Disquiet

[jfz9580m]

26. Part 18: In Which Ol'jfz9580m's Profile is Vandalized

Solidly middleclass Nimby Indian fighting the global race to the bottom driven by: human overpopulation, human overconsumption, low effort hedonism coupled with hard science denialism & finiteness denialism by the better off and transmission of those wretched/suicidal values to everyone including the worst off, human stupidity, the straining of the limits to growth, the rejection of stability/homeostasis and brainless divide and rule politics/celebrity wordhip.


All opinions/perceptions are mine and infinitely superior to yours.

Harry Harrison’s “Make Room! Make Room!” or “Barely avoided getting nuked and working towards a paved over parking lot+malls overpopulated hell” should not be the sole futures.

Mediocre scientist on extended sabbatical finishing a paper started in 2009 along with self-directed voluntary shit work combating angering and hobbling garbage nuisance tech (Ai agents/voice assistants/llms/physical ai and other deregulated trash shilled as “ai in the wild”). There must be criminal liabilty for illicit traffic studies/street mapping/light and sound pollution/exploration and exploitation of residential spaces at the risk of damage to the delicate web of life perfected by millions of years of evolution and not to be disrupted by crass ai and data mining robber barons and defense contractors who cannot distinguish between pseudosciences like Intelligent design and creationism and real science like evolutionary biology. Economics is a corrupt soft science muscling out the earth sciences as the result of an overpopulated, undereducated earth engrossed in celebrity culture, culture wars and memes as climate change, human overpopulation, out of control greed, materialism, deregulation ravage our only real home.

Daughter of a military vet (IN) from a matriarchal clan. My hometown is in a beautiful state destroyed by a corrupt and parasitic communist government which never saw a corrupt business it would not get in bed with. I lost my mother to cancer during the pandemic though she had an excellent oncologist/nurse. The physical medicine doctors in my city are competent and cool. But a sleazy private equity giant (Blackstone Inc) is destroying hospitals in the state.

Medical marijuana user. Environmentalist. Valerie Solanas style feminist (minus any gun or other violence aimed at second rate artists or other generally annoying people).

Gloomy (not depressed) curmudgeon/martinet.


Educational resources:

Compassion in World Farming:
https://www.ciwf.org.uk/

Ace is a good group (although effective altruism is generally garbage):

Animal Charity Evaluators/The Humane League:
https://animalcharityevaluators.org/charity-review/the-humane-league/

A rare respectable AI safety group (Timnit Gebru, Emily Bender etc affiliated):
https://www.dair-institute.org/

MeToo Movement:
https://metoomvmt.org/

Nandita Bajaj, who says things I would not have dared to:

https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/08/01/progressive-pronatalism-is-an-oxymoron-how-arguments-buying-into-the-low-fertility-panic-fail-women/

Andy Nikiforuk on Stupidity:
https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2025/07/25/Triumph-of-Stupidity/

Christopher Ketcham:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/03/08/clowns-to-the-left-of-me-fascists-to-the-right/

Evgenia Kovda on the Commodification of Dissent:
https://www.nefariousrussians.com/p/from-a-nefarious-russian-to-a-cam

Ed Zitron on why most Ai is junk with no use case & shilled by business idiots:
https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-era-of-the-business-idiot/

Yasha Levine on Noam Chomsky (“MeToo hysteria” is a redflag. No wonder the guy is in the Epstein Files):
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/noam-chomskys-split-personality/

Yasha Levine the only tech critic Ol’jfz9580m truly trusts. Tim Wu, Shoshana Zuboff, Evgeny Morozow are okay. Not bad. But Yasha is as peerless wrt tech journalism/general social criticism as Christopher Ketcham and Andy Nikiforuk are wrt environmental journalism/commentary. Sovietski Yah. Nastikoff Bah. Only anyone I like is awesome!

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine

Marina Bolotnikova, the only decent human writer at Vox and a generally awesome human (unlike the rest of you malcontents out there..bah), on Ai and Animal Rights: What if Ai were to treat humans the way we treat animals:
https://www.realclearscience.com/2023/09/09/what_if_ai_treats_humans_the_way_we_treat_animals_978444.html

Sam Miller MacDonald on Nathan Robinson’s Current Affairs:
There Are Many Threats to Humanity. A Low Birth Rate Isn’t One of Them

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/there-are-many-threats-to-humanity.-a-low-birth-rate-isnt-one-of-them

(“Hum Do Hamare Do” (we are two, we have two) was the most responsible advertising campaign the Indian govt ever undertook. However, with Private Equity like Blackstone Inc buying up hospitals and trashing care, overpopulation is probably more lucrative. More disposable humans).

