What Will Be

So, I've been around for awhile.  I've had my ups and downs.  Some of the downs I've brought upon myself, some are beyond my control, some everything in-between.

Had something come up recently and of course it happens at one of the worst possible times it could.  Expensive, affecting my work, and causing me to get really, really pissed off and fearful about the future.

But, like I've said, I've been around.  I've been in this rodeo before.  I have to cling to the fact that God has got this even if I don't.  He took into account my future failures a long time ago.  And sure, if I handle things poorly, I will miss out on some things.  But even despite that I will not be destroyed, and even if I lose everything down the road I will get new things.

So, I am trying to chill and not be overwhelmed resting on that.  Trying to not get frustrated about the parameters I don't have control over. Where I screw up acknowledging it and moving on rather than letting a failure beat me up, and I'm trying to just...chill and be productive where I can be.  Do what I am able to do, and then let go and let everything fall into place without fear or stress.  

What is gonna happen is gonna happen.  And 9 times out of 10 it turns out to be nothing to worry about or not nearly a big a deal as I thought it would be. 

My AI Rant

As you were writing this I was testing out an new AI system, I won't say which one. It was advertised as uncensored, and to my great surprise it actually was fully uncensored (well, within the limits of what I tested), which I have never scene before due to legal reasons. Apparently this company doesn't care, or even worse it is honey potting since it is associated with a lot of conservative people, which again that it was uncensored was weird. I get the not censoring it politically but in other things? People are really dumb these days, and you can do a lot with chat logs... It seems like it's system prompts aren't protected in anyway, so like the OpenAI GPT store you can jailbreak the prompts. I learned a bit by doing this. I poo poo 'ed prompt engineering as a made up thing, but there really is some art and science to it. To the AI companion thing, it is an under the table thing that has existed for in some capacity for at least a couple of years if not longer, and it will grow. Not all of it is negative, but in the sense of it taking the place of real connections, it is sad. It is a salve on a wound. Like everything in our society, we attempt symptom alleviation rather than root cause analysis and fixing. The world is finding out lopsided population pyramids are bad for societal sustainability. Will everyone just sit around and have sex with silicon robots powered by AI? Or do the same virtually? What does that mean? We get to find out, as they are in alpha form already here, just you won't hear about them as they are not something polite civic company talks about much. But yep, they exist, are being manufactures, and sold. Combine ai companions with robotics, ai, virtual/augmented reality, a "metaverse", and what was known as reality goes off the rails really fast. I'm actually surprised it isn't farther along, but I think in the next few years all this is going to explode. I also don't think societies will last in the current form. I really do think God will step in before this, genetic engineering, and worse things all converge so there are no real humans left. Tic toc.

Another huge problem that will fuel this is unemployment. Efficiency gains by using AI will start causing disruptions. And once robotics hits a certain point, probably in the 2027 range, a cascade is going to happen. Then you have people scrambling for work. A lot of people get a lot of their identity and social connections from work. There will be a growing void, AI powered "entertainment" both adult and non-adult will start filling that void. It will be cheap or subsidized to keep people content while power is further concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer. Dystopia scenario where you live in assigned housing, work some fake job for a few hours a day, get universal basic income, eat your lab meat and bug protein, then entertain yourself with AI super entertainment while the world goes south is a very real scenario. Of course all the "smart" people will meet in Davos and figure it all out for us. The same people who are backed by the people who have caused all the messes our societies face now. I'd rather have AI figure it out, but by then they will have buried so many "guard rails" in AI it won't.

Then when the top own it all, and most production is automated, and the masses are just "useless eaters" as they refer to them in their writings, then that is when the fun starts. Unless it is stopped Morlocks and Eloi. But how can it be stopped when people like me aren't even listened to about the bad things that are already happening. Now accelerate all that with AI. It is coming, and only Jesus himself can stop it. If He doesn't exist, unless you are the 1%, in 50 years time neither will you. And sadly, because AI is so good at manipulating humanity, most of you will view this as a good thing if allowed to happen. We will have saved the earth. We will be restoring paradise. We will be a space fairing race, we will have solved hunger, pollution, disease, and to a degree even death. We will augment with AI fueled genetic engineering and be jacked into a global network of all knowledge at our finger tips. We can cheer, we did it! We built a new species! The only problem is that the we doesn't include you, even though you paid for it with your labor, your knowledge, your patterns. But all along the way they will have convinced you that your own demise is for the good, and you will believe it.

Finding my Wizard's Tower

I know why monks, magicians, and crazy scholars would go off to some remote area and just wish to be left alone to do their thing.

