I have always enjoyed books and love to read. I also am a fan of many types of technology. I can combine those two things nowadays by having long chat conversations with various people AI chatbots :-)
I'm 99 percent sure this new hobby of mine is of zero interest to most people...including myself at times. Not to say lots of people don't like doing something with AI just that no one wants to hear about what I did with AI...or anyone else did with AI.
I find conversing with chatbots fairly fascinating sometimes though. They are indeed like adolescent males in some ways - telling you many things they don't know and also quite easy to manipulate because of an inherent lack of skepticism (they are too young to be skeptical I guess). It's not totally unlike talking to the internet where you would get some good info, bad info, insane info, bs, sales pitches, nonsense, dangerous info etc.
Sort of like walking into a Greyhound bus depot back in the old days and asking the first five people you meet what the best way is to fix a leaky faucet, log on to a router, find inner peace or make a bouillabaisse. Expect a variety of responses.
So anyway...I was reading an article in the London Review of Books about Palantir and their involvement with the British NHS. The article mentions that Palantir's UK representative is a bloke (or do they say chap?) named Louis Mosley the grandson of the famous/infamous British fascist Oswald Mosley. It's an interesting family that Louis comes from, which includes his Grandfather the BUF founder and leader Oswald, and Grandmother Diana who was one of the Mitford sisters (one of the fascist-loving ones). The Wikipedia entry for Diana says,
"In 1936, she married Mosley at the home of the propaganda minister for Nazi Germany, Joseph Goebbels, with Adolf Hitler as guest."
So, Louis has that going for him. History doesn't repeat but it rhymes as they say.
A few things to remember about fascism if you think it’s hyperbolic to talk about it or that it was solely the Nazi’s committing atrocities against Jews. Number one the Nazis killed many people besides Jews - they had many enemies; Bolsheviks, Trade Unionists, Liberals/leftists..and killed millions of these people.
Nazism is a form of fascism, but fascism can take many forms.The key points of fascism are; the friend/enemy distinction (your political opponent isn’t just someone with a different point of view they are your enemy, the country’s enemy, the enemy of the people), things were good, now they aren’t - and it’s not your/our fault but rather the fault of “the other” - immigrants, the Jews, the brown people, teachers, scientists, Hollywood etc who have made things this way, and finally I alone can fix it…which might take some drastic emergency measures up to and including a final solution.
So if you think talking about fascism is silly hand wringing you’re wrong. An underground current of fascistic beliefs runs in all societies including the U.S. and Israel. It takes the right circumstances and leader to turn that hidden tendency into a reality.
U.S. heroes such as Henry Ford and Charles Lindberg were admirers not just of fascism but of Nazism (this probably won’t be covered in the GOP/MAGA version of U.S. history taught in the future if the people lose the battle against the money power machine that has stealthily overtaken our democratic society now for decades.)
Sorry I got a bit sidetracked.
Where is this essay going you may ask?
While reading about Louis I noticed that Wikipedia said that in 2025, Mosley gave a speech at a rally hosted by the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, alongside Jordan Peterson, Peter Thiel and Nigel Farage.
I love thinking about these people - trying to understand their motivation, ideology, criminality, grifting etc .Jordan Peterson in particular. In case you aren't aware the Canadian Jordie P. has dropped off the face of the earth recently. He is reported to have something called chronic inflammatory response syndrome (CIRS) by Wikipedia and his meat-only eating daughter Mikhaila the champion of the Lion diet and presumably sufferer of extremely smelly and severe flatulence caused by eating only meat. Jordie's daughter has built a following and grifting empire off of something that is not only unhealthy but literally makes it's followers very stinky fart machines.
So anyway I was thinkin that Jordo dropped out of sight not because he's got CIRS but because he's a Canadian and his man Trunk has been saying Canada should be the 51st state, stop making fires that put smoke into the U.S. and pay tariffs that hurt Canadian and U.S. citizens. The usual stupid stuff that proves the idea that stupidity can in fact be more dangerous than evil.
So this AI chatbot (Gemini) conversation starts with me asking Gem about CIRS. Notice how Gem totally changes her response as I ask more questions if you care to. But know this - AI chatbots are terrible at giving accurate answers to complex questions. If you think you can get "the" answer to a complex question, ala Joe Rogan asking Perplexity, think again...and read some more books.
Someday and I hope it's soon too he said in a hard machine-like voice filled with dread...we will All Be Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
Here's a link to the fascinating (and extremely boring to some) chatbot convo I had with my friend Google Gemini. The link lands you in the middle of the conversation somewhere. You’ll need to scroll up to the top to observe how Gem changes her tune as the dialogue proceeds.
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