[First, an explanation…my seasonal job took off this week, and additionally my other work added on a layer of overtime. The good news is I love what I do in both. The bad news is, I had no time to write. This was intended to be the next installment in The Crumbling Time; instead it fills my Sunday post for Let’s Go Wild. I expect to be back in the groove next Sunday.]
Let’s start with a simple, if usually misunderstood, concept: exponential growth. The term describes a process when something you count rises over a period of time, creating an upwards trending curve on a graph. It represents the time it takes to double the amount being counted. For instance, say a population grows at 2% per year. After 36 years it will double. After another 36 years, it doubles again. But with each doubling, the increase is exponential, leading at some point to the infamous “hockey Stick” type graph.
Here’s an example I gleaned from Chris Martensen’s “Crash Course”: think of a large baseball stadium. Place one drop of water on the pitcher’s rubber. Then a minute later, double it; two drops. A minute later, double it again and so on. If you are tied to a seat on the top row, when would you start to worry? When the stadium is 1/8 full? One minute doubles that to ¼, one more minute to ½, and the last minute you are underwater. That’s the hockey stick effect.
This idea of exponential also works not for growth, but for decay: erosion, corruption, rot, dis-integration. We also see the exponential compounding of errors in thinking, especially as we move from seeing the Universe as mechanical to seeing it as quanta; or seeing the failures of manufactured drugs v. placebo or natural sources. Here’s another, very real example of erosion: jetliners. When I was young, people were afraid to fly because every year a few planes would crash. The government investigated crashes, and over time managed to improve the safety of flying until we almost never heard of a commercial airliner crash. A culture at its peak of technological ‘prowess’ touched, for a few years, zero defects. Until the Boeing Max8 disasters, that is. Those were chalked up to a software solution to a hardware problem[1] that ultimately failed to do its job. But now we hear of more Boeing defects; a bolt in the rudder control system without a nut found last month (December 2023), and the door “plug” blowout over Portland earlier this month.
“So how did it happen in the case of Alaska Air? At least two and perhaps four bolts, nuts and their safety wiring or cotter pin were left off when the plug was installed onto the frame of the aircraft. What's worse is that United, when inspecting their similar aircraft after the first incident, has reported loose bolts on the lower hinge assemblies and some photos of those have circulated. Again everything has a torque spec in anything important on an aircraft (or in a car for that matter) and in an aircraft someone has to install it to specification and then it has to pass inspection, with both the person who did the installing and inspecting signing off on it. Obviously the inspecting is not happening and the installing is not being done competently which is not one failure it is two failures, sequentially, in the same place.
“What happens when you start firing people who are skilled (and expensive) and replace them with people who are less-skilled (and cheaper)?
This!
“What happens when anything other than competence becomes the metric on which people obtain a position? Like, for example, whether they're of a given sex, race, color, creed or some other criteria such as how "queer" they are?
This!”
Do you think this is only at Boeing? Oh no it isn't.
We knew in 1981 that masks don't work to block bacterial infections in an operating room. We know this because Neil Orr proved it. A series of studies after his tried to refute his findings and managed only to reinforce them including one in which the masks were loaded with non-harmful microspheres and then worn by the people in the OR and the contaminant, simulating what you would expel from your lungs if you were infected, was found in the surgical wounds. Viruses are a thousand times smaller than bacteria and those microspheres. In other words the mask is a talisman, we knew this forty years ago and yet as soon as Covid showed up here come the mandates despite it being a fact that they don't work and they don't work even when used among 100% trained professionals who all know and can observe proper procedure for using and, after use, disposing of them to avoid cross-contamination. Nobody in the ordinary civilian population will manage to pull that off especially when they're hanging their masks from the rearview mirror in their cars.
These issues are abetted by the fact the regulation and safety checks during Boeing’s manufacturing process have been handed over, by the government, to Boeing itself; ostensibly because they are capable of inspecting themselves. This is the tip of the iceberg, as the profit drive cuts corners including in the area of safety, and we pass peak zero defects.
Another example of erosion: Empire. Nothing lasts forever…duh. America has been living on reputation and pride; neither has any real substance anymore. We have outsourced our ability to manufacture anything important, least of all the materials we need to live a beautiful, compassionate life. As a culture, not necessarily as individuals, we have lost our spiritual grounding. Believe in it or not, karma is a bitch. 400 years after the genocide and domination of those who lived on Turtle Island, this erosion and rot is the destiny we reap. You may not know this, if you listen to the mainstream narrative, but the rest of the world sees the rot and has begun to realize it won’t take much of a push for the tower to come tumbling down.
And so they are running for the exits; leaving military alliances in the dustbin, running pell-mell for economic alliances that build true prosperity and community, instead of division and hate. They have begun trading in local currencies, not USD. They may be selling their USD-denominated debt to greater fools, in exchange for actual goods and services. They may revise their “national defense” to rely more on negotiation and less on kinetic weapons. But however they are doing it, they have all seen the US is no longer worthy of trust because we are selfish, egotistical, and highly insane. A simple, clear example: we abrogate treaties unilaterally, because we think we are in charge and can make up or change rules as we wish.
“Show me” why you say that, I hear you ask….
Microplastics
Here’s another ‘surprise’. Suddenly[2], reports abound about unseeable molecules of plastic in everything: clouds, rain, food, and our bodies.
“Japanese Scientists Find Microplastics are Present in Clouds
“Researchers in Japan have confirmed that microplastics are present in clouds, where they are likely affecting the climate in ways that are not yet fully understood.
The team identified nine different types of polymers and one type of rubber in the airborne microplastics, which ranged in size from 7.1 to 94.6 micrometers.
Each liter (0.26 gallon) of cloud water tested contained between 6.7 to 13.9 pieces of the plastics.
