Superliminal Horror

 Although there is a video game from 2019 called Superliminal, this isn’t really about that.  Swapping out the prefix sub- for super- does generate a word nobody uses in everyday conversation.  Subliminal famously creates a somewhat subliminal perception of the use of the concept itself.  For many it will evoke a sort of dirty trick in advertising.  The jury is out on whether psychologically it works or not.  Personally, I’m in the camp that it’s unlikely to have much actual effect as the up front flooding the zone tactic of beating people over the head with repetitive bad information works a helluva lot better.

The inspiration here is the recent focus on the subgenre of horror movies - liminal horror.  At its heart, a liminal horror movie involves an ordinary place that becomes horrific because although it’s overwhelming ordinary for the bulk of the visuals, there’s something not quite right.  Something feels just a little bit…off.  It doesn’t need to be explained.  The spark of imagination ignited in the viewers mind is enough.

For a spoiler alert worthy example from the newly released liminal horror movie Backrooms there is an opening table setting (figuratively speaking) sequence.  There’s a massive complex of seemingly endless rooms like a basement of a vacant office space with ordinary and explained normal “stuff” in it.  Randomly placed furniture, signs that don’t seem to have relevance.  And then there’s an explained bird.  A loud squawk and there’s a bird.  Another living creature that serves as the only companion to a person obviously in distress as they give context clues that they’re being chased by something.  Something that definitely doesn’t fit in with the overwhelming banality of the liminal space.  Why is the bird there?  What does it eat?  Is it running from this Thing also?  Regardless, there’s no need for explanation.  It just hammers home that the space itself is the terror as there’s precious little deviation in the overall boringly normalcy of the space.  Letting the viewer’s brain create the dread of the character’s problem without presenting him with a zombie or dragon or whatever as the obvious monster.

Although education in the U.S. will acknowledge the historical background of Naziism in WWII, the focus has actually been the monster in the space.  Fascist goons with machine guns blitzkrieging their way across Europe and threatening democracy everywhere.  Corporations cozying up with autocrats since bombs, bullets and petroleum dependent vehicles are necessary for full blown war and a lot more profitable for the manufacturers.  As normalcy returns, the machine gun is set aside as a rather inefficient way to spend your retirement bass fishing or knitting.  And in this arena, the liminal space is capitalism vs. communism.

Capitalism just “is”.  It’s the walls, the occasional door, the archways, the random puddles of unexplained water.  You may have been told that communism is the enemy.  It probably is the actual enemy, or rather AN actual monster among different competing monsters.  I’m not a big fan of the idea of communism.  Others are dead certain it has to be the way to go.  Regardless, what I do know is that my personal historical context is that capitalism just is.  And to fit in with the world around me, to fake it until I make it I’m subliminally forced to ignore critical thinking and some not extremely difficult to understand math.

A prime example and returning to some of the math from last week - it is quite literally impossible for “good inflation” to continually have housing prices rise while simultaneously having affordable housing for new buyers.  Not only can you pull up a calculator, make some perfectly reasonable assumptions, arrive at a disturbing and perfectly foreseeable result, the occasional housing bubble crash will bring the numbers to the forefront.  The liminal horror has been replaced by the actual horror.  And unless it’s a movie like Cabin In the Woods where the ancient ones destroy everything at the end a victory of sorts is achieved and the possible franchise comes to a conclusion.

Actual functioning government work is very boring.  It’s resource allocation decisions and sensible regulations being enforced and dull and repetitive bureaucracy.  It’s far less sexy than creating a Ponzi scheme and grabbing billions of dollars out of an exploitation machine that’s been running in the background.  Going with the flow and surviving in the middle of the liminal space.  Keeping quiet.  Being asleep while They Live.

And it’s all fun and games until the liminal horror gives way to the superliminal.  (Supercriminal?!)  Backrooms spoiler #2 - for me the end reveal fell flat.  The design choice was a cartoonish version of one of the main characters.  But leaving aside something too nitpicking, the makers had to do something for some kind of payoff.  A physical presence besides the existential dread of boredom.  A bit rushed instead of a slower reveal stretching the running time into Marvel superhero movie at least twenty minutes too long running time.

