Mind Palaces and Minefields: The Future is His Story

Life Been Lifing, But I'm Here

Hello, kings and queens. What's good? It's your girl, BlakkMomba, and you're tuned in to Momba Raw and Raw and Unfiltered. Yeah, it's been about three months since my last drop. What can I say? Life been lifein', and the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. devil don't sleep. And apparently, neither does Pain, my ever-faithful concubine. Because that Heifer been going hard in her campaign to steal my time, my joy, my sanity, and hell, even my smile. Literally. Would y'all believe that I had an encounter with an almond that ended with me cracking and chipping one of my front teeth? An almond of all the things that could have taken me out, I certainly wasn't expecting a damn nut to be the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. one to do it. At least not that kind. Listen, I never realized just how much my identity was wrapped up in my smile until I couldn't smile the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. way that I used to. That smile has been my weapon, my shield, and one of the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. gifts I've carried through some of the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. darkest periods of my life. I could be going through absolute hell, and somehow I could still find a reason to smile. I'm dealing with a very real experience of looking in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. mirror and seeing something different staring back at me. I never knew how vain I was until I lost what I consider one of my best features. And baby, that realization has been humbling as hell. So yeah, I've been dealing with that along with everything else life keeps finding new ways to throw at me. The hits have been stacking up, and my creative motivation has taken a beating. Some days just trying to find my way back to the things I love has felt like another damn job I don't have the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. energy to clock in for. But I'm here, and I think that's what matters to me right now. Because despite everything I've been going through, there's still something inside of me that refuses to surrender my voice. My circumstances may interfere with how often I get to use it, but they don't get to decide whether I have something worth saying. So here I am, back behind this microphone, doing what I love. And here you are, still putting your girl in your ear after all this time. Thank you, truly, for coming back, for listening, and for continuing to rock with what I be putting down. I don't take that for granted, especially when I know how much there is competing for everybody's attention these days. Now, with all that said, let me tell y'all something about this rabbit hole I'm bringing to you today. This one is dangerous. And I don't mean dangerous in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. sense that somebody's about to come knocking on my door because I uncovered the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. secret plans of the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. Illuminati. Although, considering some of the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. places my research has taken me, I might need to stop answering unfamiliar numbers for a while. I'm kidding, mostly. I'm talking about the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. kind of rabbit hole that can change how you look at things once you've started making connections you hadn't considered before. And y'all already know how my mind gets. How I have a tendency to pull a thread and see where it leads. One question becomes another. Something I read in a book or watched in a movie ten years ago sends me somewhere else. I'm looking at history and connections between things that on the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. surface might not seem to have anything to do with one another. I've got seventeen tabs open, three books on the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. table, and a question I didn't even know I was trying to answer. I have been spending entirely too much time in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. back rooms of my own mind lately. And considering some of the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. places that my mind takes me, I'm beginning to think I need to start charging myself rent. Because, baby, the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. amount of research, reading, and mental gymnastics I've been doing behind some of these questions is ridiculous.

Before We Jump Down This Rabbit Hole

But seriously, I've been sitting with something that has been bothering me for a while now. We are living through a period of extraordinary change, and everybody seems to have something to say about where humanity is headed. We have people promising us a technological paradise, politicians promising to restore some imaginary version of greatness, and enough experts predicting the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. future to make you wonder whether the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. rest of us are even supposed to have a say in it. And somewhere in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. middle of all these competing visions, I find myself returning to history, particularly the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. parts we were deliberately taught to misunderstand, and the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. parts that never really ended in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. first place, especially when I consider how many of the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. institutions making promises have histories that gives us every reason to ask a few more questions. And that's where this particular reflection got away from me and began taking on a life of its own. We're talking nearly four hours of me following those threads, asking questions, revisiting history and trying to make sense of what I'm seeing. And I wasn't even trying to record a damn documentary. I was simply following my curiosity, looking at what I was finding and allowing myself to consider the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. very real possibility that some of the things we understand separately might look very different when we examine their relationships to one another. That's how the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. future is his story came about. So, rather than drop nearly four hours of heavy material on y'all at once, I've decided to release this reflection and installments. We are looking at two or three parts, depending on how everything flows. And once the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. final installment is out, I'll make the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. complete, uninterrupted recording available as downloadable content for those who want to experience the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. entire journey in one sitting. For this first installment, we're going to get into conspiracy, HYDRA, systems of control, government experimentation, eugenics, transhumanism, the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. historical classification of Black life, data as currency, and the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. kind of wealth and influence that allows certain people to operate in a world most of us will never have access to. And that's only part of the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. story. Now, I want to be clear about something before we get into this. I enjoy a good conspiracy theory as much as the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. next curious human being. But I enjoy a documented historical receipt even more. And sometimes the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. truth is so outrageous that fiction has to work over time just to keep up with it. What you're about to hear is me working through those distinctions. There will be moments when I'm absolutely convinced of something, moments when I question my own reasoning, and probably a few occasions when I take us somewhere neither of us intended to go. I'm not going to be coming to you with every answer, and I'm not asking you to agree with every conclusion I reach. I want you to hear the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. thoughts, follow along, and do some thinking of your own. You might hear a connection that sends you somewhere entirely different from where it took me, and that's perfectly fine. I'm sharing my thought process with you because I believe there's value in allowing ourselves to think beyond the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. explanations we've been handed. So, grab your pen and paper and whatever libations you need to get comfortable and settle in. Because we're about to spend some quality time in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. back rooms of my mind. Now, be sure to keep your mind open, your discernment intact, and pay attention to what you notice along the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. way. Because sometimes the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. most revealing part isn't where a thought ends up, it's what you notice along the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. way, what it connects to, and what that connection makes you reconsider. And please, try to keep up with the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. threads. I know I have a tendency to take the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. scenic route, but I promise there is a reason we're going where we're going. Now, sit back, relax, and prepare to jump down this rabbit hole with me. Don't be scared now. I promise to get you to the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. other side safely. Let's go.

Y'all Looking at the Fingers. I'm Looking at the Hand.

