boscohorowitz
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“It’s clear Russia already lost and retreated to Novosibirsk in TikTok tears (Leave Brittney Alone!) in dread fear of Ukraine’s LGBT shock troops.”
Now that was a good one. I have to crossbreed it and imagine Ukraine’s LGBT shock troops wearing holographic glasses showing TikTok screens of the infamous Leave Britney Alone video while chanting that very slogan. That’s some seriously good absurdist comedy.
Ukrainian recruitment agent. Chris Crocker of LBAlone fame all grown up.
Oh yes, almost forgot: these are vewwy vewwy seweeyuss times. Nobody laugh. We will now observe 5 minutes of silence for Britney, Chris Crocker, any anyone/thing not serious to be taken seriously while we laugh at them.
We often ask ‘Are they that stupid or that evil’? concerning various persons in higher power. That question’s two option form basic poles of much conspiracy theory discussion: one side thinks that TPTB have Final Solution plans and the means to execute (;) ) them; the other side thinks it’s a matter of incompetent deranged greed, most of it in the form of what Raul calls “little managers”. I obviously lean to the latter but would not be all that surprised if it was the former. Any contention I experience with ardent True Believers of the ‘Final Solution by TPTB’ is not what they believe but the tendency of that camp to insist they are right, period, and those who don’t believe them are naive credulous fools unwilling to face the alleged facts… although the facts that would prove them right are never supplied any more than I can prove that it’s mostly a “little managers” phenomenon.
My problem with the Final Solutionist True Believers is the same one I have with fundamentalist Xtians who insist that they “KNOW their God is Real” and it is my fault for not believing, if only I’d open my heart, some day I’ll see that They Are Right. But these remarks are just indulgent prelude to comments on a remark I saw: “The increasing unseriousness in the comments sections here on the Darpanet is one of the few things presently worthy of comment.”
I read such things and feel compelled to wonder: Is it that clueless paranoia or is it just another bot sowing some weird kind of incohesion? The main goal being, like all such bots, to either spread disinformation or encourage combative contentiousness and suspicion among commenters?
I just don’t get it. Oh, I’ve questioned the genuineness of a few posters here. I have no prob with that. In this online medium, it’s not undue caution to entertain or ask such questions. Call me a bot and I feel kinda cool:
But to make it virtually one’s entire form of commentary outside of sharings that would certainly qualify as “unserious” in terms of geopolitical discussions and ruminations on the overall human condition… that’s strange. Strange enough to trigger my personal “uncanny valley”sense toward such posters.
Life in the 21st Century involves some very strange magic. (One of the few ELO songs I enjoy.)
A Beautiful Thing… not the “singing” that so bemuses the audience, but the relationship tween man and dog and the mystery of what happens between them, a thing that can only be real, not codified into the abstractions of language and meaning.
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“…the Russians are not omnipotent…”
I wasn’t aware that anyone suggested or believed they were, including the overwhelming majority of Russians. I am quite sure that they expected that there would be counter-strikes and some of them would hit.
I don’t see any “maddeningly controlled restraint” on Russia’s part. They’re systematically turning Ukraine into a winter unterland. Their economy is on a major roll from all this nonsense. I see them just following their plan, adjusting where necessary because any good plan acknowledges that reality isn’t in on anyone’s plans.
I just see a war; one side deliberately fighting to win, the other side fighting to lose both deliberately and because it has no other choice.
The health status of Russia’s population, however, looks as bad as, say, USA/Canada/EU/ AUstralia/NZ. THis fact may prove to be more influential on Russian and global affairs than this martial Ukranonsense.
WHy do I love and revere Xmas so much? Because it’s the one time of year in which one can give a good damn just for the sake of giving a good damn without requiring a specific cause celebre’. Oh, we loony humanoids of course fight over it, insisting it align with our preferred celebrated cause, be it Jesus Is the Reason for the Season or snuggly PJs and mulled egg nog, but at the end of it all, we’re all reduced to, “Well, it’s XMAS!!!” and that can mean anything to anyone anymore.
