Recently my son received a crystal-growing kit as a gift. It turned out to be a fun science experiment, and we pretended that they were the fictional "kyber crystals" that power a Jedi/Sith lightsaber in Star Wars.
The fractal nature of the crystals is very interesting, and using macro photography I was able to show the self-similar features at smaller scales.
I also found a cool little display case to keep on his desk, so he can look at them with his magnifying glass:
However, a closer look reveals the disturbing reality…
Seeing the Republican cower before a buffoon like Trump has been an eye-opening lesson in craven fealty & shameless cowardice. Republicans at his joint session to Congress, clapping for ideas like annexing Greenland and cutting social services, are absolutely insane.
I generated the base image with Stable Diffusion, & stayed up late one night photoshopping all these creepy Trump-loving Congressmen's faces in, beholding Donald Trump's gold-plated, shit-stained glory.
The absurdity continues to plunge into new, depraved depths... Trump passing out “Trump Was Right About Everything” hats in the Oval Office is the same kind of foolishness as Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” declaration, which became emblematic of his arrogance & overconfidence about the wars in the Middle East.
I remember the early days of this blog in my younger years, during the Bush Administration. I was convinced that there couldn't possibly be a more incompetent, idiotic jackass for a President than Dubya, The Worst President Ever. Holy shit, was I naive!
One of the reasons why the human race seems to be sliding deeper into a collective psychosis is because our individual minds have been hijacked by digital technology. Our devices and media have been designed to trigger all the addictive tendencies in our brains, and the result is an agitation on some level when this sensory input is removed. We feel the urge to open our phone back up, or go back to scrolling whatever feed had demanded our attention.
I am as big a fan of digital technology as anyone, but I also recognize the dangers & downfalls of its use. My remedy is to make sure that I devote time to putting the phone aside, and being present in whatever I am doing or experiencing at the moment. I've had the benefit of practicing mindfulness for many years through Zen meditation, yoga, and even my artwork. So, I am quite comfortable with just being, without the need for external distraction. Despite my desire to check my email or social media feeds, I'm able to put it aside and be sure to "stop & smell the roses". However, for people without that ability for a level of introspection or awareness, it can be so easy to just get continually sucked into the constant, never-ending stream of info & entertainment that's now at our fingertips.
This is why this video is so on point, reminding us that we have to utilize & appreciate our original sensory inputs, with the infinite universe of "Actual Reality" around us to experience:
With President Donald Trump pushing the boundaries of his megalomania ever & ever farther, his social media accounts recently exclaimed "Long Live the King!" as he injects himself into New York's controversial 'congestion pricing' system.
I already generated the graphic above a couple weeks ago, but now it's even more appropriate in light of this recent news. The image was created from two renders by Stable Diffusion AI. I composited & retouched the resulting picture in Photoshop. The prompt was: trump sitting on a toilet throne with a poop emoji crown, surrounded by piles of gold and skulls
Trump truly is "The King of Bullshit"... and not just for the stream of unrepentant lies and utter toxicity that flows from his speech. He repulses me to my core, but I'm actually going to use this post to (sort-of) praise him for also exposing how much of our Reality™ is bullshit.
Trump is truly a phenomenon, and without a doubt, the dominant global public figure of the beginning of the early 21st century. As I put it in my previous post: "He has become basically a God-tier malignant narcissist, demanding the attention of every human consciousness on the planet.".
The most significant thing that he has done, as The King of Bullshit, is to show that all of our public institutions and socio-political systems are ultimately bullshit.
Our entire civilization is built on the most fragile foundation of gentleman's agreements & honor systems. What Trump has shown, is that unscrupulous people with no personal honor nor respect for these institutions can just tear everything apart. They can quickly dissolve these transient, imaginary creations that we call "society" & "government". As part of a relatively stable political framework for the last couple centuries, Americans have come to take our relatively well-functioning social order for granted. Trump has ripped open the curtain, and there's nothing behind our established institutions. It's all sunyata, emptiness...
Government is bullshit. It's made up of millions of actual civil servants, politicians, & military personnel, but it is really an abstract entity perpetuated by the systems & layers of bureaucracy that have been built up over decades. No matter how well things are run, it is all impermanent, & subject to being destroyed at any time. When you have a tyrannically-minded asshole like Trump & his fanatical sycophants ready to raze the established order, it has now been shown that the only thing holding everything together was the flimsy thread of "respect" that people continually hold for the government & it's principles. The checks & balances that the country's founders implemented simply do not exist if the parties do not exercise them. The Republican-majority Congress and the conservative Supreme Court have not asserted their authority in the governmental triad, and instead have let King Trump and his administration steamroll the entire system.
