xeleriac

I keep waiting for a good excuse to write.

One day I think of a subject to explore, the next day it's gone or I lose interest.

I was going to write a book review for Cory Doctorow's latest publication “How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism” but I didn't want to dedicate a whole post to it. Basically, he wants more laws written and other laws repealed that would serve to break up Silicon Valley tech monopolies. Not very radical, imo. He also peppers in a lot of “conspiracy theories are dangerous and harmful” rhetoric, which is sus because that's a dogwhistle for establishement bootlickers and it makes me wonder if he's been compromised by the BORG. Griping aside, I generally like to read Doctorow's work because of his advocacy for peer-to-peer filesharing and copyleft.

What else. I'm losing interest in Matrix. Online “communities” are still really odd to me. I don't think I'll ever get it. Is it a place for lonely people to go so they can relate to other lonely people? Create an illusion of care and cohesion with people you could never really bond with through a screen? There is no healthy substitute for true-blue in the flesh community—family and friends and neighbours and lovers and others. Maybe I'm missing something. That doesn't negate the redeeming qualities of such a contrivance. I have been led to a lot of online resources that I might not have easily discovered if it weren't for the free flow of information sharing in a chat community like Matrix. I may not have found Hack Liberty (or writefreely, for that matter) without it.

What else. The 2023-2024 NBA regular season has begun. I love hoops. Love to play, love to spectate.

What else. Oh. The media hypnosis continues. I am allergic to virtually all broadcasting that originates from the media industrial complex. For that reason I am bothered by the quickness with which “current events” comes to my attention. I've been getting more comfortable telling people that I am sincerely uninterested and I don't care to know about the latest perverse press release. Nowadays I am accustomed to redirecting conversation away from whatever propaganda people are being cued to disseminate, and go in another direction, typically toward commentary that brings attention to the conformity of perception that is characteristic of useful idiots who commonly consume establishment narratives.

What else. What else. What elks. Wha helps.

Busy days fer me, but it is with increasing interest that I dive deeper into the world of cypherpunk subculture.

Amidst this ever changing landscape I find myself coming back to one metanarrative—the war between those who want to control the digital commons, and us, who may want to make it uncontrollable; ungovernable, if you will—unless you're a spook, in which case, kindly eat shit.

The fight to keep the web free is of course a microcosm in the larger fight for freedom. The stakes are getting higher and it will be telling to see how users and abusers respond to the squeeze.

I worry that many free people who use the web as a tool of liberation will immediately cease their online efforts in the face of eventual legislation that will lead to sweeping reforms, like an era of online prohibition. Soft, as far as I'm concerned. If we are to take our rights and freedoms seriously, I think we need to make legislation redundant, both offline and online. It must be made clear to the legislators and, more importantly, to those who employ them, their scripture or “statutes” is of no importance to us. Making the criminal class obsolete is what's important to us.

I do wonder how many cypherpunks exercise their liberties away from the keyboard. Do these men & women, girls & boys, live life like everyone else?

Are they mortgagors and debtors with credit cards, registered vehicles, and streaming subscriptions? Do they file income tax? Do they attend school? Vote in elections? Do they have bank accounts? Are they employees or employers? Are they npc bootlickers, or rebel guerilla motherfuckers?

My hope is the latter, but it takes all types. Don't it mate?

Whoever you are, I just hope you're doing something for the cause. This war going on right now, it's a dirty war, a proxy war, a war that belongs to the fifth generation. No one knows exactly what's going on. So many of us are still surveying the enemy, its territory, its manpower.

I suggest you hackers and crackers, bashers and culture-jammers and cyphermonks take the subversion as far as you can take it in your day-to-day life. Get your accounts out of your name. Ditch your ID. Better yet, abandon your given name and start using a different one. And I don't mean in your Matrix groups. I mean out in the world beyond, the places you frequent. Be around people and start talking. But bear in mind, you've got two ears and one mouth for a reason. I hope you have a heart with good aim, and the resolve of a tugboat.

Get your defenses up and be smart. The enemy is in combat with us, and he will only get more forceful and harder to strike the longer you wait. You can parry his blows for only so long. Soon, you will have to strike.

You're not submissive. So make it count ok!

