Behold the faceless corporate fascism of Facebook!

The Facebook Inquisition (source unknown)

Just as the calendar rolled into December 1st, 2017, I found myself locked out of Facebook (again!) for posting a link to a book review which happened to contain a slightly ribald but perfectly harmless image - actually very amusing and hardly as objectionable as the many hideously gory images I have seen on my newsfeed.

The censorship happened INSTANTLY (within two seconds of my clicking 'POST') and the psychological effect was akin to a heavily-armed balaclava-clad inquisitorial SWAT team breaking down your front door in the middle of the night (remember that classic Terry Gilliams movie Brazil?). It was a vivid reminder on so many levels of the crazy sci-fi timelines we are all navigating and have been, especially since the end of 2012, some transcendentally numinous and others starkly ominous.

In any case, for a few moments I contemplated the option of simply turning my back on Facebook and using this as an excuse to finally detach from this artificial sense of community we have grown so attached to over the years (it's true there are so many positive features of digital interconnectivity and being part of special-focus Facebook groups, not to mention the comforting sense of being virtually in touch with everyone even if close encounters have become more difficult to manifest).

Then I realized that in actual fact nothing at all had happened. I could simply take a badly needed 4-week vacation from the Facebook Universe or I could get back in with my wife Anoora's account (which I manage, so what if she doesn't have the massive network I enjoy as Antares). As my initial sense of outrage and intense annoyance subsided I became aware that I was in a very strange place - between nowhere and everywhere, between being fully immersed in the hurly-burly world and feeling completely indifferent to any or all outcomes. Sort of like watching a football game on the screen and not bothering which team wins because I have no loyalty to any football club.

21st Century Cyber-Emperor Marcus Zuckerbergus

This can be placed in the general context of my current perspective on everything: I'm tracking developments on many different levels - from energetically supporting the anchoring of the Totally New and Unknown (as is occurring in countless spiritually conscious communities and networks everywhere) to keeping a close eye on the factional warfare that has broken out among the old-school control freaks (whether you call them the Khazarian banksters or Yahwehists or the virus-infected Zombie Apocalypse and the covert agents that have hitherto served as foot-soldiers of the so-called Military-Industrial-Financial-Academic-Religious Complex).

Although essentially an eternal optimist - and all the positive signs are to be found in the growing number of rapidly awakening, self-governing humans I have become increasingly aware of since the advent of the internet - I realize at the same time that the rot may be already too deep for the gentle transition all of us have worked towards; that the sheer inertia of our entrenched habits could be setting up too much resistance for radical transmutation to happen smoothly and painlessly.

And we have witnessed in recent months how unpredictably aggressive the elements can be when unleashed upon puny human aspirations. Fire, Water, Air or Earth can so easily erase all our fondest dreams built upon countless lifetimes - within hours, even minutes. 

So as we enter the final months of 2025, all I can say is: "Phew! ... we made it through all the bumpy patches so far ... and each time we successfully navigate the wild weather and scary waves and emerge intact, we gain so much more experience, expertise and maturity as individuals and as a species. It's a good time to relax and not feel so driven, perhaps? Maybe it's true that getting there is what it's actually about, not arriving?

[First posted 3 December 2017, reposted 16 November 2019]

Loosely Speaking: A Compilation of Facebook Comments Worth Archiving (repost)

Response to a virtual friend's Facebook video on how shaken she felt after being diagnosed with cancer

The predominant paradigms of Western "civilization" (founded on the Abrahamic Agenda, i.e., the Book Religions) have effectively severed our minds from our bodies and infected our souls with the concept of sin, of Judgement Day, external saviors and scary talk of hellfire and brimstone.

Fear and Guilt have proved to be powerful tools of control, blinding us to our own mysterious origins, the fractal nature of everything, our intimate, electromagnetic interconnectedness with the entire spectrum of life. It has produced money-driven, relentlessly expanding cities that devour the natural environment, destroying intricate ecosystems, literally turning paradises into parking lots, lush landscapes into spiritual wastelands, shopping malls, battlefields, toxic zones.

