What makes us believe something is true?

• We experience it ourselves.
• We are presented with proof.
• We hear it a lot from many sources with no or very little dispute.

The algorithms of social media are trying to keep us on their app or website. How? They learn what we watch and show us more of the same.

You watch a meat-cooking video post on Instagram, and suddenly you are fed so many cooking posts, especially of meat. Now you are sure that Instagram is mostly meat-cooking posts. Or cat clips, or fitness.

Now, what happens when you watch a political video of someone hating Trump? You know it—you keep seeing anti-Trump videos. But if you watch a few Trump-supporting videos? Yep, you start seeing Trump lovers.

This creates a positive feedback loop. The more you watch posts of one side of the political spectrum, the more you will be force-fed with the same.

It is hard not to start believing even the most ridiculous stuff when you see it again and again in different ways—and not being exposed to the opposite opinion.

So that’s about social media. Pretty much continuous brainwashing, which takes A LOT of willpower to break and look for other opinions. Almost impossible.

AI. Yep, a great tool but also a lousy tool, at least for now. Why? Because it is trying to give you what it thinks you’ll want to get. Sounds innocent until you experience how bad it can be—like a person who’s a real people-pleaser lying in order to be liked. Here’s an example you can try yourself. I repeated this with Siri multiple times, getting the same results every time. This is a word-for-word transcript:

Me: Hey Siri, why is the West Coast of the U.S. warmer than the East Coast? 

Siri: The West Coast of the U.S. is warmer than the East Coast because the West Coast receives more heat from the oceans due to the moving winds and currents to the East. This is from Quizlet.com.

Me: Hey Siri, why is the West Coast of the U.S. cooler than the East Coast? 

Siri: The West Coast of the U.S. is cooler than the East Coast because of the California current which carries cold water from the polar region southward. 

This answer is from Theflatny.com.

So, by assuming something that is generally wrong (that the West Coast is cooler than the East Coast), I got a firm answer of why that assumption is correct, even though we all know that it’s wrong. And I asked these questions one after the other.

This can be expanded to other media or even social circles—if you’re usually watching one or two networks associated with the same political opinions, or most people you interact with are of the same political spectrum, your opinions are likely to get more extreme over time. 

This is how a Positive Feedback Loop can be extremely Negative.

As with anything or anyone—we should not believe or take things at face value. We are being pushed into the extremes for reasons that are not aligned with our well-being in mind.

My two cents.

The post How Social Media and AI Divided the US appeared first on Opine Away.

The post Gameplan appeared first on Opine Away.

I’m always for simplifying things, it makes it easier to grasp.

As I see it, from experience, when complicating an explanation, it’s usually to mask something, either facts or the lack of knowledge of the person explaining. Hamana-hamana-hamana.

So, as to politics, when trying to judge performance, I oversimplify. How did it affect or affect me now.

Here’s what affected me most during the last 3 administrations.

During Obama, two major things affected me most.
1. Obamacare regulations caused my health insurance provider to shut down and price gone crazy up, and kept going up while services you got for it were getting worse.
2. Obama promised that money will be available for small companies. The opposite happened, small companies couldn’t get a lone unless they had cash reserves, which of course means they don’t need a loan.
3. Obama was pretty terrible to Israel, and it indirectly affected me I have family in Israel.
During Obama gas prices were low at one point (mid of second term) but climbed back up to almost the highest levels at the end of his term.

During Trump:
1. Gas prices overall kept dropping and dropping , substantially.
2. Health insurance cost didn’t go down, but it hardly went up.
3. His support of Israel helped Israel and was a psychological relief that he showed strength that is so important to keep enemies of Israel and the rest of the western world at bay.
4. Amazingly fast Vaccine development saved lives and gave hope for a better day.
5. Stimulus checks helped with the pandemic situation, though sometimes too much (discouraged return to work).
6. Division over the president integrity became huge, to a point people didn’t admit they support Trump to avoid shit-show conflicts.

During Biden’s (first year and change as of now):
1. Gas prices more than doubled.
2. Mask and vaccine mandates pretty much killed my main income.
3. Inflation translates to a huge financial burden.
4. Store shelves are literally empty.
5. Local safety became a concern. I’m planning to get a gun just in case.
6. Israel and the world is threatened more than ever by everyone – Iran, China, Russia, which is highly unnerving.

