Make money doing the work you believe in
So. This is a note of note.
According to Wired a few days ago, the FBI is undertaking surveillance of “anti-tech” activists, as found in 1,000 pages of unpublished reports the publication obtained.
"The chaotic atmosphere that may result from emergent AI technology in the next five years may fuel large-scale protests that devolve into civil unrest and anti-tech violent extremist activity, especially in large urban areas such as New York City," the report reads. The term "anti-tech violent extremism" does not appear in any publicly available DHS or FBI domestic extremism reports or guides and represents a novel grouping of a wide range of ideologies under a single extremist category.
The prime example given for the “anti-tech violent extremists” is the Zizians, a bizarre cult involved in a trail of at least six murders.
This is the bit that concerns me:
The Intelligence Bureau warns that "paranoid views regarding AI" may proliferate in the aftermath of the Zizians' trial, thanks to their "attempt to reason the belief that a godlike incarnation of AI is imminent," and belief that "humans must best use their time in the present to devote themselves to ensuring its compliance with human morality, or face existential consequences for failing to do so."
The Zizians believed an AI overlord from the future was inducing programmers in the present to bring him into existence. This AI overlord would severely punish everyone who had opposed the rise of the Machine.
According to a lengthy story in Wired about this group, the leader Ziz Lasota (a transgender woman) decided to fight back against the coming overlord:
She refused to be blackmailed, she concluded, by what might come. “Evil gods must be fought,” she wrote. “If this damns me then so be it.”
Now it so happens that I’ve written a story predicting the fairly imminent rise of a literal God of AI. I kind of keep this story quiet, it’s extreme, but I’m very glad I wrote it. I had absolutely no intention of writing it now, I thought maybe in five years’ time. But events in the world made me think again.
Just the other day, I decided to punt this story in a note, the first time I’ve done that. I just thought, you know, I don’t care how nuts people think I am.
There’s a shift happening in the global dynamic. Peter Thiel scuttling to Argentina is a signal. Something’s up; and the heat is coming down.
I was three years old in 1960, when the apartheid police came to arrest my parents after the Sharpeville massacre. They arrested everyone. They arrested a completely innocent guy who happened to park his car outside our gate instead of across the road, where he was visiting.
My parents spent three months in jail without trial, it’s a long time for a three-year-old. I remember visiting them in Pretoria Central Prison. I got a bar of chocolate, it was a genuine consolation.
So I know what it feels like when the heat comes down. I’ve felt it many, many times in my life.
This time — is different. This is at another level. But Systems Haywire is on a watchlist, I suspect. And if anyone wonders why I’ve been writing so much, it’s because I’ve been wondering when the heat would come down and all good things would start coming to an end.
This Is It, as Michael Jackson said. And he wasn’t wrong.
Just one last note, though. I was rooting for Jill Stein in both 2016 and 2024. When Trump got elected, I said — everything will depend on who he surrounds himself with this time. If it’s idiots like last time, we’re finished.
The very first appointment he announced was Sebastian Gorka. I went on a couple of forums and said — bye bye Trump. You could not have possibly signalled more clearly that if the last bunch of advisors were certified nuts, like John Bolton, this time around we were going to get the dregs of the total moron barrel. Gorka is one of the very stupidest people I’ve ever heard in my life. He makes Pete Hegseth sound intelligent.
The point: he is now the counter-terrorism czar. He is the person who will be administering these watchlists.
There’s an old Chinese saying, “God grant me an intelligent enemy.”
God has completely forsaken us, folks. The situation is not good.
You may think I’m being melodramatic, but just wait and see. Big events are going to start playing themselves out. And if you raise one peep of protest at a data centre stealing your city’s power — you are on that watchlist too.
I started professional life as a physics teacher, I did my training at King’s College, London, in 1978/79. I really loved teaching the subject.
When I came across Rudolf Steiner’s prediction of the inevitable rise to power of an antichrist in the early 21st century, something very powerful stirred in me. I felt I had always known this, that there was a very dark figure in the future of humanity.
When I discovered that he was the lord of physical form, of all material existence, the other shoe dropped. It wasn’t a mistake that I became a physics teacher. What’s about to happen to the Earth is basically the greatest lesson in physics it’s ever going to get. That’s kind of the whole point of this incarnation.
So stay wired, folks. This is getting interesting, as the Chinese say.
I’m planning to launch a cookbook on Monday June 1. This means writing an article, basically. I hardly have time to sleep and eat at present, with editing work, so this is going to be fun. It’s very much an end times cookbook, maybe the ultimate survival guide for the 21st century. I’ve been planning to launch this cookbook for at least 20 years. June 1 is the exact 50th anniversary of me becoming a vegetarian cook, so I thought I’d commemorate it.
But the timing is interesting in other ways. This Is It, as Michael Jackson said. And he wasn’t wrong.
Good luck everyone. Expect the unexpected.