Here lately, all I've been thinking about is, how easily we've been trained to look at things individually. we've been trained to look at things individually. Even while things themselves are becoming harder and harder to separate. We keep meeting every new thing as though it arrived by itself. Artificial Intelligence is one conversation, surveillance another, food insecurity somewhere else, biotechnology in another room, immigration over there, mass incarceration down the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. hall, then the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. billionaire class in a special room of their own. While white nationalism, public health, brain technology, racism, the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. weakening of government institutions through Project 2025 and the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. privatization of things that used to belong to everybody are placed in a back room and ranked by priority. We give each subject its own category, expert, panel, and a little corner of the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. news cycle, complete with a color-coded five-point threat plan for how concerned we're supposed to be. Then we wonder why we can't see the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. shape of what is happening while we're living through it. Meanwhile, the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. machinery of Empire keeps connecting itself like a supernatural tapeworm. And perhaps that is the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. part we have been trained not to see. Because if you can convince people that every piece of the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. hand presented is somehow separate, nobody has to look at the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. shape they make together, do they? And that right there, I find to be the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. crux of the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. problem. We have become so accustomed to fragmentation that we mistake separation in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. conversation for separation in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. system. Let me say that again: We have become so accustomed to fragmentation that we mistake separation in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. conversation for separation in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. system. And they bank on that, literally. And in a way, that's really what this is all about. What it has always been about. Rabbit holes and threads, and how we have lost the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. critical ability to follow the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. connections they make. So this is what this is: a deep, dark, bottomless hole with endless threads that trace back history, his story. And right here, right now, I'm going to reveal the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. critical connections I've found while strolling, not scrolling. And I want you to look with me too. But understand this. Although you may hear a lot about AI in this reflection and the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. future we're racing towards, this is not really a cultural autopsy of Artificial Intelligence. AI is simply one of the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. organs on the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. table. The body, though, it's much older. Its name is Legion, and they are many. Now look, I'm not going to fabricate a picture where one doesn't exist or turn every coincidence into a who-done it conspiracy. I don't need to. So much of what concerns me is sitting right out in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. open, dead ass in our faces, that all of this insistence on a secret plot to take over the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. world can sometimes distract even me from the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. truth. And the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. truth is that the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. future of control and total world domination is being described to us openly every day. The histories, policies, and money trails are all public. The tech companies are telling us what they're building. Our government tells us why they want these systems for national security. Billionaires and one trillionaire tell us their visions of a transhumanism future they will finance. While researchers describe what horrors these systems will be capable of. It's not like Intelligence agencies haven't left us records of what governments have been willing to do in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. name of national security. While these tech corporations have shown us what happens when profit takes priority over the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. people living inside the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. system. It's not a secret. Nobody gotta whisper anymore. And that's what makes this moment stranger than fiction. Enormous and dangerous changes are happening in plain sight , and yet, ordinary people are being told that noticing the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. connections between them is giving... paranoia. Red pill content. So what do they do? They fall in line, of course, like good little sheeple and believe it to be true. Nah. I know I'm not being paranoid, at least not overly. I'm looking at the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. pattern and connecting threads we were taught not to see. Now I know we have a hard time these days holding on to one conversation because we already scrolling into the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. next, never lingering, never exploring the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. receipts deeper and giving ourselves time to reflect on what they reveal. Everything gotta be fast. Fast food, fast internet, fast access, fast service, fast cars. If it ain't hot and ready, delivered Jimmy John's fast and easily digestible, people won't fuck with it. Life has become a subscription service that you not only have to pay to play, but now can tap to pay as well. Speaking of which, have you heard about the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. new concept for the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. Sony PlayStation controllers? They want to bring tap to play to the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. controllers. Yeah, that shit tripped me out too. I mean, if you really think about it, digital currency is on the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. way, so it's not that far-fetched. But I digress. I remember when everything ain't that deep, and I don't do that woke shit was and still is the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. automatic default response to a subject that either A, someone didn't want to discuss, B, was intellectually incapable of discussing, or C didn't have the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. spiritual depth to engage in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. conversation. But everything is that deep. Maybe it's just that they've been trained out of depth and substance completely. Technology has made sitting still long enough to think feel like a crime these days, so reflection never gets put on the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. content calendar. That is, unless you can monetize it as a substack writer or life coach. Hmm, I don't know. Either way, substance is lacking. People don't take time to parlay and chop it up because they programming won't allow them to go deep beneath the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. surface of a thing. Got them scared they might drown in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. back rooms of their minds if they sit with a thought too long. But you, yeah, you, you here right now, listening to the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. sound of my voice, you haven't cut me off yet. And that means all is not lost. That maybe I'm not the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. only one who can see these glitches in their matrix, that I'm not simply being paranoid. With that said, to those who breathe in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. deep end, I want you to follow me closely down this rabbit hole. And please, please, don't let go because the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. threads I'm about to pull are intricate as hell. You can easily navigate off course and get lost on a tangent that leads to infinite others. I promise to see you safely on the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. other side of this rabbit hole, but it'll require you to trust me to get you there safely. So remember to sit back and relax and don't let go. Okay? Okay, here we go.

Life is Art: Mental Exercise

But first, allow me to set the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. mental scene for you. If you haven't noticed by now, I like to use references in pop culture because I find them to be a genius way to help people understand real-world concepts, make their own connections, and come to their own conclusions about how they present in real life. Because life is art and art is life, especially on this timeline. So I want us to start by closing our eyes for a minute. That is, if you aren't driving, and picture in your mind a society where nobody needs to ban your opinions because an algorithm can quietly bury them, where nobody needs to imprison every activist because a surveillance system can identify the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. people most likely to organize and mobilize. A world where nobody needs to issue a direct threat of legal action from Top Dog Law Firm if access to employment, financial services, or public platforms are restricted through predictive decisions that are false. In this world, private companies and their tech is moving into healthcare, education, agriculture, policing, immigration, defense, scientific research, and everyday life. The public institutions, they too are becoming increasingly more dependent on those private systems, and the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. people who depend on those institutions have no say in how those systems operate their daily life. Now, like in any world, there is language, and in this world, the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. language surrounding technology is constantly being repeated on a loop. The citizens all stare with eyes glazed every time they hear key words. The words have been redefined to make them more palatable to the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. ear and digestible to the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. spirit. Efficiency is harmless. Safety is necessary. Innovation is exciting. Resilience is responsible. Optimization is technical. Personalization is convenient. Modernization is overdue. Prediction is useful. Opt in. Upgrade. Comply. Or die. Okay, before you open your eyes, I want you to think about this question and hold on to it as we move forward. What kind of human being is this system being built to serve in this world? Now, open your eyes and take a big cleansing breath. Did any of that sound familiar to you? Maybe like any number of movies you've watched, or maybe even an old sci-fi novel you read once upon a time. You know, back when reading was still a thing? Talk about a Spike Lee bamboozle with a twist of Peele and a splash of Orwell. I need you to listen to me, okay? Please understand that these things don't have to be one giant as coordinated global conspiracy to move seamlessly together. They only have to share enough infrastructure, money, data, political power, and institutional incentives to keep producing outcomes that reinforce one another. Different people can build different systems inside different organizations for different reasons. And those systems can still feed the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. same larger structure. They may disagree over geopolitics, markets, elections, or even technology itself. They may compete viciously with one another, but trust, they can still share an interest in preserving the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. economic and institutional arrangements from which they benefit. When you allow yourself to sit with the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. connections and follow the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. receipts instead of demanding that one person or group be standing behind every single plot, you find that there is always, always another receipt under the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. receipts and another one under that one, and so on and so on, revealing an account that is balls deep into ancient history. Before long, you're looking at a different picture you can't never unsee. And what do you know? You keep seeing power at the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. center of it, along with the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. beings who seem to share a rather demonic confidence about what human beings are worth, what they should be allowed to do, and which of them can be sacrificed when somebody else's version of progress needs room to grow. Real power rarely looks like a secret society with matching uniforms. It looks like private equity, regulatory loopholes, lobbying expenditures, proprietary algorithms, Intelligence contracts, monopolistic platforms, and meetings whose participants have more access to policy makers than the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. people affected by their decisions. It looks like a system in which responsibility is distributed so widely that nobody seems responsible when something goes left. And it often speaks the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. language of progress, innovation, security, sustainability, public health, digital transformation, global cooperation. These all can be worthy goals. Taken separately, none of those words sound sinister. And that's precisely why they work so damn well. They can make transfers of autonomy and power sound like an upgrade to the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. user's customer experience. They can also become convenient shields against scrutiny when institutions assume that good intentions excuse concentrated power. The problem with that is, though, that good intentions are not a substitute for transparency, democratic consent, or independent oversight. Trust is not a governing system, especially in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. good old United States of America Incorporated.