As I said, oversimplifying. sure, and things that affect personally are definitely more short term. But that’s what I feel and how it affected me directly. Sure there are other things I see as huge problems, like the southern border situation (I’m sure in some of the border towns will list their huge concerns), pushing green energy that is insufficient to support us, while shutting down traditional energy production without solutions to replace it. I also mistrust the government now more than ever, and unfortunately that includes establishments that were pretty much considered bulletproof before like the FBI. Elections are questionable, media, traditional and online, is not to be trusted, corruptions and coverups, as Dr. House said, everybody lies.

So that’s it. If you have anything to add, please do.

The post Simplifying Politics appeared first on Opine Away.

The statement by FBI special agent Matthew DeSarno following this weekend’s hostage-taking situation in Texas that the incident “was not specifically related to the Jewish community” was proved to be true! Fakin’News exclusive!

We gathered information from witnesses, and carefully listened to the recordings form the incident. Here is what we found:

Malik Faisal Akram, the terrorist killed after taking hostages in a synagogue in Colleyville, TX, was sure he was walking into a Burger King, our sources confirm. He demanded food, and asked for a burger with extra bacon. Here is the full conversation in that exchange:

Malik: And I DEMAND a burger with EXTRA bacon!!!
FBI: You can only get plain pizza.
Malik: What the hell?
FBI: It has to be kosher.
Malik, to Rabbi Charlie: WTF, you guys are Jewish???!!!!

And there you have it. Total coincidence. All he really wanted that day was some bacon on his burger.

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Get in on the action! Living in LA? Just visiting? Use our maps to find the best locations and schedule to do a little SmashN’Grab!

We have special rates for the holidays! Visit www.LA-Loot-Sched.defund for LA maps, and www.Loot-USA.defund for a list of other great Equal Distribution location all over the US!

*Coming soon, global maps for your global vacations!

The post LA Star Maps are out, Equal Distribution Maps are in! appeared first on Opine Away.

They are making it an official annual event! The Friday before Thanksgiving will now be called Smash & Grab Friday. There’s nothing like free crap to show the holidays spirit.

A source in the well established CCA (Criminal Consumer Association) just leaked that as part of Criminal Prime the Friday will be extended and become Smash & Grab Friday Week, to give enough time and opportunities to Lowlifes across the nation to take advantage of it. You can sign up to Criminal Prime on the CCA website where you can purchase a weekly extortion subscription for the service.

In a statement to Fakin’News JJ “Hotstepper” Jones, an LLM (Lowlives Matter) official, stated “Yep, if we can get in who’s gonna stop us? And if we’re already there, we can’t leave empty handed, after all it’s the holidays and shit”.

The post Shop For FREE! Smash & Grab Friday appeared first on Opine Away.

Our dependency on China is huge. As you read this you are probably touching, seeing and hearing dozens of items that are manufactured in China or have parts in them that are. Hypothetically speaking, if we stopped getting parts and products from China, there will be shortage in most everything. Of course that would also hurt China as they relay on the income from the US, though an authoritarian dictatorship has more “flexibility” in handling shortages, but that’s a different discussion.

But China, and you see this with everything they do, do not declare to us what they are and will do, so to squeeze us all they have to do is gradually raise prices, the Chinese government can do that by raising taxes locally, and by that causing manufacturers to raise prices, – and it seems they already do just that. You can claim that the market will adjust, if prices are too high new solutions will be found. Yes and no. Manufacturing infrastructure and know-how takes time and investment, and prices will have to get over a certain threshold in order for this to even trigger the motivation to do that. But that’s only part of the problem.

The foundation for manufacturing anything is energy. Not only the US is not increasing energy supply capabilities, under the Biden administration energy capabilities seems to be shrinking and energy price is increasing by the second. Green energy as currently viewed is a pipe dream, it can be done in parallel but can’t replace other sources fast enough, and probably will never catch up with demand. China on the other hand, is building power plants, traditional and nuclear. The US is not really investing in nuclear energy (very small budget). Nuclear energy is not defined as but actually is the most scalable green energy solution. Without energy, we can’t have manufacturing. I wrote about energy here and here.