About fifteen years ago I was blindsided by a new media phenomenon the likes of which would set my young self on a course of discovery I consider both empowering and harrowing.

Outlets such as globalresearch, zerohedge, bibliotecapleyades, therealnewsnetwork, humansarefree, wakingtimes, activistpost, collectiveevolution, and a number of other random ones that I can't at the moment recall helped to shed light on fringe issues that, for me, served to broaden my understanding of the world while testing my gullibility.

For the first time I came to see the significance of investigative journalism, and ultimately, the prolific schism that exists between uncensored independent reporting and the corporate media industrial complex overseen by the state.

Groups of hardworking thinkers, researchers, and reporters came out of the gate strong, many of whom are dissenters and nonconformists themselves, many of whom have been going strong for well over a decade now without a tenth of the financial support received by the corporate press conglomerates of the world.

All things considered, the new media landscape is certainly not immune to criticism—mainstream media has crucified it for years, characterizing its reporting as nothing more than conspiracy theory, misinformation, falsehoods, and other hegemonic watchwords.

To thinking individuals it should be clear by now that the barons of the corporate press have a vested interest in maintaining its monopoly on public perception, done through a tightly-controlled, uniform press establishment. It follows that any challenge to the carefully staged status quo of mass media would be subject to tense ridicule, as has been case with so many excellent journalists, outlier reporting agencies, and dissenters.

That concludes my tender intro.

If I see one more op-ed about the fucking World Economic Forum I swear to gawd I'm going to donate all my dogecoin to the Council on Foreign Relations!

For a fair amount of time now I have been a reader of an assortment of apolitical indy media.

I try to avoid sectarian reporting, notably the political theatre of statism and its trappings. It's trivial to me, so I steer clear. But only within the last five years have I come to notice a disappointing trend in the reporting and commentary of apolitical indy media: It's becoming an echo chamber.

Operation Pandemic showed us how much traffic alternative content creators could drive through their websites, resulting in a wealth of clickbait, as well as a wealth of high-quality investigative journalism too (a part I loved).

That said, I suppose I'm just tired of reading about corruption. And I'm tired of having my attention throttled by parties that stand to gain from my attention.

So I suppose the problem is me, not grassroots media.

I don't want to read about the struggle in Rojava, or the next UFO “leak,” Ukraine or Syria or Russia, new pollution, more debt, economic freefall, scientism, culture wars, privacy violations, germaphobia, and so on, ad nauseum. I know. I get it.

But tbh, I don't think I need more of this knowledge right now in my life. What I need is wisdom.

Wisdom is the intercourse of information and understanding.

Wisdom is knowledge applied.

It is not about the endless consumption of media, no matter how vanguard it appears to be. What are you going to do with it anyway, with this habitual indulgence to stay up to speed? What's yer motivation to consume?

I don't give a fuck about what the plutocrats of the world are doing—I already know what they're doing and it bores me. It bores me because it is losing relevance in my life. It's losing relevance to me because I am trying to create a parallel structure, not enable the dying beast before us. Isn't life about going out there and addressing your concerns in real-time?

Taking chances?

Adapting to challenges?

Disrupting patterns of thought and behaviour?

Building community?

Do it now, you fucking boob!

Alphabet Inc. is the holding company for google and several other of its subsidiaries. TBH I don't give a shit enough about this conglomerate to furnish the reader with a history, so you can wikiless on yer own time.

As a degoogler, I confess this was a difficult leech to remove. Yahoo: simple. Facebook: easy enuff. But ditchin' the googlebeast was a challenge. The basterds don't make it easy.

So pervasive is this company that hundreds of millions of people's lives would be thrown into disarray if its services were suddenly made unavailable. That's downright pathetic and also indicative of how much influence the Geelzebub has grown to exercise over modern man.

Anyway, I don't have any sort of inspirational tale to tell about this foul company. It is but one of the “Big Five” IT companies that dominate the digital landscape today.

With help from intelligence firms, think tanks, academia, and the state, these silicon valley companies all work together.

Why? To make the world a more connected place, of course!

To protect children!

To create jobs!

To save the world!

Blah, blah, blah, and a bunch of other asinine tropes to conceal the ultimate aim to implement a system of slavery that an unthinking public cannot detect let alone combat. Think, Plato's Cave—but with really fast wifi and an array of computer monitors instead of walls.