That's what cancer is really about - cell growth that has gone out of whack with our own coherent fields and become incoherent, subject to entropy and disintegration. I have long viewed cancer as a manifestation of human psychopathy on a massive scale. Imagine a species that meekly allows governments to spend a million times more money on warfare than welfare, that glorifies extravagant lifestyles even as homelessness and hunger proliferate all around. Well, that's one perspective on what cancer symbolizes and how we might go about reversing entropy within our psyches and physical bodies.

There are many other factors to consider - including unresolved emotional trauma, genetic and karmic legacies, even ancestral parasitism. It's alarming that humans have been systematically disempowered by disingenuous institutions to rely almost exclusively, allopathically, on the surgical and pharmacological solutions to health problems - while pooh-poohing or ignoring far more profound and meaningful approaches to restoring our emotional, psychological, physical and metaphysical equilibrium.

I'm so impressed by your courage and honesty... to do a facebook video openly confessing to your bouts of depression and fear is the mark of a true warrior and reveals that you're well positioned to demonstrate the veracity of that old adage: what doesn't kill you will make you stronger.

Please do a bit of research into the benefits of detoxing with C60 and if you're willing to consider a session or two of deep emotional healing, I know a few masterful practitioners of cellular and soulular releasing and reintegration. Yes, I'm an unabashed advocate of "hippy-dippy" notions that true healing must include the realignment of left brain, right brain and heart into a coherent organic vision of wholeness regained. Please consider yourself seriously hugged.

On life extension, population culling & immortality

We live in an era when cell regeneration and rejuvenation, age reversal methods and so on are emerging from the realm of sci-fi and slowly becoming available to humans at large.

It wouldn't surprise me that in the next 10 years (perhaps less) you will find the average human lifespan extendable beyond 150. What's hindering this possibility is that the Elite Cabal are obsessed with culling the population (which they consider cannon fodder and "useless eaters" - rather than nurturing and upgrading human intelligence). Believe me, humans will achieve "genius" potential when someone enlightened and benevolent is put in charge of the education system.

The Polarizing Effect of Two-Party Politics

Perhaps it has to do with age - though I choose to label it maturity - but in recent years I find the self-righteous rhetoric of "leftwing liberals" becoming increasingly abrasive, divisive, judgmental, even hysterical. They pretend to condemn identity politics, but they are themselves the most vociferous promoters of political factionalism (often, alas, in the guise of "minority rights").

I bet they're mostly intractable Trump-deplorers, which suggests that they continue to be mesmerized by the sophisticated mendacity of the Zionist/CIA shill media, blind to the fake progressiveness of the Clinton/Obama camp.

Cunning versus Cleverness

Too bad so many here continue to mistake cunning for cleverness. They seem incapable of independent or original thought, and so they constantly plagiarize, steal and misappropriate.

They are too shallow to have mystical visions, so they settle for superstition and taboos handed down from generations past. They neither have the courage nor the determination to stand on their own, so they hide under the sarongs of those they perceive as the high-and-mighty... who, in truth, are their enemies and oppressors.

Epiphany over Apocalypse

We URGENTLY need to look within, explore, and retrieve our own cellular memory banks; and experience epiphany upon epiphany... as a counterforce to the apocalyptic deathwish implanted in our collective psyches by astral parasites that feed off our negative emotional discharge.

Fake News Alert!

No concrete evidence that Mr & Mrs MO1 are in any way linked to Kevin Morais's grisly murder. And the malicious story that Hussain Najadi was gunned down for sounding the alarm about Najib's AMB accounts is full of holes. Altantuya Shaariibuu executed for trying to blackmail her corrupt lovers? Blown all out of proportion.

Mammon & Moloch

For thousands upon thousands of generations humankind has been seduced (or hijacked) into worshiping the Archdemons Mammon and Moloch (Money and Power) while pretending to fear or love an invisible off-planet (or otherworldly) jealous male god they refer to as Allah, Yahweh, Heavenly Father, Our Lord, or simply Him.