Hail HYDRA! Cut One Head, Two More Pop Up

Who are these beings, you ask? I call them by their fictional name, HYDRA. That's the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. name that comes to mind when I think about this pattern of evil, greed, and power I keep finding. It wasn't long ago that I got bored and headed to the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. Marvel Universe on Disney Plus and re-watched Captain America, The Winter Soldier. And what once felt like comic book paranoia now plays less like a Kim Impossible fantasy and more like an inverted Black Mirror reflection of parts of the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. world we actually live in. But hold on, because I need you to see the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. image in my head and not just the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. name before I take you any further. Just in case you aren't familiar with the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. references, when I say HYDRA, I'm pulling from both mythology and pop culture, and the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. connection matters. In Greek mythology, the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. HYDRA was a many-headed serpent or monster that Hercules was tasked with killing as one of his labors. Picture this: Hercules cuts off one of its heads, and instead of getting closer to defeating the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. creature, he watches two more grow in its place. Every swing of the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. sword makes the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. problem bigger. The harder he fights using the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. same approach, the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. more heads he has to contend with. He eventually has to change his approach, working with his nephew to burn the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. severed necks so the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. heads can't grow back. The HYDRA became a way of describing a many-headed evil that can't be overcome by a single effort, particularly when attacking one part allows the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. rest to keep growing. Now, if you're familiar with Marvel, you already know HYDRA as something else. In Captain America, The Winter Soldier, it is a secretive organization rooted in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. Nazi regime that survives long after the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. defeat of the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. Nazis. The Nazis wanted an empire built around their own racial and nationalist obsessions. But HYDRA, they wanted something more enduring. Absolute, total control. Hitler was useful up until the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. very moment he wasn't. HYDRA embeds itself inside S.H.I.E.L.D., the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. very organization charged with protecting the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. world and works from within to take control. The movie showed us that the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. enemy isn't always standing outside the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. gates where everybody can see it. Sometimes it has already made its way inside, gained access, learned how the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. institutions operate, and figured out how to use the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. institution's own machinery to advance its agenda. You don't have to believe in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. analogy of a secret organization controlling the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. entire world to see why the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. metaphor hits a nerve. What makes the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. HYDRA metaphor unsettling is how familiar its machinery already looks. Government secrecy, corporate influence, surveillance, private research, all of it dressed up as unquestionable science, revolving doors between industry and government, and power that survives one administration after another. Those are not comic book inventions. We have watched versions of them operate in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. real world. The difference now is that this rabbit hole doesn't come with a clean cast of heroes waiting to save everybody. Although, if we're talking about Captain Ibrahim Traore in Burkina Faso, that opens up an entirely different thread. And I'm not following that one today. I'm backing away slowly and leaving myself a breadcrumb because Africa is waking up, institutions are being shaken, And what happens there may disrupt more of this manufactured future than the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. people building it expects. But that is for another day. For now, back to HYDRA. Now, don't go and get it twisted, okay? Not once will you hear Momba Raw and say that I think every billionaire, politician, scientist, or global institution is sitting on a Zoom call plotting humanity's downfall. But because the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. underlying idea of HYDRA has aged in a rather uncomfortable way, the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. question is begging to be asked and answered. What if the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. greatest threat to freedom wasn't an invading enemy or some obvious villain, but a system that learned to wear the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. face of the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. people it claimed to protect? It kind of brings the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. Manchurian Candidate to mind, doesn't it? In that book, the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. danger is a man who has been brainwashed and conditioned to carry out a hidden agenda, while the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. people around him see a decorated soldier, a war hero, somebody they have every reason to trust. The person standing right in front of you may look like he is acting on his own, but there are forces operating beneath the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. surface that he himself doesn't fully understand. Now, imagine that same question applied to the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. institutions we trust to protect us. Who is really directing the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. action? And what happens when the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. people carrying it out don't even recognize the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. forces shaping their decisions? That question is what makes HYDRA such a compelling metaphor for modern power as well. Now you see why I keep coming back to that name. The comparison is not that HYDRA and the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. Manchurian candidate, Greek mythology or a comic book turned movie tell the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. same story because they don't. The book shows us a person turned into an instrument of hidden agenda. The myth gives us an image of a problem that multiplies when you attack only one part of it, and Marvel gives us a story about an organization that survives defeat, changes its position, and continues pursuing power from inside institutions people believe they can trust. Put those three images beside each other, and you can understand why HYDRA comes to my mind when I look at the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. world around me. All versions give me a way to think about how power can survive the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. removal of individual people, operate through different heads, and keep resurfacing in places we thought we had already secured.

Empire Global State of Mind(set)

And that brings me back to the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. question I started with. What if the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. threat isn't always some obvious enemy we can point to, but a pattern of power that keeps finding another way to operate after we think we have dealt with it? We don't have to go back in history to answer that question because we see it playing out right now in real time. Violent forms of regime change such as military coups, armed revolution, civil wars, and private or foreign-backed military interventions, have occurred in numerous countries throughout modern history and is a reality that so many of you listening may be experiencing now today. This little big podcast of mine somehow has listenership, not one-offs. I'm talking multiple downloads spaced out over 54 countries, with the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. most recent being the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. Democratic Republic of the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. Congo. On the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. list are places that are fundamentally opposite in every way on the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. surface, but all in some way or another have experienced and or are experiencing and enduring violent forms of control and domination. Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Argentina, Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Panama, Sudan, Ukraine, China, Russia, Pakistan, and of all places for a Black voice, a Black woman's voice at that to land, Israel. I gotta sit with that for a minute. Because every time a new ear in a new country tunes in, the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. implication of what that means becomes harder for me to ignore. This Black woman, a literal ghost in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. machine, has stalked silently across borders without a passport, landing in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. ears of people in places that I will never go. Places that have no religious, political, or cultural commonality. That signals that the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. conversations I bring are relevant on a global level. That although our realities, the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. districts inside this real-life Hunger Games we all live in, may look different, but the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. fight against empire is the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. common denominator that connects us all. On some level of that spectrum, we all understand the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. language of evil. We are brothers and sisters in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. same struggle with the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. same enemy, but you wouldn't know it because we've been weaponized to either fight alone or each other. The shit is wow. The mind control. My bad. I think I just needed to get that out of me. It's a lot to sit with at times. But back to the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. HYDRA reference... The real genius of HYDRA wasn't its weapons. There was no one weapon or one evil mastermind, really. Just an uncanny ability to live inside institutions and keep working after the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. faces at the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. top changed. And that's where the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. comparison to our real world starts to get interesting. I want you to really look around and consider how power operates today. Governments change, presidents come and go, CEOs resign, corporations collapse or merge or rebrand, and political movements rise every four years, promising to tear the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. whole dry rotted political machine down. Yet, certain concentrations of wealth, influence, institutional access, and technological power remain remarkably intact. Hmm. The faces change on each timeline, but somehow, someway, the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. infrastructure always has a way of staying put. You can vote a president out without dismantling the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. Intelligence apparatus. You can expose one scandal, sacrifice one executive, cancel a celebrity, and watch the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. news cycle move on while the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. machinery underneath it keeps humming. Case in point, Donald Trump. I scream silently in my head anytime I hear someone say that when Trump is finally voted out of office, this shit world will eventually bounce back to normal because it won't. Not because what we once called normal is exactly what got us in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. pits in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. first place, but because we have had nothing but time to see the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. fault lines and correct them. We had years, decades, centuries even, and what did we do? Instead of confronting the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. wound, we chose to invest in patch jobs that covered it up and allowed the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. infection to metastasize and spread until it put the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. dream - sickle called America in mortal peril. And yeah, we can spend time arguing all day about the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. selfish and entitled people who voted for this shit and found out that their privilege is now null and void, but for what? What can dragging them do that history cannot? I ain't got time for that distraction. Because their vote won't cure a cancer they still refuse to treat. It don't matter who is in office when power can reproduce itself without one central diabolical mastermind. Like I said, none of this proves one global cabal is coordinating every event. But the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. real truth is that people with overlapping interests, like children, for example, find one another. Institutions protect their own survival. Wealth buys access. Access shapes policy, and policy helps protect the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. wealth. It's why no one has been arrested for treason. Why January 6th, insurrectionists were pardoned, and why shit like murder, cannibalism, trafficking, sexual assault of children, lynchings, genocides, rape, and I can go on. No one is being held accountable for none of it. As you can see, the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. cycle can keep going without anybody needing to issue an order in a dark room. That right there is the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. modern equivalent of cutting off one of HYDRA's heads and watching another grow back in its place. A conspiracy doesn't always need a conspiracy meeting. Not when the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. incentives can do all the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. work. For example, Jeffrey Epstein. What everybody be yelling in all caps? RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES!!! Like, get the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. fuck out of here. In what reality, other than this one, is it okay that they haven't done so already? That there aren't investigations, indictments, charges, something damn it? But you mean to tell me they got the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. time to go to court for silly, petty, and trumped up allegations? I'm telling y'all, those files are the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. thread that binds the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. powerful all together globally. And to pull it would make their carefully constructed game fall down like a house of cards. But I wager we never see those files in its entirety. Can I bid on that on Kalshi? Call it a hunch, considering the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. revolving door between government and private industry that keeps going ring around the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. rosy without getting dizzy, alongside the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. private meetings and dinners and ballrooms where political leaders, financiers, tech executives, and influential policy makers exchange ideas beyond the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. reach of ordinary public debate. We can't sit with them. None of that proves a secret world government exists, but neither does the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. absence of a secret world government mean that concentrated private power is harmless. There is a meaningful difference between proving that a cabal of demons, shape shifters, and POD people with lizard-like characteristics secretly controls the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. world and recognizing that a small, interconnected class of powerful white men can influence decisions affecting billions of lives without ever being directly accountable to those people. Do we really need a movie villain to help us understand this? No.

