Category - Digest

My Week on ‘The Socials’

As I suspect many readers have gathered by now, I dipped a toe back into “the socials” last week.  

Most notably, I reactivated the Facebook account that I deactivated for a variety of reasons back in the spring of 2021.  

I remember feeling at the time about Facebook much the wayI felt about Scotch and vodka before I quit drinking (in 1987).

When someone on Facebook said, “he’s back!” I tried to brush it off, replying “I’m here. I’m not sure if I’m ‘back’ yet.” 

That is clearly a distinction without a difference. 

There are several reasons why I’ve crawled out of my ostrich hole: 

1.  Business / Advertising: Over the past year and a half,  I have had some success promoting my books directly on Amazon. To expand the market,I’ve set up my own virtual bookstore so that I can offer various bundles and deals that I can’t arrange though Amazon.  That done, I expect to start testing advertising on Facebook etc. in the near future.  Much of that effort is also directed toward…

2.  The Video Centennial:  Video (the generic term for what started out as just “television”) as we know it arrived on Earth in 1927.  We still have three years to mount a campaign to garner for that event the recognition that it truly deserves.  I’ve got One Big Idea that is getting my deficit/disordered attention at the moment, and others ideas are percolating as well.  I suspect “the socials” could have a significant role to play in those campaigns.  To that end, I have also recently created…

3.  The Waterstar Foundation: This is something I have pondered for decades and now it’s really happening.  I have created a non-profit and obtained the 501c3 tax-exempt status from the IRS.  I don’t know what role Facebook will have in that initiative; LinkedIn might prove more useful in the long run.  But that, too would be part of my return to the arena.  

4.  I missed the memes – and sharing them with my sister.  

Here are a few observations from a week of being back in the digital swamp: 

What’s Different

It sure seems to me that Facebook features a lot more eye candy and click bait.  I mean, what on earth are they trying to tell me here? Why is Facebook asking me “What’s on your mind?” – and then suggest the answer?  Inspiring Stories??  Where do I even start???

I know… by scrolling into the infindibulum.  I‘ll write when I find work. 

There is also much more emphasis now on… well, of course…. video  (please see #2 above, and, Zuck you can send your tax-deductible $1-million contribution to [link to come] – because you wouldn’t have a business without video;  Facebook would be a radio call-in show.). 

Now my displays are filled with short-video cliffhangers – the weird, dire, and bizarre:  A truck about to roll off a cliff… a house about to fall into a raging river.. somebody on a skateboard about to wipe out a pedestrian… time-lapsed clips of insanely elaborate woodworking projects… etc. etc.  Just enough footage to get me to click-click-click my one-and-only life away. 

In the couple of days before I posted this, after all the horrific flooding from Hurricane Helene, the feed has been filled with ‘Reels’ of biblical flooding.  Turns out they’re from India, Pakistan… all over the world.

But…  do we really need Reels and Stories?  Who thought that was a good idea?

I look at this stuff, because that’s what 21st century cyborgs do. Zuckerberg damn well knows that.  He’s made billions from P.T. Barnum’s adage. 

What Hasn’t Changed

… is the trolling, and the impossible-to-ignore impulse to engage.  

Like this colorful exchange I couldn’t resist, starting with an inane meme from somebody whose name I don’t even recognize: …to which I could not resist replying: 

Pretty fucking clever, don’t ya think?  But, of course… on it goes: 

So much for civil discourse.  I must remember: “what you posted there really got me to thinking ” – said bnobody, ever. 

But sure. I’ll start listening to ‘patriots’ like Larry – whose name is actually Harry.

And I gotta mention this:  Over this past weekend I saw a re-post that inferred that the catastrophic flooding in east Tennessee and west North Carolina was caused by the “elites” who possess secret weather control technology,  and that Hurricane Helene was deliberately directed over “hundreds of pro-Trump counties … during the most important election of our lifetimes.”