What Christmas means…
…is anyone’s guess. What Santa Claus
And caribou might share in cause
With three wise men in turbanned gauze
Or Mary’s child, or Rome’s tax lawsIs none too clear but filled with good.
How crucifix and manger wood,Or desert palm and evergreen
Can somehow altogether mean
A wished-for-world of pure intent
Where all the best is what is spentIs moot. No less, it’s nice to know,
That Arab sand and winter snow
Can form mosaics in the mind
Of all we dream that’s good & kind.Those shepeherds out there with their sheep
Who, wakened from their frigid sleep
By angel song and quasar light
Are those I envy most that night.The star placed on a crucified tree
To grace our potlatch spending spreeCan only shine and share its light:
It’s what stars do, it has the right.
To give us wonder and delight
As day succumbs to winter night.
Robin Morrison, 1995I feel these may be the finest Post-Modern Era Xmas lyrics written:
They said there’ll be snow at Christmas
They said there’ll be peace on earth
But instead it just kept on raining
A veil of tears for the virgin birth
I remember one Christmas morning
A winter’s light and a distant choir
And the peal of a bell and that Christmas tree smell
And their eyes full of tinsel and fire
They sold me a dream of Christmas
They sold me a silent night
And they told me a fairy story
‘Till I believed in the Israelite
And I believed in father Christmas
And I looked to the sky with excited eyes
‘Till I woke with a yawn in the first light of dawn
And I saw him and through his disguise
I wish you a hopeful Christmas
I wish you a brave new year
All anguish, pain and sadness
Leave your heart and let your road be clear
They said there’ll be snow at Christmas
They said there’ll be peace on earth
Hallelujah, Noel be it heaven or hell
The Christmas we get we deserveI invite you to investigate the story of their writing. Pete Sinfield had a remarkable childhood, and grew up to be a first-rate poet
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I appreciate more and more zerosum’s unique tangent of approach to things.
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Not to take away from the prowess of a (presumably) Russian torpedo, I’ll note that the speed of sound underwater is 3,000 mph, so there are no shock wave issues traveling underwater at, say, 800 mph, a little over Mach 1.
That said, googling the quote, I find that “Nuclear submarine ‘buzzed by underwater object travelling faster than speed of sound…The incredibly encounter – which took place in the late 1990s – has come to light after a scientist on board decided to speak to a YouTube channel and reveal his terrifying experience”.
A late 1990s time frame files this event under ‘UFO’ not ‘Russian/American arms race’.
While the “lardbucket” is indeed lardful, its primary purpose was not to fly fast itself but to cast broad detailed and accurate radio maps by which to launch very fast and accurate missiles and so forth. Flying real fast heats up an airplane’s surface until it glows hot and emits all kinds of electromagnetic signals that make a jet easier for enemy air surveillance to detect. Of course, the lardsters sold it as being all purpose including supersonic maneuvering but that’s what lardsters do.
Said primary purpose seems meaningless to me in today’s satellite-saturated skies with advanced anti-missile systems able to knock out anything that the USA launches.
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As for Zelensky being a NATO puppet: I believe that is a one-sided metaphor. I see Zelensky’s relationship with USNATO more as a tar-baby relationship. Zelensky surely has mega kompromat on Biden/Billary/u-name-it, which is probably why he hasn’t been taken out by Natostani missiles. (Why hasn’t Russia done this? Not their fight, I suppose. Russia has a very clearly defined military agenda whose successful fulfillment without imperial mission creep will make it Good King Wenceslas of the World after the Fight for Ukraine is a) lost and b) no longer serves the current USA regime’s political interests. Russia is doing on a geopolitical total war scale what the WWII Nazi General Rommel said was the primary reason that his battle plans – good or bad – were executed to well:” “First, I tell them what I am going to tell them. Then I tell them. Then I tell them what I told them.”
Russia has been telling USA and the world since 2015 what it was going to do (if we didn’t stop savaging them and the world in general). Now it’s doing it, which is very telling, yes? When the dust has settled, it will tell us what it has done and what that means.