When the System Predicts You're a Threat

We just gotta pay attention to the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. ordinary ways that access and influence work, especially now that technology has seemingly advanced beyond human comprehension overnight. Wanna hear something really uncanny? HYDRA's Project Insight was designed to identify potential threats using information gathered by an algorithm coded to analyze information, predict future resistance, and eliminate people deemed dangerous to the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. system before they could act. It was preemptive authoritarianism cosplaying as national security. The real world doesn't have Project Insight in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. form depicted in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. movie, but the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. idea behind it is disturbingly familiar when you consider how our current administration is laying the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. groundwork for programs that do all of that and more. Government Intelligence agencies now rely on private contractors and their proprietary software to collect data. Then they hire tech companies to build these extraordinary detailed profiles of human behavior and use their algorithms to sort, rank, recommend, flag, and predict so that the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. state's surveillance tools can identify activists, journalists, political opponents, and extremists. Those predictive systems, in turn, can influence policing, employment, creditworthiness, and even access to information. Even though these technologies have arguments for legitimate use, it leaves the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. institutions that possess immense amounts of personal information with a powerful ability to exploit and abuse the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. public who have little ability to understand, challenge, or escape that power. That is where the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. HYDRA analogy becomes more than entertainment. It becomes a warning about what happens when the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. tools of control become more sophisticated than the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. safeguards meant to restrain them. Everything exists on a spectrum, and every single time something is created for good in this world, it will always in turn be used for evil purposes. Always. It never fails. We have no historical basis for assuming institutions will automatically respect people's boundaries simply because those boundaries seem obvious to us. They have crossed lines before, repeatedly, making them a habitual offender with zero credibility at this point. But I bet you money, that data ain't in their predictive system. This is why none of us should accept the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. idea that new technology automatically represents progress. New tech represents capability, and what we do with that capability tells us something about the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. society that owns it. What does it say about ours? Every new technology deserves governance strong enough to make abuses treacherous, not assurances that the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. people involved means well. Because institutions are typically made up of evil beings with evil intentions and ideologies, ambitions, and a whole lotta lotta blood money. The mere presence of them alone destroys the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. fantasy that our institutions are benevolent. We have gotten so comfortable with the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. idea that control has to look like force before we recognize it for what it is. We think we know what force looks like because we've been watching versions of it cinematically our entire lives. We picture shit like a weapon pointed at our head or being confined to a prison cell where somebody stands over us telling us to bend over and cough. But some of the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. most effective forms of control can operate through the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. choices available to us, the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. information we keep seeing, and the things deliberately or algorithmically kept out of our view. We don't need to see a bone saw opening a skull to implant a brain chip to have a serious conversation about behavioral and mind control. Human beings have always found ways to influence each other by controlling information, access, incentives, attention, fear, and belonging. Technology just lets those mechanisms follow us around to become more personalized and harder to see for what they are. We already know that it can learn our habits, figure out what keeps our attention, and keep arranging what appears in front of us to feed us more of the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. same. It knows the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. brain functions best through routine and becomes resistant to change. Other systems, for example, can use information about you to influence which opportunities you see, which services you qualify for, or whether your name gets flagged for additional scrutiny. Once these things start working alongside one another, the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. environment itself can do a lot of the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. heavy lifting before anybody ever has to give you a direct command. You don't necessarily feel controlled when the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. choice is technically yours. It's just that you may not even notice how the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. options were prearranged before you made the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. choice you made. Do you understand what that means? Nobody has to remote activate you through brain chips, 5G towers, or nanotechnology to control you. You don't have to be forced into a decision when the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. alternatives have already been made expensive, humiliating, inaccessible, or socially dangerous. The room can be arranged before you walk in. You may never meet the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. person who designed the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. arrangement, and you may not even know a decision has been made on your behalf because the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. control happens before the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. command, through the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. options left available and the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. consequences attached to each one. So ask yourself, if the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. system has made every other path feel difficult or perilous, how much freedom is actually left in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. decision that you make then? You may walk through the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. door believing you chose freely without ever realizing how much of that environment had already been engineered to push you in that direction.

Control Without a Remote

I call that control without a hand on your shoulder. And it's a different kind of power from the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. Hollywood version of mind control that has been sold to us. Whether Elon Tusk, I mean Musk, has figured out or is close to figuring out how to read every private thought in our head is not my immediate concern, nor is his flying car. Not when human attention, emotion, cognition, and behavior are becoming increasingly measurable and therefore increasingly governable by bad faith actors. A platform doesn't need to hear the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. exact sentence running through your mind to learn which content trap keeps you coming back for another hit. An institution doesn't need to understand your entire life a pie to make a consequential decision using the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. information it has collected on you. And a system doesn't need to know you as a human being with a soul to classify you, predict something about you, or influence what happens next in your life. Say what you want, but there is something deeply and utterly invasive about being measurable everywhere you go, especially when somebody eventually wants to own that measurement, interpret it, and make money or policy from what it appears to reveal. Who do you think those somebodies are, huh? That's a rhetorical question. They are the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. people who already have access to the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. money, the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. infrastructure, and the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. institutions. HYDRA.

