This week’s Ecosophian offering is the monthly open post to field questions and encourage discussion among my readers. All the standard rules apply (no profanity, no sales pitches, no trolling, no rudeness, no paid propagandizing, no long screeds proclaiming the infallible truth of fill in the blank, no endless rehashes of questions I’ve already answered) but since there’s no topic, nothing is off topic — with two exceptions.
First, there’s a dedicated (more or less) open post on my Dreamwidth journal on the ongoing virus panic and related issues, so anything Covid-themed should go there instead.
Second, I’ve had various people try to launch discussions about AIs — that is to say, large language models (LLMs) and the utilities they power — on this and my other forums. The initial statements and their followup comments always end up reading as though they were written by LLMs — that is, long strings of words superficially resembling meaningful sentences but not actually communicating anything. That’s neither useful nor entertaining. Thus I’ve decided to ban further discussion of this latest wet dream of the lumpen-internetariat here.
Also, an announcement for those who will be coming to meet me in Glastonbury this coming June. Regular reader Guillem has set up a Dreamwidth page so that attendees can arrange travel and lodging together if they so wish. As a frugal and energy-saving project, this fits in with just about everything I discuss, and I encourage everyone to consider it. You can find it here:
https://glastonburyarrangements.dreamwidth.org/
With that said, have at it!
Dear John-Michael and the Community,
I’m thrilled to share that my book, The Great Canadian Reset, will be published on September 1st! It explores how cooperative and economic democracy can help us thrive in a contracting economy. Many of the ideas were inspired by the vibrant discussions here and the incredible insights from our host and this forum—thank you all!
I’ve also launched a Substack, https://thegreatcanadianreset.substack.com/, to promote cooperative businesses and share more on this topic. I’d love for you to join the conversation there!
For commenters from other countries, I welcome inquiries about adapting the book’s ideas to your local context.
Grateful for this community, Ludovic (aka Druidovik)
What’s going on with one of the political parties championing extremely unpopular issues? To pick the worst example: Why is it a hill to die on to require middle school girls undress in front of biologically male middle schoolers? (i.e. trans use girls locker room). Is it just random insanity, or would Spengler have something to say about it?
Also the arguments against things like DOGE seem to be completely straw man arguments disconnected from reality. So far, with DOGE, only waste and fraud have been targeted, and Musk has repeatedly said he wants to increase benefits by reducing fraud. People like Elizabeth Warren have said something to effect that they will vaguely “fight” to keep Musk from cutting benefits. Can Warren read Musk’s mind and divine his true intent? Any thoughts you would have on the above would be appreciated.
Howdy,
I had a quick historical question that I thought JMG and/or the commentariat might be able to help me out with. My understanding is that from the Medieval to the Renaissance to the Early Modern period, swords basically underwent a progression like this: sword and shield -> long (two-handed) sword -> one-handed “fencing” swords like rapiers alone. Obviously, there was lots of variation around this overly-simplified model, but to the degree this general trend is correct, I’m trying to better understand what drove it.
My best understanding/guess is that it went something like this: sword and shield is fairly intuitive, and shields work well not only with swords, but also any other one-handed weapon, so in the early(ish) days of sword use, it would be natural for societies that might have more axes and spiky clubs and what not to fight with shields, so the relatively few guys who get swords would keep fighting that way, just with a sword now. I also figure metallurgy was not quite as advanced, so shorter swords might have been all that the technology would allow. For a further influence, the Romans would have likely had a big impact on what “good gear and good fighting” looks like, and their legions mostly fought with shields and shorter swords.
As metallurgy got better and swords got more common, more and more men found it helpful to have longer swords for obvious reasons (if I can stab you before you can stab me, that’s a big advantage!), and the technology was there to enable it. Over time, folks found that if you had a long enough sword and knew what you were doing with it, the shield was mostly superfluous – you could defend yourself with your sword if you learned the right techniques, so two-handed longswords came to dominate for those who could afford them and had the time and impetus to learn.
With the advent of firearms, swords became less decisive militarily, so the need to be proficient with a sword in combat went down, but things like dueling and social status kept swords as important in other contexts. But it’s incredibly inconvenient to carry around a big two-handed sword, so the social classes that carried swords transitioned to one-handed swords like rapiers, but retained the know-how to defend yourself with the sword rather than a shield, and so developed forms of fighting suited to them in contexts that look far more like duels than battle, and those forms of fighting became what we now know as fencing.
Is that roughly right? Am I missing any major influences/factors?
Thanks very much for any insight you, JMG, or anyone else can offer,
Jeff
Hi JMG and Ecosophians,
I have been singing and/or listening to God Save the Queen (the British national anthem) as a magical exercise to lend courage to the natives and law-abiding citizens of Britain and the UK. Here is an explanation of what I’m doing: https://kimberlysteele.dreamwidth.org/144376.html
I believe my Pledge to Say the Pledge and all the people who joined it helped attain a more balanced form of leadership in for the United States. I would like to see something that rhymes happen for Britain and the greater UK.
I hope you’ll join me.
