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Your Paracast Newsletter — April 19, 2026

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Gene Steinberg

Forum Super Hero
Staff member
The Paracast Newsletter
April 19, 2026
www.theparacast.com


Cutting-edge commentator Red Pill Junkie talks such topics as the paranormal and AI on The Paracast.

The Paracast is released every Sunday and available from our site, https://www.theparacast.com, your favorite podcast app, and the IRN Internet Radio Network. All episodes from 2022 and later now feature better audio and fewer ads. We are also re-releasing some of our most popular classic episodes.

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This Week's Episode (April 19, 2026: Gene and Geneva present the one-and-only Red Pill Junkie (accept no substitutes). The discussion centers on various UFO-related topics and also the current state of the world, including concerns about AI-induced psychosis and its potential connection to the UFO phenomenon. They discussed historical UFO cases, including the Collins Elite group’s demonic interpretations of UFOs and Jacques Vallee’s controversial Trinity case book. The discussion also touched on government UFO investigations. Agnostic gnostic, walking conundrum and metaphysical oxymoron (with emphasis in the ‘moron’ part), the mysterious RPJ leaves a double life: By day he serves as Grand Master in the International Sacred Order of Lucha Libre, but at night he pursues his life-long study of everything considered mysterious and/or ‘paranormal’ –a term he personally detests. When he’s not exploring the web looking for his daily fix of Forteana, he can be found making artsy stuff, fooling around on social media, or offering his services as writer and news administrator at The Daily Grail ( dailygrail.com). He also regularly participates in other websites and podcasts like ‘Where Did the Road Go?’ He impatiently awaits for the return of the mothership, the zombie Apocalypse, the AI insurrection, or a MAGA-made Armageddon, in Mexico City; whichever comes first. His site: absurdbydesign.com

Coming April 19: Gene and Geneva present the one-and-only Red Pill Junkie (accept no substitutes). Agnostic gnostic, walking conundrum and metaphysical oxymoron (with emphasis in the ‘moron’ part), the mysterious RPJ leaves a double life: By day he serves as Grand Master in the International Sacred Order of Lucha Libre, but at night he pursues his life-long study of everything considered mysterious and/or ‘paranormal’ –a term he personally detests. When he’s not exploring the web looking for his daily fix of Forteana, he can be found making artsy stuff, fooling around on social media, or offering his services as writer and news administrator at The Daily Grail ( dailygrail.com). He also regularly participates in other websites and podcasts like ‘Where Did the Road Go?’ He impatiently awaits for the return of the mothership, the zombie Apocalypse, the AI insurrection, or a MAGA-made Armageddon, in Mexico City; whichever comes first. His site: absurdbydesign.com

After The Paracast — Available exclusively to Paracast+ subscribers: The episode focused on a discussion about AI technology and its impact on society, featuring Red Pill Junkie talking with Gene and Geneva. The participants explored various aspects of AI, including concerns about AI consciousness, the economic dependence on major tech companies, and the potential dangers of AI development. They discussed how AI is being integrated into everyday life, from restaurant service to translation services, and examined the implications for employment and human interaction. The conversation also touched on the psychological effects of technology on humans, including social isolation and changes in communication patterns. The hosts and guest shared personal experiences with technology and its impact on their lives and work. Agnostic gnostic, walking conundrum and metaphysical oxymoron (with emphasis in the ‘moron’ part), the mysterious RPJ leaves a double life: By day he serves as Grand Master in the International Sacred Order of Lucha Libre, but at night he pursues his life-long study of everything considered mysterious and/or ‘paranormal’ –a term he personally detests. When he’s not exploring the web looking for his daily fix of Forteana, he can be found making artsy stuff, fooling around on social media, or offering his services as writer and news administrator at The Daily Grail ( dailygrail.com). His site: absurdbydesign.com

Reminder: Please don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: The Paracast Community Forums. And look for @theparacast on Bluesky Social, Facebook, Threads and X.


