boscohorowitz
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“Human caused pollution is a real thing and a real problem.
Climate change is not what I’m concerned with.
Too many people consuming too many resources in a wasteful way has brought down many civilizations.
When I hear someone say we could fit the population of the world into an area the size of Texas I always reply to them that I could fit 100 rats into their pillow case, do you think anyone will get a good night’s sleep?”
I am not being passive-aggressive, merely blunt, when I say that I love it when you focus your considerable insight, knowledge, and way with words on something other than pissing into the wind (although on a sunny day, it does make cool rainbow effects).
I agree 110% with the above, and love the 100 rats/pillow analogy. Recognizing this aspect of city life is what put me on the streets at age 16 and had me fleeing, more or less broke, to the hills. I don’t mind so much that we’re all mental patients in something too much lie an experiment gone wrong, i.e., what Pfizer calls ‘right’. What is hard to handle is that so few of us realize that a) we’re nuts and b) live in a global psych ward run by c) guys in White Coats wearing White Hats practicing malicious medicine because d) they, too, are nutso mental patients.
In our new digs (we moved a few months ago), a neighbor lady about my age (mid-late 60s) has pancreatic cancer. Doctors are surprised: she doesn’t fit the profile or whatever they associate with pancreatic cancer.
I didn’t ask her if she was vaccinated. Probably so, and probably the cause of her cancer, which struck two Mays ago, around the time the USA vax campaign was peaked and starting to wind down, but telling her that vax probably caused her cancer would at this point be needlessly stressful and counterproductive to her chances of surviving. Poor dear. I need to learn how to cook tasty food in the narrow dietary spectrum she can handle with compromised digestive capability.
A quote from the Canberra hospital article:
“t is appalling to see people in shopping centres coughing and sneezing without tissues, handkerchief or a mask. Then use their hands as a face wipe. This germ collection is transferred to travelator banister rails, grocery items, sorting through fruit and vegetable selections. Hygiene is fundamental.”
First, there is such a thing as a “travelator”, it seems.
Second, the reversion to normal public hygiene behavior (“coughing and sneezing without tissues, handkerchief or a mask. Then use their hands as a face wipe”) is probably going to bring out a ton of influenza, quite possibly very virulent. A grey swan coming our way.
I suspect that Ukraine will prove to be a major hotbed for influenza: “Ukraine’s vaccination program started on 24 February 2021 and from that day to 12 September 2021 18% of the adult population of Ukraine had been vaccinated against COVID-19.[1] (About 44% of those vaccinated had been fully vaccinated.[2][3]) On 7 January 2022 the Ministry of Health announced that 44.9% of the adult population had undergone a full course of vaccination.[4] By 2022, the Ministry of Health plans to vaccinate 70% of the country’s adult population, including 80% of the elderly.[5]”
Considering the lack of sanitation happening over there, I suspect that Ukraine will simply fold and become a giant Red Cross tent of a nation.
But… that would mean taking the law into my/our own hands. Don’t you have to get a degree or something to do that?
Curtis Yarwin, a writer who strikes me as being almost ridiculously smart and educated, has some things to say about communists, progressives, and “seemingly referring to Democrats”:
“Either the Communists win and destroy America, or we destroy the Communists,”
Celts aren’t white. They’re chewish. It’s in the Secret History.
Are they praying or urinating?
Speaking of etymology (andepistemological brain farts;) ), jhere is bigotry:
“obstinate or unreasonable attachment to a belief, opinion, or faction, in particular prejudice against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group.
“the difficulties of combating prejudice and bigotry””Straight from the Unwoke Bible.
Incidentally, we all know that one catches more flies with honey than vinegar, right?
A similar phenomenon is this: when a person (for example, moi) owns himself entirely as I do, not requiring validation from others to maintain his personal beliefs and states, insulting criticism soon follows. Almost always. Even or especially among alt-types, I don’t step out of line in the approved manner.
But that just makes a fellow like me stand even taller.
It is possible to disagree without insisting the other is wrong. It is, in fact, possible to agree with oneself, believe what one believes, without requiring those who believe otherwise to be therefore wrong. It’s called ‘science’, i.e. ‘to the best of my knowledge and understanding’.