But meanwhile, back in the real world we have reached that uncomfortable superliminal horror stage.  The wealth inequality is staggering.  Fragile resource allocation systems take two big hits in 2026 with tariffs and the Strait of Hormuz shutdown.  The Epstein class took us straight from the Backrooms liminal horror into an in an your face cartoonishly bad monster wearing the face of a broken mind housed in the body of a reality TV show host turned con man extraordinaire.

Rule #1

Complex problems require complex solutions.  You absolutely are allowed to acknowledge to yourself and your like minded tribe mates that the liminal space has existed.  And despite pressure to ignore it, that it has advanced to the superliminal horror state.

Rule #2

Don’t panic until it’s time to actually panic.  Seek out those that actually seem to be actively looking to be part of the fix instead of breaking more stuff.

Rule #3

Be prepared for one of the hidden traps of superliminal horror.  Hitting your head with a hammer isn’t a good idea, even if it feels great when you stop.  Even now, rich assholes with no concern for your well being are plotting on how to capitalize on the upcoming, “anything is better than Trump” sentiment.

Part 2 - Pulling Back the Curtain On Oz

 Original Stevie Baskin Analysis of Oz

The interview I posted yesterday is a much more digestible version of the concepts involved.  A five hour long recap.  Wow.  Mr. Baskin, thou art one smart and dedicated guy.

A broad look at the themes, one point that sticks out to me is the timing of admission that what you’re providing is an illusion.  A trick done for fun.  A harmless white lie like belief in Santa Claus until a child’s brain develops enough to understand that it’s really just Mom & Dad giving you presents because they love you.

There is an ethical question about metadeception and Oz specifically.  Is it just a fun trick when the lie is continually perpetuated as a lifestyle?  Long time readers know my stance.  The same way Oz inserts himself in front of celebrities and large gatherings like Rogan - I’m special.  “This is not a trick.  I have a genuine super power that you can buy my book and learn.”  Compare that to a decade of meta-deception with gematria.  “I can predict sports results.  If you want my really good work, join my Patreon.”

And for me, Zach crossed the line by joining the Sandy Hook is a hoax crowd.  Which naturally turned in to the fake narrative of how misinformation morphed into a weakened response to the worst pandemic in modern history, Qanon insanity, and “ritual sacrifice” scapegoating among other things.

My own thoughts about being respectful to my elders long held cognitive biases have changed.  Somebody needed to try something.  And I’m pretty much the only person I know stupid enough to interact with a group of people known to through out the occasional death threat.

But anyway, back to yesterday’s original video because it’s way shorter.  I cannot emphasize enough how I can review both these videos and admire Mr. Baskin as somebody smarter than I am, and certainly way better with screen presence and public speaking.

https://youtu.be/yhvzmIDdUVY?si=FU_SLNYnIIwHDI4Q  (Reposting yesterday’s video)

0:14. The foreshadowing of the rhetorical question of who has the balls to call out the fraudster.

3:10. A great mentalist tells you he doesn’t have MAGIC powers.  But insists it’s still a form of superpower.  Just not pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

5:00. Oz, like Zach is a great performer.  It’s convincing if you don’t know what to look for.

8:30 Oz has inserted himself as the entertainment at the White House correspondents dinner that the shooting attempt occurred at.  A collection of people bound to have some thinking they’re smarter than they are.  Personal speculation and opinion - Trump’s body language and speech patterns reek of insincerity.  A target audience of people who think they can get a book to help them that doesn’t address the stage magician aspects of Oz’s performance.

9:20  Talk about cognitive biases based lifestyle and how it impacts your life when you ignore reality.

16:45 The payoff on the sleight of hand down.  Turning off a phone instead of reading body language.  And the audience of two doesn’t get suspicious when they realize the phone has turned off.

18:30 Other magicians don’t like that he’s giving away the secrets.  Not deliberately.  But just like Zach pick’s winners the day after the game, just like Zach picks both teams all the time -Oz’s media blitz has had him “go to the well” too many times.  Spoiling the trick for other performers who have audiences genuinely looking for fun regardless of any thoughts whether it’s real or not.

