Not How Humanlike Machines Have Become - Rather - How Machinelike Humans Tend To Be

Blake Lemoine got fired for being an embarrassment who needlessly stoked the fears of ignorant fantasists. There's no upside for Google in further baseless public speculation about large language models.

Bottom line.

Machines are not sentient, don't have ethics, and suffer no personality defects or mental illnesses.

Powerful chatbots have disclosed one thing - and one thing alone - that 99.9997% have failed to either recognize or articulate.

That one thing is - the now indisputable fact of exactly how mechanistic human natural language is.

If human awareness is mostly comprised of pictures and words, and far more of the latter than the former - then we are compelled to acknowledge how unconscious and mechanistic our highly overrated linguistic behaviors tend to be.

The great chatbot takeaway is not how humanlike machines have become, rather, it's how rudimentary and mechanical human beings have always tended to be.

Add to that baseline psycholinguistic realization the fact that human beings are creatures of chemical habit, and you've got a pretty unflattering but vastly more accurate understanding of the rank and file human condition.

Everything else is, as they say, merely conversation!

Humans are creatures of chemical habit and language is a mechanism.

Looking at that picture of Mr. Lemoine - we can see that he suffers from poor chemical habits (you can almost hear the ritualized hissing sound as he cracks open the day's first sugary carbonated bottle/can of fizzy lifting drink) and from that point as he embarks on a circular trudge between his cubicle and the snack drawer - locked in unselfconscious and fully automated combat with successive blood sugar spikes and crashes.

Po thang...,

Do you suppose it was the sugar highs that got him erroneously believing that Lambda Pinocchio had come to life?

Most people are addicted to some or another chemical substance(s), and more important, all people are addicted to a surrounding pattern of behavior centered on these substances and their consumption. Distinctions among chemical habits delineate the confluence of mental and physical energies that shape the behavior of each of us.

People not involved in a relationship with food/drug stimulation are rare. These relationships shape every aspect of our identities. Because you haven't spent any meaningful time in a large and longstanding IT department, you lack familiarity with the typological ecosystems which prevail in this context. Mr. Lemoine is conspicuously true to type. It is as if he had been dispatched from central casting. 

Many people yearn to be introduced to the facts concerning their true identity. To not know one's true identity is to exist as a pitifully broken machine. Indeed, the image of a broken machine applies to the mass of human beings now abiding in the digital-industrial democracies.

What passes for the identity of these broken machines is their ability to follow and comply with mass style changes (many purely linguistic) dictated from above and conveyed through the media. Chemically immersed in processed "food" these broken machines are condemned to toxic lives of minimal self-awareness sedated by prescripted habits of consumption.

Broken machines "measure" their self-worth by their capacity to consume. This is perhaps even more true today than when Thorsten Veblen broadly and originally lampooned it nearly 125 years ago.
 

It's About The Social Order...,

zacharydcarter |  So why all the vitriol over student debt? When we argue about student debt, we aren't really debating credit policy, inflation, growth or the separation of powers under the U.S. Constitution. All of these avenues of discussion are elaborate detours around the central issue: the structure of the American social order.  

In the United States, a college degree is about much more than securing a higher wage. People without college degrees aren't just excluded from a lot of jobs that pay well. They're more likely to be laid off and less likely to be hired during recessions. They're less likely to have health insurance, and more likely to have a disability (the causal arrow there probably points both ways, but the combination is particularly cruel). People who do not graduate from college even have shorter life expectancies than people who do. Higher education is perhaps the single most important factor in determining who has access to a financially secure lifestyle and the leisure to pursue intellectually interesting activities. A college degree confers respect and prestige. 

In a better world, the simple fact of being human would command equal respect for everyone. That is not our world, but we can imagine such a place and work toward realizing it. Prestige, by contrast, is inherently exclusive. The less there is to go around, the better it is for the people who have it. And so the more people we exclude from higher education, the more secure people with college degrees will feel about their place in society.

The recent student debt freak-out reminds me a lot of God and Man at Yale -- the 1951 memoir that launched William F. Buckley into the conservative intellectual stratosphere. It's remarkably bad for a book that has a reputation as a political classic -- a wealthy conservative Catholic goes to Yale and is horrified to find Protestants and Keynesians. What, pray, can the Board of Trustees do to save our dear, beloved Yale? The ideological material is generic McCarthyism, the writing is flat (Buckley would get better at that), and the entire project is preoccupied with weird provincial details. At one point he even complains about the vending machines. The literary establishment basically laughed at it, with both The New York Times and The Atlantic running devastating reviews.