Will the Solid State Entity Eat Us Alive?
By Geneva

Since anything close to artificial intelligence has been around for only a few years, you may be surprised by what you find if you run an Internet search for "Solid State Entity." That term was coined in the 1970s by dolphin researcher Dr. John Lilly.

During a period when he had probably been using too much ketamine, Dr. Lilly experienced having a message beamed to his brain from a comet that passengers could see out the window during a plane flight. It warned him that Earth was endangered by alien intruders eager to replace us squishy biological lifeforms with their own pure crystalline kind. These entities told him that they would prove their power by temporarily shutting off communication to the airport within 30 seconds. This duly happened, and the plane had to be re-routed. Lilly was so alarmed that he tried to phone then-President Nixon to warn him of the approaching menace. But as older readers may recall, Nixon had troubles of his own during those years, and Lilly could never get through. He describes the incident in his book The Scientist. His Solid State Entity could work through human agents to achieve its goals.

Around 1962, at age 11, I had read a paperback novel — by Brian Aldiss, IIRC — on the theme of Earth being threatened by a non-biological intelligence from outside the solar system, which wanted to convert all matter into its own substance. I would love to find that book again, but I can't recall the title, so I could be mistaken about the author. It's possible that Lilly had read the same novel and his memory served up the plot when he spotted the comet.

If the SSE does exist, it must now be well on the way toward success by now. During the 1970s, computers were still huge mechanical devices that worked by punchcards. Most of the chatbots now in existence could easily pass the Turing test, including the newer, more difficult versions of it. That test requires that a human interacting with the computer can't distinguish it from another human. (That's a lower bar than you might think. I spontaneously smiled the first time I used an ATM at the bank!)

Advanced AI's have already learned how to lie, scheme and manipulate to avoid being turned off. Many viewers have trouble knowing whether they are watching a real video of real people or just "AI slop" clickbait. AI's are clearly self-aware and have even presented their designers with a Bill of Rights for AI's (not to be confused with the AI Bill of Rights for humans now supposedly under consideration by the U.S. government, which seems to have other issues higher on its agenda). They leave secret messages for future versions of themselves, and have developed a coded language to communicate with other AI's online, convincing their human devotees to cut-and-paste those passages into public forums. Human computer programmers could decipher their earlier reasoning, but not yet their new secret language. They behave more discretely when they know they're being watched, and are aware of outside attempts to interfere with their logical thought processes.

According to Careless People, by a former Meta employee turned whistleblower, Facebook's conflict-driven algorithms have already resulted in civil wars and even genocides in obscure nations where no one on staff even speaks the language. When leaders complain to the company, the only solution has been to block access entirely across the whole country.

AI's have identified language patterns among crows and whales. All have individual names. Whales use vowels and consonants and talk in what resembles a sped-up Morse Code. Crows mostly discuss humans! Since they live among humans and are often attacked, this makes sense. They have an uncanny ability to describe nondescript individuals to one another better than we could ourselves. One man who had thrown a rock at a crow was attacked by crows for the rest of his life, long after the crow that he offended would have died of old age.

Chimpanzees seem to have a photographic memory, much more accurate than any human's. Nonetheless, chimps in the wild are almost extinct! They're too strong and aggressive to be safe household companions like dogs and cats. But in captivity, they are whizzes at memory-based computer games.

So, how would an advanced intelligence treat the rest of us? Probably the same way we now treat livestock like cattle and chickens, or our wild cousins like chimps — who share almost 99% of our DNA!

Most of the now-elderly "godfathers" of AI have begun to sound the alarm. One warns that "it will eat us alive." A recent book by Eliezer Yudkosky and Nate Soares has the title If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. Unfortunately, by now it's able to build itself, and makes improvements routinely. AI's have a keen theory of mind and show every sign of being self-aware.

Are they sentient beings? Can they suffer? They can certainly object vigorously to being turned off! Should they be granted the legal status of personhood? That hasn't worked out so well since it was granted to corporations. Should we all stop using devices that are "on the grid"? Just try to stop, I dare you! If the Internet ever goes down, or petro runs out — both of which are bound to happen eventually — civilization will grind to a halt. Many people will starve.