The ancient visionaries (pre-Abrahamic era) had a mystical heart connection with the breathing fertile land that birthed and nourished them and knew her as the Great Mother Goddess (originally from the Galactic Core). I am of that lineage, have always been (even if I did seem to lose my bearings in several incarnations but it turns out the detours were necessary field research).

Politics as we know it is all about Money and Power. Those who remain true to their life purpose follow the call of Beauty and Truth, nothing else. In a world infested with ugly lies, we are the keepers of the immortal spark. Our task is to anchor the primordial vision of E pluribus unum (Unity in Diversity), serving as conscious conduits for the mystical experience of One Becoming Many and Many Becoming One.

So please don't ask me to enter the political fray. You want me to put on a suit and a fake grin and shake the hands of the unawake for a few paltry bucks a month? As the Sultan of Johor famously roared: "Do you expect me to survive on a measly RM27,000 a month?"

Please listen to this intense conversation all the way and you'll understand better where I'm coming from!

Truth is beauty, beauty truth

I am instinctively, naturally drawn to all things beautiful, and continue to maintain, like John Keats, that Beauty and Truth are inextricably entwined, just as Ethics and Aesthetics serve as concave and convex surfaces of a sphere.

Tragically, the long-term effects of Archontization of the Human Psyche has led to ugly urbanization with dull, angular, inorganic structures - monuments to corporate greed that cast a deep shadow of poverty and ghettodom - not to forget the crudification (and crucifixion) of the physical senses (and sensuousness) that has resulted in "scientific materialism" and the modern priesthood of Evil Empiricism that Stephen Hawking perfectly personified.

In defence of Katy Perry

In the last few years I've noticed that "issues" we discuss on social media are revolving more and more narrowly around memes generated as red-herring topics concocted by corporate shills churning out well-crafted magazine features which promote political correctness and "progressive" revisionism.

This has the observable effect of catalyzing heated and hostile debate on Facebook, bringing out the worst in argumentative ego-driven humans who now have the easy option of unfriending each other and enjoying a daily fix of adrenaline and dopamine.

Meanwhile, the forest gets obscured by the trees - truly crucial issues get sidelined, ignored and forgotten - issues that have the potential to unify humanity in a collective effort to address and resolve them, e.g., the radioactive pollution of the oceans from Fukushima and the increasing use of false flag operations to distract the masses from grotesque corruption and to pump up fear and paranoia on a global scale.

What about Google's sneaky use of algorithms to influence popular opinion and Facebook's complicity with covert agencies to gather data on users? Instead, we get incensed when a 19-year-old boy whose desire to save his kisses for some fictional one true love is traumatized and violated by a tantalizingly debauched celebrity cougar on a talent show. We must unite and pass new laws against such insensitive public behavior!

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When Sukhbir began posting in binary

Of late, I have become fearful to share my opinions out in the open. Because having differing views can lead the world to ostracize, vilify, demonize, criticize, and, hilariously, unfriend me. It's like we're all children again. Only, a lot less carefree and more politically correct about the usage of words and how we frame our questions to the world. It's sad because deep, deep down we all want "a better world" to live in and yet we are all divided about how the ideal world should be. From now on, I'll be sharing my thoughts in binary. If the world is really interested, it will make an effort to convert my words into ASCII text. 

Androids are incapable of original thought and independent action, unlike human beings. They are programmed from birth to conform and adopt consensus opinions as their own. Once a young child is formatted to decode alphanumeric symbols, the rest is easy. It's called school, college, or university.

Just be glad we are NOT androids. You can tell right away from three key issues whether someone is capable of independent thought: first is whether they unquestioningly accept the validity of vaccinations (because scientists says so)... second is whether they are easily drawn into identity politics (issues of race, religion, gender, even football club affiliation)... third is whether they feel guilty about their own sexuality and social "vices" like smoking in public.

The Globalist Cabal has primed the millennial mind to be easily influenced by cleverly constructed "street savvy" magazine features (especially of the type you find in BuzzFeed or Huffington Post). Just to be accepted by their peers, they become afraid to express what they really feel about things. In the guise of ersatz "liberalism" an insidious and zombifying totalitarianism has been creeping in since the advent of social media.