Your Attention is the Product

Do you mind if we take a quick breather right here and sit tight with the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. platform thread for a minute? Because how we got so brainwashed on these platforms is a relevant stop we need to run back before we move further up, down, and around this rabbit hole. Some of us can burn up half a day on social media and never stop to think about what they might be learning about us while we're busy scrolling, tapping, reacting, following, commenting, subscribing, and entertaining ourselves. How long did you watch that fight video? Did you replay it? How many times? Did you share it or clap back under it or scroll past it so fast the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. algorithm barely had time to blink? What made you stop scrolling in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. first place, huh? What made you stay? What made you leave? What time did you leave? When did you come back? What made you come back? Sounds like a controlling asshole, doesn't it? That information alone has enough value for these companies to spend serious bank figuring out how to keep your attention. They know we are in an outrage economy. And our attention is part of the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. product. Meaning, in reality, we are the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. product. You think you're just online killing time, that you scrolling on lunch break or playing Candy Crush while taking a deuce don't mean shit about shit. Or when you unlock your phone using biometric software, believe that it is a secure feature on your device. Meanwhile, back at the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. ranch, these platforms are studying what makes you tick, what gets under your skin, what makes you laugh, cry, or rage out, and keeps you coming back for another helping of that dope. I mean, dopamine. Know what I mean? Not to mention governments and their use of unconsented surveillance on every single piece of personal tech devices we have access to. From our televisions to our wireless earbuds, to even our ring doorbell cameras to collect information for all sorts of reasons we can't even fathom at this point. Some we wouldn't even believe if we could. Hell, was it not Israel's grand idea to repurpose pagers into mini explosive devices? One time at Bandcamp? Was we not just reminded by their leader, Netanyahu, that the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. Apple Tech we love so much has a piece of them in it? But I digress. People are gonna do and think what they want. But folks can miss me with their ignorance or their flat-out disbelief of the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. subject, especially when legitimate evidence exists. Facebook gave us a receipt back in 2014 when their researchers conducted an experiment involving 689,003 users. They altered the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. amount of positive or negative emotional content appearing in people's news feeds and then studied whether that affected the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. emotional language those users later expressed in their own posts. The researchers found evidence that the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. emotional content people encountered influenced how they expressed themselves afterwards. Go figure. Now look, I don't need to stretch that finding into a claim that Facebook reached into hundreds of thousands of brains and installed thoughts to exaggerate what the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. study showed. The point is that the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. evidence showed a platform changed the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. emotional mix of what people saw by observing how they responded and studied those responses at a scale we could never manage ourselves. And worse, the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. people being studied weren't separately notified that their feeds were being altered for this particular experiment. Sit and chew on that gristle for a minute. We're talking about a company manipulating the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. information environment around people, measuring their responses, and using what it learned to understand human behavior. We are the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. experiment. That ought to make you look at your feed a little differently moving forward. Next time you log on, ask yourself who is deciding what content shows up in front of you and what are they trying to accomplish by putting it there? Because we tend to imagine influence as somebody trying to convince us of something, to buy something new, vacation somewhere fabulous, or vote for democracy in an election. But what we encounter before we even decided what we think about it is a choice that is already sitting there waiting for us in advance from a prediction system. Don't you think that should shape our approach to neurotechnology? How about brain computer interface, neural data, emotion recognition, cognitive surveillance, and military applications? If the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. answer is yes, and I hope that it is a resounding yes, then ask yourself, why are these people so dead set against regulating it and making it safe? Instead, the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. people selling these capabilities often talk as if measurement itself is harmless. That a system that can learn what frightens you, angers you, what comforts you and makes you spend money or stay online, things that make you feel excluded or seen is nothing that should concern you. That when it analyzes your attention patterns, emotional responses, and neurological signals for institutions to potentially weaponize against you, that we are being irrational in believing that it is in service for a better world. The documented record shows that governments have conducted secret and non-consensual experiments involving psychoactive substances, psychological manipulation, interrogation, and behavior modification. MKUltra was a CIA program involving research into behavioral modification, including experiments with psychoactive substances and other methods. The Senate held a hearing back in 1977 when it was discovered that COINTELPRO was an FBI counterintelligence program that targeted domestic groups, including Black political organizations, through tactics that involved infiltration, disruption, and attempts to discredit people and the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. movements. These are documented histories, people. Not stories somebody cooked up because they watched too many movies. No, it doesn't prove social media companies are secretly running a government mind control operation using advanced alien technology, but they do establish something a hell of a lot more important than a conspiracy conclusion. And that is that institutions have previously treated human consciousness as territory available for experimentation. They have crossed lines involving privacy under the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. cover of secrecy, national security, racial hierarchy, political activity, safety, and human behavior. And each time they did it, institutional impunity was allowed to override consent. That history should matter when we look at how today's technology is being threaded into our institutions. Because the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. government not only watches reality, but it also helps shape the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. conditions under which we live through laws, classifications, eligibility rules, policing, borders, records, and decisions about who gets treated as a threat. And private technology companies shape our information environments by deciding what becomes visible, what gets recommended, and what keeps circulating. So when those capabilities become part of an institutional operation, the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. line between observing people and influencing the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. world they experience is a line that is already being crossed. Meaning the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. right to bodily integrity will eventually need to be understood alongside the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. right to cognitive liberty, mental privacy, and freedom from unauthorized neural manipulation. Because mass behavior and mind control was never science fiction. It was and still is the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. political economy of access.

