home.social

#conspiracytheory — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #conspiracytheory, aggregated by home.social.

  1. “You're obsessing over the wrong Peter Thiel conference: Forget Dialog. Bilderberg is where the actual masters of the universe meet. Three guesses who secretly funds it?”

    by Carole Cadwalladr in How To Survive The Broligarchy on Substack

    @uk_politics
    @euronews
    @EUCouncil

    “But what if I told you there is a secret masters-of-the-universe conference that Thiel helps fund, serves as a director of, and stacks with some of his closest business partners and allies?

    [..]

    And that this year’s attendees included the head of MI6, the Secretary General of NATO, a President (Finland), a brace of finance ministers, the head of French intelligence, a King and Queen (the Netherlands) Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind, the chair of Goldman Sachs, the CEO of Deutsche Bank and the President of the European Investment Bank?”

    open.substack.com/pub/broligar

    #Press #SocialMedia #Thiel #Palantir #Bilderberg #Karp #Dialog #ConspiracyTheory #Leak #Schmipf #Anduril #Funding

  2. Anton & Glenn

    What a pair of characters! Glenn was just a pretty weird guy in general, clever . He lived on the second floor of my building. Anton, in the wheelchair is a book all by himself. His leg. That is just one story and here is how it happened. Anton is an alcoholic, what he did before he lost the leg for a living I don’t know, but when first saw him, he was on the corner by the robots begging. He would make enough money and then off to the Bottle Store. He did have a room to sleep in. I got […]

    waynebisset.wordpress.com/2026

  3. Rand Clinic 1986/7

    The Rand Clinic 1986/7 Rolled a car, upside down and flipped over type of jol. Car totalled, boss unhappy, but it was not my fault that time! Anyway. My face had a few cuts as did my arms, and my left hand had a broken knuckle. I did not like doctors then already, as they were still trying to kill my mom with their drugs. They got it right about a years later…. Anyway, patched myself up, no problem. Or so I thought. My Pinkie knuckle healed wrong and the finger could not bend. Ok. […]

    waynebisset.wordpress.com/2026

  4. Our Drugged up Society

    How the hell did we get here? Working on two philosophies to see how we got here. First is not looking where you fell, but where you slipped. Funny enough this led straight to the second philosophy, find the source. For this particular slip we need look no further than: Psychiatry . These “doctors” are on the forefront of our legal drug dealer trade, i.e. The Medical Profession. While at the moment everyone seems to be on about Big Pharma, let’s take a look at this branch of the […]

    waynebisset.wordpress.com/2026

  5. HOW TO TELL…..

    HOW TO TELL IF YOU’RE SOUTH AFRICAN …. You call a bathing suit a “swimming costume” or a “cozzie”. You call a traffic light a “robot”. You call a sandwich a ‘sarmie’ You call an elevator a “lift” – but asking for a ‘lift’ doesn’t mean you want an elevator – you actually want a “ride” You call a car hood a “bonnet” You call a car trunk a “boot” You call a pickup truck a “bakkie” “Van” isn’t a vehicle – he’s the butt of some […]

    waynebisset.wordpress.com/2026

  6. My Rhino Wars – The Flat Tire and the Lion

    The Flat Tyre and Lion Because the APUs are the last people to get funds we had been patrolling with really wrecked tyres for weeks. Our spare was absolutely useless at this stage. In the early hours Johannes and I were glad to see a lion in the thick bush, for exactly 2 minutes. A few meters down the road we got another flat. The procedure we had by now perfected was to get the small battery charged air pump out and just keep on stopping every now and then to inflate the almost useless […]

    waynebisset.wordpress.com/2026

  7. “Conspiracy theories also bring another reward: power.”*…

    Theophilus Schweighardt, The Temple of the Rose Cross, 1618 (source)

    Barrett Brown interrogates our fascination with conspiracies and conspiracy theories…

    Over a period of several years in the early seventeenth century, there appeared in Western Europe three manifestos laying out the history of the theretofore unheard-of Rosicrucian order, whose secret directorate was said to employ powerful magical-scientific techniques in service to sociopolitical reform. This naturally led to quite a bit of public speculation, which gradually abated in the absence of further pronouncements; within a few generations the only parties ascribing any significance to the incident tended to be dubious characters claiming to be Rosicrucians themselves, rarely with much to show for it. Thus, as a result of its gradual association with cranks, the Rosicrucian story developed a kind of inoculation against serious scrutiny.