Getting people to agree with you does not require proving the other guy wrong. (Ask any successful manipulating psychopath.) Getting other people to agree with you doesn’t prove the other guy wrong either. Getting people to agree with you is just getting people to agree with you.
I like it when people agree with me. I like it when they disagree with me. The former is 90% ego kibble and 10% a reward for due diligence. The latter is 90% about the opportunity it provides to do that much more due diligence and make sure that I am not a fool for agreeing with myself, and 10% possibly learning something new. (It happens.).
When people disagree with me disagreeably (standard mode), I don’t like it a bit. 100% barf-on-shoes. I think we’re all that way. I have for quite some time experimented exhaustively with how people who disagree disagreeably deal with people disagreeing with them disagreeably. It’s beyond quixotic, but sometimes, quite rarely, I draw real sparks of genuine dialog from this.
What kind of disagreement is disagreeable? Any kind that frames itself by “I disagree/you’re wrong”, when really they are just looking at the topic from a different perspective. One can share one’s different perspective without framing it by what doesn’t fit your perspective. One can instead share that differing perspective with a simple ‘here’s how it looks to me’. This incudes hard data. A simple ‘per my reading/understand/whatever of topic x, I see…’
Maybe it’s a cultural thing, this tendency to define ourselves by how we differ from others than by our similarities. It is very much in me, too, and it is the.very.devil, not just of dialog but all things relational. But I like to think I try to define my views at least as much by commonalities as by differences, and to point out distinctions that truly make a difference. Oh, I like to pick nits, but that’s regarding aesthetics, cuz everyone knows that (insert choice) is the greatest guitarist/singer ever! and those who disagree are obviously poopoodoodoocacaheads. 😉
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One other thing. Regarding the germ infection of negative attitudes toward the victims of what many believe is a planned genocide, all that Never Forger/Never Forgive jive, he does exactly what pro-vaxxers did to us: demonize the other. Not only does an eye for an eye leave everyone blind, but when both camps are demonized, where are the angels? What room is there for them? For angelic behavior?
Promoting vengeance is promoting vengeance, and while that perspective might not share well with some, it is nonetheless another perspective on this perpetual blame game where the most important task ios to find the witches and burn them.
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“We call them “bad guys”, which is remarkably fitting, when you come to think about it.”
I don’t call “them” anything, but when I see someone doing bad to another, I physically intervene to stop it. I don’t stand around taking cellcam shots and spreading the word on the internet that “these are bad men”.
A picture may be worth a 1000 words, but an action is worth a 1000 pictures.
I suspect that the conspiracy theory types of JC’s time didn’t much care for him telling them to stop whining about Caesar and start praying to God… even though that might well get them stoned or crucified or at least lose their right to vote.
Meanwhile, in the People’s Liberational Echo Chamber: Action… and CUT!
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We obviously won’t bring the fight to them, and that’s fine with me. I’ve won every fight when I was wronged (didn’t start it), and lost every fight that I started (whether I was “in the right”. For me pacifism is not non-violence, pacifism is finishing nasty unfinished business started by someone else.
I just get annoyed by all the boot camp barracks bitching around here as we wait for the inevitable: at some point, they will bring the fight to us, and we will discover if we are minions or villains (vassal villeins who disobey law and custom, and take the law into their own hands).
Me, I’m no messiah. If I’m going to martyr myself, it will be to try and protect those immediately around me right here right now. Which may also have been part of JC’s motivation to let Himself be crucified rather than rally his posse for a short-term but extremely Pyhrric victory.
Incidentally, on Xtian magic: Jesus on the cross asks God why he has been abandoned. But three days later, Jesus rolls that stone and is a free reanimated incarnate god thingie. It’s like no one can cross that scaryass divide except on their own.
You know, Buddha was all about the bodhisattvas, always reincarnating. Maybe they made a virtue of inevitability: maybe they weren’t able to cross that scary-ass divide most religions posit as the defining membrane between reality and beyond. Maybe, maybe, maybe Jeebus really WAS the first human entity to “conquer death” and not have to reincarnate. Like Buddha said: “The biggest mistake is you think you have time.” Or, for that matter, believing we have to live as long as possible. Maybe it really is true that only the good die young.