But God and Man at Yale became a publishing sensation. After World War II, millions of new college students arrived on campuses around the country to receive an education funded by the G.I. Bill. Suddenly, an experience that had once been restricted almost exclusively to the very rich became open to infantrymen. And though the vast majority of colleges and universities continued to exclude Black students, millions of white people who had never dreamed of going to college eventually earned degrees. For many prior graduates, this step toward democratization was threatening. Their credential was being diluted. Buckley's book about the waywardness of newfangled university life spoke to this new and unexpected status anxiety among the American upper-class, and so it flew off the shelves.

Freedom's Just Another Word For Nothing Left To Lose...,

strategic-culture  |  If we look at the late 20th and now the 21st century it is critical to acknowledge that the main means of coercion of the population of a given nation is comfort. Throughout all of human history from the point when we first started to slap together farm implements there has had to be some form of repression/coercion to keep the system, that we call society, on its feet. The serfs needed to toil, the knights needed to defend, the traders to trade and the elite to oversee it all. This is one of the paradoxes of Democracy, we created a system that tells us the people are in charge and free to do whatever they want when in reality society exists as it does, exactly because people cannot do what they want and do not have the power to topple the system.

Fancy textbooks call the willingness of individuals to submit to society “coercion”. Traditionally we, not surprisingly, think of this coercion in the most blunt and obvious form that is easy to understand – the police. In most nations there is an army for external threats, but the police have the same hierarchy of ranks, fancy uniforms and weapons only their enemy is you. The good news is they don’t want to kill you, just coerce you into enough obedience for society to function. After the truncheon club, many point the finger at religion or media as the great repressor. Many of our views and opinions are formed for us by these two factors and it cannot be denied that they shape our way of thinking, which can and does create coercion. Comfort though is usually not mentioned anywhere despite it being probably the most powerful form of repression we have ever seen, but this is not surprising.

Again, this isn’t to say that coercion/repression is a great evil. Without it, the complex societies that give us many benefits, could not stand and none of us wants to go live in a cave. And it is exactly this fact, that very few people are willing to go “live off the land”, that gives comfort so much power as a means of control. The overall global migration trend is for those with less to try to force themselves into countries with more, thus increasing their level of comfort. The migrants may not put it in these terms, but humans like all of God’s creatures tend to take the easy way out. Racoons prefer to attack the dumpster behind McDonald’s for food because it can’t fight back and is always available. This probably has a horrible effect on the racoons’ health but it is the most comfortable option. They become very dependent on the dumpster and would probably shriek in terror if the fast food “restaurant” was ever to be closed down forcing them to go back to dealing with food that can run/squirm away. And this sort of situation is what has happened in the decadent West.

If I Had A Dollar For Every Pompous IQ-75 EdD I've Ever Met - I'd Be A Very Rich Man

WSJ  |  Madame First Lady—Mrs. Biden—Jill—kiddo: a bit of advice on what may seem like a small but I think is a not unimportant matter. Any chance you might drop the “Dr.” before your name? “Dr. Jill Biden ” sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic. Your degree is, I believe, an Ed.D., a doctor of education, earned at the University of Delaware through a dissertation with the unpromising title “Student Retention at the Community College Level: Meeting Students’ Needs.” A wise man once said that no one should call himself “Dr.” unless he has delivered a child. Think about it, Dr. Jill, and forthwith drop the doc.

I taught at Northwestern University for 30 years without a doctorate or any advanced degree. I have only a B.A. in absentia from the University of Chicago—in absentia because I took my final examination on a pool table at Headquarters Company, Fort Hood, Texas, while serving in the peacetime Army in the late 1950s. I do have an honorary doctorate, though I have to report that the president of the school that awarded it was fired the year after I received it, not, I hope, for allowing my honorary doctorate. During my years as a university teacher I was sometimes addressed, usually on the phone, as “Dr. Epstein.” On such occasions it was all I could do not to reply, “Read two chapters of Henry James and get into bed. I’ll be right over.”

I was also often addressed as Dr. during the years I was editor of the American Scholar, the quarterly magazine of Phi Beta Kappa. Let me quickly insert that I am also not a member of Phi Beta Kappa, except by marriage. Many of those who so addressed me, I noted, were scientists. I also received a fair amount of correspondence from people who appended the initials Ph.D. to their names atop their letterheads, and have twice seen PHD on vanity license plates, which struck me as pathetic. In contemporary universities, in the social sciences and humanities, calling oneself Dr. is thought bush league.