Hi, I really enjoyed your first post on “The Vision” by Yeats. I looked it up, and got a copy of the second version, and skipped ahead to the “Great Wheel”. Within that, I was impressed by his diagram and idea of the “Two Gyres”, the subjective and the objective triangles interpenetrating each other, corresponding to the Will, on the one hand, and the Mask on the other. This reminds me of Schopenhauer’s philosophy, where you have the Will, on the one hand, and the “Principium Individuationis” , relating to the analytical mind, on the other, as subjective and objective. How exactly the other two faculties, the Creative Mind and the Body of Fate relate to this are less clear to me, but I’m looking forward to more posts on the subject.
When I was in high school, I picked up my dad’s copy of “Expecting Someone Taller,” by Tom Holt, and almost immediately put it down with the resolution that I would pick it back up after I’d read the Ring Cycle, in the hopes that it would be funnier.
I have now, after more than a decade, returned to the book, and can indeed say that it is, in fact, funnier.
Watched an interesting 30 minute lecture by one Peter Schiiff https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIQG01DRxHk who seems to be an Austrian (as in devotee of Hayek, Mises etc., not a citizen of the small Central European country) gold bug but nonetheless makes a compelling cases that dollar hegemony is in its final days and the American standard of living will be declining sharply in the short to medium term.
The evidence he points to is that central banks round the world are liquidating their dollar reserves and replacing them with gold.
This make sense and explains, among other things soaring gold prices and the plummeting value of dollar-denominated assets.
But there has always seemed something slightly irrational to me (and not just to me — didn’t Keynes call gold “the barbarous relic”?) about spending a lot of money to dig gold ore out of the ground (Schiff recommends buying gold mining stocks), refine it into bars, and then rebury it in the vaults of a central bank.
Care to comment? (In the past you have noted that in a time of general economic breakdown — which also implies a general breakdown in law and order — stocking up gold for oneself doesn’t make much sense unless one has the means to defend the stocks. But central banks generally do possess such means.)
Dear John-Michael and the Community,
I would be interested in your thoughts regarding the ongoing constitutional crisis in the United States due to the executive branch defying the orders of various courts including the supreme court with respect to deporting without due process some 261 men to El Salvador, and ICE detaining without charge or process a number of international students. My sense is that this situation will not be resolved without the direct intervention of the people through an ongoing general strike.
Good day sir, I was interested in who some of your critics are.
Personally glad to see you are swinging back to collapse themes. Very relevant. Speaks to a deep ancestral place in me as an obvious truth.
Take care
@ Bradley: how many people have been charged with fraud? Is it none, zero, zilch or nada?
What Russian entity came in the back door left by Musk’s team and siphoned up the personal data of every American? And why doesn’t that bother you?
Why did Musk hire coders for a forensic accounting job, and in what universe can he ‘audit’ a single department in a matter of hours?
Replying to Emmanuel Goldstein’s comments on leucovorin from the previous round: you really got my gears turning with that. I have 2 very-much-speech delayed children and myself had to do some speech therapy as a child. My wife has known for a number of years now that she has a genetic folate processing deficiency. ASD runs in my family…so those two things in combination really got me thinking “HMM”.
I mentioned it to their pediatrician and indeed, she’d had other parents ask her about that same study! She was intrigued by it. Told us that she didn’t know of a way to test for the antibodies or brain levels of B9, and that while she could do a blood test, it would probably be inconclusive as it’s the blood/brain barrier and processing that’s the issue. BUT, without any questions she wrote me a prescription and told me with much curiosity to let me know how it went.
So anyway, thanks for the tip! The older child is in the same age cohort as the ones in the double blind study they referenced. Based on my wife’s genetic folate issues (she already supplements B9!), I’m very much optimistic about the potential here.
JMG and commentariat:
Some time ago in the comments on this blog I mentioned a three-part essay by Sebastian Morello titled “Can Hermetic Magic Rescue the Church?” You can find Part III here:
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/essay/can-hermetic-magic-rescue-the-church-part-iii-the-magi-return/ and links to Parts I and II are in the Intro to Part III.
I myself am intrigued by the possibilities pointed at with this essay, and I am interested in seeing if there is anybody else who would like to discuss these ideas and explore them further, since one of my observations about Morello’s essay is that it raises far more questions than it sheds light on. If anybody is interested in this sort of discussion, feel free to send me an email at roysmith95 (at) live (dot) com. If there is enough interest, perhaps we can set up some sort of discussion board or group blog.
Mr. Greer, what do you make of the Democrat politcian$ following Sen. Van Hollen’s squishy step into ms-13 deportation doodo. A concerted effort at a pointed “SQUIRREL”? .. talking their OMB!! book? .. the basic idiocy of not reading the average american living(dieing)-room .. as it were? .. what?
To continue the peak oil discussion from last week, I find it interesting that if you search for info on peak oil today, you will be directed to info on peak oil “demand”. This notion has almost completely replaced peak oil supply in top line searches. Thus it is very difficult to find any data or analysis on oil supply projections.
Peak oil demand is supposed to occur because “green energy” will replace fossil fuels, making them uncompetitive.
Here is the IEA predicting an oil glut as net zero climate initiatives succeed in reducing fossil fuel demand.
The astounding thing is that people really believe this will happen.
https://www.iea.org/news/slowing-demand-growth-and-surging-supply-put-global-oil-markets-on-course-for-major-surplus-this-decade
Since it is now the expressed goal of HHS Director Robert F Kennedy Jr to discover *the* cause of *autism” by September, with the appliance of science, I would like to open up the conversation to what I believe is the main drawback. Which is that it is supremely difficult to determine the cause of an effect which cannot be properly described or defined.