Martyrdom definitely has market/message power. I just might even believe that it is perhaps the only significantly effective way of “speaking truth to power”
Pilate: “What is truth?”
Jesus:
Hilariously, I had always remembered it as Jesus saying ‘What is truth?’ not PIlate. It sounds way too cool a thing for Pontius to say. I am going to believe that the original Pilate utterance meant something like “Is that so?”
Original:
37 Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then?
Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.
37 “You are a king, then!” said Pilate.
Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”
38 Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all.Yeah, I like my version better.
DC is not pushing gay pride. It’s following the gay pride media bubble to try and be au courant., doing so way too late to make it worth the trouble. COnsidering that comix in general push this core ideal: triumphant violence is THE answer, I don’t see a p[roblem with some mutant dude slipping another mutant dude the tongue. Ho-hum, even. Purple hair is already hitting the passé mark.
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“When one feels down vintage (preferably) boogie-dance videos are great cure.”
I’m too old and stiff to do it anywhere but in my mind, but thanx for reminding me to tink happy tawts! 🙂
I think much human energy is spent trying to accept or hide from how ghastly we are. Why else (for one example) would a major world religion center on a divine scapegoat taking the blame for our horrifying sins on a planetary scale over thousands of years?
Digital bank accounts/IDs will crush themselves. Those doors swing both ways. AN other example of overreach in this Age of Max Overreach.
I turned 4 years old in 1960. As a kid who grew up with television, I have this impression that there was a relationship between how close kids sat to the TV and how dull or bright they were. Seems like the slower kids got nearly nose close to the screen while most of us sat at more like a body-length distance.
Any body else remember anything like that? Or is it just Smart Kid vanity looking backward through a dull scratched 67 year old rear-view mirror?
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On das chewden: sure, Jews are up to their share of no-goodness. Lots of people/groups are. Let’s say for sake of argument that chews are the worst, that they are the singular cabal running all other cabals. That doesn’t mean that us sitting around talking how bad those chews allegedly are does any one any good, even by the venting of fear, anger, and frustration. (Some venting only fans the flames, jah?) It doesn’t do shit except promote mean-spiritedness, from what I’ve seen. It’s very difficult to distinguish these rants from mere old school bigotry. While there may actually be no bigotry involved, it LOOKS that way to many people reading this site, I’m sure. And that, in turn, makes them LESS likely to ponder singular evil cabals and such — assuming that something productive like that is part of the goal in kike-griping, which mostly works against the attempt to make people confront das chewden — assuming, again, that something productive like that is your aim.
Let’s also suppose that, for sake of argument, my utterances are as specious and hypocritical and misinformed and malignly intended as many seem to feel, that my head is cracked yadi ya. Again: exactly what are you brave warriors accomplishing with this observation?
Why not just put me in a bag of kosher chewish shake’n’bake mix, blend it all together, and fry it in contempt and condemnation?
I’ll answer my question: because it still won’t any good to eat and now you’ve just stunk up the house.
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Me, I had a pre-dawn epiphany: about all I can do positive in this life is encourage kindness and praise it when I see it. All the rest at best is mere kvetching and distracting myself from what joy may avail; at worst it foments bloodshed.
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Israeli quietude at present owes a lot, I think, to the fact that the Big Boys are brawling and it is wise that they keep their heads low.
Russia is now the Big Dog for any evil cabalist to try and infiltrate and thereby coopt.
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“Why did NATO always hold back arms to ensure that Ukraine could not actually damage Russia?”
Two considerations:
a) in 2014, Russia showed the world by its intervention in Syria, that USA no longer was in charge, no longer held a monopoly on this superpower thing.
b) Ukraine was perhaps never intended nor expected to win in the first place. Why arm a fall guy to the teeth? He might turn against you.
I’ve never cared much for the crab bucket metaphor, especially since I’ve sent about an hour in the back of a 60s station wagon with two-three large pots of live crabs after a day of crabbing on Pemlico Sound as a kid with my relatives down south.
