Month: July 2022

by Travis Mateer

Over the weekend I came across one of the most concerning articles I’ve read in quite some time about how deeply we’ve already fallen to technological enslavement, begging the question: is too late to kill Aladdin?

Here’s an screenshot from the link about the AI that already controls the world economy:

I strongly suggest going to the link and reading the whole piece to find out for yourself how beholden your life already is to this man-made technological monster.

Living in a sci-fi dystopia where nerd-culture has ascended to the high priests of a new religion is not the kind of future I’m willing to passively accept. Will you accept this future? Because the nerds have ALREADY begun pedestaling their AI creations as gods of their new religion.

If you don’t believe me, this Wired article from 2017 takes you inside the first church of artificial intelligence. From the link:

ANTHONY LEVANDOWSKI makes an unlikely prophet. Dressed Silicon Valley-casual in jeans and flanked by a PR rep rather than cloaked acolytes, the engineer known for self-driving cars—and triggering a notorious lawsuit—could be unveiling his latest startup instead of laying the foundations for a new religion. But he is doing just that. Artificial intelligence has already inspired billion-dollar companies, far-reaching research programs, and scenarios of both transcendence and doom. Now Levandowski is creating its first church.

The new religion of artificial intelligence is called Way of the Future. It represents an unlikely next act for the Silicon Valley robotics wunderkind at the center of a high-stakes legal battle between Uber and Waymo, Alphabet’s autonomous-vehicle company. Papers filed with the Internal Revenue Service in May name Levandowski as the leader (or “Dean”) of the new religion, as well as CEO of the nonprofit corporation formed to run it.

The documents state that WOTF’s activities will focus on “the realization, acceptance, and worship of a Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) developed through computer hardware and software.” That includes funding research to help create the divine AI itself. The religion will seek to build working relationships with AI industry leaders and create a membership through community outreach, initially targeting AI professionals and “laypersons who are interested in the worship of a Godhead based on AI.” The filings also say that the church “plans to conduct workshops and educational programs throughout the San Francisco/Bay Area beginning this year.”

If technology hadn’t already metastasized to the point of deeply ensnaring the upcoming generation, grooming them for the predations of tech-fantasies like Zuck’s Metaverse, then I’d laugh at these Silicon Valley psychos eagerly venerating their new Godhead. But if the pandemic taught me anything, it’s how dedicated these psychopaths are at getting their tentacles into their brain-spaces of our children.

But in the rush to control markets and enrich themselves, has Fink and his ilk set us on the path to technological enslavement? Here’s another screenshot from the first article:

If Aladdin is like oxygen to these unhinged money conjurers, then it sounds like a great opportunity to pull the plug and snuff out a serious drag on humanity. The problem is I think we’re past that point. And that makes worshippers of the new Godhead, like Anthony Levandowski, very excited.

Levandowski believes that a change is coming—a change that will transform every aspect of human existence, disrupting employment, leisure, religion, the economy, and possibly decide our very survival as a species.

“If you ask people whether a computer can be smarter than a human, 99.9 percent will say that’s science fiction,” he says. “ Actually, it’s inevitable. It’s guaranteed to happen.”

How about no? Just no. Seriously. Before it really is too late.

Thanks for reading, humans!

by Travis Mateer

If you don’t think there’s a movement to annihilate the independence that cars have represented to American culture for over half a century, then you aren’t paying attention.

If I wasn’t skeptical of heavily promoted social changes that seem, on the surface, to be well-intentioned, I’d be an eager cheerleader for removing the motor vehicle from the American experience. But I am skeptical, and with good reason.

The Missoulian article that spurred this post is titled Missoula bikers, pedestrians confront alarming crash trends. From the link:

Katy Robin Garton bikes around Missoula every day with her three children.

Elliot Melzer, 6, rides alongside his mother, who carts around Emi Sue Melzer, 3, and Teddy Waltman, 2, in a double-seated contraption on the back of her bike.

“We get them biking young,” said Garton.

She generally feels safe riding with her young children in Missoula, but streets are getting more dangerous for non-motorized users like Garton and her family.  

In the past 10 years, the national traffic safety record for non-motorists has gotten substantially worse. According to Dr. Kelcie Ralph, an associate professor of planning and public policy at Rutgers University, 80% more people are dying on American streets while walking and bicycling.