Broadview Church which (like Bishop Marian Budde) appears to actually follow Jesus Christ’s teachings - a piece on why harm reduction is compassionate care:
https://broadview.org/why-harm-reduction-is-actually-compassionate-care/

Matt Stoller on how the Epstein class started a war (Arab princes, Western bankers, Silicon Valley AI guys, and Israeli hawks are all part of one blob. And they just started a war)
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-the-epstein-class

Dr.Suleiman on how to resist anti-Muslim bigotry:
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/how-to-resist-islamophobia-in-us-culture-and-politics

William J Astore on what a genuinely progressive military would look like:
https://www.salon.com/2023/10/15/beyond-the-rights-woke-slurs-what-would-a-progressive-us-military-really-look-like_partner/

The wounds you cannot see:
https://www.military.com/feature/2026/01/29/wounds-you-cannot-see.html

Troy Farah interviews Dr. Warren Hern:
https://www.salon.com/2023/08/05/are-humans-a-cancer-on-the-planet-a-physician-argues-that-civilization-is-truly-carcinogenic/

Dr. Clayton Dalton on what private equity (an example of which is the sleazy Blackstone Inc buying up hospitals in my corrupt communist run state) does to care quality/cost:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/25/us-health-care-for-profit-emergency-rooms-physician-turnover

The only ai scientist Ol’jfz9580m (satiric non-homage to Ol’ Orlick from “Great Expectations”. I am old-fashioned! I learnt English from books! Not that grotesque GPT thing which is an abomination and a scourge) trusts - Prof Yan Lecun:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/01/22/1131661/yann-lecuns-new-venture-ami-labs/

Chris Ketcham interviews Dr.Adam Becker, who is very cool:

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-mad-religion-of-technological-salvation/
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/grand-delusion/

Nicholas Carr ridicules the metaverse and that ass Andreessen:

https://www.roughtype.com/?ref=codebldr&paged=2

Prof Henrik Mouritsen on bird compasses:
https://www.quantumbirds.eu/

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-migrating-birds-use-quantum-effects-to-navigate/

Separation of fact from drivel wrt birds and magnetoreception:
https://www.audubon.org/news/no-5g-radio-waves-do-not-kill-birds
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/noise-from-our-electronics-and-radio-signals-disorients-migratory-birds/

Ol’jfz9580m has never suffered from any mental illness that was more than the learned helplessness and despair induced by exposure to mindboggling levels of human stupidity, narcissism and self-absorbed solipsism in action. Ruth Cain’s piece is the best one Ol’jfz9580m has ever read on the topic:

https://theconversation.com/how-neoliberalism-is-damaging-your-mental-health-90565
https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/theory-psychology-justified-torture

The very cool Dr.Fauci who was demonized by the Idiocracy that wants to rehabilitate Elizabeth Holmes:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/i-had-that-dna-of-caring-for-people-fauci-discusses-new-book-and-life-in-public-health

Bishop Mariann Budde’s speech on mercy on DemocracyNow! Interviewed by Amy Goodman:
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/22/bishop_budde

Stephen S Hall on valuing snakes on Earth Day. Ol’jfz9580m has reinvented herself as a preacher possibly budding cult leader:
https://time.com/7279027/earth-day-snakes-lessons/

Nathan Robinson on an abomination called Blippi and on that ass Steven Pinker. Robinson suffers from excessive civility and doesn’t point out that Pinker is also stupid:
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2020/08/the-dead-world-of-blippi
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2019/05/the-worlds-most-annoying-man

Sarah Silverman gave the only good TED Talk
ever. She is a comic not cruel - she was mocking TED’s hypocritical pearl clutching. Ted is for people who would cheerfully let the embattled starve in this stupid and callous world, while policing language performatively. The target of vicious satire (by any thinking and feeling human) is always those mediocre, wealthy parasites and blowhards, not anyone having a hard time. TED represents everything wrong with the pointless fount of parasitic, mediocre, insipid, creepy dreck that is Si Valley:
https://www.thedriftmag.com/what-was-the-ted-talk/