The world will trust Russia. The world will very officially no longer trust USA. Russia will have the most of what everyone wants, and we will have the least. Russia will have at least half a plan, and we will have maybe half an ass left for someone to kick.
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As for wiki left-wing bias: be careful what you wish to be canceled. Especially careful should be those who revile cancel culture (as i do, for example) You’d miss wiki overall very much if it were gone. This seems increasingly likely since they now berg for money several times a week rather than 2-3 times a year.
Other than current news, wiki is an excellent free source of highly useful info without which we’d be in the informational Dark Ages, wiki being virtually the only real encyclopedia left. I suppose that Elon has considered purchasing wiki. An info campaign against it would further its financial distress and improve his chances of wiki accepting a purchase offer from The One M(o)us(e)keteer.
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Today’s Yogi tea tag soundbite: Your greatest strength is love.
Relevant song: L’amour
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The Xmas music never stops: A winter’s light and a distant choir, and the peal of a bell and that Christmas tree smell, and their eyes full of tinsel and fire
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Partridge/pear tree:
“You need to get a grip , when I read your stuff you sound like someone who is a little deranged and obsessed.Your mind is not healthy , you are in a doom and gloom spiral , nothing you do or say will make a difference anyway.”
Wow, you really are a fuckwad. Not just willfully ignorant, but ignorantly willful.
Re: NZ blood transfusion: I say that there will be unvaxxed blood transfusions or there will be blood. If not these parents, another pair of parents.
It occurred to me that wearing a homemade Snuffleupagus mask in public would humorously shame germophobic gubmint-trusting mask-wearers into rethinking their position. I got lots of smiles and laughs when I wore mine. And they really are comfy and easy to breathe through.
DocJD: HHT has been a real blessing to me, even if it’s caused much hardship and suffering, in fact, precisely because it has caused my hardship and suffering: it’s made things very earnest, and one can hardly get enough earnestness in this ersatz culture in which we race our rats.
Roy Harvorth sometimes foams at the mouth with information easily proven false, but that seems to be the norm in the new substack hothead journalist fad, but he mostly provides good info, decent insight, and occasionally, a certified gem:
Full of goofy nuggets like this: “I guess, no coroner wanted to show up in those neighborhoods and even without it, they were able to examine about one in 30 corpses, which strangely corresponds with the amount of homicides successfully investigated”
It’s the undertakers behind all this:
Hanging Ain’t Good Enough for a Casket Thief
“Die Now<>Pay Later” Obviously they’re Catholic undertakers.
Nice moosies!
All I get around here are squirrels, rats, crows, jays, hawks, doves, various sparrows/finches and once, a fluke, a doe and fawn drinking from a pool in the no-mans’ land construction site next door which is next to a teensy wildlife corridor.
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“Serious” stuff: so Russia will probably put the Big Sleep on Ukraine come this winter, squeeze out the remaining Ukranazi pustulence, then restore power to those parts of Ukraine willing to wave a white flag.
By then, Washington, D.C., USA will be experiencing a major toupee-fire as their DNC-dominated narrative withers and the GOP-ascendancy briefly does a tolerable job of raping less and governing more while the plebiscite begins chanting for blood as the body counts amass big enough to no longer be hideable and the stores shelves acquire an over-priced bleakness.
Some time next year, the petrodollar will fizzle put and we’ll begin paying real costs for North American fossil fuels, the cost of foreign petroleum being no longer within our reach. The Grand Billionaire Jubilee/Great Reset will be announced and go over like a Klaus Schwab parade balloon at a libertarian archer convention.
Just plain old Robin Morrison, who was nicknamed ‘Birdman’ long before he adopted a parrot needing a home after two previous homes didn’t work out:
And for some realy real realz, here’s Birdman enoying the pleasure of life with HHT:
That could be fake blood, of course. One never knows, do one?
And, finally, the Real Me (about 4 years ago) addressing his son:
“I’m anything but an anarchist, but I am emphatically Wut I Arez.”