Who believes this stuff?  And more to the point, if I’m going to surrender to the Borg this way, how do I limit my exposure to people who are clearly nutz – while also making room for viable ideas or opinions that might be different from my own?

That said, I intend to make a concerted effort to avoid posting or commenting on political stuff.  Wish me luck with that.

The Upside

Within hours of sticking my virtual head up, I received a message from some old, actual friends I hadn’t actually seen in at least a decade.  Former neighbors, they live in another state now.  Lo and behold they saw something I posted and let me know they were in the area for a few days.  The next morning we went for a hike around Radnor Lake.

Radnor lake with Dianne Mike Killen, and Sister Dorothy.

Radnor lake with Dianne and Michael Killen, and Sister Dorothy.

In the week since, I have had several other meaningful contacts and renewals.  

So that part of the initiative may have some actual merit.  However… 

On the Downside

The challenge is filtering all the rest of the #NoiseNoiseNoise.

Even harder is regulating my own behavior around the endless scrolling.  Despite more than three years of abstinence, I’m still “just a poke away from scrolling all day.”

And then there is the actual experience of getting back onboard. With Facebook in particular, the process has been an arcane succession of dead ends, error messages and mystery settings.  

When I first ventured forth, Facebook denied access to my long-dormant account.  It kept sending a verification code “to your MacBook.”  Huh?  I was on my MacBook. Where the hell is the code?  Well, it turns out I had to be logged into Facebook in order to retrieve the code I needed to login to Facebook. 

Translation: “to retrieve password, enter password.”  

It took another several days to figure out how to make my posts visible to anybody other than myself.  Because that’s really useful.  Very social, don’t you think?

This addresses the bionic times we live in, where we are attached to these gizmos all day long but they are not yet physically plugged into our bodies.  And it illustrates an hypothesis that I’ve stated many times:

The  real reason for all the tension in the world is: 

1.  We’re expected to do everything by ourselves (from checking out groceries to paying for parking);

2.  Before we can do anything by ourselves, we have to figure out how to do it – also by ourselves. 

3.  Once we’ve figured out how to do it, too often…  it just doesn’t. fucking. work.  Or it’s a scam, a fake, or a fraud. 

And still we wonder why people will vote for a moron/clown like Trump.  Like he could fix anything?  

For the record, those observations are pure McLuhan.  The medium is the message.  While we’re all envy-scrolling other people’s fabulous vacations, perfect husbands/wives and children, their devoted pets and fabulous meals, the real impact of all this is far more subliminal.  

But, by all means, scroll on…

Random Observations 

––What actually gets any traction in these environments?  In the week since I’ve rejoined the virtually living, I’ve posted a couple of cartoons and one or two relatively genuine/serious rants, but what gets the most traction is pictures of my cat.  And Molly Tuttle’s hat. 

––My ‘network’ is full of people I do not really know – 1,800 ‘friends’ of which maybe, what, 20%  are people I actually know?

––As Buddy Mondlock wrote: “I’m the kid who always looked out the windows….” No need to look out the windows anymore. I can just scroll forever through the digital looking-glass. 

––As alluded to earlier, social media can be useful for staying in touch with actual people and could, with an effort to get off the couch, contribute to a more active and diverse actual social life.  But staying ‘in touch’ is filled with endless distractions, deceptions, clickbait, trolls and clown shows.

––These platforms feed on the best of human impulses –and turn them into the worst of human impulses.  I mean: I posted something witty and profound five whole minutes ago. How come I don’t have any likes or comments yet???  And who are all these trolls who snuck into my world as ‘friends’? 

––What is all this?  Why am I still scrolling?  What am I looking for hoping to find??

––The algorithm seems to know I’ve been single for a while.  My “People you may know” is  filled with attractive women  – that I do not know.  Am I supposed  just randomly send them friend requests?   If I click on enough of them, can I get a date?  Is this better or worse than Bumble/Tinder (Binder?  Tumble?).  That’s a rhetorical question.  Pretty girl!  Squirrel! 