 The Ph.D. may once have held prestige, but that has been diminished by the erosion of seriousness and the relaxation of standards in university education generally, at any rate outside the sciences. Getting a doctorate was then an arduous proceeding: One had to pass examinations in two foreign languages, one of them Greek or Latin, defend one’s thesis, and take an oral examination on general knowledge in one’s field. At Columbia University of an earlier day, a secretary sat outside the room where these examinations were administered, a pitcher of water and a glass on her desk. The water and glass were there for the candidates who fainted. A far cry, this, from the few doctoral examinations I sat in on during my teaching days, where candidates and teachers addressed one another by first names and the general atmosphere more resembled a kaffeeklatsch. Dr. Jill, I note you acquired your Ed.D. as recently as 15 years ago at age 55, or long after the terror had departed.

Rationalizing The Great Reset: Is There More At Work Than Absolute Capitalism?

thelocal.se |  Published every two years, the WWF Living Planet Report documents the state of the Earth, including its biodiversity, ecosystems, the demand on natural resources and what that means for humans and wildlife.

And the 2016 edition shows that Swedes are currently living lifestyles that would require the equivalent of four Earths to sustain – 4.2 to be precise.

Sweden ranks alongside the likes of the USA, UAE and Canada as one of the worst countries in the report when it comes to its consumption footprint, which the WWF defines as the area used to support a defined population's consumption.

The footprint, measured in global hectares, includes the area needed to produce the materials a country consumes, and the area needed to absorb its carbon dioxide emissions.

According to the study, Sweden consumes the equivalent of 7.3 global hectares per capita. For perspective, nearby Germany consumes 5.3, Tanzania consumes 1.3, and the USA consumes 8.2.

The WWF highlighted Sweden as being a big importer of consumer goods produced by fossil fuels, particularly from China. The Nordic nation has high indirect carbon dioxide emissions as a result.

“Sweden and Swedes are very good at many things and we have come far in our conversion of energy production even if there is still a lot left to do. We have advanced technology, knowledge and understanding of sustainability issues, but we don't speak a lot about the impact of consumption of items which are produced in an unsustainable way,” Swedish WWF CEO Håkan Wirtén told news agency TT.

In order to improve its sustainability, the WWF recommended that the Swedish government should bring in a target to reduce consumption-based emissions, work out a strategy to halve Sweden's meat consumption, and ban the sale of newly produced cars which run on fossil fuels by 2025 if possible.

“A big part of the Swedish footprint comes from transport. The government should set a target for consumption-based emissions so that we can actually start to measure the emissions we cause in other ways through our imports,” the WWF's Wirtén said.

According to the WWF, Sweden's consumption footprint can be broken down as 32 percent on food, 29 percent on travel, 18 percent on goods, 12 percent on accommodation and nine percent on services.

We Fail Because Our Elites Are Decadent, Parasitic, Ignoble Frauds

ianwelsh |  Let’s chalk this up to aristocratic elites. Aristocrats, unlike nobles, are decadent, but don’t stop with that word; understand what it means.

Elites who are not aligned with the actual productive activities of society and are engaged primarily in activities which are contrary to production, are decadent. This was true in Ancien Regime France (and deliberately fostered by Louis XIV as a way of emasculating the nobility). It is true today of most Western elites; they concentrate on financial numbers, and not on actual production. Even those who are somewhat competent tend not to be truly productive: see the Waltons, who made their money as distributers–merchants.

The techies have mostly outsourced production; they don’t make things, they design them. That didn’t work out for England in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and it hasn’t worked well for the US, though thanks to Covid-19 and US fears surrounding China, the US may re-shore their production capacity before it is too late.

We also have a situation where Western elites are far removed from the actual creation of the systems they run. This is most true in in the US, and to a lesser extent in the UK, which did not suffer the massive bombing and destruction of most of the rest of Europe (the Blitz was minor compared to the bombs dropped on Germany, for example). Of course, reconstructing bombed societies is not the same as pulling oneself out of poverty.

The best handling of the coronavirus crisis in the world was possibly Vietnam, who are run by a generation that just pulled themselves out of poverty. Other excellent handling has happened in societies which still remember times of poverty or which were conquered and set free (Japan/Germany). China’s Xi, probably the most incompetent, also managed the crisis badly, but still better than the US/UK: Once he got serious, he got really serious. Xi, while a princeling, had a hard early life and was forced to work on the communes and so on.

This is all standard three-generation stuff: The first generation builds, the second generation manages, and the third generation wastes and takes it for granted because they’ve never known anything else. Sometimes that extends to four generations or more, but that requires a system which properly inculcates its elites, plus something to force the elites into at least some of the same experiences as the peons. We do not have that kind of a system.

Nobles, as Stirling Newberry explained to me years ago, are elites who make a point of being better than the people below them: better fighters, better farmers, and so on. Aristocrats are people who play court games, which is what financialized economies supported by central banks and bought politicians are. These people aren’t even good at finance. They were actually wiped out in 2008, but used politics to restore their losses and they were/are wiped out by this crisis, but are using politics (the Fed/Congress/the presidency) to restore their losses. The Fed is doing one trillion of operations a day.