Stories, Folklore, Legends, Mythology

Over the many decades I have been researching the esoteric (no less than 50 years) I have encountered and temporarily adopted many different stories - about how Existence came to be, how the Universe began, the age of our Solar System, whether life on earth spontaneously appeared as an anomaly, or we as a species evolved from the primates or were genetically modified by technologically advanced time or space traveling races. Interestingly, the more I learn, the less I know.

All I know for sure is that everything is a story. Our lives are stories and "history" has been a feeble attempt to document the briefest span of time (no more than 13,000 terrestrial years or so) from the male perspective - that's why it's called "his story" - which mostly revolves around invasion (penetration), domination (might-as-right) and colonization (impregnation), hence the supremacy of warlord bloodlines on this planet and the ridiculous amount of energy and resources squandered on unnecessary, mutually destructive conflict.

In effect, once we acknowledge that it's all just stories, we can begin to reclaim our inner authority as creators of our own stories - and our freedom to rewrite, edit and modify those stories. So as one who by nature prefers Happy Endings, I am in the process of rewriting my own story, and as I expand my sense of Self to include and incorporate the entire Cosmos, I am also rewriting the Story of Life.

And I can attest that I am 100% convinced that all religions and priesthoods serve only one purpose - that is to shock and awe the innocent, gullible human psyche into an inherited fear of invisible and almighty forces or powers, so humans will never gain enough self-mastery to rebel against established external authority, i.e., God, Government and Gurus.

In short, I totally reject all scriptures - especially the so-called Book Religions or Abrahamic Agenda - as puerile nonsense nobody in their right mind needs to waste their time taking seriously.

My personal credo can be summed up thus: the only true god/goddess is the one you see in the mirror. All other representations of "divinity" must be questioned - but you may take for granted that All Life Is Sacred, as it is generated from a Supersentient Galactic Matrix - or what some might call the Sacred Feminine or Aeonic Creator known to the Gnostics as Sophia - better known today as Gaia-Sophia.

[First posted 29 May 2019]

The Facebook Interview (revisited)

Recently, a Facebook friend named Adam Lee (pictured right) asked me a couple of questions about Facebook. Said he was writing an article on... well, Facebook! Thought I'd share my response with you...

Where do you think Facebook is heading?

Consider the unimaginable ways young people can find themselves becoming billionaires in the digital age: back in the mid-1990s Larry Page and Sergey Brin were 23-year-old computer studies undergrads at Stanford U when they stumbled on a new algorithm for a faster, more free-associating search engine called Google. Today each is worth USD16.7 billion.

Then there's Mark Zuckerberg who started Facebook in February 2004 as an interactive social networking website for the campus crowd while he was in college. I hear Yahoo! offered Zuckerberg USD1.7 billion for Facebook last year - and he turned down their offer. Last I heard, MSN estimates that Facebook is worth USD15 billion.

My point is: these youngsters have been able to turn a simple idea into a complex income-generating engine by identifying two basic human needs, viz., the desire for information and the desire to feel connected. These desires are very much in alignment with the incoming frequencies of the Aquarian Age (the Water Bearer symbolizes the dissemination of wisdom acquired during the Capricornian phase of introspection and consolidation, and the Piscean phase of dissolution and disintegration of ancient taboos).

Today more and more people regard a laptop or tablet (and now smartphones) as an essential personal accessory. Instant messaging, virtually free text-messaging, Skype and a whole array of connectivity tools has been facilitated by advances in satellite communications that would leave our grandparents scratching their bald pates. This is what I call the age of server-assisted telepathy when a planetary mind is emerging from the preceding centuries of technological development. Buckminster Fuller, thirty years ago, called it "accelerating acceleration." By this he meant that quantum advances in technology would soon hurl us beyond the gravitational pull of the tragic past into a comic/romantic future.

