The Nature of Truth

One of the more important axioms of Veriphysics is the observation that truth is knowable, but it is not fully knowable, by Man. As a result, all decisions must be presumed to have been made on the basis of incomplete information, which renders the concept of fully-informed consent impossible. Therefore, any moral system based on consent is intrinsically flawed and consent cannot serve as a comprehensive justification for any action, agreement, contract, or exchange.

DISCUSS ON SG

Globalization Taketh Away

A small town in Switzerland discovers the downside of going global, as a profitable local business is shut down after more than a century in operation:

British American Tobacco (BAT) will close a cigarette manufacturing factory in north-western Switzerland next year and lay off the 220 employees working there, it has been confirmed. This decision will have a major impact on the region, the Jura government said on Wednesday. In a statement, BAT confirmed that cigarette production would be transferred from Boncourt to bigger factories in Europe and that Boncourt would be closed.

Following the closure of the factory, the commune of Boncourt (1,200 residents) will lose its biggest taxpayer – around CHF 2 million in annual tax – from its yearly budget of CHF 9 million.

The Boncourt factory was founded by the Burrus family in 1814 and was taken over by Rothmans International in 1996, before merging with tobacco multinational BAT three years later. The site has produced Parisienne cigarettes since 1887, the second best-selling brand in Switzerland.

I’m sure the little town that has lost nearly one-quarter of its tax revenue and more than half of its jobs will be reassured by the knowledge that the cigarettes that it formerly manufactured will henceforth be produced more efficiently elsewhere in Europe.

Homo economus is not human, but vampire.

Strangely enough, it may be the NFL that provides one potential solution to the economic problem of Clown World. Green Bay is one of the oldest and most successful franchises in the NFL, and it not only survives, but thrives, in a small town because it is not owned by rent-seeking pirates, but by the community. The team cannot be sold or moved without the consent of the public.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Manufactured

It will surprise absolutely no one here to learn that evidence of Ben Shapiro’s “popularity” and “success” being entirely manufactured has surfaced.

Facebook Gives Ben Shapiro ‘Shadow-Boost’ To Make More Users See His Content

A report seems to confirm that Ben Shapiro was “shadow-boosted” by Facebook’s algorithm, meaning his content enters the feeds of people otherwise unlikely to interact with the personality. The report from Buzzfeed, which mostly erroneously focuses on claims that Facebook is somehow a safe-haven for supporters of Alex Jones and Infowars, revealed that Ben Shapiro had been pushed into the feeds of Facebook users who had not interacted with his content.

The report details changes made to a Facebook feature called In Feed Recommendations, which would insert posts into the Facebook feeds of people that they didn’t follow, but were similar to content they liked already. Buzzfeed gives the example of someone who followed the page for a specific football team, who may then see content from the NFL put into their feed.

However, the IFR was not meant to recommend political content, yet users began complaining that they were seeing posts from Ben Shapiro in their news feeds, “even though they had never engaged with that type of content”:

When the issue was flagged internally, Facebook’s content policy team warned that removing such suggestions for political content could reduce those pages’ engagement and traffic, and possibly inspire complaints from publishers. A News Feed product manager and a policy team member reiterated this argument in an August post to Facebook’s internal message board.

It is unclear who else may have been subject to the “shadow-boosting” by Facebook, as opposed to being shadow-banned, which many conservatives were subject to on Facebook and other Big Tech platforms, such as Twitter. Shapiro, the editor-in-chief of the Daily Wire, is a long-time critic of President Donald Trump and America First conservatives, and as such, Facebook’s actions may raise eyebrows on the right.

Facebook has been doing this for years. Much the same thing has been taking place on YouTube on behalf of Shapiro, Joe Rogan, Sam Harris, and Jordan Peterson, among others, as well. Shapiro is perhaps unique in having been a complete fraud from the very start, when he was being pushed as a child prodigy on WorldNetDaily and through the Creators Syndicate, but it’s clear that he wasn’t the only “conservative” being mysteriously protected and promoted by Facebook.

