Topix Underground

The war had a "Ghost Battalion" of North Korean soldiers who fought in US uniforms
In 1950, KPA soldiers from the 6th Division captured American uniforms and vehicles during the retreat to Pusan. They infiltrated US lines for weeks, even directing traffic at checkpoints. The 25th Infantry Division only caught on after they noticed the "Americans" refused MREs and spoke perfect Korean to locals.

The last US Medal of Honor from the war was awarded in 2023 
Corporal Fred B. McGee got it 73 years late. In 1951 he charged a machine gun nest, took it out, then dragged two wounded men to safety under fire. Paperwork got lost during the chaotic retreat from Chosin. Biden awarded it posthumously last year after his daughter spent decades lobbying.

Both sides used sound weapons
UN forces dropped leaflets with recorded screams and flew C-47s with giant speakers playing eerie wailing to spook KPA troops at night. North Korea countered by blasting jazz and messages about how American officers were eating steak while GIs froze. It was the first large-scale sonic warfare campaign.

Google Earth has a picture of your car in your driveway....imagine what the government can see. How many times a day is your face photographed without you knowing...at the store, the bank, a red light, walking your dog by a neighbors' house... I have to make a special trip if I want actual money because everything is an electronic transfer. This shit just crept into our lives and took over so gradually and quietly that we didn't notice or didn't mind.

There is an electronic trail of every nickel given to me and every nickel I spend. Is that ok? Is Kroger scanning your keychain or typing in your phone number to keep tabs on how much beer, cigarettes and bacon you're consuming ok? You know insurance companies are interested. Google, Amazon, Meta...they know what you read, what you buy, what your pets names are....

The Unabomber was crazier than a bedbug but he saw it coming. It's depraved, immoral, terrifying.

Data centers — those big, secretive, windowless warehouses packed with IT infrastructure and almost no humans — are popping up quickly throughout the country.

Why it matters: Whenever you join a Zoom meeting, save photos to the cloud or stream Netflix, you're depending on a data center.

The server farms store our information. The electrical equipment gets hot, requiring constant cooling that uses millions of gallons of water annually.
What they're saying: Communities are worried about noise, aesthetics, and potentially higher electricity bills because these centers require as much power as a small city.

Data centers could consume up to 12% of U.S. electricity by 2028, according to the Department of Energy.
AREP's data center in University City uses 1.2 million gallons of water per day, according to a City of Charlotte presentation. To compare, all of Charlotte Water's customers use 11 million gallons per day total.
By the numbers: Nearly 3,000 new data centers were under construction or planned across the U.S. by late last year, Axios previously reported.

That's in addition to the more than 4,000 already up and running.

By now, the Dow being high and the wonders of ai are of zero comfort to 99.99% of the human race. That shit doesn't benefit us at all...and in all probability...it harms us....almost all of us.

Social media's not making us better. It's fckng us up...immensely, politically, psychologically, societally...
This right here is cool. none of us would even know of one another without these forums. But the net net is negative. The rage baiting, the hate networking, the misinformation, the political/religious/racial hate. If you want to be biblical...it's the Tree of Knowledge. It's corrupting and sinful. Our children, worse yet our politicians, have their behavior shaped by 'likes', 'upvotes', 'clicks', 'followers'.... it's not even real anymore. It's mixed reality. I'm thinking of a specific relative of mine that actually lives her life as more or less a performance for whomever she percieves as her audience. It's that whole instagram kind of thing. Or those idiots that film themselves harassing people to generate attention. None of that isn't crazy.

X is stupid, Tik Tok, Instagram, Youtube.... they're all fckng stupid. It's the same shit on all of them. Maybe 1% is factual, useful or relevant and the rest is just ai-generated click-baiting bullshit. Everyone thinks they're an "influencer".  To me, this is the moral and practical equivalant of writing on the wall of a public restroom.

No one gives a shit what I think; I don't even care, not really. None of it matters. It doesn't matter who the President or Governor is. i'm going to have the same set of bills I have been playing whack-a-mole with for my entire life. I'm sure they'll keep coming for months before anyone notices I'm dead too. Shit like this is an echo chamber, it helps all of us organize our thoughts - probably more effectively than a shrink or psychologist because it's free and it's not dressed-up like it's based on science. "Psychology" has less credibility than religion.

Plus I suppose if you are  elderly, infirm or otherwise isolated, this is a positive social outlet. This is different though than those other services that are largely performative and based on garnering attention for various reasons - including huge financial incentive.
Even old Topix ended up being bullshit. It became more or less impossible to have a normal conversation on any thread because of the trolling and banning and all that. That ruined it.

Now you can't rely on anything as being authentic because of ai....no photo, no news story, no video