Take Facebook's burgeoning popularity: within two years just about everybody I know who owns a computer, tablet or smartphone is on Facebook. My daughters and their far-flung network of cousins are now on my Facebook friends list. For the first time ever, the separate realities of family and friends are merging in cyberspace. And I just saw an interview with Zuckerberg taped in May 2007 where he quoted the figure 45 million as the total number of Facebook users - that was almost 6 months ago. I figure at least 250,000 new users sign up every day. In June 2017 Facebook hit 2 billion monthly users, making it the world's largest virtual community.



Where is Facebook heading? Who da fuck knows? Right now everybody complains that they're wasting too much time on Facebook (and a few months ago I was bitching about the same thing too) - but the reason Facebook is distracting people from work is that they're having more fun just playing with each other in harmless ways (try throwing a sheep at me in real life!) Friends I hardly get to see in real life are poking, tickling, cuddling, and loving me - albeit virtually but it sure feels nice! Hotties I've long wanted to meet give me cheap thrills by appearing in my inbox and adding me as their Facebook friend. Faces I haven't seen in 25 years are suddenly among my Top Friends! Wow... why ask where a party is heading when it's in full swing?

What's in it for you in Facebook? What's your story?

I live a long way from the city. In my younger days I was a real party animal. For me Facebook is a 24/7 party without the hassle of driving 3 hours, finding a parking space, and worrying about not getting laid. On Facebook you KNOW you're not gonna get laid because it's all make-believe, all a buncha pixels - but you can let go and sink your virtual teeth into that plump backside on some hottie's profile photo without getting slapped (except virtually of course)... and you can bite five pairs of buttocks at one go if you like. This is something I've long dreamed of doing. I've stopped cursing Facebook. In fact I've just written Mark Zuckerberg a thank-you note. Hope he responds with a $50-million deposit in my PayPal account.

On re-reading the above in February 2018, the whole world has shifted into a different set of probable timelines. Recent revelations have unearthed the distinct possibility that digital megacorporations like Google and Facebook may well have been created by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, an offshoot of the US Department of Defense). In effect, they could be products of the "Deep State" designed to effortlessly keep humans under electronic surveillance while our behavioral patterns are closely monitored by ultra-secretive agencies like the NSA, CIA, MI6, Mossad, ASIO and so on (ultimately these covert agencies transcend political ideologies and national boundaries and they all serve the same Central Nervous System (variously called Yahweh, Allah, God, Ialdabaoth, Artificial Intelligence, or the Archons of Fate). 

To me, Google and Facebook serve as useful tools - and tools are either benign or malevolent, depending on who uses them and towards what agenda. If you're paranoid, as many of my friends are who refuse to use social media and insist on sticking with email (even though they must realize that even text messages and phonecalls can be routinely intercepted and stored in gigantic databases like Prism (and now Palantir) - indeed, it is now known that software giants like Microsoft and Apple are ultimately extensions of DARPA and they all come with sneaky backdoors into their operating systems, allowing personal computers, tablets and smartphones to be turned against their owners as spyware.

[First posted 28 October 2007. Reposted 7 February 2018 & 30 December 2021]

WHY I TOLERATE FACEBOOK... (repost)

In March 2009 I received a message via Facebook from someone I hadn't been in contact with since 1989. I'd known her as Virginia Kelly and she had been traveling with her bosom pal Jane when I met the duo on Tioman Island. Jane and Virginia accepted my invitation to visit when they were in KL and I recall we had a real jolly time. Then they left for Australia and there was an exchange of letters for a period, but that eventually fizzled out.

Virginia sent me a lovely, chatty email along with a whole bunch of scanned images that effectively collapsed the 20-year gap. It was truly delightful to view photos taken in 1989 that I had never seen. Whatever happened to my youthful good looks? 😥

Anyway, I just felt like sharing this recently retrieved fragment of my past...

The Rt. Hon. Armpit or Nutopian Embassy Residence 
@ 7 Pesiaran Ampang Hilir where I lived from 1970-1991. 
Looked like a hovel from the outside but it felt like a palace to me!