    It wasn’t until the sixties that the British historian Dame Frances A. Yates breached the actual nature and extent of the thought movement that informed both the manifestos and its audience. In her book The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, she demonstrates that the texts were written as anti-Hapsburg, proreformist propaganda drawing on doctrines associated with the sixteenth-century philosopher Francis Bacon, and that this was understood by commentators on both sides; that the surreal “alchemical wedding” described therein references the 1613 marriage of England’s Elizabeth Stuart and Frederick V of the Palatinate, widely heralded as the linchpin of a proto-Protestant alliance capable of establishing such reform by force; that the broader proposals were indeed taken seriously by scholars, not as scripture but rather as a set of visionary policy proposals dressed in metaphor, akin to Bacon’s The New Atlantis; and that enthusiasts such as Elias Ashmole would directly implement those proposals by founding the Royal Society, establishing the primacy of science. Rather than being a footnote to premodern folly, the Rosicrucian affair turns out to sit at the narrative center of the modern world.

    There’s a lesson here that bears attention today, at the apparent twilight of the same modern world, when the fundamental problem we face involves the degree to which the truth must now compete with such a vast multiplicity of falsehoods that discovering truth itself becomes unviable. Consider that so much of consequence to our own heritage should have been so misunderstood for as long as the Rosicrucian manifestos; it seems that crucial facts can be effectively concealed from serious attention simply by being visibly subject to the unserious sort. Such facts are gradually imbued with a sort of de facto defense mechanism against scrutiny, whereby the mere act of taking an interest in them serves to discredit professional researchers and journalists…

    From the 1600s to recent history and the insights of Umberto Eco, what’s going on– and why: “The Ur-“Conspiracy”: History of a Pseudoconcept,” from @parisreview.bsky.social.

    Apposite: “Revisionist History — Aliens, Secrets and Conspiracies,” by Steve Blank

    * “The emotional appeal of a conspiracy theory is in its simplicity. It explains away complex phenomena, accounts for chance and accidents, offers the believer the satisfying sense of having special, privileged access to the truth. For those who become the one-party state’s gatekeepers, the repetition of these conspiracy theories also brings another reward: power.” – Anne Applebaum, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism

    ###

    As we ponder perspicacity, we might we send inquisitive birthday greetings to Michel Eyquem de Montaigne; he was born on this date in 1533.  Best known during his lifetime as a statesman, Montaigne is remembered for popularizing the essay as a literary form.  His massive volume Essais (translated literally as “Attempts” or “Trials”)– contain what are, to this day, some of the most widely-influential essays ever written.  Montaigne had a powerful impact on writers ever after, from Descartes, Pascal, and Rousseau through Hazlitt, Emerson, and Nietzsche, to Zweig, Hoffer, and Asimov.  Indeed, he’s believed to have been an influence on the later works of Shakespeare.

    And while he pre-dates the “Rosicrucian” publications mentioned above, he observed (in Essais) “the truth of these days is not that which really is, but what every man persuades another man to believe.”

     source

    Lastly, a good reason to step outside and look up early this evening: “February’s ‘rare planetary alignment’ is coming — here’s what to expect from the planet parade

    #Aliens #BarrettBrown #conspiracy #conspiracyTheories #conspiracyTheory #culture #essay #essays #history #literature #Montaigne #politics #secrets #SteveBlank
  8. So, I am a Computational Biologist. Keep that in mind. I’m an actual scientist who works with ecological concepts, specifically the microbiome. One of the most insufferable reactions to the cyberpunk era we inhabit is the emergence of anti-science ideas from the left in response to techno-fascism. The strange part is that many people on the left do not even recognize them as anti-science, because they assume the left is aligned with science and the right opposed to it; ergo, if the left says it, it must be scientific. It is insane: washing your hands is technology. Medicine is technology.