I have spent a good deal of time perusing websites, scientific papers, public health sites and etc, and am still not able to find out what the physiological attributes of “autism” are. Firstly, the word “spectrum” is already a hint that we are not talking about one thing. Secondly, every authoritative source utterly rejects the notion that there are any distinctive physiological markers common to all autistic people. Thirdly, diagnosis appears to proceed on the basis of a checklist of *behaviours*, which only an expert can navigate and ultimately pronounce a verdict based on the number of items that can be ticked.
So, the way that I would like to put the problem (in the terms which actually interest me, personally), is as follows: clearly vaccine damage IS caused by vaccines. Some types of vaccine damage *resemble* autism (whatever autism is when its at home), and when a vaccine damaged person receives a diagnosis of “autism” two things happen:
1) they now qualify for services which many people need and find impossible to dispense with once qualified for.
2) they are now statistically lumped in with a larger cohort, which is so non-specifically defined as to defy the finding of causality, reliable physiological markers, or effective treatment modalities that can apply to the whole cohort.
The interaction of these two factors actually impede the capacity of researchers to track people injured by vaccines, or treat their injuries, in any coherent way.
I am not intending to be contentious, but the word “autism” which means so many different things to so many people, and yet does not in any way help to address issues that actually occur in relation to some vaccinations, as attested by so many parental witnesses (see for eg. the “vaxxed” bus episodes). Such as massive neurological inflamatory states, micro-clotting effects which, when they occur in the brain can manifest as stroke-like facial assymetries in young infants and children, high fevers, episodic loss of consciousness, and episodes of pain so severe it leads to head banging and to the high-pitched tortured “cry” that many parents speak about.
So, throwing this out there. Is the search for a “cause” for “autism” a deliberate wild goosechase that will leave everyone empty handed, while the goose laughs and pops out another golden egg for its keeper?
From US News; headline says it in a nutshell.
“Trump’s Tariffs Won’t Work. Americans Can’t Afford American-Made Products.”
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2025-04-22/trump-tariffs-business-clothing-brand
“Even if I went without this [organic] certification, the cost to cut and sew our core products (woven children’s pants) at U.S. factories is often twice what I pay for organically certified, fairly made products in India. And this cost doesn’t include the fabric itself. Meanwhile, the samples I’ve seen from American factories don’t match the quality of production I’ve come to expect from countries I’ve worked with abroad.”
To paraphrase; to get these jobs back in the country the workers must accept Indian wages and working conditions and up the quality of their output.
The globalists are quite consistent that the developed economies are supposed to move their workers up the value chain doing hi-tech. If you can’t do hi-tech, then what? They are always fuzzy on that point.
Many of the trades require people smarter than the average bear as well. High-voltage electricity only allows one mistake.
As for the service economy, how many barbers does a city need? Are we going to go back to every middle class and up family has a maid? Even Miss Marple had a maid (and not that many of them ended up dead.) Electricity really cut down on the household labor requirements.
Even cannon fodder has to be reasonably bright.
“All military recruits must take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) to qualify for enlistment. The ASVAB is essentially an IQ test (correlation = 0.8). The ASVAB predicts SAT scores (correlation = .82). And it correlates with ACT scores (0.77).
To qualify, recruits must score higher than roughly one-third of all who take the ASVAB. The lowest acceptable percentile score to join is 36 for the Air Force, 35 for the Navy, 32 for the Marine Corps, and 31 for the Army.
By definition, the worst test taker who makes it into the military still scores higher than one-third of his or her peers. The military intentionally slices off the bottom third of test takers, not allowing them to join.”
The high tech world at the moment has no solution to this. The saving grace at the moment is that the AIs are going for lower end of high tech jobs as the robots may be able to walk but they still can’t pick a strawberry.
It’s not just us either,
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/beijing-encourages-jobless-youth-fields-164225858.html
My wife just came home from the hospital — against medical advice — after having one of the worst experiences of her life there. I would like to say that here care was characterized by foot-dragging, but that would imply that someone there was actually moving. She did have numerous visits from various “care team” entities for conditions totally unrelated to the one that she was admitted for. I suspect there will be numerous charges for these “visits”. On the other hand, trying to get service from the nurses station took interminable hours. The attending physician was not bad when present, but was apparently impossible to reach to discuss lab results as they came in. The neurologist who was supposed to read her EEG never showed up at all.
The hospital also seemed to be completely unable to understand her schedule of meds, with the result that her blood pressure went into the stratosphere by her second day there. In the end, we had to take her out of there to end her misery and maybe even to protect her health from this abysmal level of care.
Of course the hospital campus was beautiful — spacious grounds, artificial lakes, groomed flower gardens… All those things that money can buy that had nothing to do with patient care. When it came to that, it seems there was not enough money to hire sufficient staff. Oh, wait. There were plenty of staff there sitting behind keyboards. Billing staff maybe? Just not enough staff to, you know, provide patient care.
After this experience, it is easy to see why medical outcomes here are at the bottom of the developed world despite being the most expensive in the world. My question is, has anyone else here had a similar experience, or was this an unfortunate anomaly?
