51–60 of 197 posts
I used the CIA factbook so much in college in the early 2000's when looking at so many things. When researching countries to support and travel to it made sense to vreview it beforehand. Its insane that this as a resource would be taken down.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're definitely going in the direction of "might is right". The "palantirization" of data stores (not just those for surveillance) is going to be an enabler of the "hard power" you're alluding to. This whole platform is probably a dragnet for identifying intelligent people with dissident views. Expect things to get uglier and stranger as well.
Power also needs to be justified. Hitler is an example of "unjustifiable might." And all fools who want to promote Darwinism need to know that causing one's own extinction is far easier than causing one's own evolution. Evolution is merely a survivor bias, and Darwin's On the Origin of Species didn't analyze the patterns of extinction.The evolutionary pattern should be that only when you yourself are perfectly ration…
This is surely just the tip of the iceberg of what is going on in the CIA at the moment. Senator Ron Wyden just sent a mysterious public letter about concerns about what they are doing. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5724300-ron-wyden-cia-le...
https://apnews.com/article/congress-cia-ron-wyden-martin-hei...
Counter-argument: why are my tax dollars replicating Wikipedia?
I used the CIA factbook so much in college in the early 2000's when looking at so many things. When researching countries to support and travel to it made sense to vreview it beforehand. Its insane that this as a resource would be taken down.
It gets cited a lot in immigration litigation as well (eg in asylum arguments) because it's an unimpeachable factual source that the government's lawyers can't reasonably dispute.
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It was updated weekly. Constantly writing and maintaining so much information is almost certainly very expensive. Coupled with the fact that you have to be very careful before releasing each edit to make sure that no accidental personal beliefs or theories slip by (as that would be a diplomatic catastrophe), I reckon the cost of maintaining the thing could be very high. I would wager that they're still going to maint…
This is surely just the tip of the iceberg of what is going on in the CIA at the moment. Senator Ron Wyden just sent a mysterious public letter about concerns about what they are doing. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5724300-ron-wyden-cia-le...
Hypothesis: CIA is hacking reporters to determine their government sources.
If we start seeing more government sources exposed, we haven't proven it but it supports the hypothesis.
Hypothesis: State election systems are being compromised for federal monitoring and control.
If we start seeing more improbable results in one direction, that is support for the hypothesis.