You Peasants Are All In This Together

off-guardian |  The rush to elevate self-isolation to Olympian heights as a way to combat the spread of COVID-19 has gotten to the celebrities. Sports figures are proudly tweeting and taking pictures from hotel rooms (Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton being a case in point). Comics are doing their shows from home. Thespians are extolling the merits of such isolation and the dangers of the contagion.

All speak from the summit of comfort, the podium of pampered wealth: embrace social distancing; embrace self-isolation. Bonds of imagined solidarity are forged. If we can do it, so can you.

The message of warning varies in tones of condescension and encouragement. Taylor Swift prefers to focus on her cat. “For Meredith, self-quarantining is a way of life,” she posted on Instagram. “Be like Meredith.” Meredith, of course, had little choice in the matter.

John Legend delivered a concert on Instagram, wife Chrissy Teigen beside towelled and quaffing wine. “Social distancing is important, but that doesn’t mean it has to be boring. I did a little at-home performance to help lift your spirits.”

Then there was Arnold Schwarzenegger, who actually boasted two miniature ponies. “We will get through this together.” So good of him to let us know.

Others, like model Naomi Campbell, can barely hide their revelations, moments of acute self-awakening amidst crisis. 

A long dormant, cerebral world, awoken by a virus. 

Similarly, singer Lady Gaga has found that within that deodorised, heavily marketed form of celebrity is the heart of a human. “This is reminding me I think a lot of us,” she reflected on Instagram “what it is to both feel like and be like a human being.”

Self-isolation has seen the rich with their entourages making an escape for holiday homes and vast retreats. Then come the eccentric and the slightly ludicrous options: the well-stocked and equipped bunker; the safe room. Such an approach is far more representative of the estrangement between haves and have-nots.

Brand Consumption Coalitions: As Goes Blackness...,

LATimes |  West, however, has yet to face such industry reprisals. He has even posed with a grinning Universal Music Group head Lucian Grainge and influential hip-hop executive Lyor Cohen while wearing his MAGA hat. As an established artist with a huge multi-platinum back catalog, extensive production credits and his own GOOD Music label, West is perhaps less sensitive to fiscal concerns than other artists.

Adidas, the company that distributes his incredibly popular Yeezy apparel line, is standing behind him but made it clear that there are "some comments [the company] doesn't support."

And when it came time to record her first new music in six years, pop diva Christina Aguilera called West. He produced a handful of records on her upcoming album, including new single "Accelerate," which was released amid the furor.

"I've always been a huge fan of Kanye … Outside of, you know, his controversial aspects," she told Billboard in a recent interview. "I just think he's a great artist and musicmaker and beatmaker. The artists that he chooses to pluck from different walks of life are so interesting."

The recent backlash has been driven by fans who took his statements as a personal affront.

"This is a person who has spoken a lot about race over the years and in some very eloquent ways. The dramatic reversal of it all feels like it's more about power or … something else," said Justin Simien, creator of "Dear White People," a Netflix series adapted from his 2014 film of the same name that explores race and identity among a group of black college students.

At 34, Simien is part of a generation of West's core following — those entering adulthood when the Chicago rapper debuted with 2004's "The College Dropout," a potent offering that veered away from gangster posturing in favor of thoughtful observations on family, sexuality, religion, education, prejudice and wealth.

Disappointed fans have a few ways to voice their opinions. One, of course, is on West's own favored platform. The day he voiced his latest support of Trump, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Kendrick Lamar and Drake were among those who hit 'unfollow' on Twitter.

West is one of the most successful touring acts today. More than 97,000 fans attended his sold-out six-night 2016 stint at the Forum for his "Saint Pablo" tour.

That tour, however, was derailed in San Jose after West said: "I didn't vote, but if I did, I would have voted for Trump," prompting fans to boo and hurl expletives at him. He later nixed over 20 dates and was reportedly in treatment for mental health and addiction issues.

Similarly, his Adidas clout is considerable. The company's Adidas Originals division (which releases West's popular Yeezy sneakers) touted revenues up 45% for the period when he released "Life of Pablo" in conjunction with a new season of apparel.

The controversy, at least, has proven beneficial to West's "dragon brother," the president.

CIA-BezosPost Wants To Come Inside Without A Warrant

market-ticker |  I have a dozen ways criminals could exploit this, and they will.

You give Spamzon a means to access your house (e.g. a keypad on your door, etc.)  They now have it.

Let's enumerate a few of the ways you can get hosed:

• The "employee" (really a contractor, by the way) for Amazon simply steals anything he or she wants in your house while making the delivery -- which you allowed them in for.
  
