think not.

The reason I take that position is because there is a profound and (literally) existential difference between an explanation and experience. We humans invented the marvelous process called science to understand the patterns we experience around us. We did this because we are curious creatures by nature and because we also hope to gain some control over the world around us. But here is the key point: experience is always more than the explanation. (That is the takeaway from a philosophical thought experiment called Marys Room.) The direct, unmediated totality of experience can never be corralled by an explanation.Why? Because experience is the source of explanations.

Experience can be a difficult locus for discussion. It is so close and so obvious that, for some people, it does not seem like anything at all. But for many across the whole of existence, it has been a central concern. For the philosophies of classical India and Asia, it was always the starting point. For philosophers in the West, it made its most recent reappearance as a topic in the works of William James and phenomenologists like Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. For all of these thinkers and writers, experience was not something that could be taken for granted it was the ground from which all other questions became possible.

Sometimes it has been called presence. Sometimes it has been called self-luminosity. Stephen Hawking even acknowledges it when he asked, What puts the fire into the equations? That fire is experience. It is the verb to be, and the only way into being is through experience.

The key point here is that direct, lived experience is not amenable to explanation. I can theorize about perception and cognition. I can do experiments to test those theories. But even if I gave you an account of what every nerve cell in your brain at every nanosecond was doing, it would still not be experience. It would be nothing more than a list of words and numbers. Your actual and direct experience of the world of the tart taste of an apple or of looking into the eyes of someone you love would always overflow the list. There would always be more.

That is because explanations always take some particular aspect of lived experience and separate it out. Explanation is like the foreground. But experience is beyond foreground and background. It is an inseparable holism, a totality that does not atomize. It is not something you think in your head; it is what you live as a body embedded in surroundings. That is how every moment of our strange, beautiful, sad, tragic, and fully amazing lives is revealed moment by moment. Explanations may help in specific circumstances, but they can never exhaust that ongoing revelation that is the mystery of life.

Lets turn once again to our question: is life a mystery? It is good to remember Sren Kierkegaards famous admonition: Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced. This perspective does not diminish science in any way. That is because our experience of science itself heightens our appreciation of the world, like the rush you feel when you understand why the sky appears blue or blood appears red.

So yes, life is a mystery, but that does not mean we are left in ignorance. Like a skier effortlessly driving down a steep slope, or a pianist bringing us a beautiful sonata, we can know this mystery but not with words, equations, and explanations but by living it thoroughly with body and heart and mind.

Read the original post:
The mystery of life cannot be solved by science - Big Think

Last weekend, Rolling Stone ran a story about an interview an emergency room doctor had given to a local news station in which, according to the TV reporter, hed said hospitals in his state were so swamped with patients whod overdosed on ivermectin that gunshot victims were struggling to be seen. For context, ivermectin is an anti-parasitic drug used for deworming horses that has been touted by vaccine sceptics as an effective prophylactic against Covid-19. For boosters of the Covid vaccines, this story was manna from heaven. Here were a bunch of hicks so dumb they were stuffing themselves with horse pills rather than getting jabbed, with predictably disastrous results.

There was only one problem it wasnt true. A hospital in rural Oklahoma that had worked with the ER doctor issued a statement saying it hadnt treated any patients with complications arising from taking ivermectin. Two days later, Rolling Stone issued a clarification saying it had been unable to independently verify any such cases. Pity it didnt try to verify the story before publishing it, but then it probably fell under the heading of too good to check. That was the attitude of various media organisations that rehashed the story without bothering to confirm it, including the Guardian, Newsweek, the New York Daily News, Business Insider, The Hill and MSNBC. Incredibly, the host of a show on CNN called No Lie repeated it, as did the best-selling author of a book debunking anti--vaccine myths. Perhaps the icing on the cake is that this little nugget of fake news was regurgitated by an academic at the University of Maryland who specialises in mis/disinformation.

Needless to say, Twitter didnt suspend any of its users for trafficking in falsehoods and nor did any independent fact-checkers on Facebook flag the story as wrong. This is the type of in-accurate anecdote that the self-appointed scourges of mis-information are happy to ignore because it confirms their prejudices about vaccine sceptics being ignorant rubes. As a rule, any story that challenges the official narrative about coronavirus is scrutinised by these gatekeepers in forensic detail, while those that support it, like this one, are given a free pass. That explains why journalists at papers like the Guardian were quick to dismiss the lab-leak hypothesis about the origins of Sars-CoV-2, yet lapped up fanciful stories linking the Great Barrington Declaration to unscrupulous businessmen worried about their profits.

Of course, many vaccine sceptics really are conspiracy theorists, and they look at this flagrant double standard when it comes to misinformation and see an organised attempt to quash dissent. For them, the Covid hoax is part of a diabolical plan hatched by Bill Gates and his billionaire cronies to replicate Chinas social credit system across the West, partly to enrich themselves, partly to consolidate their power and partly to implement a sinister political agenda, although thats often a little hazy. Something to do with transhumanism, climate change and a Davos-inspired version of socialism in which the proles will own nothing and be happy.

When confronted with these theories I apply Hanlons razor, which says you should never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity except in my version I substitute vanity for stupidity. The reason my esteemed journalistic colleagues are so reluctant to check the stories theyre told, and either dismiss them as fake news or repeat them as gospel, is because their standing in the eyes of their colleagues is more important to them than the truth. The information that gets labelled suspect is anything believed by low-status people Trump voters, Brexit supporters while the stories that get beamed around the world are those that bear the imprimatur of the educated elite. Its about status signalling.