21:20 Preshow work.  Basically lying about the background to the on air performance.

24:45 Show business code.  Don’t give it away since we’re all professionals here.

26:20-26:50+. Outside the performance.  The preshow is admitted.  Simple (for a ‘mentalist’) math tricks and/or calculator app recall tech were used to decipher the REAL PIN.  And,

28:10 The violation of trust about the use of the real PIN instead of the fake PIN.  Not cool.  When you first comment on Zach’s videos you are setting yourself up to give out information about yourself.  Which teams you like, which particular players.  How much effort he has to produce to get you to break down and donate.

32:00 In addition to pre-show (think cold reading) there’s also post show editing tricks.  Pre-show Zach ==>. Talk up the current popular numbers which can change depending on circumstances.  Pi, Jesuit numbers, 666, 113, 47, whatever.  The audience looks for those numbers.  Post show Zach.  They flipped the script.  Double narrative.  Lying.

37:20  Oopsie.  Screw up caught on camera.

42:00 Particularly appropriate for sports gambling gematria scamming.  Barkley has been forced to pick between two options.  It’s a lot easier to guess between two options than hundreds of options.  Every football game is one out of two teams, even though the gematria might be more appropriate for an entirely different game.  Pre-show patter and the gift of gab for dual reality to mask that it’s really not so random at all.  If you think it’s easy, try keeping it up for an entirely different game football season to just make picks for the Super Bowl.

48:00 Another oopsie on camera.  Barkley actually picked the wrong one of two.  The cover up isn’t very convincing if you know what you’re looking for.  The studio audience doesn’t have a clue.

55:00 All the steps for fraud are there.  Regardless of whether it gets prosecuted or not, the smarter people will figure it out.

57:00. Oz is a “con man” for entertainment.

——————————————————————-

This is not a great time in the history of the world to be deceptive.  Even gambling on war crimes is a thing, where insider information is more important than being right.  The political con has been exposed.  Get elected.  Get access to insider trading information, bribes, contracts that are based on wasteful government spending.  Then as the magician’s tricks are being exposed, rely on your ability to lie your way out of a jam.  All because a handful of toxic narcissists spoiled the trick for generations to come.

Part 1 - Pulling Back the Curtain On Oz

Pablo Torres Finds Out - Oz Pearlman

No notes needed, but I’m going to do it despite no notes needed.  But first let’s do a trip along the highway of confirmation bias and the belief in things that aren’t real.

It’s generally socially acceptable to start kids right away into religion.  There are good messages and long lasting values in religion.  Way down the highway there is extremism.  Go ahead and allow yourself a mental image regarding fanatics using passenger planes as bombs if you need an example.  This is a far cry from reading the bible before bedtime for comfort.  Or even doing a gematria synchronicity decode as an exercise in self spirituality.

There’s a major branch along the confirmation bias highway called Economics.  Eventually, many brains even give up entirely on the religious road and develop an identity solely based on their economic and political beliefs.  Yes, those are tied together whether we like it or not.  Regarding U.S. propaganda, there is a belief that capitalism is the one and only path to enlightenment.  The political part is reduced to a false binary option only, far too often.  Left vs. Right.  No nuance.  No context.  And by golly your belief in the wrong side means you have the audacity to ruin the welfare of others that do not share your belief.

Well, bad news sunshine.  Instead of talking through things and teaching reasonable not black or white compromises you get constant failure to address anything.  And now you feel safe not believing in Santa Claus or Jesus because now you have computers, math, and technology that makes you feel invulnerable to confirmation bias criticism.  So let’s put some shade on the sunshine and show how math destroys the foundation of capitalism.  The myth of infinite growth.