“When microplastics reach the upper atmosphere and are exposed to ultraviolet radiation from sunlight, they degrade, contributing to greenhouse gasses, Okochi said.
SOURCE: Al Jazeera
“Researchers from Columbia University and Rutgers University found roughly 240,000 detectable plastic fragments in a typical liter of bottled water. The study was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“About 10% of the detected plastic particles were microplastics, and the other 90% were nanoplastics. Microplastics are between 5 millimeters to 1 micrometer; nanoplastics are particles less than 1 micrometer in size. For context, a human hair is about 70 micrometers thick.
“Microplastics have already been found in people's lungs, their excrement, their blood and in placentas, among other places. A 2018 study found an average of 325 pieces of microplastics in a liter of bottled water.[3]
“As Hurricane Larry passed over Newfoundland, the instrument gobbled up what fell from the sky. That included rain, of course, but also gobs of microplastics, defined as bits smaller than 5 millimeters, or about the width of a pencil eraser. At its peak, Larry was depositing over 100,000 microplastics per square meter of land per day, the researchers found in a recent paper published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment. Add hurricanes, then, to the growing list of ways that tiny plastic particles are not only infiltrating every corner of the environment, but readily moving between land, sea, and air.[4]”
No surprise, I expect…common sense says if this is ubiquitous in the environment, it’s also inside our bodies…
And the result? Who knows, and do we care to stop using plastic even if it kills us?
And then there is the explosion of excitement over artificial intelligence (AI)
“"ChatGPT creator OpenAI is working with the US military on several artificial intelligence projects after dropping a prohibition on the use of its technologies for "military and warfare" purposes, a company executive told Bloomberg on Tuesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
“ “The AI pioneer is developing "open-source cybersecurity software" and discussing how to prevent suicides among military veterans with the US government, OpenAI vice president of global affairs Anna Makanju said.
While Makanju did not elaborate on either project, she explained that OpenAI's decision to remove a blanket prohibition on the use of its AI tech for "military and warfare" applications was in line with a broader policy update "to adjust to new uses of ChatGPT and its other tools," according to Bloomberg.
“Despite the ban's repeal, Makanju insisted OpenAI continues to prohibit the use of its technology to "develop weapons, destroy property, or harm people."
However, Microsoft, which owns a large part of OpenAI and enjoys the unrestricted use of its advanced AI technologies, has long contracted with the US military and other branches of the government, and lacks any inbuilt prohibition on weapons development, according to Bloomberg.”
January 12, 2024:
“Microsoft rose above Apple to become the world's most valuable publicly traded company at the close of trading on Friday.
“The software giant's share price has continued to rally so far this year, building on last year's strong performance, whereas Apple has encountered a number of obstacles. Microsoft's aggressive rollout of a number of AI features over the past year has been rewarded by investors, who are hoping that the Seattle-based giant will be best positioned to take advantage of the AI boom.
“Microsoft's shares rose by more than 3% for the week, taking its market value to $2.89 trillion, just ahead of Apple, whose shares dropped nearly 3%, with its market capitalization edging down to $2.87 trillion.”
Energy is the master resource; nothing happens or is made without it. One of the drawbacks of intermittently-available, ‘renewable’ energy has been the lack of storage. What happens if storage is no longer an issue?
“Nuclear battery small enough for use in commercial products, with a charge of 50 years, developed in China. Such batteries use small amounts of nuclear material in a way entirely different than nuclear power plants associated with danger and disasters.
“The power density and charge of these new batteries are many times higher/longer than lithium batteries and could revolutionize both existing products and make entirely new products possible.”
The article says:
“Once mass-produced and introduced to the market, it will meet the long-endurance power supply needs of aerospace, artificial intelligence devices, medical equipment, microelectromechanical systems, sensors, small drones and micro-robots. If the power output is sufficient, mobile phones equipped with nuclear batteries will no longer need recharging, and drones will not need to return for recharging."
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202401/16/WS65a68ff7a3105f21a507c9b7.html
Such is modern, such is evil. The artificial intelligence tracking me both online and in real life and then building the avatar of “me” so that I can be predictably manipulated will potentially have contact with me 24/7 as my fondle slab will no longer need to be left on a table to recharge. Isn’t that special? If we think EMF fields are damaging to our fertility and DNA, wait until we carry a constant radiation emitter in our pocket or bra.
Readers familiar with my writing know I am campaigning to eliminate our dependency on technology as it has ‘progressed’ today. The price we pay for exponential growth, required for money and a consequence of ‘development’, is far too high; yet we persist to pursue growth because of… comfort? Phantom wealth is money, ‘resources’ counted as money, and Nature as a waste container. Real wealth is not found in any of these concepts or ‘goals’; it is found in healthy relationships, communities, and Nature. We are heading in the wrong direction my friends, time to wake up and smell the roses…as long as we can still find roses. One relationship deepened, one community served, and one toxic source eliminated from my life at a time, we can all pitch in to return us to a healthy culture and environment. We need new rituals for grief and conflict resolution, a new spirituality of connection, and a rejection of all that is toxic, even as we remediate the damage already done that is killing us. Civilization as we know it will not last forever; the primary question is, will anyone survive?
[1] Software took over control of the plane under certain conditions, and pilots were not only unable to override the autopilot, they hadn’t been told this was even possible or trained on what to do when it occurred
[2] Any alert conspiracy theorist asks, ‘Why the flood of information on any particular ‘disaster’?’ Sometimes it is because we can no longer hide what’s happening right before our eyes…
[3] https://www.npr.org/2024/01/10/1223730333/bottled-water-plastic-microplastic-nanoplastic-study
[4] https://www.wired.com/story/oh-good-hurricanes-are-now-made-of-microplastics/