Pope Francis was a Piscean pope. He reigned during the time when Neptune was in Pisces and embodied the characteristics and values of Pisces (i.e. love, compassion, self-sacrifice, etc…)
Now that Neptune has moved into Aries, the Catholic Church will be looking for a Pope who embodies the characteristics and values of Aries instead of Pisces.
Hello Mr. Greer,
As you are well aware politics has become unusually dysfunctional lately. I would like to return to a point you raised several years ago about Faustian bargains. You had mentioned (and Chad Haag from Peak Oil Philosophy built a you tube video responding to this) how left wing occultists may have made a Faustian bargain with dark powers. If I understand it correctly, the general idea behind it is that a person or group of people can exchange 7 years of power for 7 years of curses. The reason why I ask is that if we assume this pact was made in 2017 then the people who gained power from it would see their fortunes reverse in 2024. Sure enough, the intensely powerful feminism that dominated American public life during that time seems to have done a complete 180. It seems that everything the democrats did during that 7 year period is now coming back to haunt them. Govenor Cuomo is being investigated and brought to trial for covid 19 related decisions, their immigration policy has failed so badly Trump can ignore the supreme court, and some polls are putting their approval rating at 25 percent while Trump is more than double that. Things are so bad the millennials in the party are planning on running against the incumbents and fighting an internal civil war before going after Trump. Long story short, the efforts to destroy toxic masculinity seemed to have created the most overtly macho culture we have seen in America in generations. So is this a Faustian bargain or is this just Spengler’s historical predictions manifesting? How could we tell the difference?
JMG,
On Magic Monday, in response to a question about ancient civiliations, I mentioned a slate of rafting events happened around the same time as the PETM, and you asked for sources. I’m sorry to report that I’m unaware of a printed source which discusses this in detail; I got the information off a friend of mine who studies paleontology. I’ve just asked him if he has anything which discusses this, but he hasn’t gotten back to me yet, and since he is currently extremely busy with finishing his PhD, I’m not sure I expect a response for a while.
However, I can list a few examples: among many other examples that appear to have been rafting events from around this time are New World Monkeys in South America; Lemurs into Madascar; primates of all sorts from Asia into Africa and India; rodents into all continents; the ancestors of the marsupial genus Microbiotheria from Australia into South America; multiple kinds of ungulates from Asia into North America; geckos spread from Asia around the world; genetic evidence suggests a number of spider familes worldwide descend from Australian spiders which somehow spread everywhere around 50 million years ago. Some of these are give or take 10 or even 20 million years; but there seems to have been a lot of rafting events which overlapped with the PETM, and then a lot fewer since.
When I hear back with sources for this, I’ll happily share them.
Bradley,
I’m not JMG, but I’ve been looking into this for a while trying to make sense of TDS. My working hypothesis right now is that the madness is largely being driven by algorithmic social media. The problem is that extreme claims get more traction in algorithmic social media because they are more likely to get people’s attention; this means that even if it’s only a small percentage of the Democratic Party that supports issues like “trans” middle schoolers being allowed to use the “appropriate” gender’s washroom, social media makes it look a lot more popular. It gets even worse when social media platforms try to remove “anti-trans” voices, as they have since 2015. It is very, very hard to write a program that can get nuance; and so any algorithm which tries to remove any kind of offensive viewpoint is going to remove a lot of reasonable viewpoints, while leaving the crazies on the other side mostly untouched.
The sane voices are being drowned out by this process, and so the party is looking increasingly insane. Also, extreme anti-Republican fearmongering does well on these platforms, regardless of truth, because it infuriates Republicans and terrifies Democrats, both of which drives engagement. Both of these mean that to anyone who tries to use social media data to assess public opionion to decide what positions to adopt (something Obama pioneered) is going to think these crazy people are far more common than they really are.
This process also plays out with the mass media, because it is now dependant on shares on social media. Truth does not matter; what matters is making content that social media algorithms like, which means that the mass media looks like it has gone completely insane because it has to go insane in order for the algorithms it now depends on for money to continue to spread it.
The reason the Republicans are (partially) immune is because shortly after the social media companies started pushing these algorithms, people on the left started noticing it amplified crazy conservatives and played a role in Donald Trump winning the 2016 election, and since a lot of them thought Trump was an existential threat, the American right has been forced off of most of these algorithmic platforms.
@Bradley: The following article supports Anonymoose’s argument:
https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/how-perception-gaps-fuel-americas
Eva Breadner
The normal time frame for arrests is 1 to 3 years from discovery. I suppose we’ll need to wait. The breach you talk about is disputed. My source says the Russian IP was blocked because it was Russian.
Maybe Must is greedy for data, after all it is the new currency, however his pubic statements all revolve around preserving person-kind and civilization. His DOGE effort, to me, seems to fit the latter, although if you thought he was greedy for data it would also fit the formet.
A request and a question, both to everybody.