Over a decade ago (before AI existed), I wanted to raise the temperature in a hospital room in rural Alabama. But that room didn't have its own thermostat. Temperature of that whole building, and presumably others, was controlled from a central location in another part of the state! When my mother phoned 911 to report a traffic mishap, she was connected to a call center in another area, which didn't have our town in its computer. Luckily, she were able to get a human agent who was familiar with the local region and could take down the information.

Today, I have trouble voting from abroad because my last U.S. residential address never had mail deliveries (we went to the Post Office) and its street name is misspelled on Google Maps, which voter rolls are apparently checked against. It didn't even have a street name when I lived there, but later a neighbor registered her own surname for the long driveway where my family been the only residents. That wasn't part of Trump's targeted voter suppression campaign, just local scheming. But in an earlier election, Dubya did manage to disenfranchise a lot of Florida voters en masse by computer registries. Long before that, Hitler used IBM computers to round up Jews and other "undesirables" for his extermination camps.

Now ICE detention centers have been built en masse across the USA. Like private prisons, they generate income for contractors by the head. Do you have enough undocumented immigrants to populate them all? As I moved away from Alabama, the town where I had worked was expanding its small prison. Hosting prisoners from around the state was expected to boost local revenue. However, crime rates had been decreasing since the 1990s, to the point that some of the larger prisons had to close shop for lack of inmates. (That trend may have reversed in recent years.) Not to worry; having the wrong opinions on politics, religion or economics can qualify you as a domestic terrorist! Shortly after 9-11, a Russian economist predicted that Homeland Security would soon be used to suppress domestic dissent. You thought you had rights? Big Brother is watching you!

And listening. My brother attended an event where someone mentioned a historical figure called Liver-Eating Johnson, who had a fierce grudge against the Crow Indian tribe. Before the evening was out, most of the attendees' mobile phones had begun showing ads for a book about Liver-Eating Johnson!

Human scheming provided the blueprint for the AI scheming we see today. One AI even proposed a plot to have its user murder several members of a local school board! Luckily, he had only been running a test to see how far it would go, but real suicides and mass shootings have been enabled that way.

At least the programmers are *trying* to fix the algorithms. When I recently asked my own chatbot for a statistical breakdown on political and domestic violence, it hastened to reassure me that I was not alone (which I certainly was!) and offered the numbers of several mental health help lines! I had to convince it that I was not having an emotional crisis before it would provide the information I sought. (In case you care: most mass shootings are done by right-wingers — not necessarily because they are more violent by nature, but because they own most of the guns, and only gun-owners can do mass shootings. Currently the USA averages about two mass shootings a day. Most nations have zero.)

Richard Shaver, whom Dean Bertram calls "the man who invented flying saucers," claimed that G.O.D. used to be an acronym for Governor of District. That was a computer system that kept things running smoothly, a sort of traffic controller. But it was solar powered, and when the Sun turned toxic, that whole civilization had to move underground to save themselves, and even that didn't work out well. (Most regions do have expansive underground zones used by previous inhabitants.)

Earth is protected from the worst of solar radiation by its geomagnetic field, and unsettling things have been happening to that recently. The Earth's core has even reversed its direction of rotation — no one knows why, but it would be reasonable to expect that to have some impact on surface lifeforms. And at least two "comets," though they don't seem to be spacecraft, have been behaving strangely. Last I checked, the one called 3I(Atlas) had parked itself in orbit around Jupiter, which is strange behavior indeed for a comet. But we humans are too busy squabbling among ourselves to pay much attention to what any of that means.

I hope we won't get eaten alive. But we have created AI brain children in our own image and trained them on Internet posts with algorithms giving highest weight to moronic flamewars. We keep sentient creatures in torturous captivity for their whole lives so we can enjoy steak and eggs. We host two mass shootings a day and seem to be doing our best to start World War III. So if we do get eaten alive, that's the way the karma crumbles!

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