Clown world asserts itself.

1 Do your research at Google

Now there have been numerous criticisms of this endeavor...rather an awful lot, see here, here, here, here, here, here, and, here. That's a small fraction of the stories.

The phone itself appears to be a cheap Chinese model (Umidigi's A9-Pro) purchased in bulk from Ali-Baba  for about $119 U.S.. Given the 500 dollar price of the Freedom Phone, this seems to approach the iPhone in mark up.

1 I don't know that anyone has actually proven that the hardware encryption available to that phone, and others that use various Chinese domestic chips, has backdoors or the like, but I also don't know anyone who truly believes they don't. At the very minimum, the level of encryption provided, even if not explicitly back-doored, is insufficient to stand against any determined attack.
As for as what your network provider can get, you can generally assume that the encrypted content of what you send is safe, but that what kind of data you're sending, and to whom, is not. The protocols to support hiding even who you're talking to are gaining encryption support, but it's not there in usable terms yet.
My thinking on where we are vis a vis the whole encryption vs government and big tech spying, at least here in the US, is that you can't effectively keep Amazon, Google, etc from knowing way more about you than you'd like, in terms of who you talk to, where you go, what you read, your source of news, etc. The govt simultaneously knows both more and less, but has huge problems knowing who and what to actually look at, so unless you do something that raises red flags, it's more a concern in principle than in actual fact. And of course, "trying to encrypt everything you do while displaying thought to the right of Mao" is a very large red flag.

2 No such thing as absolute security. It is always a test against what people are willing to put into breaking in. If you are not carefully considering physical security, hardware, software, etc., you are overlooking a vulnerability. Media fire is because the PRC cannot afford to have it realized that they can and will dick around with the hardware they supply, even though they are known to be doing so. Smartphones are basically a bad idea. Assume anything on them is compromised, and put nothing important on them.

3 I'm curious about this phone and like the idea of it. Even if it is a generic smart phone, I don't mind the kind of markup discussed - it would be worth it to me since I lack the time & knowledge to 'jailbreak' a phone on my own. I don't mind letting a capitalist make extra money from me.  The deal-breaker for me is 'made in China'. We know they mess with the hardware. I'd be willing to pay more for a phone made in a less adversarial country (assuming the chips aren't imported from China). 
Love your blog. I've probably been reading over 10 years now.
Cheers, Steve S.

1 a) I like tournament arcs. b) Zombie Powder is evidence that Kubo Tite never knew how to end a story. The early mass combats in Bleach were weirdly good, but I can see why them, and the shift from before, are where it went down hill for some people.

1 <i>Despite my having gotten "the poke" twice, I still have to wear masks at work, in part for liability reasons because we don't have a high enough percentage of people vaccinated yet. </i>

Damn, I'm sorry to hear that. By luck, my profession has been pretty insulated from the Covidiocy (I can work from home a lot). It bothers me that in the critical physical jobs that make our world work, the workers are underpaid, overworked, and treated like shit. It's not good, it's not smart, and it's one of the reasons why I'm "off-libertarian" these days. It seems to me like market forces aren't really fixing these problems, and how society really decides how to reward people have little to do with them, and a lot to do with caste systems and social dominance games.

Machinists and engineers are the example I'm most familiar with. The caste divide, and the devaluation of their critical work bothers me.

2 I'm not particularly underpaid and the company I work for tends to treat is personnel pretty well. But we are working unbelievably hard right now and the inability to get help is causing a cascade effect as people, especially young people get to the end of their rope and let go. 
The 'caste' divide you mention, while not as applicable to me, is quite real though and getting worse. It gives a sobering look at the neo-feudalist arrangement many of out anointed are trying to bring about. 
 

3 Corporate is making a lot of Sam's Club fresh department employees continue to wear masks in states that are mask free. After jab. So people complained, and suddenly corporate starts leaning on everyone to wear masks again! So. Freaking. Dumb.

4 Those girls in the foreground need to watch out, because surely there is a pot of petunias incoming.

5 I don't know how you manage the shift. When I work on any projects like making garden footpaths, planting, or even making a knife at my workbench, it's 2 hours and a long break.

I am now truly old enough that I really don't understand these kids today. 

1 It is a coded message from Marianne Williamson instructing the FBI HRT to assassinate Edith Biden, PhD. 

 

1 I was in Mojave to see Spaceship One go to space in 2004. That was a remarkable achievement. Getting a slightly larger, more luxurious version to go not quite as high 19 years later... not so much.

2 Inventions are important. But being able to normalize and commercialize inventions is what makes inventions into practical parts of our lives.

3 I've been in Mojave on June 21, 2006 too. I think I may still have a thick paper ticket, about postcard-sized.

4 Apparently Musk has bought a ticket too.

1 Gun Magazines are inaccurate? Say it isn't so!

No the CCP has NOT run China since 1921. 

If you've got $25,370.00 and want to impress your progressive friends this ought to work better than an iPhone.

1 History always repeats twice, first as a tragedy, second as a farce.

1 Pina Pengin / IronMouse collab confirmed....

Well, we got a Calli / IronMouse collab, so who knows.

2 She's supposed to be doing a collab with Pikamee next week. 

While it's true that Dearest Columbia does seem to be on a bit of a bender at the moment.