“Not entirely true: You’re also not what you arez, Madamski”
I assume you’re referring to social identification labels aka “names”. Madamski is entirely a product of me, sprung from my imagination and my interests. Madamski is (well, was) part of me, but I am not part of madamski, who is a subset of Mr. What I Arez, who has revealed his true physical self on this forum more than anyone altho DocJD and Raul have also far more substantially verified their real persons represented by online persona. I am madamski when I choose to be every bit as much as you are Dr. D. when you choose to be. One assumes that you are not Dr. D. in your primary physical reality, and that you don’t walk around wearing a giant broadsheet with text imitating an online comment post based on the headline/quote<>response commentary, much less a Dr. Doom costume. Or a Dr. Doom costume under the giant broadsheet.
Which reminds me of a TAE fellow who attended a 1940s-themed Xmas pageant wearing a Superman suit underneath a vintage Clark Kentian suit replete with dark black-framed glasses (with no lenses, of course, cuz that messes with X-ray vision).
But maybe I assume wrong, and this — “Not entirely true: You’re also not what you arez, Madamski” — is just a bit of wordplay for wordplay’ sake.
And there. I have written much ado about nothing. I’ll note, just a tad more seriously, that one problem most people have with me is that I am so earnestly transparent about myself. Best way to hide the truth is to brazenly display it in plain sight. Since very very few people are that open, it makes them suspicious, and they dig around and behind and all about the Naked Truth in Plain Sight looking for the “real truth” that they’re sure lies behind this weird open revelation thing right in front of their eyes.
Who is that masked man?
Why, it’s madamski!
Today’s Yogi tea tag word-string: What can you appreciate in this moment?
Relevant song: Every Minute***
My wife’s office is also experiencing an office-emptying wave of sickness. St. Vincent’s hospital is currently not doing elective surgery due to a wave of respiratory infections.
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You will believe in the magic of Xmas or you will die shopping: I Believe
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I was just thinking it was time for Polemos to say hello.
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We have, in our house, per the requisite Spirit of Xmas(t), one of the finest Father Xmases that money can buy (from Goodwill, a USA thrift store chain)
“Horowitz Proboscoid Viral Interceptor”
That is the nicest thing anyone ever called me or the sock on my nose. Not to mention that I am personally very Pro-Bosco-oid.
I too was born in the 50s: Now with TV Twinkles!
“Giving Anarchy a Bad Name…Make no mistake about it: Corporal Klinger was an anarchist….”
First, anyone who says ‘make no mistake about it’ is almost always mistaken. Secondly, Klinger wasn’t an anarchist, Klinger was KLINGER. Anarchy is for people too scared to be themselves. The way that can be named is not “The Way”.
I’m anything but an anarchist, but I am emphatically Wut I Arez. Only name for that is Robin Morrison aka boscohorowitz.
Re: toilet-bowl lickers and so forth, I cite: information overload, the loss of meaning of just about everything, the absence of underlying background faith or ethos around which to cohere.
“Humanity’s search for meaning” thus becomes humanity’s restless migration from one semi-meaningful/semi-nonsensical thing, to another. Fads are their own sense of meaning. Ephemeral quirks that need only connect to previous and subsequent meanings not by semantics or values but by where the herd/sub-herd/hip-hip-sub-herd, is heading next. Will it get me laid? Will it get me a “free” iphone? Will it fill the emptiness of my spare time as well as Netflix and gaming?
Few know what they’re doing anymore, much less why. This time last year, a homeless dude we took in got hired on at Nike, a really swell job with bennies and good pay. The human being who actually hired him, who ran the dept. for which he was hired, couldn’t tell him when our friend was scheduled to start work, or even confirm his hiring, because the vast software complex that runs Nike hadn’t yet digested the info. Digestion took over a week before digireality and physical reality properly aligned and he could start doing the job his boss wanted him to do from the first day of actual hire.
Someone here, I think jb-hb? wrote a nifty examination (a month or two ago) of how non-productively backward things work in the corporate structures he’d worked for over the past 20 years or so. It described how employees who actually got the work done his their methods and means from their supervisors otherwise their supervisors would micromanage those means into meaningless make-work, especially meetings meetings meetings…. I think that analysis also applies to toilet-licking and gender-swap fetishes, etc.