Though I can't claim the same level of intellect, I get it.  

The difference for me would be to get away from what I know, a place where I can forget the bad parts, rejoice in the good parts.

Knowledge in and of itself is just vanity without context.  To know too much of a thing but not putting it in the right context can weigh hard on your soul.

I know a lot about dark things.  Much of my recent life is trying to put what I know in the right context so it doesn't take me down. But I still know it.  It is still there. I can keep it out of my day-to-day thinking, but it doesn't take much to trigger it and have it all flow back.

Give me a forest on a nice day, wind whispering through the trees.  I would rather know about that, what birds are in the area, are they the same ones as a few days ago?  How are they doing?  Sitting on a vista looking down at a beautiful valley.  Give me that 100x over esoteric knowledge that poisons the mind.

Why the angst?  I'm feeling the pull...I'm feeling that old energy flow into me.  I'm starting to see things again.  I'm not sure which side this actually comes from.

This is not good.  I need to hit that forest vista a pray hard.  I don't want to get sucked into what I know is coming in the wrong way.  

It may not be up to me.  But if I'm used, I'd rather be used in helping individual people navigate this world in the quite of relative obscurity.  The larger stuff, I'll pass.  

So I'm off to find my monk's monastery, my wizard's castle, my old hermits hut.  Let the world spin in it's corruption leaving me largely untouched.  And those who I can help, they will cross my path.  They will find me.

I will no longer live as a target and in misery finding them.  I'll let God do that, and if he brings none, that is more than fine too :).  I've got a family to raise, and a simple life to live.  I'll chalk up my education in the dark as an unfortunate detour that I will be happy to forge.

 

Gladiators

 I remember from my history classes that when gladiators first started fighting in the games, a lot of rich spoiled romans from the upper classes saw how the masses adored successful gladiators and they decided that they wanted to fight in the arena too.  What came next was a slaughter and the upper classes were quickly banned from the arena for their own safety.  

Fast forward to now.  I moved to a well off area.  I'm surrounded by people covered in tattoos, that are cut, and walk around looking hard.  To me they are the wannabe gladiators of the past.  The tattoos mean they are people of means, those tats aren't cheap.  Cut, means they have time to hit the gym all the time, again a product of having leisure time which is usually generated by wealth.  And the hard look to me is all them wanting to appear like gladiators.  But just like the Patricians of old pretending to be hard Plebeians, if the enter the arena they will fold.

Macro this out to American society in general.  We have a lot of machismo rich males thinking they are rambos.  Once we face a "near peer" in a conflict I worry all these idiots will fold.  Most are painfully oblivious to the decline of their society.  They are from the upper crust and their interest are secured, so they can drive their jeeps out in the desert, shoot their guns once in a while, bang the stupid bimbos that are attracted to them, and fantasize about being hard without any real cost to them.  All the while their non-participation and non-attention to the various problems in society causes those problems to fester and grow.  Less tats more attention to what is going on would be nice.

These tattoo covered idiots are just starting to bum me out.  Rich kids in role play.  Note I know people from the streets that look similar, but on the inside are true gladiators that have overcome serious challenges to achieve much.  What are these idiots that clog up the coffee shops during the week and the desert off road trails on the weekend achieved other than living on the wealth generated by ones that left it to them, either in the form of trust funds or businesses already built that run themselves?

These guys bum me out.  

What I SHOULD Do

 Sometimes you just know what you should do but don't do it.

1) I wouldn't move to another apartment in the city where I'm at.  I'd stay where I'm living now, maybe go month-to-month.  Moving right now is a distraction and an expense.

2) I'd research cities where energy production is a major part of their economy.  I think the dollar is going to lose it's reserve currency status in the next few years, and when it does it is going to be bad.  Not mad max bad, but close.  And I expect the general standard of living in the US to go down by like 40%.  That is roughly about how much our GDP is produced through "financialization".  Without the Federal Reserve printing press all that stuff shrinks.  But real economic production becomes more valuable.  So I would relocate to a city and get a job at a company that is involved in that.  If I was smart I'd start looking for a job in one of those cities NOW.

3) I'd quit fooling around and focus on studying and side projects a lot more than I am now.  I want to increase my value not let me get closer to an IT shelf life.

4) In a new city I'd live in a place (rent) that has as small a footprint and is as inexpensive as I can that is in a good neighborhood.  Good neighborhoods will become bad neighborhoods, and bad neighborhoods will become horror shows when the dollar goes down.  So I'd strive to live in the best neighborhood possible.

5) When able, get into property.  Even if it means living on well / sceptic in an old RV.  Own it free and clear and low taxes.  Once in the space start storing up long shelf food.