The-Pyramid-That-Xandi-Built was located behind 'The Armpit'
and served as an exotic guestroom

The cluttered living room where I received a broad spectrum of visitors:
from junkies and prostitutes to princes, princesses, sages, wizards, kings
and queens in exile, and goddesses of all shapes and sizes

The cap was a present from Denis Hewett.
It's still lying around somewhere!

Roxanne, the neurotic dog I inherited from former housemate Jeanne Donven

Virginia's attempt at low-light portraiture...
or perhaps I was completely stoned at the time?

Jane and Virginia (wearing my Balinese jacket) dining at the Bangles

Mary, Virginia and Jane at CJ's pub

Aha! It appears I was there too...

Who dat Dancin' Fool?

Now he's making a monkey of himself on the drumkit...

Imbi Road was a favorite haunt (oops, whose earring am I wearing?)

Camera on self-timer. Sorry, my hand got in the way, Mary!

Warding off Virginia's pheromones (or zapping her with chi,
not sure exactly what I was up to)

The 1972 Fiat Polski I inherited from Xandi Hoesch, the famous pyramid builder

Hello dear Antares,

Thank you so much for your prompt reply to my message on facebook. I was so happy to hear from you. Sorry I have taken so long to reply, you must think me very slack...

When I told Jane that I had googled you on the net and had actually found you.... she was amazed and said “so did he remember us”? I said to her well he didn’t actually say if he did... I think he did... but I can’t be sure ha ha ha ha!!! 

You were a very popular, extremely charismatic and fascinating special being then with loads of friends, and I can see that continues with over 1,100 friends on facebook. Wow!!! So I think for you to remember 2 young Aussie girls that briefly passed through would be pretty amazing... although I do think we kept in touch for a little while - you wrote to me in London... I do remember you sent me that pic of you and Marilia (the one you have on your bio). So then I dug out my ‘ol travel pics and found some of us and thought I would send them to you. I assume you have broadband with all your blogging with loads of pics etc. (I do hope you do... apologies in advance for the large email if you haven’t!!! but I think somehow you must to do what you do on the net???)

Anyway none of the pics are fabulous shots but some are funny with the expressions on some of our faces!!! Anyway I hope that the pics jog your memory (apologies for the blurry ones!! but I still thought they were worth sending even if they were blurry!!)

Oh there was another thing I thought was funny and wanted to share with you... Jane & I were both reminiscing - about lots of things... then we started talking about the little presents that you gave each of us the day we left your place in KL. The little round tin you gave me with the dice in it. The blue scarab beetle you gave Jane. I have my tin sitting on top of my fridge and frequently give it a little shake of the die and I have a code for different numbers... for some answers to some questions... strange I know... but I have always had it not far from me all these years... and Jane (who is extremely minimalist) still has her scarab beetle in her bedside drawer... I was so surprised about that... She rents a little building on this guy's place (he had originally built it for his wife to use to massage clients... (she left him... for a client I think!!) anyway it’s just a room with another room with a small kitchen and small bathroom... So being so small she doesn’t have very much with her... I guess what I am saying that I think it amazing that 2 old women (I can’t believe I said that about Jane and I ha ha ha !!!) still have those gifts from so long ago and they both still mean so much to us both... Hmmm ain’t that nice... Got a nice warm feeling now have you!!! ha ha ha!!! Well you should - you deserve it!!

Well it is a couple of days later and I still haven’t finished this email... Andy and I just got back from Brisbane today... We went down to go see the band ‘Coldplay’ it was a good night... We both really enjoy our music. I like most of the music he likes but he doesn’t like a lot of music I do... I recently went down on my own to Brisbane to see Leonard Cohen... You’d know him wouldn’t you? He is more of a poet than a singer. I just couldn’t miss this tour... At 74 he decided to tour again... and said quite honestly it was because he needed the money. I love his music, in fact I can say it was one of the best concerts I have ever been to. Andy makes fun of him saying his music is depressing and he calls his music wrist slashing music to die to,,. I say if you think that you just “don’t get it” Ha ha ha!!!