Fads create a ghostly sense of virtual community. “Be the first kid on YOUR block to get a (product xyz)!”
This relates to underwear recycling/composting. (My favorite use of old undies is to wear them over my head as covid masks. But why wear old undies when you can have a brand new fake?:: Chief T SHirt proudly presents: HOME / CLOTH FACE MASK Old Underwear Cloth Face Mask )
The ever quotable WIlliam GIbson noted that he believed that the chief difference that the young upcoming generation (Gen Alpha) would see between Them younguns and Us oldsters was how we old people bother to distinguish between the real and the virtual. Were our energy platform not collapsing, we’d get there by around Kurzweil’s Magic 2040 AI utoopia in which we will not only not own anything but be very happy, but we will not know anything, including whether we’re happy or not… as is already the case with way too many people these days.
Tangentially, I note that we typically form groups around a charismatic person (or increasingly, thing), not around the idea of grouping for group’s sake or the persons in the group. (Oh, we form Darwinian peer pressure cliques… but even those usually have a King or Queen and a marching ethos: goth, punk, etc…)
A stranger buying Twitter would not harness nearly as much sociopolitical clout as a brand name Big Man buying Twitter.
DocJD: Santa’s bio survived last winter’s fetal miscarriage when I got so sick for several months. But it has returned to life of late, and I will resume working on it come Jan. 2.
Santa, being the sole surviving saint of Euromerican culture, be important, feels I.
“That’s what gets me with charity. Sure you can DO it, but it seems so ultimately it’s just having no effect. The effect appears to be in changing lives. Which means changing hearts. This only comes from love, not money, money is not a heart thing. This is why Christ can change lives, but he’s not the only one.”
Remove the part about money and you have my heartfelt agreement.
Having been homeless many timers, having known the cold, the wet, the heat, the dessication, the hunger, the thirst, the loneliness, the alienation, the despair both at one’s situation and the state of human reality, I know that love expressed in cold hard cash with no strings attached can change hearts in positive ways just swell.
Of course we won’t solve the “homeless problem”, but we can alleviate the pain of one person being homeless for a day and sometimes even be the spark that gives them the hope and courage to carry on, homeless or homed.
Today’s Yogi tea tag suggestion: One who brings happiness to others will find it.
Relevant song: And I Thank You!
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Last night at the grocery store, I recognized a homeless dude whom I’d helped out a bit a year or two ago. He and his little terrier still looked strong and healthy. Terrier had a new winter coat. His clothes looked well enough. He still had that manic chip on his shoulder of a psychological misfit. Made me happy to see them looking no worse for the wear. I told him I’d be back from the store in a bit with some stuff for him.
He wasn’t there when I got back. One doesn’t stand outside a Fred Meyers entrance for long before security runs you off.
I walked around the corner but found no homeless dude and dog.
Returning to the storefront where my wife was to pick me up, I saw another homeless dude rummaging through the garbage looking for cashable recyclables and stale food. I gave him the sack with paper towels, roast chicken, potato bread, and peanut butter cookies, and a $5 bill.
It was so easy for me. Meant so much to him. I walked away wondering who received the greater blessing.
The Big Picture is unsolvable and dire. I feel no reason to believe we’ll fix it or that our efforts to collectively do so will make it anything but worse. But, like I explained to someone last week, I have two social modes: Let me smile and be kind to you, or get the fuck away from me.
I left with a smile and the usual tears, clutching something-something Christmas to me like a child’s teddy bear. All we’ve got is all we’ve got, and it seems so inadequate. But it’s something. It’s certainly something more than whatever satisfaction we get from trying to convince each other that we know What’s REALLY Happening, or arguing with each other over what is the One True Reason why humanity is so good at hurting itself and anything within strike range.
Something-something Xmasy music:
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“All the news that’s fit to print” the motto/mission statement of the NYTimes, is a far cry from ‘All the news that’s true’. We’re never without censorship in some form beginning with the Thumper Rule: ‘If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything.’ The foundation by which censorship/dis-mis-information is accepted is our own ideas of propriety<> impropriety. The idea that one can rely on an editor to vet what news is “fit to print” or not, is an Orwellian slope.
