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I, Nazgûl

By Rusty Guinn | 10 Comments

Being clear-eyed and full-hearted doesn’t mean being passive, weak, or silent.

It means resisting every effort to supplant our autonomy of mind with symbols of identity, no matter the source.

Apocalypse Always

By Rusty Guinn | 10 Comments

Extreme language during election season isn’t anything new.

But this time it really is different. Our response must be different, too.

Donald Trump and the Common Knowledge Game

By Ben Hunt | 34 Comments

The question is not whether Trump will accept the election result if he loses. He won’t.

The question is whether a Missionary with actual power will join him.

Virtue Signaling, or … Why Clinton is in Trouble

By Ben Hunt | 19 Comments

Don’t get me wrong. I’m thoroughly despondent about the calcification, mendacity, and venal corruption that I think four years of Clinton™ will impose. Trump, on the other hand … I think he breaks us. Maybe he already has. He breaks us because he transforms every game we play as a country — from our domestic social games to our international security games — from a Coordination Game to a Competition Game.

Men of God in the City of Man is a nine part series about a narrative virus that infected the charismatic and Pentecostal churches in the United States. It isn't a story about Christian Nationalism. It isn't a story about January 6th. It isn't a story about why people voted for Trump. It is a story about a story. It is a story about the language that created a self-sustaining movement defined by its unwavering belief in a fundamentally corrupt electoral system.

Recent Notes

I Think Representative Democracy is a Good Idea and We Should Give It a Try

By Ben Hunt | November 14, 2024

I am 60 years old.

I am a (very) patriotic American.

I have never felt represented by any elected official.

Never.

I, Nazgûl

By Rusty Guinn | November 3, 2024

Being clear-eyed and full-hearted doesn’t mean being passive, weak, or silent.

It means resisting every effort to supplant our autonomy of mind with symbols of identity, no matter the source.

Apocalypse Always

By Rusty Guinn | October 25, 2024

Extreme language during election season isn’t anything new.

But this time it really is different. Our response must be different, too.

The Open Window

By Rusty Guinn | October 21, 2024

Creating two tightly bounded political extremes is NOT opening the Overton Window.

It just adds a second, equally closed window behind which all of our worst ideas can and will fester.

Remembering the Face of Your Father

By Ben Hunt | October 16, 2024

For the past 28 years, since the death of my father, I’ve been hearing a steady tick-tock in my head.

How do we tell our stories to our children and our children’s children before it’s too late? Before we pass as all humans must pass?

Generative AI is a communion machine.

Manufactured Consensus

By Rusty Guinn | October 8, 2024

The more we believe the lie that social networks democratize narrative formation, the more systematically we make ourselves part of their manufactured consensus.

Generative AI is a Resurrection Machine

By Ben Hunt | October 1, 2024

Each of us has a unique story. A story that makes you you. A story that is the engine of your consciousness. A story that is your thread of life.

A story that today can be inferred from your words by generative AI and restored computationally, so that the thread of life remains uncut.

Everything is about to change.

Donald Trump and the Common Knowledge Game

By Ben Hunt | September 24, 2024

The question is not whether Trump will accept the election result if he loses. He won’t.

The question is whether a missionary with actual power will join him.

Metametastasis

By Rusty Guinn | August 13, 2024

We are all concerned about how Gen AI may untether us from reality.

We are not nearly concerned enough about how media will have the ability to do the same through mature social networks.

The Weird Thing

By Rusty Guinn | July 31, 2024

The weirdest thing about this “weird” campaign is how convinced some are that it represents a thoroughly directed, planned, systematic propaganda effort.

That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works. Not any more, anyway.

We Are Losing Our Minds

By Rusty Guinn | July 30, 2024

Your brain evolved to perceive symbols.

Symbols evolved to be perceived by your brain.

Human society is evolving around a technology which exposes our brains to a barrage of seductive symbols.

And it’s making us lose our minds.

This is the Great Ravine

By Ben Hunt | July 13, 2024

Our mediated cultural transition from sadness to generalized anger to focused anger at specific people and institutions of the Other Party is an entirely intentional effort by Big Politics, Big Tech and Big Media.

This is the Great Ravine, and it’s all going to get much worse before it gets any better.

Joe Biden and the Common Knowledge Game

By Ben Hunt | July 1, 2024

Common knowledge is what everyone knows that everyone knows.

Common knowledge is why the 2024 Biden/Harris campaign has collapsed.

All that remains is the cope.

IT’S. ABOUT. THE. MONEY.

By Ben Hunt | April 11, 2024

If you were a smart guy like MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor and you thought a stagflationary tsunami of enormous proportion was going to wash over the US economy regardless of who wins in November, what would you be doing right now?

I think you might be doing whatever you can to get liquid in the global reserve currency without spooking the marks.

I Think The Gun Helps

By Rusty Guinn | April 10, 2024

Our kids are being rewired.

The data implicating the smartphone-based childhood are compelling but not conclusive – and may never be.

So how should governments, communities, schools and families decide what to do?

And You Wonder Why Bitcoin and Gold are at Record Highs

By Ben Hunt | March 12, 2024

The Fed’s inflation-fighting credibility is shot and everyone in Washington and on Wall Street is in the bag for nominal growth, ie Number Go Up on EVERYTHING, through the November election.

After that … well, as Louis XV so aptly put it: après moi, le déluge.

Wheeee!

The Semantic Universe

By Ben Hunt | February 29, 2024

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

The End of History and the Triumph of Fiat World

By Ben Hunt | February 21, 2024

The great danger of generative AI lies in its use by governments and corporations to cement the most anti-human misalignment of all – the misalignment of rulers from the ruled, of the State from the People.

How Does Technology Rewire the Intricate Circuitry of the Teenage Mind?

By Ben Hunt | February 16, 2024

The central course of our children’s lives is being mind-warped by social media and smartphones, not in some ethereal ghost-in-the-machine sort of way but in an actual neural-wiring sort of way, and this research note by Kiril Sokoloff and the 13D team shows how.

The Washington Pravda and the Wall Street Izvestia

By Ben Hunt | February 14, 2024

Today both Wall Street and the White House are determined to tell you a story that inflation is over and mission accomplished. Wall Street because they want a cheaper price of money and the White House because they want to win an election.

It’s not a lie, per se, but it’s not a truth, either. It’s all just story, all the way down.

And like all sclerotic institutions, Wall Street and the White House rely on their media organs to tell the story.