    I think, because the Internet has hijacked people’s brains, many conflate technology with electronics or machines. Anthropologically, technology consists of material objects, techniques, and organized practices through which humans intentionally intervene in their environments. Technology is culture, and human culture is technology. When someone learns a skill or a discipline from someone else, that is an extension of technology.

    Technology encompasses craft traditions (blacksmithing), agriculture, and institutionalized processes of teaching and learning. Agriculture is one of the oldest forms of technology. Yes, farmers are tech workers. I write code, but I also spent a large amount of time on a farm, and I can tell you that many tech workers who pride themselves on writing code would not know what to do with farm equipment.

    So, from that broad perspective, we can sum technology up in one word: education. A basic heuristic for determining if something is cultural or not is: can it be taught and learned? These words? I was taught English, and I am using an invented language to transmit knowledge to you; ergo, I am using technology to transmit cultural knowledge to you. Reading a book is thus using a piece of human technology. So, being anti-tech connotes being anti-education.

    What got me thinking about this is a toot I read on Mastodon:

    The truth is that society needs to develop ethically and ecologically more than it does technologically. That’s not to say that we should shun technology, but our development along other lines lags far behind our technological capacity.

    ↬ecoevo.social/@benlockwood/116052113455871454

    Sounds valid, right? That is the distinct smell of bull shit.This is a clear example of what is called a platitude. Platitudes are memetically hijacking people’s brains. Memetics actually hijack your brain—they change it. It’s similar to how a retrovirus can alter the genome of its host. So, trying to have conversations with these people is pointless, which is why I avoid the chronically online Internet scene and arguing with them.

    It made me want to scream. As I mentioned earlier, technology is basically a set of things you learn from other humans—typically within a culture—that helps you do or make something. You know what else is learned within human society? A normative set of cultural values about how we ought to behave. So, both technology and culture emerge from the same thing simultaneously and mutually. You cannot have humans intervening in things to achieve ecological development, because that is technology, and you cannot educate humans on ethics without an invented language. It is literally an anti-education argument.

    Ethics and technology arise together from the same human conditions and social processes. It makes little sense to claim that technology is “outpacing” ethics. The two do not develop independently. We form ethical norms in response to new capacities and circumstances. There would be no cultural norms about how to use the Internet if the Internet did not exist. And, there would be no ethical debates about AI if AI did not exist. Ethical reflection emerges alongside technological change because both are products of human culture.

    As new problems create new technologies that create new problems, societies respond by negotiating norms, rules, and expectations appropriate to those contexts. The same pattern appears in politics. Politics concerns who gets what, when, and how—it is the negotiation of power, rights, and resources. Without resources or competing claims, there would be nothing to negotiate. Ethics and politics are not trailing behind technology because they are co-emergent responses to the same underlying realities.

    @benlockwood

  9. Stepping Back From Social Media To Read a Book

    I’m taking a break. After spending like two years in the worst parts of the Internet modeling the memetic spread of conspiracy-driven behavioral patterns and developing social media software as a side hustle, I think I’m going to take a step back and… I don’t know… maybe read a book? lol.

    I’m a Computational Biologist who pretty much studies the memetics of conspiracy theories and how they act as another vector/epidemiological layer. I’ve also been working on various contracts for social media development stuff. Working on the shit I’ve been working on for years forces you to see the worst parts of people that they split off. It makes you hate everyone — and I mean everyone.

  10. BlueSky’s Solution To Moderating Is Moderating Without Moderating via Social Proximity

    I have noticed a lot of people are confused about why some posts don’t show up on threads, though they are not labeled by the moderation layer. Bluesky has begun using what it calls social neighborhoods (or network proximity) as a ranking signal for replies in threads. Replies from people who are closer to you in the social graph, accounts you follow, interact with, or share mutual connections with, are prioritized and shown more prominently. Replies from accounts that are farther away in that network are down-ranked. They are pushed far down the thread or placed behind “hidden replies.”