We tell lies, all of us, so we accept being lied to… but only so much. Comes a time we decide we’re being lied to too much. But the very idea that there is such a thing as an acceptable amount or kind of lie, and there is an unacceptable amount or kind, works much like voting for the lesser evil. Evil begets evil; lies beget lies: and the beginning and end of it lies within oneself more than in others.
He sold us a Xmas tree. Learning the ropes, you might say. It was a startling delight and unearned honor to personally meet the Son of Santa
Today’s Yogi tea tag wisdom: Balance of heart and head yields strength of character.
Relevant tune:
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A kind wise soul from the Portland, Oregon TAE parish invited me to the event depicted above. As I wrote to a god-daughter who was raised Mormon, like me, and like me found that the LDS church didn’t fit her spiritual personality profile: “It was everything good I remember about “The Church” and none of the bad.”
My favorite Xmas gift since some wino, saw me hustling downhill to catch the last Seattle ferry to Bainbridge Island a few days before Xmas, chuckled/coughed through his cigarette and said, “So the fucking meek WILL inherit the fucking earth!”
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Xmas Music: Huron Carol
Usually I do my helping and giving in person here in my ‘hood. But this image:
made me laugh in a most excellent way and squeezed some money Raul’s way.
“This is a VP of Pfizer saying mass death was intentional, there is no other explanation. (Note, this is memory, I didn’t have time to relisten the whole hour)”
I don’t have time to listen a whole hour either, Doc. And even if I had that hour to spare, your reputation for exaggeration and occasional falsification (be it deliberate or merely credulous) precedes you here.
Is there massive collusion regarding covid? Of course. Does that mean massive collusion to deliberately wipe out a major chunk of the population? No. Words are silly but they matter immensely in human reality. For this reason, it is wise, imo, not to use our silly words in less than accurate ways, that is, when one is trying to be and be taken seriously. If one is using them to be silly, well, I’m all for that. But not when discussing genocide,
And still, no orphans are saved.
Beijing hoists the flag of surrender Central government weakness is the big unreported story
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“Redneck’s job is to keep us honest in not perhaps saying Russia is so powerful they can conquer the United States and occupy Europe, and China is not so good we’d all love to move there.”
I wasn’t aware those ideas were even under consideration.
***” Look THE VP of PFIZER TOLD YOU THIS WAS GENOCIDE.”
Fuck the topic, but truth is truth. He did not say that. He said this:
Sometimes it’s not just a matter of ‘No, you’re wrong’, it’s a matter of No, you’re lying.
You do that a lot, Doc. I think you justify it under some ‘all is fair in love and war’ rubric. But oh well. Your ego, my ego, alla samee, whatevs. But I have a thing about truth and it being rep[resented in fidelity to the facts, not one’s personal interpretation, especially that of motive inference.
” 1. The Twin-Verses
What we are is the result of what we have thought,
is built by our thoughts, is made up of our thoughts.
If one speaks or acts with an impure thought,
suffering follows one,
like the wheel of the cart follows the foot of the ox.“What we are is the result of what we have thought,
is built by our thoughts, is made up of our thoughts.
If one speaks or acts with a pure thought,
happiness follows one,
like a shadow that never leaves.“They insulted me; they hurt me;
they defeated me; they cheated me.”
In those who do not harbor such thoughts,
hate will cease.“For hate is never conquered by hate.
Hate is conquered by love.
This is an eternal law.
Many do not realize that we must all come to an end here;
but those who do realize this, end their quarrels at once.”As I’ve said before, Jesus said Love Thine Enemies. He didn’t say, therefore, never oppose them. Just to quit obsessing over them and if so, then who knows, maybe the energy that releases might actually improve the situation a bit. Wanna put a bullet in the forehead of a few Pfizer-execs, I’ll understand,. Wanna spend day after day bitching over the Same Old Shit, often exaggerating or falsifying facts in order to be “right” and one earns a resigned oy vey from mr. horowitz.
