Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for July 26, 2023

The AI apocalypse isn’t far fetched anymore

For the record, this is nothing new. Growing up in the 80’s I was worried that civilization would collapse in a nuclear holocaust and I would have to grow my own food.

And I was terrified because I didn’t know the first thing about farming.

Just wait. When, not if, the next Carrington event occurs it will very likely destroy the electrical grid and in a matter of hours we’ll all be back to living in the 1800’s. It WILL be interesting…

I still remember underground bomb shelters on display at the local outdoor mall. I wanted to climb up into them SO badly, but alas, my father was not of the same mind.

Nah, we’ll be fine. If the power outages we go through are any indication, we can adapt quite easily, so long as we got backup junk to deal with. And most households do!

Just because Marjorie may be wrong doesn’t mean there isn’t a deep state and also doesn’t mean we are becoming enslaved to technology.

most phones are waterproof nowadays.

But if we’re slaves, we could learn many useful skills.

Don’t worry. The “deep state” isn’t going to turn us into slaves. They’re simply going to give us better opportunities to learn new job skills, since there was never any such thing as slavery. /s

The literary genre of apocalyptic began more than 2,000 years ago. Life sucked. But, the good news is that it is now sucking for the last time! There will be a major disaster, but then God will step in and everything will be perfect! It was basically wish fulfillment literature, and people were encouraged by it, but no one at the time it was being written took it as ‘real’. (When things got a little calmer people without a clue started to pick one or two of the dozens and dozens and written and declared these couple were really gonna happen.)

I’m not sure when post apocalyptic literature began. I’m definitely going post-Enlightenment, when they were no longer looking for God to step in and fix everything. But the heroes of the Enlightenment had their own god. Science was going to fix everything. That optimism pretty much ran until WW I, when science was just seen as increasing the levels of carnage. I might point to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis as a good reference point. Certainly the Cold War added to the growth of post-apocalyptic with books like Day of the Triffids (ignore the dreadful movie).

Marjorie?….Marjorie?…Where have we heard that name before? The hysteria and “statement of facts” seem quite familiar.

Have any pics of nekkid men to show us, Marjorie?

https://www.gocomics.com/overthehedge/2023/07/26?ct=v&cti=1451790

Is this MTG’s debut in Non Sequitur?

There’s always new threats…..with me it was the ATOM BOMB, WWII, Russia, Cuban Missile crisis, Korean War, VietNam, etc, etc….

Panel two, no one else at the bar. Suddenly, in panel three, is Margorie. Hmmmm…

My problem with this sort of position is that technology is a broad word. It covers everything from fire and the wheel up to computers and space shuttles. Do you mean we should go back to being hunter-gatherers, but without spears or fire? No? OK, then, how do we know which technology to keep and which to throw away? I doubt either Marjorie or Joe has a coherent answer to thoze questions.

Where is Uncle Eddie when we need expert advice??

I was brushing my teeth with my electric toothbrush and the battery died. I stood there for a second or five wondering what I would do now!! LOL!! Oh, manually, duh!

I almost missed that fact that her name is Marjorie. lol

Some of us still remember what it’s like to plant and care for our own vegetable garden, start a fire with just wood and a match (or magnifying glass, or… ), catch fish, hunt varmints…. of course, some people do take the panic and prepping a little too far, yes.

maybe we’ll get lucky and all the idiots who can’t go 10 minutes without look at their phones will darwin themselves .

All the people I know who say the deep state is out to control us through technology spend way too much time on social media.

It’s getting weirder and weirder out there. I was reading the British newspaper (The Guardian) this morning and read that Congress is going to hold hearings on government suppression of UFO evidence. CONGRESS investigating UFO coverups for Pete’s sake!! What next?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/26/ufo-hearing-congress-evidence-david-grusch

MTG? :-D

By 2025 the global currents could shut down. Too much melting iced floods the area shutting down the warming current.

The Deep State …..what a load of rubbish.

The ones who control everything are the RICH.

Always have been, always will be.

They do their best to keep us squabbling amongst ourselves.

One of 1984’s main features was wall-size TVs that ran continuously with a camera.

IT one day will overthrow us human creators…

No, putting the phone in water means you don’t have to hide any more. Didn’t you see The Mitchells vs. the Machines?

She needs a tinfoil hat.

Every Congress needs a couple of bad examples.

GREAT Book – California Master Gardener Handbook – covers all the food you would want to grow and since California is crazy long it helps regardless what your climate and soil might be. Cold weather, too hot weather, etc.

Don’t worry. Now eat your sugar-filled foods and take your insulin. You can thank big food and big Pharma who made it all possible

Seems like Marjorie would be in favor of that.

She’s looking for peaches.Read that bad weather ruined the Georgia peach crop this year.

No shortage of nuts though

Marjorie, eh?

Shall we play a game?

Found out the new CPAPs come with built in Cell networks. Now the AI Santas know when we are breathing and know when not awake. Creepy

Since EmptyGreen came on the scene, I feel like my first name is the new “Karen”. :-P

dont worry, nuclear winter would mean no one could grow food.

I’m sure the choice of the name Marjorie was entirely coincidental

Best keep your questions to yourself. You know already what the answers from this strange person are likely to be, anyway.

Marjorie come from a long line of Chicken Littles. A reasoned approach is to ensure you have some idea what your machines do and do not do. People were suggesting taking a mallet to Alexa yesterday, not realizing the object in question is just a fancy peripheral using your personal net work to stay connected to a more complicated network of neural net devices that adapt to the users habits and collect enough data to eventually anticipate their needs. To a certain extent. But each user is an abstract data point in a pool of similarly acting individuals. So odd results continue.

I believe that the key to survival is self reliance.

Captain Eddies new Girl Friend?

Marjorie is even worse than Captain Eddie.

At least his shaggy dog stories have a bit of Entertainment value.

1940’s New Mexico. No duck and cover drills. I almost got a job doing instrumentation for some of the underground testing in Utah. Look at Hiroshima today, beautiful city, no radiation. I was stationed in Japan for 2 years, great place. Father was in Army in Pacific Theater, said the bomb may have saved him. There would have been many US troops killed if they had to actually land troops in Japan. You need to read books! Not internet! Find out about bombs and radiation. Read about Los Almos. The scientists were very concerned about what they were dong. read just don’t be repeating words, find the truth.

She’s not wrong, …