“It is vanity to desire a long life, and to have little care for a good life.” — Thomas a Kempis Tolkien mourned the decline of the Shire* i.e., …the real shire of his youth which he ever remembered and sought to salvage to the extent that he could. The Shire: the simplicity and beauty… Read More Tolkien’s Battle for the Shire. And for Us All.
The coming of the “Son of Perdition, the Man. of Sin” In 1954 the famous Thomist, Josef Pieper wrote: “Once, and as soon as, world dominion in the full sense has become possible, the Antichrist has become possible. To this corresponds the other coordinate fact that the Christian gospel must have reached the totality of… Read More Thomist Josef Pieper on the Pseudo-Order and World Dominion of the AntiChrist.
+ Kissinger’s final warning and the Antichristic: “Prepare now for ‘superhuman’ people to control Earth…Kissinger’s co-authors, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and longtime Microsoft senior executive Craig Mundie’s bracing message, warning that AI tools have already started outpacing human capabilities so people might need to consider biologically engineering themselves to ensure they are not rendered… Read More Closer to Midnight? The Signs and Wonders of Elon Musk.
The rules will cover high-impact, general-purpose AI models and high-risk AI systems which will have to comply with specific transparency obligations and EU copyright laws. “I welcome the overwhelming support from the European Parliament for the EU AI Act, the world’s first comprehensive, binding framework for trustworthy AI. Europe is now a global standard-setter in… Read More World’s first major act to regulate AI passed by European lawmakers
… or of Scientistic Transhumanism? Eva Vlaardingerbroek and millions of young people around the world are waking up to the threats of scientism, what Vlaardingerbroek rightly calls the “poisoned chalice of history”. Note: Living in New Time. Christians believe history is going somewhere. If man (m/w) is not allowed to flourish as the Image of… Read More Man as Image of God?
“A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.” — Matt. 2:18 Ireland: Irish journalist John Waters, who started his journalistic career writing about youth and Rock ‘n Roll, sadly notes, “There was a moment close to the beginning… Read More Lamentation For Ireland. John Waters
Updated: Neuralink Corporation is a neurotechnology company that develops implantable brain–computer interfaces (BCIs). Co-founded by Elon Musk, Max Hodak and Paul Merolla, the company’s headquarters is in the Pioneer Building in San Francisco sharing offices with OpenAI.[5] Neuralink was launched in 2016 and was first publicly reported in March 2017.[1][6] —Wikipedia Telegraph UK. “His reasons to do this are two-fold. At one level, he sees an… Read More No Thank You, Elon.
McLuhan, 1969: “There’s nothing at all difficult about putting computers in the position where they will be able to conduct carefully orchestrated programing of the sensory life of whole populations. I know it sounds rather science-fictional, but if you understood cybernetics you’d realize we could do it today. The computer could program the media to… Read More Marshall McLuhan on media manipulation of peoples and nations
“The Hidden Environmental Toll of Smartphones If you’re reading this on a phone screen, you hold between your hand valuable pieces of the Earth’s crust which have been extracted from mines all over the planet. You’re not alone: an estimated 3.5 billion people use smartphones, almost half of the world’s population, and this number grows… Read More Oligarchs Choose Efficient Global Surveillance Over Environmental Ideology
What is Order to the Spider is Chaos to the Fly. —Morticia Addams. The LORD presented our first parents with wondrous Creation, Being. The Enemy of souls however proposed a counter-reality. And our Maker allowed this test of the only real freedom there is. SH. Two presentations. The Thomistic Institute and the proposed “World Brain”… Read More The iPhone is Changing us …
“In the summer and fall of 2021, Prof. Mattias Desmet appeared widely on the internet and in print as he discussed his theory of “mass formation,” or “mass formation psychosis” as it is sometimes called, especially in regard to the government reaction (and overreaction) to the Covid pandemic. Most interesting to Desmet was how many… Read More The Psychology of Totalitarianism.
Paul Kingsnorth. “Do not be conformed to this world“— St. Paul Welcome to the Abbey. ‘Instead of thought there is a vast, inhuman void, full of words, formulas, slogans, declarations, echoes, ideologies … If we do not think, we cannot act freely; we are at the mercy of forces which we never understand, forces that… Read More The Abbey of Misrule
An important discussion on our perilous technological time. Orthodox Christian Jonathan Pageau, Ph.D, writes, “This is my second conversation with Paul Kingsnorth. We talk about his brilliant substack, called The Abbey of Misrule, civilization and control, the power of the state and our technological systems, the matrix, politics, what it takes for communities to survive,… Read More Civilization and Control. Jonathan Pageau
by John Waters 4.29.22.First Things Magazine Elon Musk is typically the object of considerable masculine envy, and so, in the interests of avoiding accusations of green-eye, it would be nice to be able to declare him unequivocally as on the side of the angels. But, for all his legendary space-adventuring, this is by no means clear.… Read More Elon Musk And the Post Humanist Threat — First Things Magazine
This documentary shows only one tragic instance of the proficient use of propaganda in the 20th century. Of course, the Communists did the same, even if a little more clumsily. But what about us today in the 21st century? Western people today live, move and think in a 24×7 media hall of mirrors. George Orwell,… Read More The Propaganda Machines of Yesterday Should Give Us Pause Today
Ireland’s John Waters writes, “As things stand, it appears that artificial intelligence, while capable of outperforming humans in certain tasks and reckonings, still requires human supervision. Being neither sentient nor self-aware, AI cannot reflect on its own processes. It gets things wrong, mainly due to insufficient, poor, or confusing inputs, albeit less so than before.… Read More Morality in the Age of Machines.
Catholic Critique 