1. I’m practicing my blessing skills by performing a formal blessing each Wednesday, where I bless everybody who signs up. I’m grateful if people do sign up, as it gives me a chance to practice! Here’s the link if you want to read more or consider signing up:
https://thehiddenthings.com/categories/weekly-blessings
2. To anybody who visted Stonehenge not too long ago:
I’ve never been to Stonehenge before and am considering a visit. While I was fully prepared to be within crowds of other visitors, the visitor website also “promises” things like a visitor centre with multimedia displays and a 360 degree experience, all sorts of “fun” stuff to do and experience, shuttle busses, a to-be-pre-installed app for the parking lot, and of course an extensive gift shop. I don’t really want to “immerse myself in a unique visitor experience”, though – I just want to experience some old stones and their surroundings! 😀
If you’ve been to Stonehenge recently, do you feel it’s worth braving all the brouhaha to experience the actual stones and the area? Can they even be experienced anymore beneath this pile of glitter? Or would you, if you were me, rather go experience some other old stones elsewhere? 🙂
(And if the latter, is there anything in particular you’d suggest?)
JMG, thanks a lot for hosting an Open Post again. I hope you’re having a good week,
Milkyway
Ludovic, delighted to hear it! By all means make an announcement with a sales link in an open post when it’s available for sale.
Bradley, keep in mind that people have flooded their brains for decades with media schlock in which the Good People are always an embattled minority fighting for the Right Things against overwhelming odds. If everyone else thinks they’re idiots, why, that just proves how right they are, and a miracle will come along any day now to win the day for them, just like in the movies. As for DOGE, it’s quite straighforward; do you remember all those Congresscritters with the signs saying “Musk steals”? What they meant, of course, was that Musk was cutting into the fantastic amount of grift that lines their pockets. Of course they’re bellowing nonsense about it — they can’t exactly shout, “How dare you stop me from ripping off the American public,” can they?
Jeff, well, that’s not my take. As I see it, there were two major factors. The first was the distinction between military and civilian swordsmanship, which didn’t emerge until the Renaissance; before then the right of private war was recognized and so aristocrats went around pretty well armed much of the time. When that changed, the rapier, followed by the smallsword, became standard civilian weapons, because they were much easier to carry, while soldiers continued to carry various kinds of one-handed cutting swords on the battlefield; look at 19th century military swords as a useful comparison. The second was the emergence of mass infantry combat in organized groups, primarily using the pike. Pikemen don’t carry shields — the pike is a two-handed weapon — and they can sweep aside most other forms of infantry and cavalry; infantry shields worked when infantry fought in looser formation, and once that wasn’t an option the infantry discarded shields and went to pikes and missile weapons (bows and crossbows first, then muskets).
Among cavalry, shields were another casualty of pike warfare, because massed cavalry charges stopped making sense the moment massed pikemen hit the battlefield; shields and armor alike went out, and cavalry was repurposed for scouting, raiding, and protecting the flanks, all of which works better if you’re not weighed down and have a nice sharp saber or, later, a brace of pistols. The two-handed longsword, finally, was another adaptation to pike warfare; the landsknechts were elite infantry forces who learned how to use those swords to hack and batter down pikes so they could get in among the pikemen and force them to go at it hand-to-hand with their backup swords. That lasted until firearms came in.
Kimberly, er, it’s “God Save the King” now, as it was during the reign of Elizabeth’s father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. Other than that, glad to hear it.
John, stay tuned! There’ll be one post a month on A Vision.
Calliope, er, did you think that Wagner wrote comic operas?
Tag, the US dollar is in the process of losing its status as global reserve currency, and yes, that means that the US will have to get by without all those billions of dollars a year of unearned wealth we got by selling dollar-denominated debt to central banks around the world. That’s why the slaughter of the bureaucracies continues unabated in DC — in the near future, the federal government won’t be able to run a deficit any more — and why the Trump administration is raising tariffs and trying to bully other countries into lowering their trade barriers. Gold is a common hedge during such times. Yes, it’s a barbarous relic, but these are barbarous times; central banks have to have assets in their vaults in order to issue credit, and when T-bills no longer count as a stable asset, they’re going to turn to anything that will serve — barbarous or not.
Jim, er, do you recall when the Biden administration ignored a Supreme Court ruling and pushed ahead on student loan relief anyway? It was exactly the same sort of thing. Every presidential administration does this; it’s a normal part of the conflict between branches that defines our system. As for your ongoing general strike, why, go ahead and give it a try; I think you’ll find that most Americans don’t support your side of the issue, and will gladly apply to fill the job you’re giving up.
Travis, I don’t keep a list of my critics; I read their posts from time to time when those come to my attention. Sometimes I go, “Hmm, okay,” and rethink something I’ve written; other times I roll my eyes and chuckle. Either way, it’s all in a day’s work.
Roy, well, saving that or any other church other than the Universal Gnostic Church isn’t high on my agenda just now, but I encourage you and other readers to go for it.
Polecat, I think they’re so caught up playing roles in a self-defined political melodrama that it never occurs to them that they should read the room.
Seaweedy, I know. The funny thing is that this was also true in the early days of the peak oil movement, back around the turn of the millennium: finding information about petroleum depletion was hard enough that there were whole forums where people labored together at the task.
Scotlyn, I hope not, but it’s certainly a possibility.
Siliconguy, the headline left off a clause: “If Corporations Are Still Paying Absurd Salaries For Executives And Bloated Administrative Staff.” I’d like to see a comparison of expenditures for administrative superstructure between US and offshore companies.