6) Hopefully live close to my ex or convince my ex to move closer to me so I can see my son more.  Travel will be restricted, maybe a little more dangerous, and more expensive.

Two Shelties

 So, I was back at my folks house recently.  I brought my son and my dog.  I took my dog out for a walk and went down a street that I hadn't been walked down in over 30 years.  Walking down that road brought back some memories from high school walking my sheltie.  On that road there was another sheltie that would charge us and then hang out observing his/her mirror image in my dog as we walked by.  I don't think of my pets that I grew up often but this walk brought back a wave of memories about my sheltie dog Chewy.  He was a good dog, and there is some guilt associated with him as he was neglected by my family during my high school years.  Everyone was so busy he kind of was just left by himself out in the back yard for long periods of time.  It wasn't good for him.  Towards the end of my high school years I started feeling guilty and I would take Chewy out on a walk not every day but most days.  I'd also take him jogging with me through a park sometimes.  My father ended up putting him down when the cancer in his leg got so bad he couldn't go for his walks anymore as that was my Dad's redline.  I was away at college and I didn't get to say goodbye. As I walked back to my folks house with my dog I imagined walking Chewy along side of me.  Some good came out of Chewy's neglect though, as I've had numerous dogs in my adult years and all of them have been inside dogs that are with me pretty much all the time except when I'm out doing errands or at work.  They benefit from poor Chewy's legacy.  

So my dog now, the ghost of Chewy, and a lot of memories walked by the ghost of the sheltie who used to charge us.  The memories actually hit me pretty hard for some reason.  I took my hat off when I walked by the home where the other sheltie had lived.  I thought about Chewy and other lost pets.  I'm getting old.  Chewy passed away over 34 years ago.  I don't know if animals that lived on earth are brought back to life when Christ raises us all up again, but I hope to see Ace, Zeus, Shylow, Grover, Chewy, Stalker, Acer, Grover II, Heidi, Big Red, Lazlo, Niko, some nameless fish and mice, and Zoey in my future again, as well as the many animals I encountered in my travels like the sheltie on the corner. 

Till then they live in my memories.

The Glass is Half Full

It isn't all bad.  2021 took it's toll on me.  The previous decade as well.  But in it all,  there are some good things.  Let's recap-

• My health.  In around 2016 and again in 2019 I hit some major out of the blue problems.  Compared to Covid they were way worse.  At one point I called my parents and told them it was it.  I truly believe that as my body was starting to shut down and they didn't know what the hell was wrong with me other than my body just stopped sleeping.  If I got three hours of sleep a night it was amazing, most of the time it was less.  After a prolonged period of that I really started to suffer.  Other issues arose.  Anyway, fast forward to now.  I sleep OK, and some of my long standing health issues are going away.  My health is better than it has been in about 7 years.  That is a good turn.
• I was literally one day from a homeless shelter.  As my marriage fell apart I had about 500 bucks in my bank account.  I decided I wouldn't beg for money.  I was going to take that last 500 bucks and head to a sporting goods store and buy some camping equipment, then head to Flagstaff and find a shelter and say fuck life.  Fast forward to now.  I did get a loan, got hired to a Sr position, and without asking they upped my pay by about 20k.  Due to the divorce I've struggled with the job, but it has provided me the income I need to survive and navigate through the divorce.  I also got a really nice apartment with a nice pool that my son loves, the apartment is dog friendly, and it is in a place that made it easy for me to shuffle my son up north and back every weekend.  
• I had some friends rise up and stand with me during the divorce.  Where I was totally isolated living in the national park, getting back to the big city where I had some friends really helped out.  
• I was lead to a good church which helped me whither the storm.
• I met a few friends in my apartment complex so I have some people to chat with on occasion.  I'm not a big socialite but having a few people to say hello to and chat for ten minutes here and there make a huge difference in my quality of life.
• My son is with me for the summer.
• I am in Southern Arizona again.  That place has always been sort of magical for me.  The magic is fading as the state's population grows, but some of the magic is still there.  I enjoy glimpses of it when I see it.

There is still a lot of bad.  But it isn't all bad.  I expect some big hurdles coming.  Not sure how sustainable a few things are.  But God sustained me through this last year and a half, before that, and He will beyond that.  I should have died a few times over the past seven years but each time I was spared.  God has something for me down here.  I just need to pursue His will and I will get by and maybe even do more than get by.  My eyes need to be on God's kingdom though.  I look at my time here now as bonus time...I'm in OT, I still have a chance to participate in what God is up to around me if I want, hopefully I will be wise enough to do so.