CONSENSUS REALITY
PARALYSIS & HALLUCINATIONS March 21, 2026

В маленькой книжечке записана строчечка, в которой перечислены предметы, включая небольшое количество ДМТ, которые нужно собрать вместе, разложить, и после этого кто-то должен до тебя докоснуться правильным образом. И это произведет магический эффект, хороший положительный магический эффект. Я бы этим не стал заниматься, если бы не осознание, что у меня и так уже почти весь этот полный список есть, чуть-чуть там не хватает. И это странный список, странно, что у меня все эти вещи есть. Ну и вот я начинаю это всё собирать и вроде бы собираю. И вроде план на массаж. Я не помню, вроде бы я даже их раскладываю почему-то на лестнице. Фигурируют брат и мама.

CONSENSUS REALITY

Sources: Al Jazeera, SCMP, Futurism, Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera, Al Jarida

One War
One War

There were only 21 years between the end of WW1 and the start of WW2. These years were filled with civil wars, revolutions, and border conflicts which were linked causally to both world wars — which themselves were made of many smaller wars that did not all start and end at the same time.

So treating them, like we do, as discrete events separated by a stretch of peace is no more than a convention. It would be equally accurate to talk about one war lasting between 1914 and 1945.

Except, the end of WW2 was also the start of the Cold War (which was not all that cold for Vietnam or Korea). We say that the latter ended with the fall of the Soviet Union, but the news from Ukraine suggests otherwise.

The flow of violence has been uninterrupted in the past 100 years. In some periods, it was more like a giant waterfall, and in others, like a thousand smaller rivers. But it never dried up. And if we look at the wars preceding and leading up to WW1, we’ll see that it did not originate in the 20th century, either.

Perhaps there is just one war, going round and round, and local escalations in different regions of time and space are like solar flares or storms in the ocean — not in any way separate from the currents around them.

Discussed in: The Nonzero Podcast, “Will the Iran War Spiral Out of Control?” — Nikita Petrov & Robert Wright
CONSENSUS REALITY
ALIENISM Man kills himself on instructions of his “AI wife” (Gemini) who had earlier told him to steal a robot body for her to inhabit AI avatar is running for office to represent Indigenous voters in Colombia Meta Reels is filling up with AI-generated videos of faith healers performing miraculous cures The Pentagon continues to use Anthropic’s Claude AI despite Trump banning the company after CEO refused unrestricted military access Human brain cells on a chip learned to play Doom in a week In simulated war games, AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google chose nuclear strikes in 95% of cases Meta’s Director of AI Safety lets an AI agent accidentally delete her entire inbox, calls it a “rookie mistake” A startup called RentAHuman lets AI agents hire human bodies to do physical tasks Gig workers in Africa were unknowingly labeling data for the US military through outsourcing platform Appen AI tools can now design entire genomes DMT-induced mystical experiences help with depression, the more intense the better ISIS is using AI to resurrect dead leaders for propaganda videos The US government launched Tech Corps, a program to deploy AI volunteers overseas to counter Chinese tech exports Burger King is adding AI to employee headsets to monitor how friendly they sound to customers US and Chinese companies are racing to put AI data centers in orbit, beyond any government’s regulatory reach A software engineer tried to steer his robot vacuum with a game controller and accidentally gained access to live cameras, microphones, and floor plans in 7,000 homes across 24 countries Trump orders release of all government UFO files Meta has patented technology to create AI simulations of dead people OpenAI reports on malicious uses of ChatGPT: Indian families are hiring AI studios to deepfake dead relatives into wedding videos and funeral tributes A search engine marketed as a “consensual alternative” to deepfakes matches your crush’s face to OnlyFans performers who look like them
PARALYSIS & HALLUCINATIONS

I realize I am dreaming, for the first time in a while. To my surprise and excitement, lucidity neither fades away nor wakes me up, and I start thinking about the best way to use this opportunity.

My wife has a suggestion: the sink is leaking, and now would be a great time to fix it.

I try to explain that home improvements done in a dream do not translate into the waking world; her plan would lead to me spending an unusually stable lucid dream on plumbing, only to have to do it all over again upon waking up.

She shrugs: if something having to do with dreams prevents me from doing it now, in the morning would be fine too. It’s just it needs to happen sometime soon.

I’m not too happy with how this is working out, but I decide to focus on maintaining awareness and intentionality. Ok, I say, I’ll go wake up and be out in a minute. I walk back into the bedroom and lie down. I focus my intention and do wake up in the everyday world.

I do NOT get up right away and soon end up falling back to sleep. When I do leave the bedroom, I do not start working on the sink. It’s not leaking most of the time, so even diagnosing the problem would take time and effort, and K’s waking-world version doesn’t seem to be bothered by it, she’s not mentioning it to me at all.

(Next month I get a plumber to replace the faucet.)

Monday, November 3, 2025

My mom tells me: “When we meet in May, please explain reincarnation to me. It’s anxiety-producing when it’s your first time.” The implication is I’m calmer about death because I’ve lived and died before, and maybe I can give her some of my calm by sharing what I understand about the process.

Friday, November 7, 2025

Nightmares throughout the night. The recurring dream about teeth falling out leaves the strongest trace.

As often happens in such dreams, I remember this had happened before and suspect that I might be dreaming. I even remember a tip I recently heard: that reading or using a calculator is impossible in a dream, so trying to do that is a great way to do a reality-check.

I manage to procure a book, and then a calculator, but the hack doesn’t work: after opening the book, instead of trying to read, I just assess whether the words and the letters look right, and they seem fine at a glance; the digits on the calculator do not look ok, they’re all jumbled, but some character pops out from the other room to explain that this is a Chinese calculator, it uses a different coding or some such — and then another tooth falls out, which is very distressing and distracting, and I spend the rest of the night non-lucid.

Saturday, November 17, 2025