"The Law" & Its Enforcement are bullshit. Trump has proved this truth, time & time again. Law is another one of those things, hand-in-hand with government, that depends on people to respect & uphold it. If this is not enforced, then the whole thing is shown to be just a farce, a collective illusion that we agree to. The fact that Donald Trump escaped prosecution for the Jan 6th attempt to block the election certification, as well as his various fraudulent activities, AND became the fucking President of the United States shows that law is definitely not equally applied & can be completely subverted. He's shown that the courts are also bullshit, & they can either be politicized, corrupted, or stalled. As the Trump Administration churns out executive directives, organizations & states have begun to sue. People are looking to the courts to save us from the Trump/DOGE wrecking ball, but litigating against this administration's actions is like putting bandages on a decapitated head, the critical damage is done or unstoppable, & the country is fucked in the short term, for sure.
The Media is bullshit. Trump, being the King of Bullshit & master media manipulator, has shown how dishonest & sensationalized the news media has become. "Sane-washing" became a term during the 2024 election campaign to describe how the media & journalists simply don't call out Trump on his insane bullshit. It's agonizing to watch talking heads try to come terms with or spin the constant flood of belligerent stupidity & craziness. There are still fact-checkers in the news (much to the dismay of the MAGA faithful), but more people should just point out that Trump is a total ignoramus & often has no clue what the hell he's talking about. "The Weave", yeah sure,... it's called BULLSHIT.
Consensus Reality is bullshit. That's right- there is no such thing as an agreed reality, especially in the realm of politics. Political divisions have always been a major force in any society throughout history. However, the influence of social media and digital information have drastically affected perceptions of reality through misinformation, propaganda, and fictions. The devastating effectiveness lies with their distribution to the individual & collective consciousness, via the algorithms determining the content viewed based on an individual's psychological profile. We still have verifiable physical facts, but people may still not accept your measuring system or your descriptions even if they are supposed to be rooted in so-called objective reality. As Robert Anton Wilson described, we are living in our own "reality tunnels," and although there are certainly shared experiences among us, everyone is literally in their own world. When I go into the comments on Fox News articles, it is often like entering Bizarro World. The more MAGA the news source, the more disconnected from reality it seems to be. Trump himself, channeling 1984's Big Brother, has demanded that "what you're seeing... is not what's happening".
So here were are, Donald Trump, The King of Bullshit, is enshittifying the country, the world, & everything he touches, like the reverse King Midas. He is an narcissistic old fool sitting on an imagined throne, just as temporary as all the established institutions that he's exposing as a giant pile of bullshit.
This idea came to me from the news stories about aspiring trillionaire Elon Musk's effective control of the government, & also Luigi Mangione being in prison for shooting a health insurance CEO. I could see elite power-mongers in the near future employing swarms of hunter-killer attack drones for flawless, continuous protection (at least until they are hacked or blasted with an EMP).
What really motivated me to get this post up was this video from today - of President Musk hijacking the Oval Office & absolutely blathering on about his dopey views on government, as Trump listens while hunched over The Resolute Desk in his weird orange clown makeup:
The pure, glaring irony & hypocrisy of Elon Fucking Musk, an un-elected oligarch with billions of dollars in government contracts, complaining about bureaucrats making money off the government is truly breathtaking. He is the biggest goddamn welfare queen around, having siphoned untold amounts of wealth from the American taxpayer. What a cringe-fest... although Trump's annoyance with Elon's son is almost worth enduring the rest of the insane press conference. I have trouble wrangling my toddler son at my work, & I wouldn't dream of letting his crazy ass loose in the Oval Office! I like the theory that Elon's using his kid as a human shield (at least until he gets his drones).
I hate being right about stuff like this... but like all the other sane people in this country, I knew that Elon Musk was going to be Trump's "Shadow President". Elon definitely isn't staying in the shadows, though. He's right out there, openly orchestrating the hostile takeover of the U.S. government & economy. In fact, it has become crystal clear that the world's wealthiest man is the one pulling the strings, not Trump.
Can you imagine if Pres. Biden had George Soros come into the Oval Office & describe how he's going to unilaterally reform the federal government??? The nuclear explosion coming from the collective heads of Fox News pundits would leave a smoking crater where their studios once stood. As usual, the hypocrisy is truly bottomless.
