Lux Colloquii – Trance Blackman

It’s Plausible: Truth, Repetition, and the Manufacture of Belief

It’s Plausible: Truth, Repetition, and the Manufacture of Belief

Disinformation in the Age of AI

26 September 2026 ~ 36 minute read

Somewhere along the way, “truth-seeking” on the internet became its own strange ecosystem, complete with its own language, symbols, authorities, personalities, and recurring narratives. What begins as a reasonable question can quickly become something much harder to disentangle, particularly when genuine facts are mixed with speculation, technical language, and claims that seem to explain everything at once. This discussion started with one such story and ended somewhere considerably more interesting.

Lux Colloquii

The Devil We Feed: Fear, Attention, and the Creation of Reality

The Observer Becomes Part of the Story

26 September 2026 ~ 40 minute read

There comes a point in any investigation when the thing being investigated is no longer the only thing worth examining. We can follow the names, institutions, documents, networks, symbols, patterns, and apparent connections as far as they will take us, but sooner or later we have to turn the question back upon ourselves. What happens to the observer who spends enough time looking into the machinery of power, control, fear, and hidden influence? And what happens when the search for an explanation becomes part of the very environment we are trying to understand?

Lux Colloquii

The Centralization of Food: Agriculture, Industry, and Institutional Power

Food, Freedom, and the Systems Around Us

25 September 2026 ~ 51 minute read

There are certain questions that become more interesting the longer you sit with them, particularly when what first appears to be a question about food turns out to touch land, power, economics, science, institutions, technology, and the very structure of modern life. This discourse began with meat, but it gradually moved toward something considerably more fundamental: what happens when the systems we build to serve human needs begin to shape, constrain, and ultimately redefine those needs themselves?

Lux Colloquii

The Accountability Gap: Institutions, Incentives, and Consequences

Theranos and the Machinery of Trust

23 September 2026 ~ 21 minute read

There are certain conversations that begin with a single story and gradually reveal something much larger underneath it. Theranos is one of those stories. What initially appears to be a tale of technological deception opens into questions about institutions, incentives, accountability, evidence, and the ways ordinary people can be persuaded to trust things they have neither the knowledge nor the means to independently verify.

Lux Colloquii

The Earth We Are Shown: Narrative, Evidence, and Omission

Documentary, Persuasion, and Truth

23 September 2026 ~ 22 minute read

There’s something particularly frustrating about watching a beautifully made documentary and realizing how much of what you’re seeing has been selected, arranged, compressed, and framed before it ever reaches you. The production may be polished, the narrator credible, the imagery extraordinary, and the message carefully constructed, but none of that removes the need to question what lies beneath the presentation. What is being shown, what is being omitted, and what assumptions are quietly carrying the entire narrative?

Category: Lux Colloquii

It’s Plausible: Truth, Repetition, and the Manufacture of Belief

The Devil We Feed: Fear, Attention, and the Creation of Reality

The Centralization of Food: Agriculture, Industry, and Institutional Power

The Accountability Gap: Institutions, Incentives, and Consequences

The Earth We Are Shown: Narrative, Evidence, and Omission