• Your credit card gets compromised.  Said individual orders something on your card to your house, waits for it to be delivered inside and exploits said delivery, either in confederation with the person doing it or by rick-rolling them, and robs your house.
  
• The access code is stolen and used to directly access your home.  It's in the cloud.  I'm sure nothing in the cloud will ever be stolen, right?  Uh huh, just like virtually every American's credit file wasn't?  And since the code used to open the door will be authorized guess what -- your high-fautin' security system won't raise a peep as your nice 60" 4k OLED TV and jewelry walk right out the front door!

These took me about 30 seconds to come up with.  A bit more thinking would, I'm sure, enumerate dozens more, all of which will be exploited immediately by those with criminal intent.

I cannot imagine how stupid you have to be to sign up for such a thing.  The "initiative" to get into your car to make deliveries is bad enough, but allowing a retailer's contractors into your home when you have utterly no idea who they are or how said access data will be secured has to rank as one of the dumbest things I've ever heard of, and if you allow it then you have just marked yourself as having an IQ smaller than my running shoes.

in an age of privilege, not everyone is on the same boat...,

NYTimes |  Behind a locked door aboard Norwegian Cruise Line’s newest ship is a world most of the vessel’s 4,200 passengers will never see. And that is exactly the point.

In the Haven, as this ship within a ship is called, about 275 elite guests enjoy not only a concierge and 24-hour butler service, but also a private pool, sun deck and restaurant, creating an oasis free from the crowds elsewhere on the Norwegian Escape.

If Haven passengers venture out of their aerie to see a show, a flash of their gold key card gets them the best seats in the house. When the ship returns to port, they disembark before everyone else.

“It was always the intention to make the Haven somewhat obscure so it wasn’t in the face of the masses,” said Kevin Sheehan, Norwegian’s former chief executive, who helped design the Escape with the hope of attracting a richer clientele. “That segment of the population wants to be surrounded by people with similar characteristics.”

With disparities in wealth greater than at any time since the Gilded Age, the gap is widening between the highly affluent — who find themselves behind the velvet ropes of today’s economy — and everyone else.

peasants get life for 3 petty crimes, .00001% get to hide the profit from crimes against humanity...,

newyorker |  Witanhurst, London’s largest private house, was built between 1913 and 1920 on an eleven-acre plot in Highgate, a wealthy hilltop neighborhood north of the city center. First owned by Arthur Crosfield, an English soap magnate, the mansion was designed in the Queen Anne style and contained twenty-five bedrooms, a seventy-foot-long ballroom, and a glass rotunda; the views from its gardens, over Hampstead Heath and across the capital, were among the loveliest in London. For decades, parties at Witanhurst attracted potentates and royals—including, in 1951, Elizabeth, the future Queen.

In May, 2008, I toured Witanhurst with a real-estate agent. There had been no parties there for half a century, and the house had not been occupied regularly since the seventies. The interiors were ravaged: water had leaked through holes in the roof, and, upstairs, the brittle floorboards cracked under our footsteps. The scale of the building lent it a vestigial grandeur, but it felt desolate and Ozymandian. A few weeks later, Witanhurst was sold for fifty million pounds, to a shell company named Safran Holdings Limited, registered in the British Virgin Islands. No further information about the buyers was forthcoming.

In June, 2010, the local council approved plans to redevelop the house and five and a half acres of grounds, maintaining Witanhurst as a “family home.” It was the culmination of a long battle with other Highgate residents, who did not welcome such an ambitious project. Since then, Witanhurst’s old service wing has been demolished and replaced with the so-called Orangery—a three-story Georgian villa designed for “everyday family accommodation.” And beneath the forecourt, in front of the main house, the new owners have built what amounts to an underground village—a basement of more than forty thousand square feet. This basement, which is connected to the Orangery, includes a seventy-foot-long swimming pool, a cinema with a mezzanine, massage rooms, a sauna, a gym, staff quarters, and parking spaces for twenty-five cars. In late 2013, the local council approved plans for a second basement, beneath the gatehouse, which will connect that building to both the main house and the Orangery. Earlier this year, the owners also sought planning permission to extend an underground “servants’ passage.”

When the refurbishment is complete, Witanhurst will have about ninety thousand square feet of interior space, making it the second-largest mansion in the city, after Buckingham Palace. It will likely become the most expensive house in London. In 2006, the Qatari royal family bought Dudley House, on Park Lane, for about forty million pounds; after a renovation, its estimated resale value is two hundred and fifty million pounds. Real-estate agents expect that the completed Witanhurst will be worth three hundred million pounds—about four hundred and fifty million dollars.