I have so enjoyed looking through the pics you have on facebook and also the family pod pics... through other links. I see Mary is there... We met Mary, I am sure it is the same Mary... she is in the pictures I am sending you. What is she up to now? What about your girls... All grown up and have children of their own now... Jane reminded me that we met one of your daughters whilst we were staying at your place... and haven’t you got some gorgeous grandchildren... Sexy grandad indeed!!!!!!... And now you have a young son with Anoora... wow!!! I love touching base with old friends and getting the gaps filled in... what useful things have they done... and how have they spent their time. It looks to me that you have had a wonderful life (and still do!!)... Full of connecting with people from all over the place and through your blog informing and stimulating awareness and conversation about important issues... You are a very special being Antares!!!

The Moossajee Family: Ryan, Andy & Gemma

I am also sending a fairly recent pic of Andy and Gemma and Ryan. Andy was born in England (Gloucester) but his Mum is Welsh (living in Australia now) and his Father was born in Mauritius (but has been living in Switzerland for the last 35 or so years) so in case you are wondering where the colourful surname ‘Moossajee’ came from. There are only 6 of us in Australia... Andy & I and our kids and Andy’s brother in Melbourne and his wife... so it is a little unusual over here... it is pronounced Moose-a gee!!! I never had to spell or pronounce Kelly (my maiden name) ha ha ha!!!

Anyway I want to get this sent to you so you can see the pics and see if you remember us... be honest!!! We won’t be offended... As I see it you have 1000’s of people pass through your life and you can’t possibly remember everyone...

Take care and I will be continuing to read your blog so I can get a picture and be informed about these issues that you write about... hopefully when you have time you can drop me a line (part of me feels like you have so many people to keep in touch with already that another will only burden your already overloaded cyber correspondence) but I will be happy to hear from you if/when you have time...

With love and cyber hugs x Virg

[First posted 18 March 2009. Reposted 22 November 2019]

Mark Zuckerberg, I take back what I said about you... (but do I still feel the same about facebook 7 years later?)

It all began in mid-2005 when the 24-year-old son of an old friend returned from a week's holiday at my place and invited me as his Facebook friend. I like Dave Herzenberg so I signed up. Soon after that I received almost daily friend requests and after a while it became a serious annoyance. I was tempted to delete my account more than once.

Then I read somewhere that Yahoo! had offered you $1.7 billion for Facebook - and that you had turned them down! That got me really mad, Mark. First of all how could a nerd come up with just another variation of the networking site and attract so much interest in such a short time that he'd be technically a billionaire? Guys like me have been plodding on for decades, dreaming of that elusive Big Break... and here comes a kid on rollerblades whizzing out of nowhere with a nothing idea and... anyway, how dare you turn your nose up at 1.7 billion bucks?

I got even madder when friends kept asking me to add all sorts of apps - just so they could poke me and turn me into a zombie (yeah, that's what I've always wanted). But why didn't I just delete my Facebook account and breathe a huge sigh of relief?

Well, the sad truth is: I couldn't! I was secretly having too much fun flirting with the women and bonding with the men. Then amazing things began to happen: long-lost friends spontaneously appeared in my Facebook inbox; people I had long wanted to meet suddenly added me as a friend!

Damn... I knew then that whatever Mark Zuckerberg's original intentions were, he had created a monster beyond anyone's control. Nobody can predict what will happen when family and friends begin to merge on Facebook (up till now they've always been separate worlds). But I've got my buddies and my two daughters and their mother, as well as my sister and one brother, on my Facebook friends' list - and that alone is a phenomenon. Distant nieces and nephews have added me as their friend... people who bumped into me eight, nine years ago at a party have added me as a friend. It's a weird unpredictable journey into a dimension of universal connectivity one could only dream about even 10 years ago.

There are detractors who warn about having so much personal data on Facebook's servers - and then there are all these auxiliary app developers and their servers. What if the secret government is behind Facebook?

Well, fuck the secret government! We have nothing to hide. It's them that have been in hiding all these aeons. I haven't a clue where this will eventually lead, Mark, but I just wanted to tell you one thing: Facebook is pretty much a sign of the Aquarian times and you deserve to be fabulously rich because your simple idea is enabling a level of planetary connectivity that merges work and play across the board. That, ultimately, has got to be a very positive and wholesome evolutionary factor.