Paul and Anne Ehrlich on the Population Bomb revisited. The Ehrliches were unfairly slandered and Julian Simon is a douchebag. These Ehrliches etc are all too fancy, civilized and scientific. Ol’ jfz9580m learnt from watching the world. Instead of having carefully scientifically whetted arguments with blatantly sleazy and disingenuous bad actors like Julian Simon, they should have given him a metaphoric shove and said “You are a sleazy charlatan in a fraudulent field beholden to special interests and putting earth on a suicidal path. Be quiet!” Julian Simon like most economists driving this brainless, useless cancer like growth has had a net effect that is anti-human as well as anti-earth. Guys like him are frauds and should be dealt with as such. Ol’jfz9580m miserably tried to comply with this parasitic type for 15 years almost and finally learnt on March 7, 2026 that it is madness to engage honestly with this type and the entire criminal crew I dealt with in India and the malpractitioners in the US circa 2012:

https://mahb.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/2009_EhrlichPB-REVISIT-1.pdf

A cool person. I do like Alec Karakatsanis/Briahna Joy Gray
and think it is a misunderstanding, but I agree with Matt Stoller. I personally think “Open Borders” and “Defund the police” are terrible messaging & dissecting John Muir and Margaret Sanger, takes attention away from Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Reid Hoffman, Mark Cuban, Vinod Khosla, Marc Andreessen and other brainless, parasitic billionaires, which is very CATO/Koch friendly:

https://www.economicliberties.us/matt-stoller/

Prof David Golumbia on that other rubbish faux industry crypto. Prof Golumbia was also correct about the bullshit narratives purveyed by frivolous and sleazy people like Joy Buolamwini (the MIT Media lab is uniformly all about sleazy bullshit. From that creep Alex Pentland to Neri Oxman to Rosalind Picard). Lie detection/emotion detection etc are not worthwhile science anymore than Michael Kosinki’s bs, Ben Waber’s rot, Aaron Elkins’ rubbish. And this rot will displace all honest publicly funded science from all idiotic sides with what medical research is left administered by Zuckerberg’s moll, parasitic sports billionaires/reality show parasites faking concern over the justice system (e.g.: parasites like Kim Kardashian and Clare Wu):
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/zealots-of-the-blockchain-golumbia


Coleman Spilde is cool:
https://www.salon.com/2026/03/11/why-oscars-season-in-trumpworld-makes-us-so-mad/


Tejas Thackeray seems like the rare thinking human. I like how he thinks:

https://www.theweek.in/theweek/specials/2024/05/04/tejas-thackeray-shares-his-passion-for-wildlife-conservation-and-photography.html

A rare sane piece of writing:

https://crookedtimber.org/2022/12/08/your-platform-is-not-an-ecosystem/

Memory Good:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/let-their-words-do-the-talking/201712/looped-linear-thinking

https://www.quantamagazine.org/for-algorithms-a-little-memory-outweighs-a-lot-of-time-20250521/

Chauncey DeVega on John G Roberts:

https://www.salon.com/2025/10/31/john-roberts-betrayed-america-for-donald-trump/

The thing is, it is rarely only about the Louisiana frog.
https://www.courthousenews.com/supreme-court-revives-battle-over-frog-habitat-in-louisiana/

The Niemollar poem has rarely been applied to our treatment of earth, factory farmed animals etc, but the logic is the same. A species (aka humans) that doesn’t give a shit about anything or understand anything will cannibalize itself eventually, starting at the bottom and working its way up to the top.

Quite shameful how we treat animals, especially given what we now know about the depth of animal cognition and it’s diversity. All for some foul artery clogging, bowel gas producing fast food and fugly malls full of cheap plastic crap made in China or other sweatshops the world over:
https://www.steelsnowflake.org/post/animal-ethics-three-philosophies-animal-ethics

Emergent Stupidity by Lucien Greaves (the reference to Galton is unlikely to be a nod to eugenics and likelier to be about critical thinking and side-stepping thought terminating cliches or that is my guess. I would take it down if it was in support of eugenics, ironically a stupid idea and way of thinking, mean-spiritedness aside. But how it plays out on an overpopulated planet that pays lip service to the sanctity of human life while behaving exactly opposite to that is another matter. The Satanic Temple helps women get abortions and that is pretty cool):

https://luciengreaves.substack.com/p/emergent-stupidity

Certain people should not be trusted, but Chuck Palahniuk is unlikely to be one of them:
https://chuckpalahniuk.substack.com/p/ephemera-the-ordeal-cont