––I guess the lesson here is that in the 21st century, our lives have to be both on-and-offline.  Living a balanced, active and engaged life seems to require surrendering to the algorithm and becoming part of The Borg.

I guess it’s just coincidence that when I get my haircut I ask her to “give me The Picard.”

Postscript

That point – that life in the 21st century is bionic, both real and virtual – was driven home last Saturday night (Sept 28).

First I saw this ‘random’ post on Facebook:

Steve Allen (not to be confused with this Steve Allen) is somebody I know peripherally.  I’ve seen him perform with The Long Players, our paths have crossed on occasion, we’ve spoken a time or two but he has no reason to know me as well as (I think) I know him.  He’s the kind of guitar player who still feeds my septuagenerian teenage fever dreams, so it pleases me to know him even virtually. 

So I see his post about putting on a Beatles show.  I was reluctant to leave the house yesterday on accounta all the rain and the horror stories from other parts of the region, but ventured forth to run a couple of errands and, as long as I was out, went to the show.

And had a blast.

The ‘Beaatedudes’ at Rosies Twin Keg on Thompson Lane. How cool that you can live in a place for 25 years and still not know all the hot-spots.

I ran into several people I had not seen in ages, caught up on their travels, commiserated over recent losses, made some ‘real-time’ contact with a couple of ‘virtual’ friends and enjoyed a tasty greasy-spoon cheeseburger and fries.

And I posted a video clip to Facebook.

Now the challenge is to just comfy with a new-ish ‘online persona’… that other personality that we all have to conjure and live with now.

So yeah. I’m back.

For now, anyway.

We’ll see what the algorithm giveth and taketh away.

___________________________________

Before you go, please enjoy “The Kid,” the aforementioned song by Buddy Mondlock:

_

 

 

This One Is Kind of A Big Deal

Everybody fire up yer radios!

Wednesday night – well, actually, Thursday morning – I will be a guest on the Coast to Coast AM radio show with host George Noory.

Coast to Coast “…airs on over 600 affiliates, and has repeatedly been called the most popular overnight show in the country.”  The audience is said to reach in millions despite the bizarre hour – I’ll be on from 2-4AM Central!

I first learned of “Coast to Coast AM” back in the early ‘aughts.  After I’d first published the Farnsworth bio – and embarked on my new career as the “biographer of obscure 20th century scientists” with the Townsend Brown project – I started hearing about this fringe-topic, all-night radio show, at the time hosted by the legendary Art Bell.

It’s only taken twenty-some years, but I’ve finally been invited to appear on the show.

And, yes, the program has its share of critics who take issue with its coverage of “pseudohistoric and pseudoscientific ideas,” but I’m entirely comfortable with the forum. I know that I’m going in with actual history and a pretty healthy sensibility re: where the science gets to the edge of pseudo.  So I’m looking forward to a lively conversation.

If by some strange happenstance you are awake at that ungodly hour, see if you can find a station near you from these listings. 

Next stop:  Joe Rogan!

CYA on the radio !!

The Future Is Prologue:
Cosmic Summit 2024

Some of you know that for the past couple of months I have been ‘laser focused’ (I actually hate that expression, but it does seem to express the ADHD way I go at some things) on the presentation I delivered to The Cosmic Summit on Saturday June 15.

I have to admit that being part of something called “The Cosmic Summit” seemed a bit… daunting? … but in fact it was a very successful and engaging weekend.  I met a lot of interesting people and felt at times like I’d found my tribe.

There were also times I was glad I was wearing my ‘tin foil hat.’

The entire conference was live streamed.  I recorded the live stream and did some editorial work before uploading the result to YouTube for your viewing pleasure.  I may have jumped the gun with all that, because I’m told now that eventually I will get a higher-resolution recording for my own use, in which case I’ll probably have to do all the editing again, but in the meantime I am sharing this with my inner circles.

The biggest wrinkle in the actual presentation was the set up on stage.