This EMOTIONAL framing of the issue utilizes a nice family at the beginning of the article to get you worried about kids being killed by cars. It’s quite effective, and reflects the way I used to travel with my two boys when my family lived in the Slant Street neighborhood.

In fact, I am such an adept user of non-motorized transportation, I was once nominated as commuter of the year for biking to work every day, even in temperatures that plunged below zero.

Now, WHERE I was biking to work matters to this story because I’d like to introduce the concept of PEDESTRIAN BEHAVIOR as an important factor in whatever trend is being claimed in this Missoulian article.

I worked at the Poverello Center–both at the old downtown location, and the new one on West Broadway–and during that relocation discussion, the potential of vehicular conflict with client pedestrians was a BIG concern.

After we relocated, my role in addressing neighborhood concerns put me in constant communication with homeless clients, and I can say from direct experience that many of them demonstrated ZERO concern about walking straight across the road, traffic be damned.

Since leaving my job, I have had to slam on brakes and honk my horn AT LEAST a dozen times to avoid hitting and possibly killing people around the homeless shelter. In fact, just last Friday, I was driving down Cedar street when someone physically SLAPPED my vehicle, then pretended to be hit and fake injured. That incident resulted in a really fun conversation with a Rogers International private security douche bag who SHOULD BE keeping this area secure.

(on a side note, I hope the Poverello staff member I spoke with sticks with it. He’s only been on the job for two weeks, and already has a negative impression of the private security firm I’ve been trying to expose for being shady AF).

Getting back to the article, pedestrian behavior IS an acknowledged factor, but not as important as street design, allegedly. To me this sounds like preparing the public for LOTS of public tax spending, like I mentioned last week regarding the TIF-funded study to change one way streets downtown to two way streets.

Here’s more from the article:

Local mobility advocates and government officials see numerous reasons for the alarming trend of bike and pedestrian crashes. Street design, individual behavior and vehicle changes all seem to contribute to the growing danger.

“Roadway design is the predominant determinant of travel speeds,” states the city’s Safe Speeds on City Streets report created in 2021.

Wide, multi-lane arterials are particularly dangerous. In Missoula, that includes popular thoroughfares like Reserve Street, Broadway, Brooks Street, Russell Street and Orange Street — where a May 2 collision killed 77-year-old cyclist Vincent Burrafato. 

The example provided in the article regarding the May 2nd collision bolsters the agenda of eventually designating some portion of Missoula vehicle-free, except for maybe buses.

Speaking of buses, a local municipal bus killed a pedestrian last March, a pedestrian that was apparently intoxicated, but that does NOT bolster the right agenda, so it’s not a useful to reference for this article.

A useful document that outlines how Missoula approaches transportation issues is the Activate Missoula 2045 (PDF), a long range transportation plan developed in March of 2017. Here are the goals:

Yes, one of the goals of Missoula’s transportation plan is to PROTECT THE ENVIRONMENT, so I’m guessing that means eventually eliminating all the lethal car farts threatening our planetary health. Also, with the expansion of Missoula’s airport, eliminating cars will help balance all the private jets bringing deep pockets of wealth to our little valley.

One of the funny things about the Missoulian article is that the trend of accidents actually went DOWN over the past year. Is this a trend-busting aberration? No, it’s evidence of success, claims local transportation advocates.

Nationwide trends and the recent Missoula bike fatality notwithstanding, non-motorized crashes actually went down from 2020 to 2021, per MPD’s data. Both 2019 and 2020 saw 63 bike/pedestrian collisions, but 2021 only had 46.

While one year is not enough to draw conclusions about trends, existing local initiatives can be credited with contributing to non-motorized safety in Missoula.

Those initiatives include Missoula’s Neighborhood Greenways, a series of streets parallel to major roads that bikers and walkers are encouraged to use instead.

Local policy has also proven a useful tool for increasing safety on local streets. Bob Giordano, executive director of Free Cycles, lauded programs like Complete Streets and the Long Range Transportation Plan, which includes the goal of halving single-occupant vehicle trips by 2045 and tripling walking, biking and transit trips by the same year.

