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I can find no reputable news sites to link to for this, so you'll have to do your own research.
But a curious tale nonetheless. First reported in 2016, the lede is that after the 2011 Tsunami that hit Japan, in which some 16, 000 people were killed/disappeared, Taxi Drivers started getting "Ghost Passengers", people who needed a ride home, usually from the zone of disaster, only to disappear before being dropped off. Some 7% (Skepticism is healthy!!!) of Taxi Drivers reported this. If indeed this is a real story (and in some ways I believe it is) than you could safely presume that number to be a great deal higher. Most people prefer to keep tales like this to themselves.
In any event, a curious look at how collective trauma and grief imprint itself upon our collective consciousness, and how we might deal with it. IN this there are echo's of "The Vanishing Hitch Hiker", wherein a driver picks up a hitchh-hiker only to have him or her disappear before they get home. This is often followed by the driver confirming the circumstances of the disappearance or tragedy by checking with the address given them by the passenger.
Everyone loves a good ghost story, and so you can see how this grew legs. And, who knows? Maybe there's something to it...
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And - despite my laughing at all the ridiculous shit Facebook is throwing at me, there's the very real concern - AI is still in it's idiocy stage, garbage in, garbage out, but soon - maybe a year, maybe 2 or three, the results are going to start to be indistinguishable from reality. An AI hallucination of the worst sort. And all the possibilities of the internet - already hard enough to find good information - all these things are going to be destroyed.
There will be a very big market for a carefully curated internet that deals in facts and realities, whereas of late it's become a cesspool of clearly deranged AI hallucinations. And a market for an internet that delivers human generated results.
On the upside, (and you'll see this from all the "Follow Me" posts I get) - there's going to be a reckoning coming for every "Model", "Influencer", "Artist" and "Pornstar" that's going to require them to get clothes, a personality, a job and a life.
That won't be a bad thing...
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A curious phenomenon not entirely explained away:
Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_jelly
& BBC on "The Jelly Mystery".
I'm intrigued with the history and references in poetry/literature, as well as it's reputation for showing up after Meteor Falls.
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An interesting article that examines the idea of money, and various other means of currency.
Interesting, because money is the biggest lie any civilization has ever bought into, bigger even than religion - certainly a lot more universal.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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Now I'd heard this, that you should safely presume your phone is always listening to you.
And I'd had some evidence, as for example a few weeks ago I was humming/singing "Pretty Women..." from Sweeny Todd, and then - to my surprise, it turned up on my YouTube recommendations.
To be sure, I checked my history, no evidence that I'd listened to it for a very long time. And you could say "Coincidence" but I am skeptical, more that just as the internet absorbs local cues and surfing habits to tailor your content, but spies upon you by listening as well...
I wonder what keywords I'd need to be speaking out loud to bring the FBI to my door?
Which is kind of funny, because I went to use the microphone on my phone a week or so ago and to do so I had to enable all sorts of permissions that by default are turned off.
I think we're long past the point where this is paranoia, this is simply reality. 1984.
And, on a more humorous note, all that time looking at inane Facebook videos has resulted in me getting ads promising to treat my adult ADHD...