I ran through the whole thing like 20 or 30 times in order to commit as much of it as possible to memory.  When I did those rehearsals, for some reason (probably a photo I saw of last year’s conference) I thought I’d have a laptop on the lectern in front of me.

So when I practiced,  I had everything on the one screen:  the presentation on one side of the screen, the script on the other side.  That’s how I practiced, imagining a laptop on the lectern and the audience just above-and-beyond, so that it would be easy to glance at the screen and continue directly eyeball-to-eyeball with the audience.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Alas.

I discovered the night before the presentation that the stage was about three feet high – and my reference monitor was on the floor below and at the foot of the stage!  Who thought that was a good idea?!?

So that’s why I’m ‘looking down’ a lot – and why I did all the editing I did – to hide all the looking at the floor.

Where I am reading from the monitor (on the fucking floor eight feet below my eye level!) I edited the frame to fill the screen with the  slides themselves rather than the two panel view –with the slide on one side and the idiot looking at the floor on the other side.

*

Despite line-of-sight challenges, the whole thing went about as well as it possibly could. I didn’t see all the other presentations, but those that I did see were mostly “put up a slide, talk about it, put up another slide, talk about that, rinse and repeat for an hour.”  This one has an actual story… the proverbial beginning, middle and end (#NotSoHumbleBrag).

I’ll admit, there were moments while I was putting this together where I thought it just wasn’t gonna happen, that I was going to have to call the promoter for the conference and back out.

Eventually it dawned on me what I needed to do: take a very personal approach to all this science and history and what drew me into it in the first place.  Once I dropped in this slide:

Literally the moment the seed was planted.

…then  all the work, stories, ideas, theories and conclusions started falling together.

This is what all I have been ruminating on for the entirety of my adult life.

Judges, y’all let me know if I stuck the landing…

And, now that I’ve ‘got my act together’, I’d like to take it on the road….

Available Now on Audible!

The Boy Who Invented Television now on Audible

As  Philo-The-Third told me, his father – Philo T. Farnsworth The Second – had ‘two major cases in his life.

The first was electronic video.  You wouldn’t be looking at this if he hadn’t cracked that one back in the 1920s.

Over the course of the next thirty-plus years, Farnsworth gained as much first-hand knowledge about the practical workings of the quantum realm as anybody who worked at Los Alamos.  In fact, he was invited to participate in The Manhattan Project, but declined the invitation, telling his wife “I want nothing to do with building an atomic bomb.”

Instead, in the 1950s and 60s, he used his experience and singular insight to conceive and build something not even the assembled wizards at Los Alamos could fathom: a controlled nuclear fusion device, a ‘start in a jar.

This second preview from The Boy Who Invented Television recounts the moment he figured it out:

The audiobook edition is now available on Amazon or Audible.

Y’all get yer ears on!

Coming Soon: TBWIT – The Audiobook!

Coming Soon: TBWIT - The Audiobook!

More than fifty years after I first heard of Philo T. Farnsworth (in the summer if 1973)…

More than twenty years after The Boy Who Invented Television was first published…

And a year after it was re-published (after the release of The Man Who Mastered Gravity)…

There is finally going to be an audiobook edition!

Once the book was re-released last year, I considered several options for converting it to an audiobook.  I auditioned several narrators via the Audible platform at Amazon, but finally opted to do the reading myself after enlisting the production assistance of Robert Lane, the creator of a program called “Your Book, Your Voice.”

I started working with Robert back in January. It has taken the better part of the past four months to get the project done.  Each week I would read and record several chapters.  I sent the files to Robert, he edited and mastered them and uploaded them to Audible.

I found the experience of reading and recording the text quite gratifying*, to hear how the way I write sounds like the way I talk and vice-versa.

We finished all the uploads this week and have submitted the project to Audible for review.  I expect the production to go ‘live’ before the middle of May.

Keep an eye on the Amazon sales page, the audiobook will show up there the minute it’s approved.