Never saw the crabs behave as the metaphor describes. I do know I hated the smeel and the sluicey sound of maybe 5-70 crabs running water through their gills. I don’t much care for crab meat, and loath how it is typically cooked: alive.
But hanging around here makes me think maybe there’s something to it. Crab Mentality
Hint: one does not prove oneself right by proving others wrong. Two separate issues.
I think of wiki as wiki, period. I remember when it was born. I frequently check citations in wiki just like anything else I read, from college textbook to cookbook.
Trust but verify. Mistrust but verify. If possible, verify and avoid unnecessary speculation.
“It’s magical thinking to think that magical thinking is essential to our survival. ”
Looks like we need to define magical thinking and separate it from rational thinking. FWIW, I said what I said about magical thinki9ng based on rational ideation.
But we could split these hairs ad infinitum, in the process focusing outwards rather than inwards…
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“Bosco: the point about Khazar is that they are NOT Semitic, i.e. not a Middle Eastern people at all. Ever. They were not dispersed by the Romans. They were never in Judea even once til now. They’re converts, albeit a very long time ago.
More like 6-700 AD. I know the history, dude. The Khazars did NOT take over Judaism nor Jewish politics. That’s just another loony conspiracy theory. I’m fine with conspiracy theory, but not with unfounded lunatic nonsense.
You guys FREAK OUT when somebody challenges the legitimacy of your Superhero Villain scapegoat.
It’s inane, pointless, and why are we wasting time on all this Jewish nonsense?
“And Wikipedia? Not a reliable authority about anything controversial. Not only not authoritative, but also completely corruptible.
The Khazari “thing” started around a thousand years ago.”Sources, then? You know, put up or shut up.
As for wiki: all sources are suspect these days. Show me to the One True Data Source or deal with untidy reality as reported by those who will. I’ve read your remarks for some time and do NOT consider you a credible source. But I’m willing to be impressed anew.
On the magical thinking mentioned in the article that Red shared: magical thinking is absolutely necessary to human survival. But keeping it separate from one’s rational thinking is necessary lest we just go nuts individually and collectively. Instead, we mixed superstitious with science, creating scientism, the stuff of which superhero comix are made.
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Whitey danced just swell until the 60s freakout dancing craze followed by ‘idiot dance crazes’.
Suddenly, after the hippies, we were supposed to ‘just feel it’, go out on the floor, and be cool and yet spasmodic. Blacks weren’t much affected by white hippy freak-dancing. They kept on practicing cool dance moves in a culture that rewarded it. It was a sport/art form/mating ritual.
That’s my hypothesis. So there.
But my fave dance song about groovy black music/dance mystique is one that wouldn’t make it through the censors today:
Slightly more “racey”: More Mud
Ah well. Carry on. Keep asking questions. (They don’t get their vocal harmonies balanced until the second half, alas.
Khazarian ancestry of Ashkenazi is basically so much rumor:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazar_hypothesis_of_Ashkenazi_ancestry
I suspect pheonixvoice’s response to the Khazari-Askenazi thing is somewhat colored by her experience as a Mormon and the LDS church’s belief that Native Americans are Jews who sailed over a few thousand years ago.
The Khazari thing started, btw, around the same time as young Joseph Smith was flirting with alternate Biblical history aka The Book of Mormon.
Third rail? As in talking about Jews? Whatever. Not everyone has racially defined idees fixe. Some (like me) prefer to blame it on evil extraterrestrials. Who needs Jews or Illuminati when you got the Anunnaki?
It’s like we can’t go a day here without some kind of Five-Minute Hate.
Me, I think we need mandatory vaccinations against the boogie.
WES: the neighborhood I now live in Milwaukie Oregon is the birthplace of the Bing cherry variety. I live on a street named after its breeder.
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The evil without is hopelessly beyond our redemptive reach. The evil within us, we just *might*, if not redeem, at least reduce. Especially if we let it go and just love whatever’s in front of us as best we can, even if that translates into kicking the fucker senseless for spitting on your cat.Anything, ANYTHING, but standing around pointing fingers all about at BAD MEN!!! BAD MEN!!!
