Carl T. BergstromThere is losing your mind and then there is this. I don't even know what to call it.
https://newrepublic.com/article/180487/balaji-srinivasan-network-state-plutocrat
Loukas (They/Them) 🏳️⚧️@ct_bergstrom Ah yes this exciting gray-shirt corporativist authoritarian movement is certainly a new and exciting idea.
Bruce Heerssen
Shinydan
Arena Cops 🇺🇦✌@Loukas @ct_bergstrom Just a corrupt, perverted & mutilated plagiarism of Orwell's writing, begging for a histrionic billionaire's attention — and money.😎😬
Pamela Barroway – Biz Editor
Elena@ct_bergstrom an appreciable dystopian novel.
Roadskater, Ph.D.@I_am_elena @ct_bergstrom My reaction was, haven’t I seen this movie? Or maybe it was the 1984 Apple ad?
@roadskater @ct_bergstrom the trope of the "elected ones" with a number of privileges is itself a familiar one. It's familiar. 😄
Tim Panton@I_am_elena @roadskater @ct_bergstrom I am pretty sure this is lifted from Anne Currie's panopticon series, where the post human Greai form an exclusive secretive cult. https://www.annecurrie.com/
Bret Mogilefsky@steely_glint @I_am_elena @roadskater @ct_bergstrom It's a straight lift of "Franchise-Owned Quasi-National Entities" or "FOQNEs", a foundational concept in _Snow Crash_.
https://hachyderm.io/@mogul/112340595513046695
https://hachyderm.io/@mogul/112340595513046695
Bret Mogilefsky (@[email protected])
It kinda feels like these asshat technocrats read _Snow Crash_ around the same time I did, but they thought that a society drowning in a cacophony of FOQNEs sounded like a utopia, not a dystopia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash#Plot_background So now they're facing mortality and have money to burn and it's Torment Nexuses all the way down. 🙄 https://hachyderm.io/@mogul/112340556145191501
jack the nonabrasive@ct_bergstrom Freebasing Freemasonry
critter@karabaic @ct_bergstrom Freemasons at least knew how to build things to last. There won't even be a functioning light to turn out when the last member of this leaves.
@neocritter @ct_bergstrom oh when was the last time a Freemason actually built something? These folks have exactly the same relationship to creating technology.
Tom Ritchford@karabaic @neocritter @ct_bergstrom Nineteenth century? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sim%C3%B3n_Bol%C3%ADvar
Houdini was also a Mason, he was pretty OK, early 20th century.
So, say, 100 years.
@TomSwirly @neocritter @ct_bergstrom I am speaking specifically to building what their name implies, as an institution. I am deliberately excluding their own meeting places.
They've been known as a fairly odd secretive civic organization for centuries, going back to Tolstoy's masterful parodying of them in War & Peace.
@karabaic @neocritter @ct_bergstrom
Not sure what your answer has to do with what I wrote?
I know a great deal about the masons, and I have also visited their secretive world headquarters in New York. They were an actual revolutionary force until about a century ago, including most of America's founding fathers, and many of the South American revolutionaries.
Now they occasionally do things like loot the Vatican Bank, but mostly nothing of interest.
@TomSwirly The original reply had to do with them actually being technologists, building things, like these techno-optimists claim to be. You decided to take it to some of them being a force in politics, which is immaterial to my point of them being as divorced from their origins as these so-called technologists are from theirs. Sorry for the confusion.
@karabaic Arg, you meant "built" as in "built a building"!
Sorry, now it's all clear to me. I should have guessed.
Either way, we agree that the Freemasons are a spent force, except for the occasional criminal conspiracy to steal.
@TomSwirly May these "grays" be spent before they become part of our cultural currency
Nice play on words there!
In all fairness, they were pretty well the only race-blind organization in the United States for a long time.
Unfortunately, their insistence on only allowing monotheists who possess penises dooms them to cultural irrelevance...
@TomSwirly So was the Catholic Church, by centuries. 🤷🏻♂️
Edited to add: and the orthodox church, fwiw. This cover is from the 60's, but it was in line with centuries of Orthodox doctrine.
Edelruth, PBS Passport Holder@karabaic @neocritter @ct_bergstrom
Every Shriner Hospital, everywhere.
@Edelruth @neocritter @ct_bergstrom They constructed those using contractors, right? They didn't design and build them, like my local IBEW union hall was wired by the guys in the union and built by trade unions?
I don't want to say they are not capable of organizing and getting things done, but they are far from their origins as builders, as far as these technologists are from working with technology.