They like to boast theyre guided by evidence and reason after all, following the science is another high-status indicator. But we know these liberal muckety-mucks arent really interested in the views of scientists, because where elite opinion parts company with mainstream scientific orthodoxy the notion that vaccinating healthy teens isnt very sensible, for instance theyre happy to follow a different group of experts. The sad truth is that thanks to social media platforms like Twitter, journalism has become a largely performative profession.

Continued here:
The stories that are too good to check - Spectator.co.uk

The Overwatch Transhuman Arm, or OTA (as it is commonly abbreviated to) is the military backbone of the Combine-unlike Civil Protection. They are infrequently seen within city limits. (colloquially referred to as Combine Soldiers) are transhuman infantry units, well-armored with Pre-War Ceramic Plate Armor, heavily augmented, and conditioned into post-human killing machines.

Most of the time, OTA units will remain garrisoned in stasis, and are only deployed when necessary.

Unmodified CW:HL2RP will give you 150 health and 150 armor to start. This makes you difficult to kill; yet remember that you are still vulnerable alone. As a result, it is best to coordinate with your allies and use tactics such as flanking and suppression fire to defeat enemies in S2K or S2RP engagements. But remember that Rebels have the critical advantage of surprise and guerrilla warfare to counter you in-turn.

The Overwatch Transhuman Arm is composed of several different divisions, also known as detachments. Each detachment either serves a different purpose, or possess different weaponry and attributes.

ECHO units are standard Overwatch Soldiers, and are usually armed with an MP7, OICW, or AR2. Most of the time, they will remain garrisoned in stasis, only being deployed in critical situations.

DAGGER/MACE units are Overwatch Soldiers that wield a shotgun. They operate similarly to standard Overwatch Soldiers and bear reddish-brown armor instead of the usual dark blue. On certain servers, MACE is a division of the MPF.

HURRICANE/AIRWATCH is an Overwatch detachment that is responsible for the control of Combine gunships and hunter-choppers. Instead of a standard Overwatch helmet, they will wear a helmet outfitted with a visor.

RANGERs specialize in long-range combat, serving as the sniper division of the transhuman arm. They wield an OSR, though weaponry can depend on server.

GHOST/PHANTOM units are deployed for stealth operations where their deadly accuracy and efficiency are required. Most servers will use GHOST and PHANTOM as MPF divisions.

X-RAY is simply a medical division that are usually armed with standard weaponry.

The SENTINEL division are usually Overwatch Elites that guard the highest ranking members of the Combine, such as the Earth Administrator. They will often wield an AR2.

KINGs are Overwatch Elites that command standard OTA ECHO squads. They are highly trained and skilled combatants.

Add OTA Shotguner in Mace and Elite on King photos

See the original post:
Overwatch Transhuman Arm | HL2RP Wiki | Fandom

This list is a mere starting point for you, to do your own research. Dr. Madej studied this for twenty years, so the actual basis of her knowledge is much larger than this list.

https://pubs.rsc.org/--/content/articlelanding/2015/ra/c5ra01508a#!divAbstract

Why “Operation Warp Speed” Could Be Deadly

https://www.facebook.com/1780584826/posts/10213711458378968/?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1232869/

https://kenfm.de/bill-gates-predicts-700000-victims-from-corona-vaccination/

https://www.national-geographic.com/science/2020/05/moderna-coronavirus-vaccine-how-it-works-cvd/?fbclid=IwAR1EFM74n4ulVp8pEufYOA9vN13CCyYeKoXdnWpk-R_0gZoDgflr3w5N0T4#close

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2020/07/29/modernas-mysterious-coronavirus-vaccine-delivery-system/#2226d81562d9

Gene Drive Files Expose Leading Role of US Military in Gene Drive Development.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2018/11/30/gene-drive-research-fight-diseases-can-proceed-cautiously-un-group-decides/

https://youtu.be/iMl0ty6evhU https://steemit.com/life/@pranavsinha/bill-and-melinda-gates-foundation-kicked-out-of-india

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=share&v=ksEVaO806Oo

https://youtu.be/Ofdd4ILdpVY https://scialert.net/fulltext/?doi=biotech.2011.136.148

http://ir.inovio.com/news-releases/news-releases-details/2020/INOVIOs-COVID-19-DNA-Vaccine-INO-4800-Demonstrates-Robust-Neutralizing-Antibody-and-T-Cell-Immune-Responses-in-Preclinical-Models/default.aspx

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232740966_What_you_always_needed_to_know_about_electroporation_based_DNA_vaccines

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/international-business/article-astrazeneca-to-be-exempt-from-coronavirus-vaccine-liability-claims-in/

https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/20-things-you-didn't-know-about-dna

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/gene-editing-moderna-and-transhumanism/

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200715095500.htm

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC33911/

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-potential-coronavirus-vaccine-could-be-as-easy-as-sticking-on-a-bandage-2020-04-08

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3675524/#!po=0.446429

Quantum Dots Deliver Vaccines and Invisibly Encode Vaccination History in Skin

https://newatlas.com/snake-fang-microneedle-patch/60868/

Scientists Propose ‘Tattoos’ To Solve Vaccination Issues

https://www.thermofisher.com/us/en/home/references/gibco-cell-culture-basics/transfection-basics/introduction-to-transfection.html

Injectable Body Sensors Take Personal Chemistry to a Cell Phone Closer to Reality

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarwantsingh/2017/11/20/transhumanism-and-the-future-of-humanity-seven-ways-the-world-will-change-by-2030/

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200715095500.htm

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/invisible-ink-could-reveal-whether-kids-have-been-vaccinated/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338044557_Biocompatible_near-infrared_quantum_dots_delivered_to_the_skin_by_microneedle_patches_record_vaccination

https://sciencebusiness.technewslit.com/?p=36802

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Dr. Carrie Madej: why vaccines alter the human DNA