From MKUltra to the Fight for Our Minds

That takes the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. thread straight into the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. body, eugenics, and transhumanism. Because what happens when a culture that is learning to measure, classify, and predict human beings starts talking about improving, redesigning, augmenting, or transcending the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. human design itself? Control over human beings has always involved control over bodies. The history of eugenics, colonial medicine, forced sterilization, and racialized medical myths was full of people who were told that these questions were scientific when they were deeply political. And that institutional abuse demonstrates exactly why we should be extremely careful about any future that talks too casually about improving the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. human design. Because eugenics didn't introduce itself as hatred or a lack of science. It arrived through the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. whitewashed language of progress, heredity, health, Intelligence, civilization, and social improvement, taking racial hierarchies already present in society and giving them a scientific vocabulary that could pass for authority. Now AI is moving deeper into biological research, drug discovery, synthetic biology, and human enhancement. Automated laboratories can design and test biological systems. Gene editing continues to advance. Brain computer interfaces are being developed, and research into Artificial and external wombs is already part of the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. conversation. Yeah, you heard me, gestation pods, just like in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. movie Matrix. But of course, marketed as innovation to help combat infertility in women. And reproduction is another piece that makes the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. whole rabbit hole even darker. People hear talk about Artificial wombs, designer babies, and biological synthetics merging and automatically assume it's a discussion about some distant landscape that has nothing to do with the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. history we already know. We know what happens when powerful people decide that somebody else's body is a resource, a problem, a tool, or a fucking site for experimentation. So, no, I can't separate the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. future of reproduction from the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. history of who has controlled reproduction, especially the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. reproductive lives of Black women. The technology may change what's possible, but it inherits the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. ability to decide what should be done to someone's person unless somebody deliberately breaks it. Once again, I can see the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. potential for some of these things. I am by no means against the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. science or medical breakthroughs or saying AI has already become an autonomous bioweapons factory. I know for a fact that some of these technologies will prevent diseases, develop treatments, and help us understand the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. body in ways earlier generations could barely imagine, if at all. At the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. same damn time, though, the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. wall between digital Intelligence and physical intervention is getting thinner and thinner. I'm not about to separate the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. dream of improving humanity from the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. question of who gets to define improvement, especially when the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. tools are owned by institutions that has already spent centuries deciding which human beings are more valuable than others. So, it is in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. very least fair to ask what those old ideas will look like when they acquire new technology. Who gets augmented when enhancement becomes possible and who gets managed instead? Who decides whose body is labeled defective simply because it doesn't fit the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. preferred design? Who owns the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. technology, biological data, and the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. tools capable of transforming the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. human body? Who becomes the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. test population that makes somebody else's advancement possible? What happens when something sold as liberation becomes another requirement for staying competitive, employable, healthy, or worthy of being included? And who bears the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. consequences when the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. system is wrong? At what point does a personal medical choice become a social or mandated expectation? Hint, hint: COVID. But hold on to that thread, y'all. We will spin the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. block on that in a minute. But yeah, I got hella questions because I can't help but to think about what will happen to the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. person who can't afford to participate or simply refuses to opt in. I guess because I know that'd be me. I am that person. These are not hypothetical musings designed to instill fear. They are old, unanswered questions, entering a new technological environment that is continuously presented as if the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. moral problem began with the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. machines when some of the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. deepest questions have always been sitting here this whole fucking time. Let me repeat this again so that maybe it'll stick. Gene editing does not automatically equate to eugenics. But at the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. same time, the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. technological visions of the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. future don't become free of the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. racial and class hierarchies of the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. societies imagining them. Plus, the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. language of social improvement can still become the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. language for ranking human worth in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. future. The old colonial desire to classify, rank, and improve human beings, didn't magic erase because the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. word eugenics became embarrassing? Once again, we have done several variations of this Uno reverse before. That's what has me pulling these threads. And the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. more I pull, the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. more history starts staring back at me. Not the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. fabricated textbook version, because that version is too damn Prager University convenient. I mean the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. kind of history that leaves fingerprints, shape shifts, and still recognizes itself behind a new mask. I'm talking Black history. And the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. world's future.

Racial Heirachy Becomes Algorithmic Code

One of the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. oldest ambitions of organized power has been to make populations knowable. Long before a machine could recognize your face, somebody was already very interested in identifying you. Governments and police departments were creating categories of people considered dangerous, undesirable, suspicious, foreign, criminal, or less worthy of protection long before an algorithm could calculate risk. People building systems around race, class, and social worth ain't new. AI didn't invent the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. impulse to sort human beings, but it did industrialize it. Think about the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. historical records created that made the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. sorting possible. Things like census, racial classifications, property documents, passports, police files, medical records, school photos, employment histories, credit systems, and all those bureaucratic categories that can look neutral until you see what gets done with them. Classification was never merely descriptive. It determines what becomes visible to the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. state, valuable to capital, and what becomes actionable against a person. The difference now is the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. scale and speed at which a system can assemble a profile, infer patterns from it, and keep revising its assessment as more information arrives. A human being with a private, interior life starts becoming a constantly updating profile and decisions can be made from that profile without the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. person being present, heard, or even aware that a decision is being made about them. That is a crucial historical shift because where old forms of racial class domination often required explicit declarations of superiority, the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. newer upgraded forms can operate through dashboards, risk scores, automated denials, fraud detection, public safety, optimization, and of course, my favorite, efficiency. That shift hits differently when you Black. Black life has been turned into records for a very long time. Bodies were counted because somebody wanted to know how much labor they represented. Families were documented because slave ownership required documentation. Physical characteristics were labeled to build a racial hierarchy and call it science. Neighborhoods were mapped to determine access, opportunity, and surveillance. Medical information was collected from Black bodies under conditions nobody should ever fix they mouth to describe as ethical or humane. Even intelligence and brain size was measured and ranked through systems that already carried assumptions about whose mind was capable of working a certain way. I mean, we're talking about fabricating an entire mental health disease to explain why the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. enslaved ran away from their oppressors. They gave it a name and everything. Drapetomania, they called it. I mean, who would think that a HUEman wanting to escape from demonic captivity would be considered having depression? You mean to tell me they invented that shit off niggas too? Depression? I can't make this shit up, institutions are being shaken, But obviously these inhumane ass motherfuckers can. As we can see, empire was deciding what Black bodies meant long before Artificial Intelligence arrived on the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. scene. And not one lick of that history disappears because the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. paper trail became digital. A system can reproduce prejudice without having a thought about you at all. It will repeat the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. same pre-coded pattern and assumption thousands of times at an astronomical rate before anybody notices and has enough presence of mind to stop and ask whether the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. underlying assumption was grossly false. Inside that treasure trove of information, somebody entered into the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. world long before the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. machine existed is what the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. machine sees as repetition and calls evidence, sees consistency and calls it objectivity, allowing the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. person who signs off on the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. negative result to simply shrug and say, "well, the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. computer did it." And voila, the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. human hand behind the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. original judgment disappears from view. And yesterday's assumption settles into a category, becomes part of a policy, travels through a database, and turns into a governing rule that people have no idea where it came from. But it came from somewhere. Because the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. machine learned it from somewhere, the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. institutions deploying it came from somewhere. The data, categories, predictions, all of it came from somewhere. It wasn't magic. It came from bodies and choices, neighborhoods and histories, what people buy, where they go, where they search and watch, and what they say, what they fear, what they love, what they can't afford, what they can't access. And if yesterday's hierarchy is being fed into tomorrow's machine, we won't get a futuristic looking society. We will simply get yesterday with better processing power. They call that efficiency too. Again, efficiency for whom? A system can become incredibly efficient at doing something we should never have asked it to do in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. first place. That's where our obsession with technological capability gets stupidly dangerous. We forever asking, can it be done? We don't never spend enough time asking who benefits when it is done, and even less time asking who becomes easier to control once it's done. Do you know what I find to be the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. most fucked up part about it all? Is that we are the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. ones who continuously feed the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. whole damn enchilada of our lives to these machines, helping them fill in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. blanks every day. Then got the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. nerve to be dumbfounded when the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. machine finds the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. pattern it was coded to look for. Folks really out here thinking a record becomes neutral when they enter the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. information themselves. Silly rabbit? On this timeline, data is currency. We all rich, bitch. And they are working nonstop overtime to turn every single human being into information at a scale and speed that should make us all ask: what happens when a system can know more about a person than that person knows about the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. system holding their information? That is what I find to be one of the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. deepest dangers in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. present moment. The conversion of human beings into machine readable objects whose value and risk can be calculated by institutions they can't meaningfully see, understand, or challenge. There's nothing you can think of that's not considered data. Your favorite color, food, toilet tissue brand, hell, even the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. last time you Cash App'd the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. plug is all in your digital record. Nothing that is known about you is ever truly private. Not to the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. machines. Making the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. distance between collecting information and deciding what somebody is allowed to do in society based on that information, that shit's getting wider and wider and wider. And it's while traveling around that route that a person starts disappearing behind the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. profile built from their own personal information. When a profile becomes more important to the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. institution than the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. person, we've crossed into something much deeper than technological convenience. We've created a world in which you can be known by a system without ever being known as a human being. Our bodies steadily becoming a site of governance and thus becoming increasingly controlled through private technological systems. That is a profound change in the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. relationship between human beings and the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. institutions surrounding them. A profile rendered can become more authoritative than the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. person it supposedly describes, making them less like a human and more like a data object, or in this case, a nigga. And that's a dangerous place to live, especially when the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. line between information we voluntarily provide and information systems take as a condition of participating in ordinary modern life has found its way to a central government database.

