dream_weaver
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Posts posted by dream_weaver
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On 11/4/2020 at 7:13 PM, dream_weaver said:
This is a link to an article I looked at back in September. The title reminded me of a book of a similar name by Richard Connell, The Most Dangerous Game. (This fits into the hunter being hunted, written in 1924.)
Rooting about some more and came across this article from September 2022
QAnon: A Modern Conspiracy Theory and the Assessment of Its Believers
by Brian J. Holoyda
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On October 28, 2017, the birth of the QAnon conspiracy theory picked up where Pizzagate left off.6 On that day the now mythic Q created a post entitled “Calm Before the Storm” on the forum site 4chan in which he claimed to be a government official with connections to the Trump administration and Q clearance. Releasing alleged intelligence in the form of breadcrumbs or Qdrops, Q built on the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, asserting that then-President Trump would initiate The Storm, an attack against the deep-state actors responsible for the global pedophile cabal. Since then, a community of online followers has expanded the belief system of QAnon, often in response to political and societal happenings or to the tweets of former President Trump. For example, the group identified Q’s influence when Alabama’s football team presented Trump with a jersey bearing the number 17, which also happens to be the position of letter Q in the alphabet.7 The conspiracy theory rapidly worked its way into the mainstream, in part due to the amplification of QAnon material by celebrities like Roseanne Barr, who tweeted supportive comments about the Trump administration’s role in breaking up pedophile rings in March 2018,8 and Trump himself, who is estimated to have promoted the conspiracy theory at least 265 times via retweets of QAnon-associated accounts between October 2017 and October 2019.9
One of the things that piqued my interest was the rate of speed the phenomenon spread at, reminding me of something else I had seen outlined.
Here's How Long It Took 15 Hot Startups To Get 1,000,000 Users
A few bullet points of summary:
- Kickstarter got its 1,000,000th backer in about 30 months
Date founded: April 2009
- Airbnb doesn't release user numbers, but it reached 1,000,000 nights booked 30 months after launch
Date founded: April 2008
- Tumblr was aiming to hit 1,000,000 users within 24 months. It hit 1,000,000 blogs in 27 months.
Date founded: February 2007
- One Kings Lane hit 1,000,000 users in 26 months
Date founded: Early 2009
- It took nearly 24 months for Twitter to reach 1,000,000 users
Date founded: July 2006
- Gilt Groupe reached 1,000,000 members in 24 months
Date founded: July 2007
- It took Foursquare 13 months to score 1,000,000 downloads
Date founded: March 2009
- Facebook reached 1,000,000 users in 10 months.
Date founded: February 2004
- It took Dropbox 7 months to get 1,000,000 users
Date launched: September 2008
- Fab reached 1,000,000 users in 5 months.
Date founded: June 2011
- Spotify hit its 1,000,000th user 5 months after launch
Date relaunched: October 2008
- Instagram was downloaded by 1,000,000 people within 2.5 months.
Date founded: October 2010
- Path (the relaunched version) received 1 million downloads within its first two weeks
Date relaunched: November 2011
While not linear, the rate of spread has become faster, perhaps due to informal information supply lines, new releases get communicated more 'efficiently'.
The game-theory in conjunction with an interactive conspiracy platform, an informal distribution system that crowd-sources decoding the cryptic aspects of the Q-drops much like the kindergarten game of telephone, where the teachers message is whispered from teacher to student to student to student usually resulting a completely different message from the original.
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9 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:
Maybe later. Greg has taken down some of my posts. Maybe after that's resolved.
...one of your posts. You may resume what appears to be an attempt to cherry pick from your QAnon multi platform RPG.
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On 12/7/2022 at 2:43 PM, Jon Letendre said:
In all the mentions of Q at this site have any of the haters ...
As this split thread stretches into page two, and given the form of your phraseology cited above, which of the mentions were made by Q-haters on this site, and if you want to delve deeper, have there been posts made by Ayn Rand haters here as well?
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Considering that reasoning by analogy is invalid, drawing a sharper distinction of comparison is a step toward an objective identification.
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9 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:
You watched an HBO series hit job.
What would your impression of Ayn Rand be if you got all your information about her from television?
8 hours ago, Jon Letendre said:OK, then going online and finding some videos claiming to be about Ayn Rand is a proper way to inform oneself about the content of her ideas?
You consider the above approach cited to be a sound analogy?
How about the converse?
The solution is to read Rand directly to grasp her clear and concise writing for one's self, is analogous to reading what appears on the qanon.pub for a similar grasp of how clear and concise the writing is there?
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I don't consider it inevitable that those trends will continue, but if they did, sure, collapse woud ensue.
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Elsewhere she pointed out that it is philosophy that brings the world to the state it is in.
Consider the difference between "What are you fighting against?" and "What are you fighting for?" being couched in regards to philosophy.
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The collapse in Atlas Shrugged is/was a prediction to be projected existentially?
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I copied and pasted them from a facebook acquaintance who has been tinkering with different inputs. I did not edit them.
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17 minutes ago, tadmjones said:
I went 'thru' the paywall by going to Drudge and clicking on the article.
But what 'echo' was in there ?
Sorry. Yes, this one just states Russia attacked Ukraine.