Shoot em or shut up, I sez, and yes I am promoting violence. I am also promoting peace. I promote both. I’m a standard issue past-modern schizoid human. We speak from both hemispheres of our mind at once.
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“Path to peace
quit all communication
disconnection
Silent treatment
Social exclusion
expelled
Cherem
Herem
excommunicated
ostracism
shunning”I’ve pretty much experienced all the above, both on the giving and receiving end. In the end, all that works so far for me in the making of peace is to smile a lot. Especially when I don’t feel like it. Especially at people who make me want to frown.
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I mostly liked the other image/memes in VP’s sequence above, but this one stinks, imo.
I think man is least positioned of all the animals to stop the so-called selfish genes. Said genes were doing okay in breeding ever more sensitive/caring animals. Then something added hyper-brains and the capacity for symbolic language to the hominid genome, and homo depravus was born.
I like the Lao Tzu meme the best by far.
Life in the era of information overload.
“At a time when trans and gender diverse folk are facing particularly harsh attacks,”
Touting the party line seems de rigeur any more. I just liked the etymology.
On queerness:
The origin of the word ‘queer’
Queer is a word of uncertain origin that had entered the English language by the early 16th century, when it was primarily used to mean strange, odd, peculiar or eccentric. By the late 19th century it was being used colloquially to refer to same-sex attracted men. While this usage was frequently derogatory, queer was simultaneously used in neutral and affirming ways.The examples provided in the Oxford English Dictionary show this semantic range, including instances of homosexual men using queer as a positive self-description at the same time as it was being used in the most insulting terms.
Compare the neutral: “Fourteen young men were invited […] with the premise that they would have the opportunity of meeting some of the prominent ‘queers’” (1914); the insulting: “fairies, pansies, and queers conducted […] lewd practices” (1936); and self-affirmed uses: “young men who call themselves ‘queers’” (1952).
In the 1960s and 1970s, as sexual and gender minorities fought for civil rights and promoted new ways of being in society, we also sought new names for ourselves. Gay liberationists began to reclaim queer from its earlier hurtful usages, chanting “out of the closets, into the streets” and singing “we’re here because we’re queer”.
Their newsletters from the time reveal sustained questioning of the words, labels and politics of naming that lesbian and gay people could and should use about themselves. Some gay libbers even wanted to cancel the word homosexual because they felt it limited their potential and “prescribes a whole system of behaviour […] which has nothing to do with my day-to-day living”.
In Australia, camp was briefly the most common label that lesbian women and gay men used to describe themselves, before gay became more prominent, used at that time by both homosexual men and women.
The evolving use of the word queer
In the early 1990s, gay had come to be used more typically to refer to gay men. Respectful and inclusive standards of language evolved to “lesbian and gay”, and then “LGBT”, as bisexuals and transgender people sought greater recognition.Queer began to be used in a different way again: not as a synonym for gay, but as a critical and political identity that challenged normative ideas about sexuality and gender.
Queer theory drew on social constructionism – the theory that people develop knowledge of the world in a social context – to critique the idea any sexuality or gender identity was normal or natural. This showed how particular norms of sexuality and gender were historically contingent.
Thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Michael Warner, Judith Butler, Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick and Lauren Berlant were enormously influential in the development of this new idea of queer. Some people began to identify as queer in the critical sense, not as a synonym for a stable gender or sexual identity, but to indicate a non-conforming gender or sexual identity.
Activists in groups such as Queer Nation also used queer in this critical sense as part of their more assertive, anti-assimilationist political actions.
Queer as an umbrella term
From the early 2000s, it became more common to use queer as an umbrella term that was inclusive of the spectrum of sexual and gender identities represented in the LGBTIQA+ acronym.Today, queer is included among the terms lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, gender diverse, intersex, asexual, brotherboy and sistergirl, recognised in style guides as the most respectful and inclusive way to refer to people with diverse sexualities and genders.
Of course, the different usages and meaning of words such as queer have often overlapped and have been hotly contested. Historical usages and associations persist and can sit uncomfortably next to contemporary reclamations.