@Edelruth These technologists are like Masons after they stopped directly building. They are now policymakers laboring under the academic fallacy that their out-of-date expertise in one area is transferable to another.
what the duck@ct_bergstrom "messianic techno-fetishistic proto fascism"
Morgenmuffel@Chimneyswift @ct_bergstrom you are missing “libertarian fetish”
George Liquor, American@ct_bergstrom jfc, this guy's messy
✨pencilears✨@ct_bergstrom it's so funny because security absolutely hates the techies.
Like, security knows you don't see them as real people, and they hate you for it.
scott f@ct_bergstrom "Those who try to downplay Balaji’s importance in Silicon Valley often portray him as a 'clown.' But Donald Trump taught us that clowns can be dangerous, especially those with proximity to influence and power" Yeah. We could laugh it off if his friends didn't have so much money. But seeing as they do...
Dreaming of dad jazz.He's a clown, and I'll say not very important to the tech scene, really.
The people who bankroll him and encourage him. The folks that always make sure there's some spot on some payroll for him?
They're the scary ones.
They won't talk because they know they'll get found out.
Big Kumera Energy@ct_bergstrom we... need to tax people.... More.
TC Won't Give In To LiesTHIS 👆👆👆
Half the world's problems would be helped if we #TaxTheRich (specifically a #WealthTax not income)
Negative12DollarBill@ct_bergstrom
He's openly admitting that his plan involves bribing and co-opting the police?
I mean I'm not saying it wouldn't work, but … people would kinda notice if five members of every SFPD cop's family got a fake job at a tech company. And every cop went to the same 'banquet' every week.
L'égrégore André ꕭꕬ@negative12dollarbill @ct_bergstrom Yeah, but as long as nobody does anything about it it'll be successful. There's a lot of open secrets like that around.
Their strategy works well for a few city blocks, one police district, maybe in the 1930s or a developing country. The rampant egotism of a guy who thinks he's going to take over a whole city though? Insanity.
@negative12dollarbill Looking at a number of US cities (New Orleans for one), I'm not so sure it'd fail.
(and re. the "developing country" thing: large swaths of 'murica checks many of the boxes for that category)
(and re. the "developing country" thing: large swaths of 'murica checks many of the boxes for that category)
Guido Stevens@ct_bergstrom This is an invidious attempt to put @theonion out of business.
Bruno Philipe@ct_bergstrom libertarian tech bros are so boring that not even their ideas of how to take over the world are original
Jairaj Devadiga@brunoph @ct_bergstrom Srinivasan is not a libertarian at all. He is a run of the mill fascist.
Libertarians don't like the police.
Dubi is here 
Tom Walker@ct_bergstrom "Silicon Valley invents the bus" but for freemasonry (with fascistic imagery)
Aral Balkan@ct_bergstrom I believe you call it fascism.
OH, that guy *again*! Dude cannot stop licking boots.
Rachel Rawlings@ct_bergstrom Neofeudal caste society with people who don't know how to farm?
Adlangx@ct_bergstrom bwahahahahhahah. GASP! . BWAHHAHAHAHHAH!
Faye@ct_bergstrom Living in a virtualised society. Brilliant… detached from reality.
Toni Aittoniemi@ct_bergstrom I’m not the only one who’s been seeing the Silicon Valley religion emerging.
The Valley is so filled to the brim with engineers and so little humanists, that they have been incapable of seeing their ”logical choices” actually being moral judgements and value trade-offs for a long time.
The next logical step is them missing also that their organisations are turning into acting on articles if faith, like rationalists, longtermists or techno-optimists who ”believe”.
They’ve already got their technological creation myth, the simulation hypothesis. And the media of chock-full of ”proofs” as they pledge allegiange to mind-uploading and eternal life, where the chosen ones get to live forever and the unfaithfull get left behind as they proceed to colonise other planets.
So convinced are they of their atheism, that they fail to see what path they are on. Even as it is as plain as day.
Bruce Mirken@ct_bergstrom Weirdly reminiscent of H.G. Wells' later dystopian novels.
random thoughts@ct_bergstrom One of my ex-colleagues is heading this direction fast. He was always quick to fall to any scam like bitcoin or now the generative AI bullshit, but he is adamant that he is on the right track.
Sashin@ct_bergstrom What the fuck is this?!
Henrik Sundström@ct_bergstrom Evidence of neo-feudalism and the commodification of policing.
Prem Kumar Aparanji 👶🤖🐘@ct_bergstrom losing your soul?
Tristam@ct_bergstrom only tech bros could look at fascism and say "you know the problem with this? Too much Hugo Boss"
Stacey Campbell@ct_bergstrom At first I thought this was the annotated manifesto of that chap who self-immolated outside a Manhattan criminal court the other day.
Pseudonymous 
Out of curiosity I looked into what he wrote, & the immolationist was a #hippie complaining about these guys.