Sunday, October 31, 2021

Happy Halloween. The leaves are starting to fall and change colors. The days are getting darker and the precious amount of light is getting shorter. Autumn wind and chill can be felt swirling about you and we can’t help think about pumpkins, spooky things and winterizing. Hopefully you’ve been stayin’ alive amidst the “pain-demic”… We have a few “scary” articles of interest that we’re mentioning for the October month wrapup that were of interest. Do be afraid – muahaha.

• The eyes are the prize…
  As seen on Yahoo, there’s a new cryptocurrency that was trying to onboard people quickly into the cryptospace. The creators of digital currencies talked about blockchain, QR codes, and decentralization. For people that aren’t as digitally savvy it might seem intimidating and like speaking in a foreign language. So the company “Worldcoin” a creation from founder Sam Altman tried to create a medium of exchange to ease onboarding of new people into the digital currency world. However as is often the case in new scenarios there was significant backlash from users and Twitter commenters and what some deemed as a serious miscalculation by the owner. Users got free coins, however at the loss of privacy. It was less “brave new world” and more Mark of the Beast-ish since new users were encouraged via carrot stick to get new free coins, but with the trade off of allowing iris scans under the premise of ensuring an single identity and unique identifier. The founder explained it was never to create a giant database of personal identifying information because the iris scans were digitized into unique hashes that can’t be used to personally identify an individual. But it brought such a brouhaha that even a former infamous national security employee agent (E.S) denounced that the project was being used to catalogue eyeballs. Others also noted that the project also had a 20% premine for the founders thus enriching themselves despite claiming it was supposed to be a currency for the people and be the great equalizer. Well if you’re trying to equalize but create more coins and stash 20% for yourself before everyone else, isn’t that a bit unequal? After much backlash the founder Sam couldn’t figure out why there was so many people opposed to it. Some social media commenters said something to the effect that that’s what happens when smart folks get in a think tank.
• A film shoot gone wrong
  There is a petition to ban guns from film sets after a freak accident that left the director wounded and DP dead. “No real guns should ever be used” in a make believe world was the sentiment from many people around the world and prompting a Change.org petition. To many, the film world is meant for play and entertainment. It should be for play. Many fresh faced individuals dream of perfecting their craft, their thespian drama days in theater in high school of just being themselves and also just being able to imagine and create and unleash a part of their brain and explore freedom in a rigid world. Often people wait tables and work 8-5 jobs just so they can continue and further their creative spirits. They are stifled by rent and working pay check to pay check with dreams of just breaking out and making it big. However film and art and theater often has conflicting goals of real world interests while the actors want to fall into their fantasies. Unfortunately the insatiable hunger that society has for endless movies, carnage and gore just feeds into an endless barrage of spectators and back commentary… instead of zombies clamoring for brains it is filmgoers begging to be entertained over movie theater popcorn and boxed candy… at what point does being under paid, slaving long hours and mistreatment by often misogynistic execs – all in the sake of a show that must go on become madness? The film set was under lock down and under investigation after not blanks, but a real weapon and cartridges were found.
• That robotic social media co.
  FB experienced long extended outages in conjunction with one of the former FB execs whistleblowing on the company about how the bottom line of the company is padded on the backs of people espousing wild theories, far out political views and pushing what were deemed “divisive” views and making young female teens anguish and cry over body image. According to Congressional testimony and other soundbites, the company is not just ripping society apart with its business model of stoking disension and strife, but also really bad for many people’s self esteem, and not to even say a terrific time waster. When it suspiciously went down just before the day the whistleblower was to testify, some questioned if the company was scrubbing data sheets and such. The company is rebranding or renaming itself after much negative PR in the last few years to emphasize its virtual world and even showing off fun avatars in goofy commercials and meme-ification of its founder in some attempts at making the company seem more approachable and down to earth.
• Supplies and shipping and state of society
  In one of the other scary parts of the news in the current state of world full of job uncertainty, hacking, labor market job hopping people are starting to see issues with the supply ships affecting school lunches, and electronics, food at the market. As if there weren’t enough things to worry about like rent, trying to not get chewed out by your boss coworkers at work, and navigating traffic. Can you believe there was a “Year without Summer” in 1816 due to volcanic activity which affected climate? And now we have to worry about people that can’t even put masks on faces correctly or get free medical care. Already people are being advised to get their holiday shopping done early because the shipping centers in California are now operating 24/7 just to get back ordered items to people. Yes we will be able to get our Rock Em Sock Em robots and Tickle Me puppets for kids, but we won’t ever get people on Mars because as Elon says, once they are done coming for the rich folks, they’ll come for you (the middle class) next. We’re too worried about daily mundane things and can’t DYOR on so many things much less get through the airport without getting into altercations and going out in public and thinking we should live life as a DC villain with nihilistic views. There’s a lot to worry about like civil asset forfeiture, FOMO on dog themed digital currency and whether my gov is going to inflate its currency or pay back its debts, but getting TP and chicken soup at the store shouldn’t be one of my worries…

Know any other scary happenings going on in the news? Let us know and shock us with a comment, make no bones about it. Happy treating and tricking tonight…