BREAKING NEWS: The newly released State of Climate report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change identifies the widespread use of surgical face masks during Covid-19 pandemic as the new major cause of climate change. Face masks increase physical exertion of human bodies by 23% compared to unmasked population, resulting in 35% increase in CO2 whole body emissions. The average CO2 emissions rate across all of the whole-body experiments was 28.7 ± 2.1 g/h/person or 251 kg/year/person without a mask. The additional carbon emissions due to masks worn by the entire global population add up to 615 million tonnes per year, which is equivalent to 63% of global aviation emissions (pre pandemic level). IPCC blames Greta Thunberg for popularising face masks without actually having done any calculations of their carbon footprint. “Greta should first go to school and learn arithmetic before pontificating on climate action” furious António Guterres was overheard saying at the conclusion of an emergency UN climate meeting, apparently not aware that his microphone was still on. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969722023348

Artificial intelligence will never become conscious without opposable thumbs;)

We can only be ourselves (Human) vis-a-vis other beings of the same kind, which hinges on commonality and reciprocity of language/meaning. Since we can satisfy this condition only with other beings who are engaging in meaningful, reciprocal communication with us, and of generating common meaning with us, we are limited to rational beings only. The Kantian concept of humanity (as rational beings) allows for extension of this category if we would develop reciprocal communication and common meaning with any entity other than Homo sapiens, but for now this practical reciprocity is limited to Anthropos. It also seems that common embodiment (maintained by species interbreeding) is necessary to have such reciprocity, which would automatically exclude all non-embodied ‘minds’.

Looks like Murdoch is positioning his golden boy Tucker to run for president. We will see.

TRANSLATION: Rupert Murdoch pays $962 million to buy credibility for his presidential candidate.

All humans share the same ancient ancestors: the original owners of the earth, the first people, who were roaming the earth 200 million years ago. All living humans are their descendants, lost or dispersed but still our brothers and sisters; we are all the original owners of the Earth. But there is something more important than common ancestry that unites all of humanity: our capacity to reason, to understand one another and generate common meaning.

The things the majority accepts today as uncontroversial and right will shock us tomorrow. The rational way to deal with the problem of moral ignorance is to face the irrationality of the day and reveal its contradictions. Irrationality has an infinite supply of guises, and suppressing just those guises that were historically discredited will do nothing to defeat those that are yet to be unmasked, let alone those we unwittingly harbour within us. We cannot delegate this task to people in power, as this would be a renunciation of our own moral responsibility to discern right from wrong.

The rational is never labelled. If any opposition to the state doctrine is consistently labelled/identified by the mainstream, it is the irrational. The rational is evaded at all cost, and when this fails, the rational is gently set aside as ‘controversial’ and the conversation promptly redirected to the irrational.

I have argued that it is impossible to create consciousness by creating a brain outside of the process of biological evolution and embodied socialisation. Reflexive consciousness is not an individual property but a distributed property of a species/kind, and only in this social ‘cloud’ the sense of individuality exists, as a constitutive element of the reflexive consciousness of a species. The concepts that describe the physical world (including the concept of the human body) are believed to be encoded in the physical structure of each individual body, but those may be also relevantly encoded in the species as a whole, therefore never wholly determined by the constitution of the individual. This would reflect the social/distributed structure of meaning itself, which is the reality we are in. It is possible that only via continuous communication of some extra sensory kind, possibly biophotonic, this final harmonisation of consciousness and self-individuation ‘in the Same world’ is accomplished. While this hypothesis is empirically unproven it still serves as a metaphor for the purely logical requirements of self-conscousness, which is impossible apart from a community of beings of the same ontological kind, to provide each individual with a mirror in which to identify itself, as discussed in the section on consciousness here: philpapers.org/rec/KOWODO

Ukraine had no chance of victory against Russia. Giving them weapons and coercing Ukrainian men to fight is a means of their extermination.

How to love your enemies.

The early hominin were not aware of their own faces until they conceived of the face of another and thus began to conceive of themselves in terms of another. At that point in the evolution there emerged the Anthopos - the ‘likeness of me’. This reflexive turn was the beginning of self-awareness, which is nevertheless only indirect, mediated by the essential ‘likeness’ of another. Self-awareness is a conceptual synthesis of others from the first-person perspective, a mental act of internalising the human kind as my-Self in a situation. The more faithfully we internalise humanity as the potential for conscious choice, the more conscious we become. For this reason, we cannot dehumanise or un-Self any wrongdoer without losing the awareness of a part of the Self, which may further degrade our consciousness.

Does anyone feel comfortable with a democidal government of moral rodents ‘understanding’ your health issues?

I reserve the right to disassociate myself from any ID; this ID is not me, nothing but me is me.

Digital Idenity is not YOUR identity

The claim that the ability to prove who you are is a “fundamental and universal human right” is absurd and false. It is false because it is not on the list of ratified human rights. It is absurd because there is no possible universal standard for expressing a “true” identity apart from just being yourself, which is trivially true for everyone and everything. Everything is alway only identical to itself (the Law of Identity), and any additional feature (like a number, microchip, tattoo etc is necessarily not you), nor is any part or feature of your body (like fingerprints or a retina scan) your identity. What the authors of the linked page are trying to assert is that there is a human right to assume a false identity, which is a very strange (insane) proposition. In short, a Digital or biometric ID is a false identity, a fundamental lie, a violation of the law of identity, therefore nonsense.

https://id2020.org/digital-identity

Charles III is by far the most successful Sovereign Citizen alive, and the biggest inspiration to budding sovereign citizens everywhere;)

The following paper at first reads like a parody, but then the author slowly brings the reader to his side. I like the narrative tension. The argument is all the more interesting in the current ‘cultural/media’ climate, where we are told that sexuality is at least in part subjective, which leaves the door open to regarding any violation of bodily autonomy as a sexual violation. At the same time one wonders whether there is something psychologically and culturally unique to sexuality that does not fit the proposed analogy of the needle. Nevertheless, the author seems to argue that this distinction is morally irrelevant, and the comparison to sexual harassment was only used to make a point about bodily integrity. https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/article/3/1/231

BREAKING NEWS: Daniel Andrews, the Premier of Victoria, has affirmed Labour’s commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals by mandating that by 2030 all Victorian households will transition to a new, ultra-sustainable heating technology. Residents will soon be required to heat their dwellings by rubbing their hands together really fast. “Our sustainable development policy prioritises not only sustainability but also affordability. We will support Victorian families by making rubbing your hands together completely free,” sensationally announced the Premier.