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In the WSJ, it referenced DOW Chemical as having a team of eight people that used OSINT to anticipate Russia attacking Ukraine, and use the information to profit in an unspecified way.
An additional search on DOW Chemical, Russia, Ukraine yielded another 1 of 1 article remaining for:
Chemical industry under pressure to cut ties with Russia
After the invasion of Ukraine, some of the world’s largest chemical companies are shunning Russian business
by Alexander H. Tullo
https://cen.acs.org/articles/100/i10/Chemical-industry-under-pressure-to-cut-ties-with-Russia.html
Dow, the largest US chemical maker, told C&EN in an email that it has suspended all purchases of feedstocks and energy from Russia. Dow says it has also “significantly reduced its operations and product offerings in the country” and halted investment. It adds, however, that it is still supplying “limited essential goods in Russia, including food packaging, hygiene, cleaning and sanitation products and household goods.”
Dow operates a polymer dispersion plant and owns a stake in a polyurethane systems joint venture in Russia. The company says it is providing evacuation support for employees and their families in Ukraine and is also looking to do so for its Russian workers. -
Sure enough, it's behind a paywall after having read it once. Here another in a similar vein:
Are spy agencies ready for open-source intelligence?
By Weifeng Zhong
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/courage-strength-optimism/are-spy-agencies-ready-for-open-source-intelligence -
Hmm. I'm not a subscriber. I'll look for a comparable article.
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Via Drudge Report, a Wall Street Journal article about a shift from central intelligence agencies to Open-Source intelligence.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/rise-of-open-source-intelligence-tests-u-s-spies-11670710806
Warning: Echos of Russia being manipulated into attacking Ukraine are contained therein too.
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Why does the question form in my mind about the morality of haranging someone for an expectation of the specific form in which a clear moral statement is to be framed?
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Imagine having ChatGPT create poetic quatrains predicting future events. It could provide a feeding frenzy for those who eat that kind of stuff up.
Here is an example of a ChatGPT output:
QuoteOpenAI ChatGPT Prompts
Write the Sermon on the mount - but by Ayn Rand
The Sermon on the Mount is a famous passage from the New Testament in which Jesus Christ delivers a sermon to his disciples. Here is a hypothetical rewrite of the Sermon on the Mount, written from the perspective of Ayn Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism:
The Objectivist Sermon on the Mount
Blessed are the rational, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are the independent, for they shall be free.
Blessed are the productive, for they shall be rewarded.
Blessed are those who strive for excellence, for they shall achieve greatness.
Blessed are those who respect the rights of others, for they shall live in harmony.
Blessed are those who reject the tyranny of the collective, for they shall be true to themselves.
Blessed are those who embrace the virtue of selfishness, for they shall find happiness and fulfillment.
Blessed are those who embrace reason and reject faith, for they shall know the truth.
Blessed are those who seek their own happiness, for they shall find it.
These are the ideals that we must strive for if we are to create a just and prosperous society. May we all strive to live by these principles and create a world in which each person is free to pursue their own happiness and reach their full potential. -
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2 hours ago, Eiuol said:
I forget sometimes that it's mostly an American thing.
Germany arrests dozens as QAnon-inspired "Reichsbürger" group accused of plotting to overthrow
Granted QAnon-inspired is arguably not 'Q' nor QAnon.
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'Q' has been discussed in several threads and mentioned occasionally in others:
https://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php?/search/&q=QAnon&search_and_or=or
(This post should not to be taken as a contribution to QAnon.)
Split from this thread: *** What are the similarities and differences between 'Q' haters and Ayn Rand haters? ***
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35 minutes ago, AlexL said:
I also suspect that this Seshadri Kumar never dreamed to be approvingly quoted on a Objectivism site...
Obviously I need to work in my delivery, if what I said is to be taken as approving.
Is the USA striving to be the role of the promoter of individual rights if their goal is to bring about an unstated subversive ulterior agenda?
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3 hours ago, tadmjones said:
If it had said 'not always' instead of 'never' it would be more 'right'. No ?
The implication that a central enforcer is needed would not stand, yes ?
The no right or wrong reveals the author's acceptance of moral relativism.
As to a central law enforcer, the laws have to be discovered /or created before the discussion of their enforcement comes to play.
If the role of legitimate government is to identify, secure, and protect individual rights, then using this standard for evaluating right or wrong casts much of what was written by. Seshadri Kumar under a different light.
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13 hours ago, whYNOT said:
From the article:
International relations are never about right and wrong. They are about what is possible and what is not, because we live in an anarchic world with no central law enforcer.
This is the key error. This is where the laws of identity and causality are brushed aside to make acceptable to the reader that we live in an anarchic world, and suggests that a central law enforcer might be needed, or possible.
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Should be working now.
About the Russian aggression of Ukraine
in International Politics
Posted
Ha!
Per a google alert I discovered that Ukraine has an Ayn Rand Center - Ukraine.
Ukrainian politician who idolizes Reagan tries to win over today’s Republicans
by Jeff Stein
... Zablotskyy founded the Ayn Rand Center Ukraine to promote the libertarian author and covered his office walls with posters of Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill, with their quotes translated into Ukrainian.
I inserted the link to the center, and while it doesn't directly pertain to this war, it was an unexpected find.