Plutopia News Network

In this episode of the Plutopia podcast, Jon and Scoop check in with an obituary for 2021 and its politics. Our dynamic duopoly wax poetic about fascism, the election fraud fraud (aka the big lie), red pill versus blue pill, Covid, and cryptocurrency.

No politicians were injured in production of this podcast (but we seriously tried)!

Scoop: There were a lot of German scientists that worked for the Nazi party back during the war, that all of a sudden became good American citizens, working at NASA, of all places – and DARPA, and lots of other high tech government agencies. You could go into any building in Los Alamos, New Mexico and yell ‘Seig Heil,’ and you’d have a lot of people jumping up and saying, ‘Oh, sorry, I forgot what country I was in! Never mind!’

Jon: And you also had – particularly Werner Von Braun was associated with Disney, appearing in Disney documentaries. And it’s okay – people change. It could be that these guys put their fascist past behind them, and became good Americans, devoted to democracy. But it’s still a fact that we have people who really believe that democracy is just a bad thing.

Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash

The post 2021 Redux! first appeared on Plutopia News Network.

Ed Cavazos is an attorney who’s always focused on the cutting edges of technology law, including cyberlaw. He manages the Austin office of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. Ed negotiates complex technology-related transactions and routinely advises on corporate and general business matters, licensing, strategic partnerships, development contracts, data rights and privacy issues. He represents internet, e-commerce, software, hardware, video game and media/entertainment clients. He litigates complex IP disputes, including patent, trade secret, copyright, trademark, contract breach and internet-related claims.

In our conversation with Ed, we discuss cyberlaw, including censorship, social media monopolies, the right of publicity, the Metaverse and the law, and much more.

Ed Cavazos: “The earliest incarnation of these Metaverses – in the best ones, the most highly populated ones – are game environments. You look at what’s going on with some of these MMO games, where millions of people are interacting, and there the interactions are game interactions. It changes things a little bit if we’re playing a game, where your character is a thief, and your game role is to try to steal things from people. Even if those things have real world translatable value, I’m not sure you could call it theft in terms of going down to the DA and reporting and saying Jon’s thief character in this vanity game stole my shield and that shield’s worth $100 on eBay – I want him put in jail in the real world for that. It starts creating some real fuzzy weird lines about ‘are you changing the rules when you go and use it.’ And I think we’re going to have to face that in the Metaverse quite a bit.”

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In this episode of the Plutopia News Network podcast, Jon talks to Joe Verona, a certified professional hypnotist specializing in brainwave entrainment (BWE) and biofeedback. The original neurohacker, Joe has explored hypnosis, meditation, energy practices, lucid dreaming and out of body experience as well as clinical uses for brainwave entrainment. Joe has been on a mission to not only learn all there is to know about brainwave entrainment, but also to encourage fresh research and product development.

Since downloading his first binaural beat session back in the 80’s, Joe has been on a mission to not only learn all there is to know about brainwave entrainment, but also to encourage fresh research and product development. Since his years at Transparent Corp., Joe has made a living creating brainwave entrainment sessions for commercial BWE companies and meditation apps, as well as individual hypnotherapy clients. With the explosion of affordable technology, Joe is on the soapbox clarifying exactly what BWE can do and dispelling the abundant myths and misconceptions. The advent of psychedelic therapy and the legalization of marijuana products has brought a renewed interest in BWE coming full circle from its roots in the hippie culture. The wake of the pandemic hysteria has left many looking for alternative wellness methods. Will BWE finally get the recognition and respect it deserves?

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This episode’s guest, Sam McChesney (aka Sam the Fungi) is dedicated to ending mycophobia, changing mycostigma and connecting people through the power of mycelium. Sam joins Jon and Scoop for a wide-ranging talk about all things fungi.

I discovered my affinity for fungi when I got over-stressed around my 18th year in the existence of this body. I was unable to eat many of the foods I loved and was unhealthily dropping weight. I had recently had ‘Magic’ mushrooms introduced to me and discovered the power they can lend your mind and wanted to know more about this kingdom. “If these mushrooms can help my mind like this, what other mushrooms exist that can help my body.” So I delved into the field of Mycology and started to discover amazing things and other beings. One of them being Reshi (ganoderma lingzhi). I purchased a kit from Fungi Perfecti and that’s where my understanding and respect for fungi really kicked off. Making reishi tea for myself and my family allowed my body to settle back into balance while also bringing my family and I closer together. ~ https://www.centraltexasmycology.org/events/2020/12/3/myco-hangout-with-sam-the-fungi

Sam is mycelium in human form! He’s a founding member and part of the leadership at the Central Texas Mycological Society. In that context he hosts ecology walks, creates edible mushroom beds, facilitates garden inoculations, and teaches about mycology and mushroom cultivation around Central Texas.