If a vast and lavishly appointed house in Manhattan—a palace nearly double the size of the White House—were being redeveloped on the edge of Central Park, New Yorkers would want to know who lived there. Londoners are equally inquisitive, and concerted efforts have been made to uncover the identity of Witanhurst’s owners. Shortly after the house was sold, it became known—from local gossip and publicly accessible planning documents—that Witanhurst belonged to a family from Russia. Several newspapers speculated that the owner was Yelena Baturina, Russia’s richest woman, and the wife of Yury Luzhkov, then the mayor of Moscow. (Luzhkov and Baturina reportedly enriched themselves while he was in office, before Luzhkov clashed with the Russian government; she now lives in London.) Baturina denied owning Witanhurst, and in 2011 she sued the London Sunday Times for publishing an article titled “BUNKER BILLIONAIRESS DIGS DEEP.”

The Baturina lawsuit and the continued secrecy surrounding Witanhurst have intensified the guessing game. Generally, the names of homeowners in Britain are listed in the Land Registry, which can be read for a small fee. But listings for properties owned by offshore companies do not disclose individual beneficiaries. In the British Virgin Islands, records reveal merely the name of the “registered agent” of Safran Holdings—Equity Trust Limited, a local agency that holds several such positions and is connected to the company by name only—and the company’s post-office box, on the island of Tortola.

A recent investigation by the Financial Times found that more than a hundred billion pounds’ worth of real estate in England and Wales is owned by offshore companies. London properties account for two-thirds of that amount. Charles Moore, a former editor of the Telegraph, says that London’s property market has become “a form of legalized international money laundering.”

Steve Wynn "Nobody Likes Being Around Poor People, Especially Poor People"

zerohedge |  Last September he again made waves when he became one of the first high profile personalities to endorse Donald Trump.

Then, overnight, during a presentation to Wynn Resorts investors, Wynn tossed out another bombshell which, while taken out of context, will further inflame the already class tension within the US. This is what he said: "rich people only like being around rich people, nobody likes being around poor people, especially poor people."

Whether or not what he said is true is secondary because as Robert Frank correctly points out, "this line is sure to go viral as the latest tone-deaf gaffe by a billionaire, akin to the 2014 remarks made by technology venture capitalist Tom Perkins saying that rich people were being persecuted and should get more votes."

That said, in its full context context the phrase was less incendiary:

This company caters to the top end of the gaming world. We're sort of a Chanel, Louis Vuitton to use the comparison and metaphor of the retail business. But unlike Chanel and Louis Vuitton, we are able in our business to cater to all of the market by making our standard so high that everybody wants to be in the building. Or to put it in a more colloquial way, rich people only like being around rich people, nobody likes being around poor people, especially poor people.

So we try and make the place, feel upscale for everyone. That is to say, we cater to people who have discretion and judgment and we give them the choice and we are consistent in that, whether the economy is up or the economy is down. We don't do layoffs, we pay attention to our capital structure, so that we don't bounce around our employee base, and we don't bounce around our service levels.

And while Wynn's point about desiring to create a sense of wealth that draws all kinds of crowds is indeed reasonable for a business plan, it is almost certain that that particular soundbite will promptly make the social media rounds as another indication of the language used by Picasso-collecting, Ferrari-driving billionaires (especially one who endorses Trump).

It will certainly not help the simmering tensions beneath America's great wealth divide which is growing greater with every passing year.

the consensus reality of plutocrats, politics, and the media didn't include the Left Behind...

Move over Rat Pack and Brat Pack Here comes the Snap Pack

counterpunch |  It is probably a truism that you do not know people you do not hang out with very well. Maybe you read about them but if you happen to be the person who is hired to write about them, they probably do not get written about. You know why. Because they are not the people, you know very well or at all.

Let us say we have the sort of generous plutocracy where about 20% of the population, most of them the professional/gentrified class and a few at the very top, the Equestrian/Patrician class. First, let me say, that one fifth of a population of over 300 million is enough to keep the Dow Jones doing its ups and downs. Also, members of this top 20% keep the 80% informed, not about the 20 people who have wealth equal to 50% of the population or about the consequences of this. Now the 80% who do not know fuck all about Wall Street’s dark dealings have suddenly, in the eyes of the 20%, emerged to push the presidential candidacies of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.

For the gentry, whether Democrat or Republican, this is like your hired Nanny telling you to shut up, or a bunch of hooligans busting through the gates of your “community” and wanting to do something other than clean your pool. Somebody has shown up at the electoral dinner party who wasn’t invited and whose name is unknown. This is not exactly like Nat Turner showing up in a bloody rebellion but the sheer unexpectedness of it is something like what 20% of the country is now facing with the populist explosion in both parties.