Helix, it’s been decades since I’ve had anything to do with hospitals, but everyone I know who’s been in that unfortunate situation has had similar experiences.
Anonymous, well, we’ll see.
Stephen, the Faustian curse isn’t seven years of power followed by seven years of curses. It’s seven years of power, and then the devil shows up and drags you off to Hell. Since I haven’t seen any significant number of leftwing activists being hauled away by Mephistopheles to a flaming inferno, I suspect it’s just ordinary backlash following a lot of impressively stupid policy decisions.
Moose, fair enough! Thank you for this; yeah, that suggests invasive species facilitated by a technological civilization.
There is only one monarch of the United Kingdom, and she reigns from heaven. God Save our Queen Elizabeth II.
Not the current woke WEF puppet who currently occupies the throne and is betraying Britain with his every action. #NotMyKing
JMG, have you noticed the increased use of the word ” Decry” recently. It seems to have become a kind of catchall way to call out something you don’t like but don’t have any logical reason for disliking it. I have noticed it popping up more and more frequently in what remains of our local newspaper ( left leaning). It is commonly used like this, ” Jane Doe Decrys the airline blocking her emotional support squirrel from boarding a plane with her.”
Hello JMG,
A further question on the topic we were diving into on Magic Monday regarding the difference between aspects of the shadow self sometimes described as “personal demons” and the real, often quite dangerous to humans, nonphysical entities also known as demons. Your emphasis that these are quite different things was helpful, and I wanted to test my understanding with an analogy.
Someone can “evoke” a political party in their imagination in order to interact with it as an idea – considering its history, its stated platforms, the kinds of politicians and people it tends to attract, imagine joining the party, etc. This entails some activity on the mental and astral levels. They could also go a lot further and join the party, vote in the way it recommends, perhaps even attempt to influence the party itself, and this would entail quite a bit of activity on all of the mental, astral, etheric and physical levels. Then there is the party itself as a nonphysical entity with many physical manifestations, which of course is distinct from even the deepest level of participation in the party by an individual.
Is this a reasonable analogy, or are there key parts missing? Thank you as always.
Hi JMG, I was thumbing through an old issue of Weird Tales and came across an add for Psychiana, a New Though movement. Are you familiar?
https://archive.org/details/Weird_Tales_v21n04_1933-04_missing_ifc_ibc_bc
@ Helix #18
My experience with hospitals in the last 5 years is the same as yours — extravagantly furnished and landscaped campus with extremely deficient patient care for those who are sick. And yes, random medical professionals wander through rooms daily, doing nothing for the patient, but absolutely billing for the “visit.” The worst was a supposed cardiologist who stood at the door of my husband’s room and shouted at him, “Are you having any chest pain?” My husband shouted back, “No!” The cardiologist turned around and left. I got a bill for that.
The only exception was my daughter who went in for an elective C-section (yes, I know, I tried to talk her out of it, but she doesn’t listen to me). The maternity suites were palatial. They had, no kidding, a room service menu for mom and dad after the birth.
I told my kids, you put me in the hospital for any reason I will make sure to die and then haunt you the rest of your life! 😆
FWIW, you did the right thing getting your wife out of there, in my opinion.
Hi JMG, You have mentioned in the past (within the comments) that you once considered relocating to England and specifically to Somerset. How close was this to happening and what prevented you from going ahead in the end? Also, why did you consider this area rather than Scotland which you have ancestral roots in or Wales which seems to have more of a Druid connection?
I thought I’d pitch in a bit of personal anecdote about my little slice of the current mess in the United States. The other day, as an employee of the Department of Interior, I watched the new Secretary of Interior give an address to the department as a whole. Normally, I studiously avoid the ramblings of all politician-like people and until it came time to losing my job I had managed to go several years skipping every single required regional and national meeting. But, I wanted to watch this one because I wanted some insight into what kind of direction the current administration was actually taking things, get the information direct, no?
I sat through almost the entirety of the secretary’s hour-long address even though nothing new was said after the first ten minutes or so. My wife texted to ask me, “what he was saying/what I thought?”
Just to be clear, even though I am (was actually) a federal employee and I just watched my retirement disappear, and no, for the record, my job was not one of middle management but rather one of things like operating boats, heavy equipment, maintenance, organizing volunteers, etc. Nonetheless, I’m under no illusions that my job is actually necessary to anything in the grander scheme. Then again, I’m under no illusions that anyone else’s employment is either…
It’s been bemusing to me over the last several months, essentially knowing that I was going to get the axe as I watched the panicked reactions from the rest of the staff. I listened one day to a manager who works (worked) at the regional level of my agency go on about how awful this all was to treat people this way and the huge amount of human suffering it was causing. I agreed with her. I did add a little quip that it really wasn’t anything new to me.
I demurred from adding that it was actually very like the covid vax tyranny of a few years ago, the pompous righteousness from on high, the masses screeching for blood, the snide comments coming in from one half of the public, and the emotional support from the other side that amounted to nothing. Then again, in covid all those of us refusing the vax got was a stiff middle finger from our highers and the open condoning of people demanding our children be taken away. Now, the support from the system is palpable, everyone needs to helped to a dignified exit. They need to be as safe as possible from the economic fallout.