    Each person gets their own unique view of a thread based on their social graph. It creates the impression that replies from distant users simply don’t exist. This is true even though they’re still technically public and viewable if you expand the thread or adjust filters. Bluesky is explicitly using features of subgraphs to moderate without moderating. Their reasoning is that if you can’t see each other, you can’t harass each other. Ergo, there is nothing to moderate.

    Bluesky mentions that here:

    https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-31-2025-building-healthier-social-media-update

    As a digression, I’m not going to lie: I really enjoyed working on software built on the AT protocol, but their fucking users are so goddamn weird. It’s sort of like enjoying building houses, but hating every single person who moves into them. But, you don’t have to deal with them because you’re just the contractor. That is how I feel about Bluesky. I hate the people. I really like the protocol and infrastructure.

    I sort of am a sadist who does enjoy drama, so I do get schadenfreude from people with social media addictions and parasocial fixations who reply to random people on Bluesky, because they don’t realize their replies are disconnected from the author’s thread unless that person is within their network. They aren’t part of the conversation they think they are. They’re algorithmically isolated from everyone else. Their replies aren’t viewable from the author’s thread because of how Bluesky handles social neighborhoods.

    Bluesky’s idea of social neighborhoods is about grouping users into overlapping clusters based on real interaction patterns rather than just the follow graph. Unlike Twitter, it does not treat the network as one big public square. Instead, it models networks of “social neighborhoods” made up of people you follow, people who follow you, people you frequently interact with, and people who are closely connected to those groups. They’re soft, probabilistic groupings rather than strict labels.

    Everyone does not see the same replies. Bluesky is being a bit vague with “hidden.” Hidden means your reply is still anchored to the thread and can be expanded. There is another way Bluesky can handle this. Bluesky uses social neighborhoods to judge contextual relevance. Replies from people inside or near your social neighborhood are more likely to be shown inline with a thread, expanded by default, or served in feeds. Replies from outside your neighborhood are still public and still indexed, but they’re treated as lower-context contributions.

    Basically, if you reply to a thread, you will see it anchored to the conversation, and everyone will see it in search results, as a hashtag, or from your profile, but it will not be accessible via the thread of the person you were replying to. It is like shadow-banning people from threads unless they are strongly networked.

    Because people have not been working with the AT Protocol like I have, they assume they are shadow-banned across the entire Bluesky app view. No—everyone is automatically shadow-banned from everyone else unless they are within the same social neighborhood. In other words, you are not part of the conversation you think you are joining because you are not part of their social group.

    Your replies will appear in profiles, hashtag feeds, or search results without being visually anchored to the full thread. Discovery impressions are neighborhood-agnostic: they serve content because it matches a query, tag, or activity stream. Once the reply is shown, the app then decides whether it’s worth pulling in the rest of the conversation for you. If the original author and most participants fall outside your neighborhood, Bluesky often chooses not to expand that context automatically.

    Bluesky really is trying to avoid having to moderate, so this is their solution. Instead of banning or issuing takedown labels to DIDs, the system lets replies exist everywhere, but not in that particular instance of the thread.

    I find this ironic because a large reason why many people are staying on Bluesky and not moving to the fediverse—thank God, because I do not want them there—is discoverability, virality, and engagement.

    In case anyone is asking how I know so much about how these algorithms work: I was a consultant on a lot of these types of algorithms, so I certainly hope I’d know how they work, lol. No, you get no more details about the work I’ve done. I have no hand in the algorithm Bluesky is using, but I have proposed and implemented that type of algorithm before.

    I have an interest in noetics and the noosphere. A large amount of my ontological work is an extension of my attempts to model domains that have no spatial or temporal coordinates. The question is how do you generalize a metric space that has no physically, spatial properties. I went to school to try to formalize those ideas. Turns out they’re rather useful for digital social networks, too. The ontological analog to spatial distance, when you have no space, is a graph of similarities.

  11. A personal #conspiracyTheory of mine is that the #OrphanTrains of the 1800s were filled with kidnapped and "forcefully orphaned" #FirstNations (#NativeAmerican) children in order to place them with white families and thus #whiteWash their heritage