 

Its's good to remember that not only are things getting better, as people remember the founding principles of this nation is the following document, ratified 245 years ago  today.

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

 

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

---

The Signatures.....

Georgia:

   Button Gwinnett

   Lyman Hall

   George Walton

 

North Carolina:

   William Hooper

   Joseph Hewes

   John Penn

 

 

Massachusetts:

John Hancock

 

 

 

Pennsylvania:

   Robert Morris

   Benjamin Rush

   Benjamin Franklin

   John Morton

   George Clymer

   James Smith

   George Taylor

   James Wilson

   George Ross

 

 

New York:

   William Floyd

   Philip Livingston

   Francis Lewis

   Lewis Morris

 

 

   Josiah Bartlett

Massachusetts:

   John Adams

   Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:

   William Ellery

Connecticut:

   Samuel Huntington

   Oliver Wolcott

New Hampshire:

Make a special note of those signatures. When they signed they risked rather greater penalties than  ostracism by upper middle class mean girls or even severe platforming and banking difficulties. 

They did not give up on their quest for freedom, which took 8 years 4 months and 15 days, and involved more consequential deprivations than being excluded from parties. That long fight by our forefathers provided a different and better option for coping with those who seek to rule us, one that happily provides some small bit of security from even the minor torments that our malign ruling class provides for non-compliance. 

After all; Karen can't report what you do in the voting booth. 

1 By cooking it too hot for too long.

2 With a flame thrower, but preference, but to each his own.

3 1.  Confusing Grandpa's potato masher grenade recipe with Grandma's potato salad recipe.
2.  Having it too close when you are using the rocket engine stationary test stand for cooking.
3.  Freezer has an operating defect.
4.  Unwise experiments using liquid nitrogen for freeze drying. 
5.  LOX will work.
6.  Chlorine Triflouride spill. 
7.  Saying that potato salad is terrible, in a particularly effective way.

4 8. Airbursting the special fireworks for 2021 low. 

5 The opposite of making love to a porcupine - carelessly.

1 It got dropped before, about a month ago. And maybe a month before that.
I'm doubtful, because the arm was a guy in a suit, not Capitol Police.

1 The problem with all these cycle-of-history analyses is that most of human history happened pretty close to a bare minimum of population, wealth, range, and technology, and we're so far off the map that you couldn't perceive any ellipsoid stretched to include us as a "cycle".

Just like WWII was something the world had never seen before, atomic weapons are something the world had never seen before. 7 billion people dependent on the frictionless functioning of an overheated global technological system to eat has never happened before. Global communications have never happened before: The interaction of our brains with computer-mediated media, and the sheer hypertrophy of micromanagement, oversight and bureaucracy that computers enable have never happened to this extent before.

Pretty much every civilization up through 20th century continental Europe could die and people would pick up the pieces and restore some sort of order with little lost. This civiliztion is more than who parks what tolls on which roads: The machinery is necessary to sustain our population: If this civilization blows up, the die off could be unprecedented.

2 /One/ problem with all the cycle/trend of history analysis.

There's a more general category of error.

All of our observations of history are past. 

This isn't a problem when we form theories about widgets, because it is usually safe to assume that a widget is not able to choose to change its behavior based on opinions about the observer, or what is going on.  So a widget measured in the future doesn't know the date, and might have the same measured response to the test that a widget measured in the past would have.

Okay, some joker may start talking about smartphones, but the transistors are transistors, and cannot, for example, let out all the magic smoke and then decide to start working again. 

So, a lot of time you look at humans, and they aren't motivated to screw around with you, so they aren't putting on much of a show for you.  And you can take those observations, and formulate rules or a model that describes them, and it may even be useful predicatively.  But mess with them, give them incentive to screw with you, or force them to dance for you, and you may then find yourself surprised.

You can look at people, maybe figure out their magical thinking, and then maybe use that magical thinking to manipulate people.

Manipulation is a somewhat common human behavior. 

When a lot of people are doing it, it becomes obvious to some of those they are manipulating. 

The manipulated people can in principle choose to avoid that magical thinking. 

One remedy to that countermeasure is using force to scare people away from quitting the magical thinking. 

Once a regime is deeply invested in using this to prop itself up, it becomes fragile.  If it loses the force, it loses the magical thinking, and disappears. 

This theory could explain the late bronze age collapse.  Some group of failures cost that brand of kings their reputation for mojo, so people decided they no longer got anything for tribute/taxes.

Also, around 33 years ago in 1988. 

For good parts of the historical record, the populations involved were not necessarily scholarly enough for magical theories derived from the historical record to take hold of the public consciousness.  They had oral history, but that would ahve been 'my grand daddy said', and mostly not 'what this officially approved scholar said'.  So, you were not having a lot of manipulative jerks trying for general consumption to appeal to magical theories of historical forces.  China and some few other cases being more of an exception. 

Marxism is currently a popular family of religions/heresies, and Marxism is definitely such a superstitious belief.  We thus now have a lot of people trying to use this magical theory to manipulate folks. 

We should expect a greater degree of such scams than were widespread pre-Marx, more such scammers, and much more frequent backlash as a result. 

You should be careful how seriously you take any cycle of history/trend of history theory.  The more people in power take it seriously, the more likely it is that they are gaming it for power.  If they are gaming it for power, there is a risk they tick off enough people to prompt a behavior change that upends that theory.