“What I’m saying is that those seriously mentally ill bastards are a Cabal that knowingly and explicitly conspires to kill humankind. That’s not conjecture. The documentation is overwhelming. It’s just so painful to look at that many people would rather die than look.”
If one replaces “humankind” with “people”, I can agree. They don’t much seem to care who they kill. But this planned depop of humanity thing has been blown as a belief-bubble that is far larger than the evidence will support. Planned population depop is not a reliably established fact just because the likes of Bill Gates reiterate what half the common people have said at some point in their lives: We need to reduce the population. Every other Boomer has said that. Every other Boomer has also said they would never bring babies into a world like this. Most of them procreated anyway.
There is very reliable evidence that TPTB don’t much care how/how many gets killed, that they start wars just to make money, but there is no firmly established proof that they are deliberately reducing the numbers of slaves on whose existence their verry wealth and power depend.I do myself firmly believe that there is ample evidence to support the notion that TPTB are plenty stupid enough, by way of mental illness and the blindness of Gilded Tower lifestyles, to do such a thing (major depop) by sheer incompetence, compulsive greed, rigidly dogmatic thinking, and lives consumed by perverse addictions.
But that’s just my opinion, and I ain’t in any mood to debate it. Doing so ain’t gonna save a single.starving.orphan to prove me right or someone else wrong in online discussions with little material effect on action. Doing so won’t even soothe the ruffled egos of those debating in order to soothe their ruffled egos. It’s mostly a compulsion we indulge to smooth our existential dreadlocks into less knotty emotional tresses (and granny-knot blackjacked metaphors like that one).
Besides, I think today’s C&H explains it better than I did:
As usual (per my money), Orlov’s logic is impeccable. He still won’t address Russia’s disastrous covid policy, but then, he’s a citizen of a nation experiencing existential war with the entities who created the covid nightmare, so I have to respect this info blackout for sake of public morale. In real existential war, one wins the war at home AFTER one wins the war at one’s borders. It’s just how it’s done.
Stooping to mere gossip, I ask what does Redneck think he is doing with his incessant attempts to make the Russia/China/Iran/India alliance look weak and evil? Evil is universal; weakness is not: and that alliance is much stronger than Euromerica’s Natostani circle-jerk.
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There was discussion of Dr. Malone suing Dr. Breggin et al. I don’t recall seeing this link posted here:
Just the facts Robert W Malone, MD, MS vs Peter R. Breggin, MD et al
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Today’s Yogi tea tag mantra: Inner peace creates peace in the world.
Relevant song:
ABout Joe: “Newly married to his wife Maxine (also recognized as the first African-American Playboy bunny), and with a growing family (the couple raised three sons), Zawinul received a tempting offer in the late 1960s: the chance to realize his originally frustrated dream of performing with Ella Fitzgerald. Promoter Norman Granz offered him a salary of $1,400 a week to fill the vacant keyboard spot in Fitzgerald’s band, a substantial raise from the $300 a week he was making with Adderley. But Zawinul by that time was closely following Miles Davis’s new experiments in fusing rock and jazz, and he felt he had original ideas of his own in that vein. He asked Granz for five minutes to consider the offer and consulted Maxine, who, as Zawinul recalled to Walters, said “No. You do what you have to do. I can make do with $300 and I have time to wait until you have your thing.”
It not only takes a village, it takes a good person with a good person beside them, hetero, homo, interplanetary… a good-pair-bonding tends to make or break our persons.
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Merry Muzak. You Will Be Merry or Else!
I’d do her. She’s a hot old broad:
“Regarding the myth of the great wealth of Russia. The same can be said for Canada too. After all Canada’s north is exactly the same as Rusdia’s north. I have been in both countries’ north and I couldn’t tell the difference. They both are full of black flies and mosquitoes!
“What most people forget is the vastness of both countries’ northern areas. Distances are so great that most people can’t fathom how far away a given place in the north is. They greatly under estimate the difficulties involved in exploiting any riches found up north.”