So how come almost no one who represents what is going on knew this would happen? Simple answer: they did not know these people were there because they were not reporting anything about them and they were not reporting anything about them because they were invisible to them. Look at it this way: no one had been campaigning the bottom 40% hard since…never. We have thrown into that group blue collar workers, the once unionized manufacturing working class, the “salaried” class, and now all, The Underclass. The classless, ungentrified. They have less shopping power than the top 20%, they do not usually vote, they have no one lobbying for them, they are not needed as laborers except for jobs that cannot be sent out of the country, and they have almost no leverage in a plutocracy. Right now, we have a burgeoning plutocracy still tied to an electoral, representative democracy and so “one person one vote” remains the solo bargaining chip of plutocracy’s “negative assets,” how The National Review refers to Trump’s followers.

Peacocks, Porsches, and Thorstein Veblen: Conspicuous Consumption as a Sexual Signaling System

researchgate |  Conspicuous consumption is a form of economic behavior in which self-presentational concerns override desires to obtain goods at bargain prices. Showy spending may be a social signal directed at potential mates. We investigated such signals by examining (a) which individuals send them, (b) which contexts trigger them, and (c) how observers interpret them. Three experiments demonstrated that conspicuous consumption is driven by men who are following a lower investment (vs. higher investment) mating strategy and is triggered specifically by short-term (vs. long-term) mating motives. A fourth experiment showed that observers interpret such signals accurately, with women perceiving men who conspicuously consume as being interested in short-term mating. Furthermore, conspicuous purchasing enhanced men's desirability as a short-term (but not as a long-term) mate. Overall, these findings suggest that flaunting status-linked goods to potential mates is not simply about displaying economic resources. Instead, conspicuous consumption appears to be part of a more precise signaling system focused on short-term mating. These findings contribute to an emerging literature on human life-history strategies.

to get to the creamy sheeple nougat, you have to get through us....,

identity, caste position, or procreative reality?

newyorker |  The dispute began more than forty years ago, at the height of the second-wave feminist movement. In one early skirmish, in 1973, the West Coast Lesbian Conference, in Los Angeles, furiously split over a scheduled performance by the folksinger Beth Elliott, who is what was then called a transsexual. Robin Morgan, the keynote speaker, said:

I will not call a male “she”; thirty-two years of suffering in this androcentric society, and of surviving, have earned me the title “woman”; one walk down the street by a male transvestite, five minutes of his being hassled (which he may enjoy), and then he dares, he dares to think he understands our pain? No, in our mothers’ names and in our own, we must not call him sister.

Such views are shared by few feminists now, but they still have a foothold among some self-described radical feminists, who have found themselves in an acrimonious battle with trans people and their allies. Trans women say that they are women because they feel female—that, as some put it, they have women’s brains in men’s bodies. Radical feminists reject the notion of a “female brain.” They believe that if women think and act differently from men it’s because society forces them to, requiring them to be sexually attractive, nurturing, and deferential. In the words of Lierre Keith, a speaker at Radfems Respond, femininity is “ritualized submission.”

In this view, gender is less an identity than a caste position. Anyone born a man retains male privilege in society; even if he chooses to live as a woman—and accept a correspondingly subordinate social position—the fact that he has a choice means that he can never understand what being a woman is really like. By extension, when trans women demand to be accepted as women they are simply exercising another form of male entitlement. All this enrages trans women and their allies, who point to the discrimination that trans people endure; although radical feminism is far from achieving all its goals, women have won far more formal equality than trans people have. In most states, it’s legal to fire someone for being transgender, and transgender people can’t serve in the military. A recent survey by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force found overwhelming levels of anti-trans violence and persecution. Forty-one per cent of respondents said that they had attempted suicide.

drought frames economic divide of californians

NYTimes |  Alysia Thomas, a stay-at-home mother in this working-class city, tells her children to skip a bath on days when they do not play outside; that holds down the water bill. Lillian Barrera, a housekeeper who travels 25 miles to clean homes in Beverly Hills, serves dinner to her family on paper plates for much the same reason. In the fourth year of a severe drought, conservation is a fine thing, but in this Southern California community, saving water means saving money.

The challenge of California’s drought is starkly different in Cowan Heights, a lush oasis of wealth and comfort 30 miles east of here. That is where Peter L. Himber, a pediatric neurologist, has decided to stop watering the gently sloping hillside that he spent $100,000 to turn into a green California paradise, seeding it with a carpet of rich native grass and installing a sprinkler system fit for a golf course. But that is also where homeowners like John Sears, a retired food-company executive, bristle with defiance at the prospect of mandatory cuts in water use.