If you're the type of person that treasures all the redeeming qualities of being a human person, I strongly encourage you to divorce google now now now.

Not convinced? How about this excerpt from a 2020 article by cupwire:

“Google has been constantly embroiled in some kind of controversy for almost two decades. Between changing user settings remotely, manipulating search results, censoring their search results, exposing the private information of its users, dealing with constant antitrust investigations, acquiring businesses to further its data collection and analytics, obstructing investigations against them, and a slew of other matters, there's a lot going against them.

But this post isn't about any of that. It's also not about the things that could have negative privacy implications, such as Google Glass (featuring, the Glassholes) nor is it a bland read through of their privacy policy while making up hypothetical scenarios in which they collect the data they say.

What you'll find here are 13 years worth of scandals, mishaps, and borderline malicious decisions regarding privacy with Google at the center.”

You can read the full exposé here.

EDIT: the writer behind fmda, another instance of agorism.blog, does a devil's advocate of google here.

Just this morning I finished reading Psychiatry: The Science of Lies by the late, great Thomas Szasz.

No, my dainty copyright enthusiasts, I did not purchase this book from a retailer. Sorry to disappoint yews. It was shared to me by some unknown peer who wanted to make it available for others to read and enjoy. Thank you, whoever you are.

Besides Szasz's work being pretty fuckn explosive, it is a publication I discovered through what is known as a shadow library.

enter the shadow

I wish I thought of it, to be honest—a colossal web archive of literature open to everybody with access to a web-connection and a machine. No strings attached. This idea of an open-source global literary commons, a liberated library, is nothing less than revolutionary. According to the eminent pirate archivist, Anna, like all things revolutionary, it's not exactly a walk in the park.

I've been using shadow libraries for three years now and boy, let me tell you: boners and bookmarks are aplenty. Readers, let us rejoice. I remember how amazed I was when I discovered that these archives maintain such an extensive collection of material. Really current publications, too.

I don't see how it is not a service to humanity. Making literature—a cultural treasure and perennial source of knowledge and inspiration—as accessible as possible sounds like a spankn good idea to me.

Alternatively, if, like so many well-groomed individuals, I am hoodwinked by the idea that art mustn't be freely shared, then I suppose I would cry theft! O' how the bleeding heart of the indignant author, the corporate publishing house, and the public relations hack vie for your sympathy.

intellectual property: just another rich man's trick

As I've chosen to educate myself about IP/copyright and its controversies, it has become clear to me that it's a confidence trick, albeit, a deplorable one meant to further extend the dogma of capital outward and into the mind of the human race. Slavers! up to their usual tricks again, eh ...

Because I am hungry and in need of a snack, I can't wax too philosophically about how contemptible it is to me that some assholes in a legislature want to prevent us from reading what is available to read. Fuck those guys!

1. Anna's Archive

2. Library Genesis

3. z-library

(If there's any way to verify book downloads from these sh_libraries, it might be wise to do so. Checksums or hashes, whatever there is available. I can see this being a delicious opportunities for threat actors to insert various spyware/malware etc. into the freeware-copyleft community.)

The teams behind these archives really deserve a cookie. I have so much respect for them. There's still a lotta fasci dirtbags out there that wanna burn books, or at least, prevent you from reading the “wrong ones”. It's obvious to me that they've failed. So let's seize the day by learning, unlearning, and relearning all the things that matter to us.

I don't know about you, but I'm down to honor the work done by those who encourage us to read and read radically.

All the steps I'm now taking to secure my privacy and reclaim control over my data makes me reflect on the days when my digital practices revolved around porn, torrents, google, and routinely ignored software and OS updates.

How careless of me.

I used the web like a stooge from age 12 to age 30. That's a lot of frivolous internet use with practically no thought given to security, anonymity, or threat modelling. Big data thanks me. And I get Five Big Winks from the Five Eyes.

For so long I had waived my privacy without thinking hey maybe I should be smarter about this. Maybe I oughta learn more about this revolutionary tool I use on the daily. Maybe, just maybe, who I am, and what I do, has value—both online and offline.