Here's the terrifying reality: The ultimate goal of Musk & the other billionaire technocrats behind the scenes is actually NOT "cutting waste & corruption." That is just the cover story that voters would find agreeable, because no one can argue that the government shouldn't be more effective and efficient, right???
No, the true goal is the total decimation of the United States Government, along with its various agencies & services that benefit the public. Why, you ask? So the power & financial vacuums can be filled by private interests, who, as modern-day feudal lords, stand to make many billions from their new serfs, the American people. I watched the NYT interview with their so-called "prophet" Curtis Yarvin, & I realized these guys are self-important wannabe edge-lords who have no real understanding of humanity because their heads are so far up their own asses.
Their plan for the dismantling of representative democracy is called "The Dark Enlightenment" & Elon is openly flaunting the ideology, with his black Trump hat & his proclamation of being "Dark Gothic MAGA".
We all have already been ground under the corporate boot, but the boot is about to get much heavier for the majority of the population. Elon talking about prices & inflation coming down by 2026 due to all this "saving" is pure, ketamine-fueled bullshit. I have two small kids and I'm freaking out about the destructive potential this administration & it's rogue organizations will have on our economy & society. The fact that anyone believes either of these hokey con-men for a second is a testament to the mass delusion affecting a heavily-propagandized portion of our population.
Anyway, back to my dystopian vision of the Musky future- originally I had the top image in my head of an very elderly Elon Musk in a hoverchair, surrounded by a detail of security drones. I plugged the idea into Stable Diffusion & it gave me an awesome starting image. However, the original face didn't look anything like him, so I Photoshopped the face & other details- like the black & gold U.S.X. flag.
Here is a high-resolution version of the U.S.X. flag design... we might as well get used to using it!:
I recently finally traded in my 8 year old iPhone 6s, for a current model 16.
My 6s served me very well for all those years, & I was really trying to keep it going until the proverbial wheels fell off. It was only within the last 6 months that the battery life became very short (had to keep it plugged in a lot), & I began noticing a lag in performance. I had 128 GB of storage, the most you could get at the time, & I had just recently come close to maxing it out. My new phone has 512GB, so it should let me add 10's of thousands of more pics/video in the coming years.
Eventually, A.I. will likely allow us to reconstruct (perhaps in VR) whole scenes or even chapters from our life based on our accumulated digital photo libraries. Anyway, I'll save my tech predictions for another post...
It's crazy how attached we've become to our technology, especially smartphones. I'll have a mini panic attack in the car if I think I left it at home. I have always felt that my computers & phone devices were extensions of my nervous system, tools to extend my consciousness & abilities.
Sometimes, I'll look at the phone & think what a mystifying creation it is... It's almost like magic when you closely consider the complexities of it's engineering & functionality. We carry around this light screen that allows us to communicate & even share thoughts like a form of telepathy, create or appreciate art, capture moments in time, and navigate our reality, while also giving us access to the sum of all human knowledge right in our hand. It's unbelievable!
Now, with the addictive nature of gaming & social media, our devices have become "attention prisons" of endless scrolling and clicking. Our brain is completely hooked on the interaction with the screen. It's not all brain-numbing nonsense, but the craving for the interaction of the mind with the digital devices is a psychological imperative that is too strong for most people to resist.
I try to intentionally disconnect from my phone- to read a book, pay attention to the taste of my food, play with my kids, enjoy the rare moments of silence, a chance to talk to my wife without the little gremlins hounding us (also rare nowadays), or just be present in whatever I'm doing. I have a meditative mindset, and try to maintain a sense of conscious awareness in each moment. The phone is an almost irresistible temptation, but it's vitally important to take time & experience the sensorium of "real life".
We also try to limit the kids' screen time, because we realize how addictive it is. I see kids glued to their phones, but then so are adults now. I want to help my kids to be able to be aware & mentally resilient enough to experience life directly, by disengaging from electronic media periodically.
So, as I continue on with newer & better hardware, our technology is evolving within our lifetimes, as biology as evolved through the millennia. It's truly an amazing time to be alive as so much change & novelty is taking place in our world. With how crazy things are, I just hope humanity can keep going & not destroy itself before we reach a more stable stage of species development. My phone delivers me all kinds of news that makes me nervous about our chances, but I have to stay optimistic, for the sake of my children the human race as a whole.