Yes, this MUST BE proof that money spent is having the desired effect, so the only conclusion is that MORE MONEY spent will provide MORE DESIRED EFFECTS for transportation safety and equality. I’m sure our illustrious leaders will make this happen for the betterment of ALL.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

The title of this post is quite a bold statement, but I’m feeling pretty bold after my performance on the street of downtown Missoula for a group of people who included the man who plays Lloyd Pierce in the show Yellowstone.

I rolled up to the group and said “Whoa, famous people” as an ice breaker, then produced one of my cards. I explained that I was a local journalist trying to get out suppressed narratives in this town–like what REALLY happened to Sean Stevenson in January of 2020–and maybe they could help.

Just the fact they listened to me for the few brief minutes I had their attention was a big help, and it was also helpful that my pitch was recorded by a member of the group on a fancy looking camera (much fancier than Andy Smetanka’s hipster camera).

Last Sunday I published a similarly bold declaration to the myth makers that they will not win this war. One of this blog’s astute observers and commentators, J. Kevin Hunt, had a little difficulty in wrapping his head around my declaration. Here’s how he ended his comment: “Fun read, notwithstanding my difficulty discerning a coherent message or theme“.

For Mr. Hunt and anyone else scratching their head over my declaration, allow me to elaborate on how THEY see the power of narrative control, and by “they” I mean global narrative influencers like Ajit Maan, who wrote the book Plato’s Fear. Here’s the back of the book describing Maan’s background:

And here’s an excerpt from page 10 to give you an idea of how Ajit Maan perceives the power of narrative:

Artists are dangerous people. Plato would have banned poets from his ideal Republic due to the danger they pose. He was afraid of the artist’s ability to evoke emotion in audiences – emotion that would override reason.

Plato was afraid of the power of representational force.

Reality, Plato thought, was comprehensible through a logical process. But neither reality, nor reason, holds the power that artists do, because artists don’t just reproduce reality; artists provide a new way to view reality. Observing the unfolding of events often does not move people emotionally the way the representation of the unfolding of events does. Representations of events, what we call narrative these days, ties events together in a way that imbues them with meaning.

Plato’s suggestion of banning poets from his ideal Republic would have been a disaster because THAT kind of overt action tips the hand to artists about the power of their craft to shape reality. A much more effective strategy, as our lovely “intelligence” community has shown, is to CONTROL artists with money. Here’s how it works:

Did the CIA fund creative writing in America? The idea seems like the invention of a creative writer. Yet once upon a time (1967, to be exact), Paul Engle received money from the Farfield Foundation to support international writing at the University of Iowa. The Farfield Foundation was not really a foundation; it was a CIA front that supported cultural operations, mostly in Europe, through an organization called the Congress for Cultural Freedom.

Yes, it’s a fact the CIA justified funding culture creation as a legitimate front in the war against Communism. The problem, though, is that kind of thinking is antiquated. The ‘ism wars are a smokescreen for the REAL war, which is an anti-human one. Who (or what) is waging this war, and why, are questions requiring serious engagement.

Understanding HOW some of this narrative control works erodes its influence, and I am more than happy to do my part in service of the deeper truths this narrative control seeks to hide.

If you feel like helping me financially, I do have a GoFundMe page I’m terrible at promoting, and some other ways I am working on to do what it takes to fight back.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

I had to do a double-take when I saw it in print. I mean, it was only two years ago when Adam Hertz had that delightful debate with Missoula’s TIF-addicted Mayor, John Engen. And now, this:

Otis LLC is looking to develop a 39-unit apartment building on the corner of Scott and Otis streets. The project was intended to provide housing deemed affordable with a target hitting 68% of the area median income.

Project manager Adam Hertz said it’s a well-designed and needed project but was now on the verge of becoming nonviable due to escalating costs and unexpected delays in permitting.

“It’s really challenging to hold those rents and make this project viable with such drastic increases in construction costs, in addition to an interest-rate environment that hasn’t been friendly to us. This project is on the verge of viability.”

An even bigger cringe-factor for this former critic of TIF handouts is the fact this puppy of a project, Otis LLC, already got a nice chunck of TIF change last year. And now they want more.

Last August, MRA approved Otis LLC’s request for funding in the amount of $315,000 to aid in the construction of public infrastructure, including water and sewer extensions, sidewalks and other necessities.