Queer as a slur?
Contemporary concerns with queer’s historical use as a slur seem odd to me. The heritage report A History of LGBTIQ+ Victoria in 100 Places and Objects (which I co-authored), surveys the complexity of language use in historical and contemporary society.It is notable that almost all of the words that LGBTIQA+ people use to describe ourselves today have been reclaimed from homophobic or transphobic origins.
In fact, it could be said that liberating words from non-affirming religious, clinical or colloquial contexts and giving them our own meanings is one of the defining characteristics of LGBTIQA+ history.
While queer does have a history of being used as an insult, that has never been its sole meaning. Same-sex attracted and gender diverse folks have taken the word and have been ascribing it with better meanings for at least the past 50 years.
Queer’s predominant use today is as an affirming term that is inclusive of all people in the rainbow acronym.
At a time when trans and gender diverse folk are facing particularly harsh attacks, I’m all for efforts to promote inclusion and solidarity. Respectful language use doesn’t require us to cancel queer, but rather to be mindful of its history and how that history is experienced by our readers and listeners.The Conversation
“Wilson also criticized scientific types with overly rigid belief systems, equating them with religious fundamentalists in their fanaticism. In a 1988 interview, when asked about his newly published book The New Inquisition: Irrational Rationalism and the Citadel of Science, Wilson commented:
“I coined the term irrational rationalism because those people claim to be rationalists, but they’re governed by such a heavy body of taboos. They’re so fearful, and so hostile, and so narrow, and frightened, and uptight and dogmatic … I wrote this book because I got tired satirizing fundamentalist Christianity … I decided to satirize fundamentalist materialism for a change, because the two are equally comical … The materialist fundamentalists are funnier than the Christian fundamentalists, because they think they’re rational! … They’re never skeptical about anything except the things they have a prejudice against. None of them ever says anything skeptical about the AMA, or about anything in establishment science or any entrenched dogma. They’re only skeptical about new ideas that frighten them. They’re actually dogmatically committed to what they were taught when they were in college. …[36]”
Robert Anton Wilson, 1988
Re: the Edvard Slavsquat article that I posted above:
Considering Russia’s history as a police state, and its ability to afford the energy to run a big ol’ technosphere for several decades at least, Skynet is a real threat to Russians. Over here in discombobulating USNATO, Skynet would at most merely cyber-blitz our energy grid and/or nuke our cities. Over there, it might very well put the brain-synch on everyone and wake them up every morning at work-thirty with Putin playing piano in their heads.
Yes, Russia is a major threat to Russia. Russia is succeeding mightily these days, at least in the terms by which we judge huge ancient empires, nation states, and national economies, but success is the worst thing for a hominid social structure to achieve. USA did this and the results are laughable (if one gets high enough to stop crying).
“The question is, “Have you now or have you ever been a bad guy or minion?””
Both. But I sucked at villainy as much as minionhood, and so have accepted focusing on just being me. Finally, I something I’m good at!
“The device is simple: It slips over your eyes like a pair of glasses and blocks all distractions while reading. Even as I’m typing that, I’m sensing some sadness: I have wanted this product to exist for many years – I was basically raised by books, and lost my ability to focus on reading over the past few years. Something broke in me during the pandemic – I was checking my phone every 10 seconds to see what Trump had done now and how close we were to a COVID-19-powered abyss. Suffice it to say, my mental health wasn’t at its finest – and I can’t praise the idea of Sol Reader enough. The idea of being able to set a timer and put a book on my face is extremely attractive to me.”
Absurdity and triviality on display:
UK clears Amazon’s $1.7 billion deal for Roomba-maker iRobot
The war in Ukraine is real and ongoing, despite nonsense social media posts
How do Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s classified documents cases compare?
The expression “tabloid reality” comes to mind.
“What I see is the Cabal coming out from under cover out of sheer desperation and panic, thereby further exposing their previously well hidden motives and identities so blatantly that even folks as sheep-like, gullible and stupid as you and me now see them and reject them as the abhorrent and condemned failures that they are. Each time that happens the numbers and certitude of the awakened grows and the dying hegemony of the satanic cult shrinks. One awakening at a time. Just as it happened with you, and me, it is also happening with millions of others around the world.