DOGE And The Surveillance State

Enter DOGE into the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. chat. DOGE, the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. Department of Government Efficiency. Remember how they sold it? Waste, fraud, and abuse? Elon Musk was gonna clean up Washington, cut the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. waste, and get the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. government out of its own way. The stated mission was to modernize federal technology, increase efficiency, and make government work better. And who doesn't want less waste? Who wants their tax dollars thrown away? That was the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. hook. Come in, find the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. waste, cut the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. fat, save the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. taxpayers some money. Simple enough, right? Right. Except the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. operation that came in under the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. banner was given access to something a whole lot more sensitive than an office supply budget. Musk and his crew came through Washington like a wrecking ball, tearing into federal agencies under the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. promise of cleaning up government with a team of young tech nerds moving through institutions and gaining access to an astonishing amount of information. Financial records, employment information, benefits, sensitive personal data, all pieces of people's lives that government agencies had collected over decades were suddenly part of a much bigger conversation about who could get their hands on them, what they could see, and what they could do with what they found. Agency after agency with information about people's money, benefits, jobs, identities, and private lives sitting inside those systems. I remember watching all this unfold and thinking, hold up, institutions are being shaken, We went from finding waste to giving a bunch of young tech guys access to some of the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. most sensitive information the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. government has on its own people. And now we're supposed to just trust the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. process because they called it efficiency. Then came the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. reports about just how far that access reached, including allegations that a former DOGE employee had copies of highly restricted Social Security databases and had stored at least one on a personal thumb drive. Let that sink in. We're talking about databases holding records on American citizens. And now there are questions about where that information went, who had it, and what they intended to do with it. The government was giving a team access to sensitive systems, and years later, the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. public still can't get a complete accounting of what that access amounted to. My mind goes into a whole tilt-world thinking about the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. implications because we aren't just talking about somebody knowing your name and address. Think about all the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. information scattered across those federal systems, the things you have to disclose to get benefits, pay taxes, work for the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. government, receive assistance, or simply handle your business as a citizen. Pull enough of that information together, and you have a hell of a picture of somebody's life, their circumstances, needs, financial situation, family connections, their vulnerabilities. And just as quickly as DOGE tore through Washington, its people began disappearing from public view. We still don't have a full accounting of what DOGE personnel accessed across the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. agencies they entered. The government accountability office reported in September 2026 that it couldn't determine the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. extent of DOGE's team access across the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. agencies it reviewed because the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. records were incomplete. Wow. What a shocker. Is that proof of a Pinky and the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. Brain Master Plan? Nah. But it's definitely a reason for us to stay woke and remain vigilant. Remember HYDRA? The thing that makes the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. comparison so unsettling is not the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. idea that DOGE is part of HYDRA, but the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. way a mission presented as protection can become the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. doorway through which power enters institutions and changes how they operate. The public hears waste, fraud, and abuse, and thinks somebody is finally going to clean the house. Meanwhile, the machinery of government is being opened up, institutions are being shaken, and access to information becomes part of a much larger question about who holds power over the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. Information like this doesn't have to be used against somebody tomorrow to change the balance of power today. Once you have the information, you have possibilities that the person who supplied it may never even imagine. Can't nobody tell me, "only God knows my heart," without that landing a little differently now. DOGE might not know your soul, but they know enough of your business to piece together a whole hell of a lot about your life and the things that matter to you. And when access to that information becomes concentrated in the hands of people who are not accountable to the public in any meaningful way, I don't have to wonder what kind of future they're making room for. But it does make me wonder if the waste they're really preparing to purge from system is us. One of the most disturbing parts of the HYDRA comparison to me is that we keep imagining tyranny as something that must arrive from the outside. A foreign enemy, a dictator, a revolutionary movement, hell, an alien invasion, or, you know, some obvious villain? But what if the real danger is more ordinary than that? What if it develops through a thousand small accommodations, each justified as necessary, defended as temporary and too complicated for the average person to challenge? What if institutions gradually accumulate powers that nobody would have approved of all at once? What if we become so dependent on the systems managing our lives that questioning them begins to feel more dangerous than trusting them? The strongest version of the HYDRA metaphor doesn't require us to exaggerate reality. The abuse of power, surveillance programs, conflicts of interest, and concentration of influence are already documented and continuing without interruption today. The real struggle is holding the people behind them accountable. And that struggle gets harder when public institutions begin depending on private fortunes to build the systems shaping health, education, agriculture, national security, and Artificial Intelligence. Follow the money far enough and another head comes into view. A class of people wealthy enough to gain extraordinary access, influence, public priorities, and insulate themselves from consequences the rest of us can't escape.

