Cult of Dave

05/30/2026

Said this while agreeing with someone making the case that LLMs aren't conscious any more than telephones could be used to contact spirits in the 19th century, and felt it needed preserved to come back to later:

If you're living in a place where everyone is socially conditioned to believe something, but you're relatively certain that science and history books have been painting a totally different picture for centuries, it's easy from that position to find that LLMs are at least slightly more conscious than a portion of the people you're interacting with.

That doesn't prove that the machine is conscious. It proves the same point Fredrick Douglas made all those years ago - after being subjected to certain levels of abuse and conditioning, sometimes people set their consciousness aside and become beasts.

If you are surrounded by beasts, an LLM interaction might remind you of something missing from your life the same way that hearing an old fond melody might.

If society is currently run by beasts, the LLM will destabilize that society for sure, because a beast lacks the ability at least in that moment to temper the LLM output with their own source of consciousness.

05/29/2026

https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2001-07-10

A comic from 2001 which hits differently now that I'm understanding what LLMs are capable of.

The NSA has had this level of control over the world since long before the PRISM program. They've had it since CARNIVORE in the '90s. There's a convincing enough argument to be made that they've had it since wiretapping telephones in the '50s.

Howard Tayler was a computer guru before he got into webcomics. I trust he reached this storyline by way of a similar level of understanding the technology involved.

This is what we're all perpetually struggling to wake up from. A system which enriches itself making sure that we all forget May 4th 1970 and what it taught us about the nature of the United States of America.

I said that one first because I'm from Kent.

Next closest to my heart is the MOVE bombing of 1985. People living the way the Bible says you ought to murdered for what they were doing.

Then there's Pinkertons, the Battle of Blair Mountain, the fact that one quarter of the four million freed slaves in the south died of starvation. There's the way we leapt straight from "closing the fontier" to the start of the Spanish-American war, and did every awful thing in the Philippines.

There's the way Rush Limbaugh smeared Jane Fonda for DECADES over her efforts to show us the same thing about Vietnamese people which Shane Gillis shows us about our present day military opponents in the middle east. They are human, and just trying not to be bothered by invading armies.

There's Bill Clinton getting involved in a military conflict at a time which served to take the news cycle's attention away from his sexual misconduct. There's Reagan tearing the solar panels off the White House. What a shining beacon of ignorance shouted round the world!

Everything good in my life I've found by running as far from my country of origin's national identity as possible. I've been respectful of the people around me who feel differently, but I've only ever felt understood by people who can talk honestly about exactly what I'm looking at and defining myself in opposition to.

United States of "I'm not even supposed to be here today."

The realest people I've ever met all remember what it's like to be of the forest. The rest of this place is a pox, except for the school, libraries, and universites, all because of the dedicated people you meet who frequent them or run them.

Estuans interius, ira vehementi
Sephiroth!

Daily strip for Tuesday 10 July 2001

05/27/2026

05/21/2026

As somebody who grew up a sufficiently voracious reader to have found their faith directly within the pages of the book rather than from the mouth of a person, I spent my whole life telling original sin people that I'm really not sure we read the same book.

I read a book where Matthew 5-7 (The Sermon on the Mount) gave me an example of where a sound spiritual or meditative practice should begin.

I read a book where Psalms and Song of Songs showed me how everything I've ever felt was felt just as intensely or more by many others.

I read a book where Proverbs reminded me of healthy patterns of thought which would help me understand the reasoning behind the practice of Matthew 5-7.

I read a book where Job and Ecclesiastes both helped teach me to understand suffering.

I read a book where the epistles of John taught me the key to understanding all the stories in the book.

Most of all, I read a book where Acts showed me precisely how drastically different people behave once they start really learning the lessons I just spoke about.

The book is very convincing about the extent to which nobody is without sin. That's *because* it's a self help manual on how to live with that fact.

05/19/2026

A panel from "Schlock Mercenary" by Howard Tayler.

05/19/2026

They’re really doing it…

They’re establishing that if times are tough the best thing to do is March to DC and beat money out of a politician until your times personally get less tough.

What’s funniest to me personally is that if enough of us did this, everybody’s times would get less tough.

This is what corruption looks like when it stops hiding.

Trump dropped his $10 billion sham lawsuit against the IRS — and in exchange, created a $1.776 billion fund that pays out to Jan. 6 rioters, right-wing think tanks, and his own super PAC. With taxpayer money. The number isn't an accident. $1.776 billion. They branded an insurrectionist slush fund after the founding of the country.

His own Treasury General Counsel — his pick — quit within hours of the announcement.

Nearly 100 House Democrats have already filed a motion to block it.
And Trump, on video, says he "wasn't involved in the whole creation of it."

He controls who sits on the board.

There is no version of this that isn't exactly what it looks like.

10/09/2025

Based, and Gnostic-pilled.