Like everything about life on earth, it all depends on the entropy differential. In 1890, northern Minnesota was way far from Pittsburgh. But the Mississippi/Great Lakes/St. Lawrence waterways/emerging rail networks (themselves built of coal and steel) made it efficient to mine the Mesabi range, manufacture ore in Pittsburgh will Allegheny/Appalachian coal, and turn them into cars in Detroit and skyscrapers all over hell and back.
Russia’s EROEI on pert near everything kicks global butt these days. It can afford to build railways to inner Siberia and build whole cities if needed, and has a northern waterway opening up as the Arctic ice cap turns into transportationally accommodating slush. It has large export markets just south of Siberia all the way to Australia. But it’s gonna want more people when this WWIII dust-up is over.
“Another thing people forget is how empty the north really is. There is a bloody good reason why very few people live up north! The land simply can not support very many humans living up north. You can’t grow any food up there. Even if you could grow food up north, there is no top soil to be found!”
Agriculture is inevitably tied up with climate, as Siberia’s is not the most forgiving or lenient. Siberia does not get warmth from the Atlantic Ocean because of the barriers of Europe and the Ural Mountains, or from the warmer climes of Central Asia because of the mountains to its south and the mountains of the Russian Far East. Therefore, the only side of Siberia which is not blocked off by a geographical barrier is the north, opening up the area to the bitter cold of the Arctic Ocean. To add to these agricultural disadvantages, most of Siberia’s soil is acidic podsol, which is not a good match for agriculture. However, there are rich, fertile black earth belts in the southwest (known as chernozem), as well as scattered pockets of rich land in other parts of southern Siberia.[2] Despite the many drawbacks for cultivating Siberia lands, there exists a multitude of rivers and lakes that can be put to use for irrigation.[3]
In terms of geographical location, there are two main agricultural centers in the fertile areas of Western Siberia, one being near the Urals in the Tobolsky District and the other located on the upper Ob River around the city of Tomsk.[4] Despite the much more favorable conditions that prevail in these western parts, there do exist, however, pockets of suitable farming lands to the east.[5] All of these combined areas were fertile enough, in fact, to necessitate the “Siberian tariff” of 1897, which was an increased rate on transport of butter and grain by rail to European Russia. This measure, which lasted until 1913, was enacted in order to protect European Russian farmers from the very cheap Siberian agricultural goods flooding in from the newly built Trans-Siberian Railway (which had decreased the price of shipping from Siberia by 5-6 times).[6] Therefore, while the climate and geography posed difficulties for the Siberian farmer, there was still agricultural success to be had in the region.
It’s not all black and white. Besides, northern podsoils support many large ruminants like reindeer, and meat is a popular food item.
“Any transportation networks have to be built and supported by relatively small populations. These small populations can only support so much.”
That’s why immigrants are so popular. An extreme example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashima_Island***
Looks like Elon has incubated his own private black swan. The man’s a delusional fruitcake but also a genius with titanium testicles and a chromium toilet. He has, with his Twitter move, created a major mediaplex tapping into everything from Julian Assange, the man and his work, to half a decade (at least) of DNC-entric malfeasance of very high and very lurid quality (legitimizing Hunter’s laptop, for example)…
We now get to watch, I believe, the best laid plans of a buncha mice-men gang agley while a major rat-man of uncanny savvy (Elon) saves his ass from his trail of colossal graft and inevitable failure. For awhile, at least, but probably long enough to be a major kingmaker in whatever USA politics becomes.
Would any crazy mice-men try to destroy the internet in order to prevent the above from happening? Do they have such power? Is some creep-in-charge working to release the Kraken worm or digicovid onto the internet? Someone on substack will, I’m sure, tell us all about it real soon.
“Blessings to you all, even though we are all functionally isolated from each other in a moderated hall of mirrors that relies on rapidly depleting finite resources, child labor, and environmental destruction all around the globe.”
One of the most pithily holistic descriptions that I’ve ever read of our fundamental situations.
Now if you could just say that as a bare-chested aging silverback human male shaving bark from a log with techniques millennia old, we could put you on tour and make serious money pissing people off.