But on Thursday, the developer sought an additional $275,000 to cover rising market costs. Transportation costs for the project have increased 30%, PVC needed for plumbing is hard to obtain, and contractors are busy elsewhere in the city and hard to get bids from, according to Kody Swartz of Woith Engineering.

He added that the lift station that serves the area doesn’t have the capacity to support the Otis apartment project. That wasn’t known until the permitting process began, and it would add another $45,000 to the project.

“I think it was an oversight by city engineering due to the capacity caused by the Vallagio, which is a great project and a project I support, but not a project we want to pay upgrades for,” Hertz said. “That’s a big elephant in the entire area and all of the projects going on in the area.”

Great attempt to scapegoat the city, but the reality is EVERYONE is dealing with shit costing more money. The amount of money I’m burning through in just gas alone really pisses me off, but I’m not expecting other people to pay my gas bill for me.

This isn’t just another development project looking for a TIF handout, it’s a glaring example of where the rubber meets the road when it comes to supposed principles. I guess being a fiscal conservative taking a stand against an out-of-control TIF-sniffing regime just evaporates when one’s own project is facing “viability” problems.

Speaking of rubber meeting roads, the Missoula Redevelopment Agency is throwing more money at its master-plan obsession to change some one way roads downtown into TWO WAY roads. Isn’t that exciting? (emphasis mine)

A long-planned but highly complex effort to convert two of Missoula’s major downtown streets from one-way to two-way traffic got a big boost in public funding on Thursday.

The Missoula Redevelopment Agency’s board of commissioners voted unanimously to commit $233,563 in Tax Increment Financing for design work to figure out how to convert Front and Main streets to two-way traffic. Essentially, the money is for a “scope change and amendment” to the original contract the city has signed with a local engineering firm. 

The entire project is estimated to cost between $8 million and $9 million, and some of the planning funds will come from three Urban Renewal Districts that encompass portions of the downtown area. The agency has the discretion to use new property taxes in those districts generated by new development. To pay for the entire project, the city will have to use a combination of sources, including federal infrastructure funds. No exact timeline on the project is set in place yet because the designs aren’t completed.

Yes, after TWO disbursements of public money, this design firm is, like, you know, REALLY close to completing the design. That’s pretty damn funny, considering the DENIAL the Otis puppy project received.

I wonder why some projects can get MORE money, but other projects can’t? Hmmm. That sounds like a Monday kind of problem.

Have a great weekend!

by Travis Mateer

UPDATE BELOW

I see lots of interesting things in the morning in downtown Zoom Town as I skate the sidewalks toward my morning cup of joe.

For example, yesterday I spotted a Smetanka in the wild and it was VERY exciting!

This artist (sort of) was busy filming the Wilma with his hipster camera, so I briefly interrupted him to inquire if he knew that the Wilma’s owner, Nick Checota, had killed the music at the Top Hat, but sadly Andy’s ears couldn’t hear my inquiry. Not wanting to further disrupt this artist in the wild, I chose to continue my morning roll.

Later in the morning I finally followed up on my inquiry about why Missoula’s bridge to no where has been shutdown. Is the city trying to avoid another encampment no-go-zone situation?

For a more visually stimulating report, here’s my on-the-ground perspective filmed on July 20th, 2022.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/731785004?h=23256322e1&badge=0&autopause=0&player_id=0&app_id=58479

The final short for today’s post involves a bold figure to panhandle from an already tapped and pissed off public currently being replaced by deep-pocketed transplants. Here is the VERY predictable outcome of providing short-term Covid cash to “crisis” services:

Saying the cost of tending to the city’s most vulnerable residents has become too much to cover with unpredictable funding, advocates on Tuesday asked Missoula County to consider placing a crisis services levy on the November ballot.

If approved and passed by voters, the funding would replace revenue from the American Rescue Plan and CARE acts. Funding from such programs was used to start or invest in a number of programs but is not long term.

I hope those voting machines are pre-tabulated to support this bullshit, because sane citizens with functioning eyeballs and more than 3 brain cells can easily see the charade for what it is: a money grab.

That is all for today, thanks for reading!

UPDATE: The following day after this posted, I drove by the bridge and noticed it was finally open. Did I ever get a call back from the Parks and Rec person I called? No, I did not, but I may try to follow up to see why it was closed in the first place.