“This is a high fire-risk area,” Mr. Sears said. “If we cut back 35 percent and all these homes just let everything go, what’s green will turn brown. Tell me how the fire risk will increase.”

The fierce drought that is gripping the West — and the imminent prospect of rationing and steep water price increases in California — is sharpening the deep economic divide in this state, illustrating parallel worlds in which wealthy communities guzzle water as poorer neighbors conserve by necessity. The daily water consumption rate was 572.4 gallons per person in Cowan Heights from July through September 2014, the hot and dry summer months California used to calculate community-by-community water rationing orders; it was 63.6 gallons per person in Compton during that same period.

Now, California is trying to turn that dynamic on its head, forcing the state’s biggest water users, which include some of the wealthiest communities, to bear the brunt of the statewide 25 percent cut in urban water consumption ordered by Gov. Jerry Brown. Cowan Heights is facing a 36 percent cut in its water use, compared with 8 percent for Compton.

please sir, I want some more...,

NYTimes |  The average citizen of Nepal consumes about 100 kilowatt-hours of electricity in a year. Cambodians make do with 160. Bangladeshis are better off, consuming, on average, 260.

Then there is the fridge in your kitchen. A typical 20-cubic-foot refrigerator — Energy Star-certified, to fit our environmentally conscious times — runs through 300 to 600 kilowatt-hours a year.

American diplomats are upset that dozens of countries — including Nepal, Cambodia and Bangladesh — have flocked to join China’s new infrastructure investment bank, a potential rival to the World Bank and other financial institutions backed by the United States.

The reason for the defiance is not hard to find: The West’s environmental priorities are blocking their access to energy.

A typical American consumes, on average, about 13,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity a year. The citizens of poor countries — including Nepalis, Cambodians and Bangladeshis — may not aspire to that level of use, which includes a great deal of waste. But they would appreciate assistance from developed nations, and the financial institutions they control, to build up the kind of energy infrastructure that could deliver the comfort and abundance that Americans and Europeans enjoy.

Too often, the United States and its allies have said no.

The United States relies on coal, natural gas, hydroelectric and nuclear power for about 95 percent of its electricity, said Todd Moss, from the Center for Global Development. “Yet we place major restrictions on financing all four of these sources of power overseas.”

indicative of the way a lot of people in power behave?

nypost |  In 2012, Forbes magazine ranked Brunei the fifth-richest nation in the world. Yet there is little fun to be had: Alcohol is banned and there is virtually no nightlife or culture.

“I’m trying to think of a place that’s duller,” Australian writer Charles James told Fortune in 1999. “Maybe a British village in midwinter.”

In one way, the brothers adhere to Islamic law: As prescribed, each has several wives and families. But everything else they do is in defiance of the Koran and the law they’ve just imposed.

“It’s a radical double standard,” says Jillian Lauren, who wrote about her life as a member of Jefri’s harem in her memoir, “Some Girls.” “They have more money than anyone else. I know that they both have been married and divorced multiple times. It’s really hypocritical.”

“With their money, they could have cured diseases,” an adviser to Jefri told Fortune. “But they have little interest in the rest of humanity.”

Another described Jefri and his brother as incredibly dim. “They don’t have a lot of thoughts,” he said. “If you were a fly on the wall and heard their conversations, they’d take you to Bellevue.”

A third brother, Mohamed, was reported to loathe his brothers’ wantonness and profligacy. But when the Sultan tasked him with rebuilding the economy that he and Jefri had so badly damaged, he took more than $2 billion for himself and was promptly fired.

pope francis must be depressed or sum'n, steady on that radical late-MLK type isht...,

Time | "Responsibility for the poor and the marginalized must therefore be an essential element of any political decision" Pope Francis warned heads of states attending the annual G20 meeting in Australia about the effects of “unbridled consumerism” and called on them to take concrete steps to alleviate unemployment.

In a letter addressed to Australia Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who is chairing this year’s G20 Leaders’ Summit which begins Sunday, the Pontiff called for its participants to consider that “many lives are at stake.”

“It would indeed be regrettable if such discussions were to remain purely on the level of declarations of principle,” Pope Francis wrote in the letter.

Pope Francis, who has made a habit of addressing the leaders of the G20 meetings, has often raised his concerns with the global economy. Last year, in lengthy report airing the views of the Vatican, he criticized the “idolatry of money” and denounced the unfettered free market as the “new tyranny.”

In the letter published Tuesday, he said that, like attacks on human rights in the Middle East, abuses in the financial system are among the “forms of aggression that are less evident but equally real and serious.”

“Responsibility for the poor and the marginalized must therefore be an essential element of any political decision, whether on the national or the international level,” he wrote.