I suppose the arch-irony of it though is watching the masses demand my impoverishment with the justification that I (as part of the “Feds”) didn’t care when all those poor folks were losing their jobs over the vax mandates…
I digress though, back to the secretary. Not a single word about all those employees watching who were actually about to lose their jobs and place in society, nope, all forward looking. Apparently, we all need gratitude and humility. Why? Well, we need to be gracious that we are so wealthy and that the economy is so strong and that we live in the most privileged country in the world. In fact, birth rates are down because we are SO wealthy. We need the humility to accept that energy running out, the decreasing quality of food, changes in population, these are not actually issues and we are all just too ignorant to understand that. We also need curiosity and courage. For what one might ask? Why, we need to be curious enough to dig into the facts and understand just how wrong we are about the state of things and how amazing everything is right now. We need courage to embrace progress! Especially the progress brought about by AI! AI is going to change all of our lives for the better! We will all work less and have more stuff! But we need energy dominance! That is what the president needs for us to deliver! And we will! We have more fossil fuels than anyone! All we need to do is DRILL BABY DRILL and we can support all the dozens, nay hundreds, of new data centers to power the AI and bring us to our incredible future! How? We will do it through this amazing new technology, fracking! If you doubt it, you are just too stupid to understand!
Ok Ok, I am paraphrasing but I am paraphrasing. But this really is pretty much the jist of what he said complete with the “values” we need to have.
While some of the actions of the current administration are things I think are a great idea (tariffs, downsizing the government, separating ourselves from our European vassals) my original assessment of our shift to the new administration stands, we traded one dysfunctional and retarded view of the future for a different but equally dysfunctional and retarded one.
What did I reply to my wife? “These are the tail end of the weak men who make hard times”.
HV
@Jeff Russell #3,
Hope all is well where you are and that life is back to normal after the previous year’s storms.
Please consider my initial response as “thinking aloud”. My first thoughts in response.
JR: “sword and shield -> long (two-handed) sword -> one-handed “fencing” swords like rapiers alone.
I also figure metallurgy was not quite as advanced, so shorter swords might have been all that the technology would allow. ”
Scotty: The Britons, Gauls and Celts in general (e.g. La Tène-type swords, named after the La Tène culture (c. 450 BCE–1st century BCE), widespread among Celts in Europe) all used long swords before encountering the Romans.
In all these cases, the short sword people, eventually won. I looked up and now lost the reference which quotes Caesar as saying there were cases of the Gaul’s long swords bending in battle and the warriors having to take time to straighten the blade as best they could.
I think culture was the deciding factor in this example. Roman organization and tactics (used less energy with short swords and covered by large shields) versus the Celts desire for more individualistic combat. When the Roman order eventually broke down, everyone reverted back to the old ways (i.e. more individual combat).
That may be a reflection of energy and not just energy spent on the battlefield. Imagine the energy required to train, drill and equip the forces before the battle was fought. Without a strong, centralized government, the individual combat with longer swords would actually require less energy in total (even though wielding long swords would take more energy on the battlefield).
Firearms definitely changed everything and I’d say was a major reason behind swords becoming lighter. Exception would be the cavalry sabre, all the way through the Napoleonic Age and even up to the U.S. Civil War. Guess who was carrying the extra weight of that sword a lot of the time? Not the human rider.
So I’m thinking both cultural and net energy played a role in the changes. What just popped into my mind are the excellent katana (samurai sword). The katana was somewhat shorter than a long sword and was used for cutting. This in battles where opponents were not wearing plate male and chain mail like in Europe around the 14th Century. I’m thinking culture and energy influenced this again. Japanese were small than the average European and not just because of famines or the general population not getting enough to eat. There were prohibitions against eating meat (religion) and that meant less protein. Lighter weight swords worked better. Also energy used before the battle in developing the technology and craftmanship of the katana swords.
Dear HELIX:
no, it’s not unusual what happened to your wife in the hospital. my late partner, James Swanson, had been in a couple different hospitals, with UCSF being the worst when it’s “rated” the best BUT it’s gotta be because biotech infuses them with money. James was dehydrated and had dried feces on his backside by the time i got there the next morning. i had to fight with the male nurse who got really bitchy about being challenged over his judgement, and was about to claim nurse rights or something and then it was about the nurse.
the doctors weren’t much better and James was in agony and begged me to get him out of there. days later when i finally scheduled a ride and didn’t know whether the family and the hospital would have me arrested when i showed up.
about 4 or 5 medical folks ambushed me when i arrived and tried to get James to change his mind but he was desperate to get out of there. he felt ignored like your wife did and all the hospitals do whatever they want regarding drugs.