“This is a war and there are casualties. What would you have me do? Quit fighting because I might die? That’s not even possible. I cannot die, and I certainly don’t choose to shrink. I’ll choose truth, thank you very much, and the truth is that Light wins.”
I really REALLY like this. Kind of stuff I can stick in the knapsack of my soul for provisions along the journey.
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“”One of the ways for the BRICS to replicate that, and then displace it, is to link their bond markets, and the governments and the populace actually start to buy the bonds which are denominated in the new currency. And I believe that if they do that, de-dollarization could happen much quicker than most people think.””
Insert famous quip about going bankrupt first slowly then all of a sudden.
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The images of nature that Raul posts daily have really become a significant source of soul food for me. Cleans out the optic brain pipes normally befouled by das latest newz.
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Warhol/biplane: I say that it’s less, even much less, than “the Guardian lies about everything” and more that modern mediated culture has so hyper-sown and hyper-bred language and semiotic words, meanings, definitions, tropes, memes and applications that the difference between truth and a lie, not just in print or recorded audio/video, but in common daily conversation beginning with one’s first words to one’s spouse or, that lacking, self.
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re: google: it’s a good time to but lots and lots of good quality print books. Goodwill is quite the home library these days.
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Friendly banker wants to crash Russia’s economy by replacing bureaucrats with AI
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I say that if Count Basie had let the legendarily strict martinet, Benny Goodman, rehearse his orchestra for him once a week, both bands would have been even better than they were. Benny’s would’ve loosened up a bit, and Basie’s gotten tighter.
It took about 60 years from the time Wallace was pointing out problems with smallpox vaccination before they got it right and turned smallpox vaccination into a success story.
On Alfred Russell Wallace:
“The co-discoverer of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace, found himself deeply embroiled in a range of controversies surrounding the relationship between science and spiritualism. At the heart of these controversies lay a crisis of evidence in cases of delusion or imposture. He had the chance to observe the many epistemic impasses brought about by this crisis while participating in the trial of the American medium Henry Slade, and through his exchanges with the physiologist William Benjamin Carpenter and the psychical researcher Frederic Myers. These contexts help to explain the increasing value that Wallace placed on the evidence of spirit photography.. He hoped that it could simultaneously break these impasses, while answering once and for all the interconnected questions of the unity of the psyche and the reliability of human observation.”
On Alfred Russell Wallace and vaccination:
“Like so many other people, till a few years back I had not a doubt as to the efficacy of vaccination. I accepted it blindly as one of the established facts of science. Having been led to look into the evidence on the subject, I was first startled by the discrepancy of the statistics of small-pox mortality with the vaccination theory, and on further inquiry I was amazed to find that the evidence in favour of vaccination was of the most shadowy kind, while there was good reason to believe that it was itself a cause of disease of the most serious nature.
“I have also been struck by the (apparent) want of honesty in the defenders of vaccination, in repeating over and over again statements which are not true, and in actually falsifying the records of small-pox mortality by entering all doubtful cases as “unvaccinated.” 1
“I have no doubt whatever that any unprejudiced person who will investigate the evidence on both sides for himself will arrive at the same conclusion as I have done, that to enforce on unwilling parents a surgical operation which they honestly believe to be injurious and as to the efficacy of which there is so great a diversity of opinion even among medical men, is a gross infraction of personal liberty entirely unjustified by any proved beneficial results.–Believe me yours very faithfully,
“Alfred R. Wallace.”
“Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is now admitting “a bunch of” COVID information that Facebook censored as “misinformation” was actually true, and the collusion of its so-called “fact-checkers” with government authorities who proved to be wrong on the coronavirus undermined public trust.
“Unfortunately, I think a lot of the kind of establishment on that kind of waffled on a bunch of facts and asked for a bunch of things to be censored that, in retrospect, ended up being more debatable or true,” Zuckerberg said in a lengthy interview Friday on the Lex Fridman podcast. “That stuff is really tough, right? It really undermines trust.”