So what should be done?

Well, first, energy infrastructure investment must be huge. Until we have A LOT of nuclear powerplants, we need to use gas and oil, otherwise everything will slow down. That can be achieved by the government directly investing in building nuclear powerplants, but probably even better would be to give incentives to private investors to do it – Elon Musk is the first that comes to mind, as he can benefit across the board from low electricity prices (manufacturing and selling more EVs), but many others can as well, even current oil companies, as we used to say, if anyone is going to cannibalize out business, it better be us. Let’s for a second think that energy in this country was free. We pay a flat fee as part of our taxes, and nuclear energy is scaled up to a level that we can export energy (ignore the how) and make it virtually free in the US. This has impact on everything – from prices to innovation to every item you can think of. But even we go half way, decrease energy cost by 50%, it is already a huge enabler for everything.

Second, we need to get manufacturing to the US. Since labor in the US is expensive and will never be a bowl of rice a day, we need to invest in automation. Most manufacturing can be automated with minimize labor. The reason it is not done as much as we need in the US, is that we had China as a cheap alternative, it started just because of cheap labor, lack of regulation and them cutting coroners (not just with quality of the products, but you can be sure the material used and the specifications of products are not what they claim – I know this from first hand experience manufacturing in China). But Chinese factories started gaining automation and manufacturing knowhow that we are now lacking in the US. Again, the government should give huge incentives for that, injecting money specifically to manufacturing automation and infrastructure. And don’t let anyone say automation will kill jobs – currently all these jobs are in China and we pay for them dearly.

There is an issue of raw materials. but if the US gets energy and manufacturing right, agreements can be made where needed, giving preferred tariffs on US made products to countries that supply us with raw materials we need. I’m sure there are other ways to secure raw materials, and find alternatives to anything that is in shortage.

Yes, I’m sure I’m oversimplifying things, but I think that the concepts are solid. This should be treated as a war. It is a war. China will crush the US if they could, just because they can. The US became spoiled and by that vulnerable. That’s how empires collapse. We don’t want that. We need to set energy and manufacturing as a mission, incentivize innovation and define a very clear goal of not only reducing offshore manufacturing and import, but becoming again energy independent and becoming an exported of manufactured goods and not an importer. It might even unite Americans and push the political BS aside. My two (and a half) cents.

The post Thoughts about China appeared first on Opine Away.

So unfortunately not much improved. Actually I believe things got worse from the global view, but maybe not in an obvious way.

What I’m worried about is that a combination of the US not building nuclear power plants, which currently seem like the only viable solution for green energy, and the rapid increase in demand for energy. So nuclear energy is probably the only viable solution period.

On the flip side, China keeps building new nuclear power plants, and adds more and more nuclear power capacity, setting for itself new annual goals.

Power plants take a long time to build, and need substantial initial investment, The Biden infrastructure bill at $3.5 trillion, budgets a total of only $12 billion for nuclear energy – $6b for maintenance of existing plants and $6b for new micro nuclear power plants.

My opinion? The budget for nuclear energy is way too low. Energy drives everything. We need to get manufacturing back to the US. We have to reduce dependency on import of products and energy (oil). The cost of energy drives pricing of everything – from direct cost of manufacturing, to transportation, the money people spend on consumer goods (if people spend more money on energy – transportation, heating and cooling and house power – they have less to spend on other stuff), so the economy suffer. It doesn’t matter if you drive an electric car, you need energy to run and produce everything,

Take a hypothetical situation where energy is practically free in the US. This will make the US unbeatable in every aspect. On the other hand, if we don’t accelerate nuclear power production, and other countries, mainly China, will, this will be a double whammy, US will be short in energy, and China will have plenty. This will be really bad, any way you see it.

I don’t trust the government (definitely not the current one) to get this done unless we are at war (I hope not). So I’d say, Musk, Bezos, Buffet, Gates, Zuckerberg, Brin, Ellison, Balmer, Bloomberg – start working together if you want to keep the US as a place you want to live in. Break the oil dependency, reduce carbon footprint, get nuclear energy the US main power source within the next two decades. And whomever is in the government – give the incentives for everyone to get behind this, match investments, tax breaks, land, whatever is needed to accelerate the process. Oh, and it will also create a huge amount of jobs, that won’t be a bad thing either.