_________

*when I wasn’t wondering “why am I still grinding on this material, much of which I first wrote more than 50 years ago!” ‍♂️

My Family Thinks I’m Crazy

As you all know by now, it has been my privilege to be interviewed on several podcasts over the past few months, finally fulfilling my lifelong delusion that someday, somebody might think I have something interesting to say.

Well, now I am pleased to say that I have finally been featured on a podcast for reasons entirely other than my vast education, training, or experience.

This one I’m entirely qualified to be on this one just because of what it’s called:

My Family Thinks I’m Crazy. 

Here’s a link to listen via Apple Podcasts:

And here’s a link to Spotify:

This is a long one – more than two hours!  But it’s one of my favorites so far, because we cut straight to some of the broad themes that tie these mysteries together. Here’s a summary of some of the ground we covered:

Paul Schatzkin, Author and Researcher, joins me to discuss the amazing breakthroughs achieved by the Inventor of the electronic television, Philo T. Farnsworth, The Mysterious T. Townsend Brown and his revolutionary discoveries in the realm of electro-gravitics, space travel and even time travel, Paul reveals how the movie Back To The Future was directly inspired by T. Townsend Brown, with Oppenheimer doing so well in the box offices this conversation echoes Einstein’s remorse, and draws forth the possibility of dozens of other unsung marvels of technological innovation that have never had the chance to develop within our inherently destructive scientific culture of industry.

As long as I’m here, I may as well post the video clip that offers up the connections between these stories and the Back to the Future movies.  This is the very last scene in the first of the trilogy:

There are at least three elements of this scene that connect to the books I’ve written:

  1. “Mr. Fusion” – Philo Farnsworth spend the last half of his life developing a nuclear fusion process;
  2. The ‘flux capacitor’ that makes time travel possible: Townsend Brown’s ‘gravitator‘ devices were all based on capacitor technology;
  3. The ‘Doc Brown’ in the films… his full name is…. EmeTT Brown.

I’m sure it’s all just a coincidence.

Finally, if you have any lingering doubt that we are all living in the wrong timeline, consider this: Bob Gale, the screenwriter of all the Back to the Future movies, has gone on the record saying that the villain in the films, Biff Tanner, is actually based on…. Donald F’ing Trump.

Now all we have to do is figure out how to get ourselves jiggered into the correct timeline, where we get the keys to the Cosmic Ferrari.

Put Mr. Fusion and a Flux Capacitor in that.

Put Mr. Fusion and a Flux Capacitor in that.

Joe and Nick and… Me!

B2 Bomber

Thanks to Jesse Michels (@AlchemyAmerican) for my first “joint appearance” with @joerogan and @iamnickcook as we all speculate about the deployment of the Biefeld-Brown effect in the B2 Stealth Bomber.

 

The freeze frame that YouTube delivered with the embed above would not have been my fist choice, but I do think the word ‘plausible’ is incredibly apt.

I know Joe Rogan is a controversial figure for some, but I certainly have no quarrel with the man and would dearly love to spend some time talking with him, so I hope this catches his eye.

I am a long time admirer of Nick Cook and relied heavily on his deeply researched 2001 book The Hunt For Zero Point when I was trying to make sense of the Townsend Brown saga back in the ‘aughts.  Nick and I have somewhat different methodologies: he comes at this material as a hardened aviation journalist and I’m more the whimsical story teller. But we agree that there is far more to the #TTBrown narrative than meets the eye.

It is gratifying to see all these clips cut together in a way that lends some credibility to the allegation that the Biefeld-Brown effect is at work in the B2, despite the government’s frequent denials.

‘Tis the (new) Season ?

Winter: it’s the season that goes on as long as you can possibly endure it* … and then it goes on a while longer.

Apparently the Bradford Pear trees up the street from me have not gotten the memo and there is going to a spring after all.

_________

*apologies to anybody in California digging out from under twelve feet of snow, it hasn’t been nearly that bad here in middle Tennessee)