I do wonder if the poor digital opsec of my past has compromised my efforts going forward. Perhaps only time will tell.

All things considered I take heart knowing that if my digital efforts to anonymize and agorize are in vain, at least I am cultivating a tactical mindset, a useful mentality as we plunge deeper into a “guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation,” as Marshall McLuhan so aptly put it in Culture is Our Business (1970).

So I decided to sign up for PayPal.

As a privacy advocate, this was a pretty big deal to me. Knowing full well the loathsome track record of PayPal as an instrument of the technocratic state, I agonized over this decision.

The skinny: I applied for a remote editing gig. If I wanted it, I'd have to get the P, and I don't mean Pfizer. The employer wanting me on board as an editor apparently only makes payments to its freelancers via PayPal. Balls.

Understand this. I don't ever give out my provincial name (i.e. “legal name”... does that mean another name can be illegal?). Well, sadly, I gave it to PayPal. I thought it'd satisfy their hunger for a “true and correct identity.” Then I could get on with my life and provide for my family. Not so fast! What a foolish move. At least I didn't give them any other personal identifiers of mine.

Within minutes my activity was flagged as 'suspicious' and all features were frozen. I was informed by a bot that until I provided their “team” with gang-issued photo ID, my account privileges would be suspended indefinitely. Here's the kicker. I just said fuck it and decided to close my account. Ah, not so fast there, private eye. Wanna close your account, do ya? Send us that ID. We'll review it first. Then maybe we'll close your account.

Well stuff me in the KYC.

I can't believe I even bothered. All things considered, I did it with my family in mind. Noble though that may be, I compromised integrity and now I feel like I have to do damage control, which suxxx. Those stasi motherfuckers have me flagged. Great. I don't even get any work out of it! A raw deal [I recently learned that the organization accepts any PayPal account as long as I invoice them!]. The parasite class will always try to leverage our families against us. Never forget that. That's how this/a mafia works.

Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) policies are evidently trojan horses for the expansion of the corporate surveillance-state. I'm discovering how troubling this is in real time. I remember the days when a signup took two seconds and an email address. Now its like your applying for a fucking mortgage.

The crazy thing is, the functionaries writing and peddling these KYC + AML standards literally work for the organized crime establishment. Have you read the Paradise Papers? How about the Panama Papers? These conmen want to know how to con you better. They're using big data for that. Just look at Palantir.

Us mutineers better start putting our heads together, or we're gonna find ourselves living in an open-air prison faster than you can say “end-to-end-encrypted.”

That said, there are people are out there, both underground and on-the-ground, doing really tremendous work to preserve privacy and freedom in the digital age.

This report is dedicated to them.

Hackliberty. Right on. Let the pine bough sway.

Anarchism. Libertarianism. Abolitionism. Privsec. Natural Law. Yeah. Whatever you wanna call it, the spirit is free. Like I tell my daughter from time to time: Different Word, Same Meaning.

Some days I feel like ~ If it ain't free, it ain't worth shit.

The web is still the wild west as far as I'm concerned. Shootouts aplenty. Yee. Fucking. Haw. Saddle up partner and so forth.

Basically, I just wanna use this pretty instance right here to candidly share the stuff I done learned about taking responsibility for my word and my deed. I'm not a rookie nor do I be a veteran.

Figuratively speaking, I'm a learning machine. There is no practical way I can reasonably share a fraction of what I manage to learn in a week, so I'll have to distill what I can muster, load the bazooka, aim, fire, and SPIT.

Big into the privacy/opsec movement these days. The ecosystem is a wild ass, magikal place. Clearnet stuff alone is really impressive. Just one look at privacytools.io or privacyguides is enough to keep a mate occupied for the next year alone.

Gettin into KeePassXC, Fawkes, Veracrypt. Librewolf, OSINT. Infosec training. Coding. Privacy frontends. You name it! Wintertime is always a high time to absorb new juices. Spring equinox will be here lickety-split baby. Dial it up.

What does it all amount to?

Can't say, bud. But for the time being, the silent war on privacy is being fought on several fronts and the general public is characteristically clueless/careless/apathetic. That said, the fight is on and it is a fireworks display. I am not in the bleachers; I have a roman candle.

Stay warm, fuzzy peaches.