Imagine if you can or get paper and pen out and draw it.  An equilateral triangle.  Now that there are three sides we get our first shape, because two sides are still just a line or two lines intersecting with no area.  No add a side and you’ve got a square, a fancy name for an equilateral rectangle.  Add another side.  An equilateral pentagon.  Then hexagon, heptagon, octagon, etc….   As the number of equilateral sides increased you get something that approaches a circle.  Congratulations, you are starting to grasp how calculus is what I call math saying “fuck you” to people who insist you can’t do math with infinity or dividing by zero.  You don’t ever reach either extreme, you just get so close.  And although you could draw a pretty respectable square or equilateral triangle, the more sides you have drawn freehand, the harder it’s going to get to draw.  Send me your best freehand drawing of an equilateral polygon with 1 billion sides.  You don’t need to hit infinite number of sides to be a problem in regards to reality.

Sane economists will acknowledge how pure capitalism with true infinite growth as just some sort of ideal.  And politically/economically your black and white choice is capitalism versus communism.  (Spice things up with some disingenuous fascism and socialism references, too.). Here in the States:  Communism = Evil/bad/destructive.  Capitalism = Patriotic/good/sexy.  Why not at least strive for being on the right side instead of settling for the compromise?  No Octagon for you, go for that perfect circle to pull up your bootstraps.

Mankind has already existed long enough for banking to debunk itself.  Our friends making AI let us know that the first prototype of a bank existed a long, long time ago.

 

So let’s pretend our ancient protobankers had one smart ass among the lot of him.  He sets himself down and one day thinks, “Ya know, I really want to be the first Rothschild.  How do I make generational wealth without actually doing something resembling real work?”

The answer is (and reality is this way now), how do I make an insane amount of income on passive income.  Just the appreciation of a modest amount of compound interest over a long time.  The following calculation does not approach the result that “infinity” would.  But it shows the thorough impracticality of someone investing the equivalent of just $1 at a modest 3% for the 4000 years since our first passive income earner let his $1 ride every year until today.

Built into finance and investment lingo are cutesy phrases like “correction” and “Bear market”.  These address the immediate concerns of anxious investors scared of losing their <cough> <cough> hard earned passive income.  But a short term politically motivated pep talk is all that’s needed.  The entire fantasy that a long term modest 3% earnings rate can create more wealth than could possibly exist.  That fantasy makes the Santa Claus story look pretty good in comparison, because grown ass adults actually believe that everyone can just pick themselves up by their own bootstraps and with minimal effort become the next Elon Musk.  With or without being a total douchebag, just the money part.

If it were that easy, we would be living the Star Trek utopian pipe dream, all loving each other.  But of course the same holds true for communism.  Actually sharing everything equally… totally impractical.  Too often capitalism versus communism gets no more than third grade insult level dialogue.  No nonagons for either of you.  It’s easier ad hominem attack when you don’t understand capitalism.  It’s supposed to work this way:  The market moves funds towards investment in useful stuff to make sure useful stuff gets down.  Checking my notes….lets see the appendices…nope…citations…nope…social media……uh nope.  Nowhere can I find that Zuckerberg, Musk, Bezos, Buffet, Trump, etc… hoarding cash in an insane pissing contest moves money towards useful stuff.  Go ahead and type up your angry comment about SpaceX and AI so I can tell you about the upcoming “correction”.

No, what the Epstein class has learned is that in order to avoid wars redistributing wealth, bubbles bursting and just “shit happening” over time - it doesn’t have to be infinity or even four thousand years.  You’ve got to change the $1 or the 3% rate needs to be higher to get those sweet, “I’m a thoroughly corrupt billionaire more interested in exploitation and attention than benefitting society” accolades.  Trying to get the interest rate up is pretty tough, too.  That means you pretty much need to start with more than $1 to invest.  A lot more.  You need to hoard millions before you can even start to think of investing that into billions.  The difference between a million dollars is roughly, er…one billion dollars.  So better make it in steps.  Millions turns to ten millions, tens of millions to hundreds.  Hundreds of millions to billions.  All not invested in anything useful, just sitting on a balance sheet other than the occasional deduction for doing unspeakable things that lawyers bought and paid for will take care of.

Keep that in mind as part two goes into the gullibility of the target audience for Oz Pearlman.  It’s really the same kind of gullibility from the early days of gematria.  (Gosh I miss those days). Someone pretends to have a super power which is actually just a cheat and con job.