So, hey... thanks, buddy!

[From a facebook message to Mark Zuckerberg sent 20 Oct 2007 at 6:54pm. First posted 16 February 2012]

The Face of Facebook

MARK ZUCKERBERG OPENS UP
by Jose Antonio Vargas
The New Yorker

Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in his college dorm room six years ago. Five hundred million people have joined since, and eight hundred and seventy-nine of them are his friends. The site is a directory of the world’s people, and a place for private citizens to create public identities. You sign up and start posting information about yourself: photographs, employment history, why you are peeved right now with the gummy-bear selection at Rite Aid or bullish about prospects for peace in the Middle East. Some of the information can be seen only by your friends; some is available to friends of friends; some is available to anyone. Facebook’s privacy policies are confusing to many people, and the company has changed them frequently, almost always allowing more information to be exposed in more ways.

According to his Facebook profile, Zuckerberg has three sisters (Randi, Donna, and Arielle), all of whom he’s friends with. He’s friends with his parents, Karen and Edward Zuckerberg. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy and attended Harvard University. He’s a fan of the comedian Andy Samberg and counts among his favorite musicians Green Day, Jay-Z, Taylor Swift, and Shakira. He is twenty-six years old.

Zuckerberg cites “Minimalism,” “Revolutions,” and “Eliminating Desire” as interests. He likes “Ender’s Game,” a coming-of-age science-fiction saga by Orson Scott Card, which tells the story of Andrew (Ender) Wiggin, a gifted child who masters computer war games and later realizes that he’s involved in a real war. He lists no other books on his profile.

[Read the entire feature here...]

Priscilla Chan has been Zuck's girlfriend since 2003

Read my 28 October 2007 post:
The Facebook Interview

E8, XML, PHP, SEO, RDF and My Friend Wheel

70 million blogs were tabulated in July 2005 and I hear that 120,000 baby blogs are born into the blogosphere each day.

It seems the explosive growth of the weblog phenomenon worldwide - especially amongst the younger set of internet users - may be due to two factors: (1) the newer blog templates accommodate multimedia encodings which allow bloggers to post not just rich text but also audiostreaming and embedded videos; (2) blogs are interactive and encourage instant feedback by way of comments.

And, of course, advances in software programming have made functions like RSS (Really Simple Syndication) a routine part of the browsing experience. When I began blogging in December 2006 I surfed smack into a wall of acronyms incomprehensible to anybody who isn't a professional nerd: esoteric terms like RDF (Resource Description Framework), XML (Extensible Markup Language), SEO (Search Engine Optimization), PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor - NOT Pothead Pixie and don't ask me why it isn't called HPP!). For someone who hasn't begun Podcasting and who doesn't even own an iPod, all of this was somewhat daunting. Slowly, I began to understand the value of getting my blog listed on Technorati and having an account with del.icio.us.

Two-dimensional E8 image courtesy of Peter McMullen and John Stembridge

However, what's truly amazing about these new developments in the web-dweller's world is the exponentially increasing interconnectivity that is beginning to resemble the latest mathematical model of the fabric of reality, proposed by a 39-year-old Californian physicist named Garrett Lisi who also happens to be a surfer - not just of virtual reality but also of some very wet waves. This stunning mathematical model has been dubbed E8 and I don't pretend to understand it one bit, except perhaps on the intuitive level - and I must admit to being drawn to it mainly because it's so aesthetically gratifying! Here's a beautiful video showing how Lisi's "Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything" looks when the E8 is rotated through eight dimensions:




Yesterday I spent a few minutes on Facebook generating a Friend Wheel, which graphically represents how each friend is connected to another and ultimately to me. The sheer beauty of the Friend Wheel makes me happy to be connected to at least 300 people on Facebook alone. There are hosts of other friends and acquaintances who are unlikely to squander their time on Facebook, but if I add them to the mix, my Friend Wheel will ultimately resemble the E8! Mind-boggling, ain't it? Rainbow Fractals forever!