Fungi, particularly mushrooms, have influenced popular culture for centuries. In Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland,” the caterpillar said “one side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter.” “One side of what? The other side of what?” Thought Alice to herself. “Of the mushroom,” said the caterpillar, just as if she had asked it aloud; and in another moment it was out of sight. Fungi have also been a part the human diet for untold centuries.

The post Sam the Fungi: Ending Mycophobia first appeared on Plutopia News Network.

Singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Kevin Russell joins Jon and Scoop in this episode of the Plutopia Podcast. Kevin talks about his days with The Gourds and his current band: Shinyribs. 

We also talk about violence at music venues, streaming music, Covid’s impact on the music business and a possible Gourds reunion.

Stick around for the end of our session — Kevin plays a bit of music and talks about guitars.

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Jasmina Tešanović – “I thought it was a temporary state of mind, but the more that time goes by, especially now with the more the system is broken of information… and I really tried to read between the lines in the press, in different languages, and now I have the Spanish language and French – I know many languages, you know… but I am more and more an idiot. If somebody gave me power to govern something, I wouldn’t vote for myself.”

Jasmina Tešanović is a Serbian author, feminist, political activist (Women in Black, Code Pink), translator, and filmmaker. She has a column in the Italian newspaper La Stampa, together with her husband Bruce Sterling. She blogs at Boing Boing, Huffington Post, and her own blog, Vita Virtual Nuova. Also with Bruce, she co-founded “Casa Jasmina” in Torino, Italy. It was an example of “the connected home of the future.”

She is the author of “Diary of a Political Idiot,” a war diary written during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and widely distributed on the Internet. She has distributed essays, diaries, stories and films on blogs and other Internet media.

In 1978, together with Žarana Papić and Dunja Blažević, she organized the first Feminist Conference in Eastern Europe bringing Italian feminists (Dacia Maraini, Anne Marie Boetti, Letizia Paolozzi, etc.) into Yugoslavia. The international conference was condemned by the ruling Communist party as attempt to import western ideology into the country.

As a filmmaker, she made conceptual video performances at the student cultural center of Belgrade SKC (“Love is only a Matter of Words,” “An Unedited Being,” etc.) and shot short films together with Radoslav Vladić.

She translated Italian authors such as Italo Calvino, Elsa Morante, Alberto Moravia, Sandro Veronesi, Andrea de Carlo, and Aldo Busi, and published an anthology of contemporary Italian literature within Yugoslavia.

She worked as the assistant director and writer with Zivojin Pavlović in the movie “Zadah Tela” which won major prizes at the Pula Film Festival (Croatia) in 1983.

At the beginning of the Balkan Wars in 1990 she became a pacifist and an active opponent of Slobodan Milošević’s regime. In 1994, together with Slavica Stojanović, she founded the feminist publishing house “Feminist 94.”

Her first book of essays, “The Invisible Book,” became a manifesto for alternative Serbian feminist/pacifist culture. Since then she published several other fiction and essays books translated in several languages.

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Plutopia goes on a ride along… our friend Spike Gillespie was literally on the road when she spoke to Jon and Scoop for this week’s Plutopia podcast.

Spike takes us on a free-wheeling tour of her ranch, her businesses, and Bastrop County, Texas. We also talk about her new restaurant in Smithville, small town Texas and fitting in, glamping, weddings, creating happy communities and much more.

So…..fasten your seatbelts and don’t forget to use your turn signals!

Spike Gillespie:

I have empathy for people who don’t want to get vaccinated, and there’s something that you just said – not known for vegetarianism. I don’t know – I think maybe what I was going to say was kind of like, “When in Rome,” which doesn’t mean that I’m going to go have my vaccination taken away, or anything. But I’m really learning how to adapt more, and I am not going to convince people to become a vegetarian by opening a vegetarian restaurant. (Laughs) But what I do is every day, almost every day, I make some insanely incredible vegetarian soup. And then sometimes I’ll make a bread. And the idea isn’t that I’m trying to convince people to eat differently, it’s just, like, “here’s some delicious food, it just happens to not have meat in it.”