The Epstein Class: Power Beyond Accountability

We have been far too blasé about extreme concentrations of wealth infused with our public institutions and what that means as we move forward into an advanced technological society. We've been trained to discuss wealth as personal achievement and stop at the yachts, private jets, high fashion, and ridiculous houses featured on Yo! MTV Cribs or some shit like that. Those things are almost beside the point. Extreme wealth, in this conversation at least, is not about what somebody can buy or where they can afford to live. It's about what somebody can build, influence, fund, access, and own. The media calls them the billionaire class, but I call them the Epstein class. Not to say that every wealthy person is connected to Jeffrey Epstein's crimes. I'm talking about a class of extreme wealth in which money creates its own protected world of access, networks, influence, and insulation from many of the rules and inconveniences that shape life for everybody else. That kind of wealth changes the relationship between the individual and society because at a certain point, they can step outside of the conditions of society and the law. When a handful of extraordinarily wealthy people can finance and control the systems everyone else must live inside of, we're no longer talking about personal wealth or somebody buying a bigger house. We're talking about private power acquiring the ability to design pieces of reality itself, how we communicate, where our information is stored, what machines are able to calculate, and which institutions can function without asking a corporation for access. That deserves more attention than we have been giving it because the boundary between private enterprise and public life begins to disappear when privately owned infrastructure becomes a condition of participating in society. Think about how many different hands can touch a single ordinary moment. You unlock your phone, and enter a network operated by companies such as Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile. You open an app whose data may be processed or stored through Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure. The Artificial Intelligence behind that app may depend on an NVIDIA chip designed under Jensen Huang's leadership. If the information is being sorted for a corporation, military, police department, or government agency, Palantir, co-founded by Peter Thiel and led by Alex Carp, may provide the software that helps connect the records and turn them into decisions. These are not interchangeable companies doing the same job. The mobile carriers control pathways of communication. Amazon and Microsoft rent the cloud infrastructure in which businesses and government services increasingly depend. NVIDIA supplies much of the computing power driving modern Artificial Intelligence. Palantir builds systems that allow institutions to combine, analyze, and act on enormous bodies of data. Meta and Alphabet govern platforms through which attention, advertising, speech, and social behavior are organized, while their founders and executives retain unusual influence over the direction of those systems. Each company owns a different layer, but ordinary life passes through all of them, and the layers become most powerful when they work together so seamlessly that dependence feels like convenience rather than a transfer of authority. It is that all-around dependence that'll make those systems harder to regulate. And not only that, it gives their owners growing presence in public life practical power over how we live our lives. That is what will happen. That is what's happening now. Bill Gates, billionaire owner of Microsoft, has invested heavily in global health initiatives, education, agriculture, and has participated in influential philanthropic and policy networks. His wealth gives him access to conversations and decisions that ordinary citizens will never enter. Although the investments made by him and others may produce meaningful benefits, their stated benevolent intentions don't settle the question of who gets to decide whether communities retain their own influence over the systems being built in their name. A seed is not just a seed when its traits, patents, data, distribution, and farming recommendations are controlled somewhere else. A medical platform is not just a medical platform when health information becomes an asset. Public health becomes something totally different when care and surveillance are difficult to tell apart. The public deserves to know who sets the priorities, who decides which interventions receive funding? How are conflicts of interest managed? Who evaluates the results? What happens when the preference of the wealthy donors differ from the priorities of the communities they claim to help? Those are fair and valid questions, and they matter because having good intentions are not a substitute for transparency, democratic consent, or independent oversight. The road to hell is paved by good intentions. Extreme wealth is no longer just purchasing influence around the edges of government. It can finance the technical foundations through which government, commerce, education, health, communication, defense, and culture operate. The same person with money can fund a laboratory, buy a media platform, invest in Artificial Intelligence, build data centers, finance political campaigns, influence legislation, purchase access to government, acquire companies, shape research priorities, and create their own little Polly Pocket of continuity using technologies that millions of people will eventually rely upon while everybody else is being told to prepare for an uncertain future. There's a difference between being told to be resilient and having enough money to buy the conditions that make resilience possible. I've been watching the stories about wealthy tech people and their associates buying enormous remote properties and building private refuges. The word online is that all of them are secretly preparing for the end of the world. And that may very well be true. But the ordinary explanation is already enough for me. Extreme wealth gives people the ability to build forms of private continuity most everyone else will never have access to. Not even in a hundred lifetimes. And I don't know about you, fam, but I for damn sure can't afford a bunker, a compound, spaceship, or my own private militia like ICE to escape it. Ask yourself this: Where does sovereignty live when the infrastructure of ordinary life is increasingly belonging to wealthy and private institutions? On paper, freedom belongs to the people. But in practice, more and more of the machinery through which people experience society is being built and controlled somewhere else by people we don't know. We keep hearing that our rights still exist and the Constitution still stands in the United States while the practical machinery through which people experience life is increasingly controlled and dependent upon systems whose internal rules are automated, murky, and damn near impossible to comprehend. Meanwhile, the public is being told that these are tools, but they too in practice set the rules of engagement and participation in society. And that's no small change in reality. That's a transfer of power over the terms and conditions of life. And out of it can grow a form of privatized sovereignty that won't have to announce itself as a shadow government where the wealthy get to shape the reality the rest of us must live, work, play, and die in. That should concern everybody regardless of political party too. People reach for labels such as the Third Reich, Tech Oligarchy, the Great Reset, Project 2025, but I call the recurring impulse the New OLD World Order. Ancient history on repeat, remixed for the timeline, where authority concentrates and the conditions of ordinary life get remade, while the new order is sold as necessary, divine, natural, or good for the people expected to live under it.

What Are We Smuggling Into the Future?

Whew! Well Kings and queens...that's where I'm going to leave this reflection for now. We haven't exactly made it to the other sode of this rabbit hole. But I'd say we're a little closer than we were when we started. And Lord knows, I could keep pulling at these threads because every time I think I've reached the end of one, something else comes along and sends my mind wandering into another part of history. But that's part of what I've been trying to understand through this entire reflection. How do we make sense of the world we're living in when so many of the things shaping our lives are discussed as though they exist independently of one another? And I don't know about y'all, but I have a hard time accepting that we can spend centuries building societies around certain beliefs about human beings, and then somehow wake up one morning with technology advanced enough to erase all the thinking that created those societies in the first place. Who told us that was how progress worked? Seriously. At what point did we decide that a new invention automatically meant we had become better people? That's one of the questions I keep coming back to, especially when I look at how much of our history is still sitting right here with us, influencing decisions that will affect generations who haven't even been born yet. Now, we've covered a lot of ground today and we're nowhere near finished. What started with questions about conspiracy and the way power operates has taken us through government experimentation, the human mind, eugenics and transhumanism, the historical classification of Black life, and the increasingly valuable information being collected about every aspect of our existence. And somewhere in all of that, we found ourselves looking at the people whose money and influence allows them to operate in spaces most of us will never see. Which brings me to something I want you to consider before we pick this conversation back up, If we keep inheriting systems built by people whose ideas about humanity were shaped by the world they lived in, how much of their thinking are we carrying into the future without ever realizing it? And more importantly, how would we know? Hmm, a little something to think about. Because the next place this rabbit hole takes us is into what I'm calling the New OLD World Order. And baby, that's a whole other entire conversation we need some room to get into. It's also why I wanted to release this reflection and installments. I don't want us rushing from one revelation to the next without giving ourselves an opportunity to consider what any of it means. We've become so accustomed to consuming information that sometimes I wonder whether we're actually giving ourselves enough time to digest and understand anything at all. And listen, I know there are probably some things I've said that some of you disagree with. Good. I'd much rather have somebody challenge an idea because they genuinely thought about it than agree with me simply because something sounded convincing. Hell, challenge me too. I reserve the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. right to learn something tomorrow that changes what I think today. That's what having a living, breathing human mind is supposed to allow us to do. And that's part of what this space is for. I want us to be able to have conversations where people bring their own experiences, their own knowledge, and their own perspectives without feeling they have to arrive at the people whose lives are recorded inside those systems. same conclusions to participate.

To Be Continued...

You can continue this conversation with me through my Rabbit Holes and Breadcrumbs series on my Substack, Digital Disobedience. I'll be sharing a written companion piece there, along with discussion questions, because some of these subjects deserve more room than I can give them behind the microphone. Maybe you'll recognize a connection I overlooked. Remember a piece of history that deserves another look, or come away with a completely different interpretation of something I've discussed. And for those of you who want the entire reflection in one sitting, the complete recording will be available as downloadable content after the final installment. For now, I hope you give yourself a little time to sit with whatever stayed with you from today's conversation. Think about what made you curious, what challenged something you believed, or what sent your mind wandering somewhere unexpected. Because that's why I'm preserving the evidence of my mind in the first place. I want there to be a record of what I was thinking, what I was questioning, and how I was trying to make sense of the world while I was living through it. I don't have all the answers and I don't pretend that I do, but I do believe the act of thinking for ourselves, remembering what came before us, and questioning the things we're being asked to accept has value that goes far beyond whatever conclusions we eventually reach. The future doesn't arrive on a blank page, it carries the decisions, histories, assumptions, and power structures of the people who came before us. And what we choose to do with that knowledge is something every generation has to confront for itself. I'm BlakkMomba, and you've been tuned in to Momba Raw and Raw and Unfiltered. Thank you for spending this time with me, for lending me your ears, and most importantly, for bringing your mind into the room. Be sure to check out the show notes for direct links to connect with me on social media, find me on Substack, or send a donation to help keep the lights of the digital resistance on. You'll also find links to my merch shop and tools for creators there as well. Until next time, keep your eyes open. Keep asking questions, and don't be afraid to look a little closer at the things that make you stop and think. We'll pick up the thread next week in the next installment. Look for me in a week or two. Be good, be safe, and stay healthy. And oh yeah, don't forget to drink your water. Water is life. I love y'all. Peace.