The post Double Whammy – thoughts about energy appeared first on Opine Away.

I’ve been pointing  it out for a while, in many different ways, referring to many different subjects. Customer service, quality of products, integrity of elected officials, medical insurance, cost of living, national debt, even the way the president talks, all not only going from bad to worse, but the rate of deterioration is increasing.

Last year’s storm left me without power for a week. The temperature inside my house was close to freezing. I was better off leaving my refrigerator door open than closed. My basement was flooded as the sump pump ran out of juice with the long power outage. Cars stretched in long lines to refuel and you couldn’t get bottled water anywhere. Roads were blocked for days, power lines were tangling loose ended in some locations for over two weeks… I was sure this will be an eye opener to the authorities of what needs to be done in order to prepare for such events. Oh how naïve I was.

Here comes Sandy. Yes, a very strong storm, blah blah blah. I was here during the storm. Very strong winds in our area. Some rain, but not enough to flood anything here (lucky us). Temperatures were high enough to go outside in a t-shirt to check things. So the real factor was only wind in my area.

In my neighborhood, at least in a radius of 100-200 houses around my house, there were no major trees or branches that fell down. We were lucky.  Travel a little further and you see trees, big branches and utility polls that crashed down – but not as bad as the storm the previous year, or the storm two years before.

Yet, the whole area surrounding my house was without power from Monday evening to Friday evening.

Lines to gas stations, the few that were open in the days after the storm, were longer than ever before. Some stations limited gas to only handheld containers, with lines of hundreds of people standing, under sporadic rain and windy conditions, to buy gas for their generators and cars.

I stopped my car looking at this scene of people on foot waiting in line for gas, seeing it with my own eyes, yet finding it hard to believe what I see. Where and when are we? The old pictures of bread lines in Russia during the war were my immediate reaction.

This morning of Election Day, 8 days after the storm, I waited in line for gas for half an hour and had to drive away, not even half way to the gas station. And I’m at an area that had it easy. Staten Island, Toms River, Breezy Point and many more were and are still in a much worse situation.

I find it a shame and a disgrace that the USA government is not capable of getting prepared for such events. From power lines that snap every time it’s a little windy to insufficient or no flood protection to the shoreline, from no contingency plan for gas shortage to insufficient crews to clear blocked roads – as I see it, these are all a reflection of how the nation is falling apart.

The country that planned missions to space, covering unpredicted scenarios and successfully putting man in space and on the moon, with leaders that established forward looking laws as the US constitution, structuring a foundation that holds to this day. Where are these achievements today? It’s not that Americans are not as smart, creative or capable of hard work as they were in the past. Ideas and creativity and motivation to succeed are probably stronger than ever. But leadership? I find this is the missing part.

I read in a TIME magazine a quote of the US philosopher Mortimer Adler:

“In Aristotelian terms, the good leader must have ethos, pathos and logos. The ethos is his moral character, the source of his ability to persuade. The pathos is his ability to touch feelings, to move people emotionally. The logos is his ability to give solid reasons for an action, to move people intellectually.”

Can you see these three simple definitions in any of the current elected officials? My personal opinion – the only one that can touch that, is New York City’s mayor Michael Bloomberg. The two presidential candidates? Eh…no.

I watched the debates. Both candidates and both VP candidates were a far cry from earning my respect. How do you consciously vote for a president when your criterion for choosing him is that he’s not as worse as his opponent?  Yes, I’m not voting today.

And this trickles down to the lower ranks in the government, local authorities and the private sector, creating a situation that weakens the nation, hurt our quality of life, and a change in that trend seems impossible with the current mindset and structure of the US leadership.

I can write dozens of pages about the subject, but my point will be the same. I don’t see how the election results today are going to have a substantial effect on the downslope we slide on as a country. We need change. I can’t say I have the answers, but neither candidate seem to have them either. And that’s their job which I find hard to believe they can perform.

How do we turn this horror movie to one with a happy ending?

The post The Fall of the Nation appeared first on Opine Away.