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Former political consultant, current mixed martial arts blogger, editor of SB Nations’s Bloody Elbow, and host of the “Let It Roll” podcast Nate Wilcox joins the Plutopian crew for a verbal cage match about politics. He takes a break from blogging about mixed martial arts to take a few swings and kicks at politics and politicians. Jon and Scoop get in a few sucker punches, in a discussion that originally aired on our YouTube livestream.

Nate Wilcox: “The powers that be in the Pentagon were still of the mindset that, like, look, a peaceful transition of power is a core brand value of USA world police. This money train stops fast if there’s a gross, obvious coup in the United States. If you want to steal an election the way Bush did it in 2000, that’s on thing. When it’s all legal, and you’ve got Joe Lieberman, the other party’s VP nomination, helping you do it – that’s fine and dandy. But if you’re gonna do this crude, crass “let’s rile up a bunch of yokels, and send them storming into the Capitol building, and hang Mike Pence,” that is not gonna play. And so you had a few – from what we can tell, there were a few people in the Pentagon that were backing Trump wherever he wanted to go. But that most of the powers that be in the Pentagon, especially the ones like Milley who had been out there in Lafayette Square and felt very burned by Trump, were not having it.”

The post Nate Wilcox: Real Politics first appeared on Plutopia News Network.

In this week’s Plutopia podcast, Jon and Scoop make a deep dive into death… also Halloween, sex, pagan celebrations, and Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead).

“Everyone is a beginner when it comes to death.” – Sallie Jiko Tisdale, “Everything Dies” in Lion’s Roar

We don’t like to think about death in mainstream America. We hide it, and when we do have a death close to us, our grief is amplified by the unfamiliarity of the experience. It’s hard to let go. It’s hard to envision letting go. It’s especially hard to envision non-being.

Other cultures have other approaches. We’re posting this on Dia de los Muertos 2021. The Dia de los Muertos celebration is an acknowledgement and a celebration of death. It’s a time to honor the deceased, and at the same time recognize that death is an inherent part of life. That impermanence is inherent in the Universe. Everything is changing and moving; what seems permanent has a lower rate of change – but change is inevitable. And in this sense, in changing, everything dies.

Photo by Bala Manivasagam. Día de los muertos, Tlaquepaque, México. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

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Just in time for Halloween – scary stories from the world of big tech!! Thanks to our friends at EFF-Austin, we present a session with author and tech veteran Vahid Razavi. He shares some of his personal experiences – many of them bad – from his time working for some well-known tech giants. He also shares the most important question to ask a hiring manager before accepting a job offer!

Vahid Razavi: “For a small business such as mine, even though we had a registered trademark, we got tangled up by Computer Science Corporation. CSC was just a notoriously horrible company to get tangled in, in any way. They were known as the rotten company in the UK, they failed a number of projects in North Carolina, they were responsible for these rendition flights of torture, which were basically CIA planes that were being used and supplied by CSC to take people from the various salt pits and torture sites in Europe. I don’t know why a tech company would be in that business, but that’s what they chose, and that’s what they did.”

From EFF-Austin’s event: “Our speaker this month is Vahid Razavi. A technology veteran of Silicon Valley, Vahid has advised and worked in senior management roles at Amazon Web Services, Fast Search, Exodus Communications, Qwest Communications, and was the founder of the Cloud Computing Company BizCloud. He has published two books, The Age of Nepotism and Ethics In Tech and Lack Thereof. As a lifelong activist and humanitarian he has published hundreds of articles and videos on various social issues including tech industry and social injustice.

“As the Founder and Managing Director of Ethics in Technology, Vahid will be sharing lessons he learned from 20 years of working in Silicon Valley. He will be sharing what is the most important question you should ask every hiring manager before accepting an offer of employment! Other topics of discussion will include what it’s like to work for Big Tech at companies such as Amazon Web Services, as well as the revolving door of Big Tech and the Defense Industry, along with highlights from his book Ethics in Technology and Lack Thereof.”

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