On Uncertainty by Dr. Clayton Dalton:
https://www.salon.com/2025/05/20/dont-fight-uncertainty-embrace-it-2/

Quantum Darwinism:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/are-the-mysteries-of-quantum-mechanics-beginning-to-dissolve-20260213/

Neural Darwinism, Maurice Edelman & Peter Putnam:

https://nautil.us/finding-peter-putnam-1218035
This is cool:
“It’s easy to say why someone is wrong, Putnam said. The hard part is figuring out why they’re right. And everyone is right. Everyone has some central insight, hard won by the consistency-making mechanism of the brain, built of past experiences, cast as motor predictions, a pattern that repeats, sustains itself in the chaos. Our job is to pan for it like gold, sift it into our own nervous systems, reconcile the resulting contradiction, become something new.”

In Defence of Wodehouse - George Orwell
http://george-orwell.org/in_defence_of_p._g._wodehouse/0.html

A creepy early piece writing breezily about what was then an emerging creepy PanOpticon. I used to read it in anger, disgust and disbelief back in 2015:
https://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/17/data-crunching-is-coming-to-help-your-boss-manage-your-time.html

This otoh was a more reassuring piece wrt faith in one’s instincts:
“What Do Corrupt Firms Have in Common? Alison Taylor
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1076&context=public_integrity

This struck me when I looked up Barbarian on Wikipedia. It has sadly become an unexpected survival aid I had not expexted to need in this day and age.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gift_of_Fear

I used to read this a bunch too:
https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/theory-psychology-justified-torture

Troy Farah on Climate Change:
https://www.salon.com/2025/12/31/against-trumps-climate-sabotage-a-different-future-is-still-possible/

Quantum Entanglement:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/computer-scientists-prove-that-heat-destroys-entanglement-20240828/

Hugh Everett’s Many Worlds Theory:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/manyworlds/
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/manyworlds/orig-02.html

Apophenia:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/reality-play/201207/being-amused-by-apophenia

Cryptography, Avi Wigderson, 2023 Turing Award Winner:

Nicolas Gisin and Intuitionist Math:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/does-time-really-flow-new-clues-come-from-a-century-old-approach-to-math-20200407/

Carlos Rovelli and Time:


Infinity & Zeno’s Paradox:

Central Limit Theorem:

Homeostasis:

Limits to Growth:


Puzzle Solving Games: Baba is You

Found via John Naughton’s Memex - “Machine of Second Hand Ideas”:
The Machine Stops - E M Forster


Popular Culture:
Counterpart, 2018 (Outstanding)
Kettering Incident, 2018 (Outerstanding)

Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Problem, mid 2023(insipid drivel)
Promising Young Woman, 2023 (Brilliant)
The Good Place, 2024 (partially insipid drivel)
Leaving the Omelas (Hat-tip to Nathan Robinson, Oct 2025)
Existenz (Hat-tip to Yasha Levine, Fall 2025, His New Internet Chronicles Series)
The Discovery, Dec 2025 (acceptable)
If I Hadn’t Met You, Jan-Feb 2025 (acceptable)
Lords of Light/The Amber Chronicles (Hat-tip to Yasha Levine, Feb 2026)
Frankenstein (2026)

Books:
The Citadel - A J Cronin
Progress - Sam Miller MacDonald
The Shallows - Nicholas Carr
SCUM Manifesto - Valerie Solanas
Surveillance Valley - Yasha Levine
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism - S. Zuboff
What is Real? Adam Becker
More Everything Forever Adam Becker
1984 George Orwell
Down & Out in Paris & London George Orwell
William at War - Richmal Crompton
The Caine Mutiny - Herman Wouk
The Snark and the Boojum - Lewis Caroll
A Blunt Instrument - Georgette Heyer
The Voices of Time - J G Ballard
Ubik - Philip K Dick
The Catbird Seat - James Thurber
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
The Song of Wandering Aengus - W B Yeats

How Love Came to Prof Guildea (I thought of this years ago in 2010 out of the blue remembering my mom mentioning a creepy old tale, maybe part of a Hitchcock collection). It was up at the time on a site called gaslight.ca

The Rape of the Mind - Joost Meerloos:


The studies that were potentially relevant to the making of the Unabomber:


The only decent message board anywhere aside from Physics Stack Exchange:

https://democraticunderground.com/
Sovietski Yah, Nastikoff Bah..