“In the US it appears that interventions have been almost exclusively on behalf of conservative publishers,” they wrote, attributing this to political pressure or a reluctance to upset sensitive publishers and high-profile users. As BuzzFeed News reported last summer, members of Facebook’s policy team — including Kaplan — intervened on behalf of right-wing figures and publications such as Charlie Kirk, Breitbart, and Prager University, in some cases pushing for the removal of misinformation strikes against their pages or accounts.

Anyhow, the truth is inevitable. The Noticing will continue.

DISCUSS ON SG

When There is Nothing to Play For

Play to win anyhow. Peter King writes about a meaningless game from fifteen years ago.

Fifteen years ago this week, on Dec. 29, 2007, the 15-0 New England Patriots traveled to New Jersey to try to finish an undefeated season against the New York Giants, who, in a playoff sense, had nothing to play for. They were locked in as the fifth seed in the NFC playoffs, due to play at Tampa Bay in the first round of the playoffs, win or lose in Week 17.

It’s one of the best regular-season games I’ve covered as a football writer, which is paradoxical. Why was a game with two teams locked into their playoff positions so good? The Patriots had clinched home-field advantage through the AFC playoffs entering that night, yet played like it was a playoff game because of the potential for an undefeated season. The Giants, after beating Buffalo the previous weekend, also had nothing to play for.

Tom Coughlin doesn’t play meaningless games, however. I’m glad to see the Giants’ coach that day has written a book now, A Giant Win (written with Greg Hanlon, Grand Central Publishing) to commemorate that championship season for the franchise—with special attention paid to the Saturday night game on the final weekend of that regular season.

Coughlin on the game, and on his decision to play his full team against the Patriots:

“As soon as we won the previous week, you know how this goes because it’s scripted somewhere for the writers. ‘OK, coach, you gonna play your starters against New England?’ It started right away. I listened to that a little bit. I thought to myself, ‘We are the New York Giants. We are the flagship team of the National Football League. We are red, white and blue. I am not going to allow that future historians would look back upon this game, where the Giants would play the Patriots, the Patriots having a chance to have an undefeated season, and the New York Giants do not put their best foot forward. We are going to play our starters. We are going to play to win.’

“When I told our team that on Monday, they rallied. They wanted to play against the 15-0 New England Patriots. If you remember, we’re leading in the fourth quarter. We got the lead. It’s one of those games where, they beat us, but when we walked off, we knew we could play with them.”

In the eyes of many, it was a 35-38 Giants’ victory over New England. Coaches hate moral victories, but this was one for the Giants. It was also memorable for New England, of course, finishing a perfect 16-0 regular season by beating back a gallant bid for a big upset by a heavy underdog. I remember Tom Brady and Randy Moss in the New England locker room post-game. They couldn’t stop smiling. Brady was downright giddy.

He wouldn’t be giddy five weeks later, but that’s another story. When I spoke to Coughlin recently about the game, it was a pre-dawn memory the next day that stood out.

“I gotta tell you one more story because this is what will be most meaningful,” he said. “It was a great performance. I’m really proud of my team. That’s a team that’s 16-0, we know we can play with them. All that stuff. Next morning at 5 o’clock I come into my office and I see the red light’s on the phone. A voicemail. I pick up the phone and it’s John Madden. He’s saying, ‘Tom, I just wanted to call. Because I want you to know that is the greatest thing that’s happened to the NFL in the last 10 years.’ He said, ‘This is the National Football League—we don’t NOT play our players. We owe a responsibility to our fans to perform every day. That’s what you did. I’m just so proud to be a part of that. I’m so proud of what you’ve accomplished and what your team has accomplished.’ He said, ‘I’m very emotional right now. But I want you to know how I felt.’ I played it for my team in our next team meeting. It was moving. Very moving.”

The two teams met in the Super Bowl. The Giants beat the previously 18-0 Patriots, 17-14.

This historical anecdote is a useful reminder that excellence has its roots in effort. And success isn’t just luck combined with talent, it’s also a consequence of positive philosophy.

DISCUSS ON SG

Merry Christmas

A very Merry Christmas to everyone from Arkhaven, Castalia House, Infogalactic, Unauthorized, and, of course, Booster Patrol.

  • Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
  • The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
  • Holly, Jolly Christmas
  • The Ninth Day of Christmas, Boosted
  • What Child is This
  • I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas
  • O Holy Night
  • I’ll Be Home For Christmas
  • White Christmas
  • Silent Night
  • Let It Snow
  • Hallelujah
  • All I Want for Christmas

DISCUSS ON SG

On the Cold Snap

The smartest man in the world says it is the result of US government weather modification:

A Few Choice Words on the Geoengineered “Polar Vortex”

I live on a ranch smack in the middle of the US Heartland. There are 3000 people or so in this entire county. We’re a hundred miles from the nearest airport able to handle commercial jetliners. Yet last week, just prior to the “polar vortex”, the sky over our property was a fluffy white tic tac toe game played by what appeared to be large jet tankers belching out ugly non-dissipating contrails which were smudged and smeared by the wind into expansive blotches that blotted out the sun. This has been going on ever since we moved here nearly 20 years ago.

There is no way to explain this in terms of normal air traffic generating the usual vapor-laden jet contrails. The “contrails” do not look or behave like water vapor or ice crystals, and there is no reason that we should ever see more than a single jet airliner overhead, maybe two at rush hour (the usual number on a clear day is 0). I’ve checked the airline schedules, and there’s simply no way. The government is once again trying to kill us, and you’d better believe that this record “cold snap” is taking quite a death toll.

This farmhouse presently feels like an icy tomb. The warmest spot in the house registers 50 degrees. We have animals here about which we’re very, very worried. Animals are tough, but notoriously susceptible to attempts by humans to kill them. This is such an attempt, and it is being made without our permission or approval. Whoever is responsible for this has no right to be doing it.

This sounds far-fetched, to be sure. But if we’ve learned one thing about “conspiracy theory” since the CIA invented the term to discredit observers who doubted the official story about the JFK assassination, it’s that the conspiracy theorists are much more likely to be correct than the apologists for the mainstream narrative.

DISCUSS ON SG

A Vibrant Christmas

Online shopping was a blow, but it was something the malls of America might have been able to survive if it were not for the dissemination of vibrancy throughout suburban America:

A shooting inside the Nordstrom department store at the Mall of America on Friday night left a 19-year-old man dead, according to Bloomington Police Chief Booker Hodges.

Hodges said during a late-night news conference that the shooting involved an altercation between two groups of young men and that the individuals involved fled the scene immediately after the shooting, which occurred about 7:50 p.m. on the eve of Christmas weekend.

A Bloomington officer who was nearby heard the shots and arrived to find the victim on the ground, Hodges said. “We had 16 officers working today in the mall. Sixteen cops,” Hodges said. “And they still decide to do this. I’m at a loss.”

I used to love going to Rosedale, Southdale, and occasionally, the Galleria, at Christmastime. From the time I was a little boy, they were vast and magical Winter Wonderlands, where children could roam freely and window-shop. I used to wander alone from one end of the mall to the other, with particular attention paid to B. Daltons and Games by James. I still remember being 11 years old and walking back through the parking lot at Rosedale to our Oldmobile station wagon with my father, who was carrying what seemed at the time to be a very large package.

When I asked him what it was, he said “the best Christmas present you’ll ever get”. I can’t say he was wrong, because it was a Mattel Intellivision, and with the possible exception of an Apple //e with two disk drives, it was the device that I loved most throughout the course of my life. From that year on, I’d happily be abandoned in Sears when my mother was shopping, playing Utopia or Sea Battle in the little electronics section.

When I started working at Dayton’s at the age of 15, I began seeing Christmas from the other side, from the retailer’s perspective, and it was every bit as magical. Dayton’s was one of the anchor department stores at all the Dales, and it was always exciting when the Christmas decorations would start going up the day after Thanksgiving. The sights, the lights, and the smells, taken in sum, were nothing but pure and unadulterated joy.

Christmastime in Minneapolis, 1963

This sense of communal magic and wonder is one of the many things that vibrancy has cost America. Perhaps it wasn’t important, perhaps it wasn’t a significant part of the Christmas season, but I loved it as a child and it grieves me to know that it is part of the world that we have lost.

DISCUSS ON SG