James constipated at SF General and they mistook his labored breathing for the death rattle, but it went on for 4 or 5 days and i fed James myself and snuck in ivermectin and fenben and i had to try and get him enemas, which they wouldn’t do so i was there as much as i could be.
he never did or wanted drugs, but against my wishes as well his family’s, they gave him morphine anyway, and that was the end. i knew i’d lost because it shut his whole system down and he wasn’t even eating anymore.
and if you don’t have money, but i hear even if you DO, you’re not treated well. the nurses kept saying how lucky he was to have an advocate and i was horrified because “what if you’re on your own or your family’s working full time???”
i saw the shape of the other poor patients left to drool and die.
it all felt like James’ illness was a bonanza for money and everyone wanted a piece of him. yes, the appointments of caretakers coming in to offer new drugs to cover the side effects of the last drugs and then someone else comes in about the NEW side effects. and your doctors change depending on the emergency room you were admitted to and cannot have collaboration between prior doctors without the current ones feeling infringed upon so they all say, “yes! my colleague’s great!” and Everyone “LOVES” everyone and that’s how they refer you to specialists. are they any good? no matter. they LOVE them because they gave them an extra cupcake once.
i think the medical world another weird scam to make the “caretakers” and visiting volunteers feel good about themselves. everything in the wellness industry seems to make people feel virtuous, except for the patients.
no. if i have my mental capacity i’ll likely starve to death on purpose if i end up incapacitated and cannot care for myself at home.
i used to wanna be Normal People and now i find them horrifying.
erika
@JMG #24 re: Influence of Pikes and Private/Public War on Sword Use
Ahh, that makes good sense, thank you. For some reason, despite knowing about the importance of pike infantry to military history, I failed to make the connection on this particular thread of arms development. I also wasn’t aware that the Landsknechts with their famous zweihanders were specialized in breaking pike formations. I also hadn’t given due consideration to the “publicization” of the right to war as something only state armies had, with corresponding effects on the nobles and their habitual armaments when not called up by the state.
Thanks very much!
Jeff
@Moose & JMG
According to what I’ve read, palentologists and geologists think land bridges connected Eurasia, Greenland, and North America, cutting off the Arctic Ocean from the global ocean. If that was so, I don’t know why the mammals didn’t spread to other continents earlier, but I’m guessing it was because the high latitude regions got a tropical climate in the PETM and Eocene Optimum.
>the cost to cut and sew our core products (woven children’s pants) at U.S. factories is often twice what I pay
Well, we may be headed back to a time when if you want new clothes, they must be made by hand at home, using a pattern, thread and a sewing machine. During the Great Depression, they would make clothes out of empty flour sacks, that got so popular, the milling companies started printing designs on the sacks so people could make their clothes look more purty.
We also may be headed back to a time when it takes two people to keep a household going and there will have to be a division of labor. You focus on this, I’ll focus on that and we’ll meet in the middle.
I dunno, maybe we’ll all just dig in the dirt and wear rags too, while screaming about it all? It’s easier to say someone owes you something than to get up and go get it.
One way or another, globalization is going away, it’s just how it goes and who gets blamed for it, really. It looks like they want to blame Trump for it going away, but it could’ve just as easily happened on Sleepy Joe’s watch.
>Gold is a common hedge during such times
Or there has to be some common reference in the system, so that everyone knows how much they’re actually talking about. It doesn’t have to be anything in particular, it just has to be accepted as valid by your trading partners.
There’s a reason why the gold standard was abandoned all those decades ago though. But maybe like with bell bottoms, or skinny jeans its time has come again at least for a while.
>That lasted until firearms came in
Which was another missile weapon. And now we’re up to hypersonic missiles.
>My question is, has anyone else here had a similar experience, or was this an unfortunate anomaly?
No, I have relatives that have told me stories substantially similar to yours. I’ve just accepted that when I need a hospital, it ain’t going to be there. Or, it’ll be there – but you won’t want to go anywhere near it.
If you need a hospital, now’s probably the time. It’s only going to get worse from here.
Oh, I’m well aware that the Ring Cycle itself isn’t comic. “Expecting Someone Taller” is a fantasy novel wherein a nebbish young British man accidentally runs over a badger, which turns out to be Fafnir and Fasolt’s younger brother who stole the tarnhelm and ring during the chaos at the end of Gotterdammerung, and has been hiding as a badger in the arse-end of England ever since. By right of conquest, the young man is now the new Master of the Ring, and has to restrain the destructive nature of the Ring and avoid the various agents of Wotan, the Rhinemaidens, and Albrecht, who all want the darn thing back.
The book is clever enough in it’s own right, but better when you actually have a slight knowledge of Wagner, which I most assuredly lacked back in high school
Hey JMG
I thought this would interest you, as it is a bit unusual.
Essentially, the MP of the LNP party in Australia, Colin Boyce, has suggested to his colleagues that the best way to get people to stop wanting “net zero” and renewables is to allow them to cause blackouts in major Australian cities. Here is his quote from the article.
Unfortunately you will not change the minds of the wider public in metropolitan Australia until the lights go out.
“It’s a case of let Rome burn for a while and the only way you will make people realise what a fiasco the whole energy system is in Australia it has to come down to practical terms where you simply can’t supply the energy.”
Also, he apparently is part of some climate denialist group called “The Saltbush Club” that is involved in propaganda work of some description, I am unsure if you or anyone else here is aware of them.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/apr/16/let-rome-burn-coalition-mp-colin-boyce-says-blackouts-the-only-way-to-turn-voters-off-renewable-energy
Seaweedy@14 and JMG
It is obviously rubbish that peak oil demand will happen because everybody starts driving electric cars or fairy dust cars or whatever, but there is some thought going into the probability that people will become poorer and not be able to drive as much or at all there by reducing demand. There is also the balance between what consumers can afford to pay and what producers need to make a profit. Current prices are barely break even for fracking., now that “other people’s money” is drying up.. Trumps’ claim that the US can double its production at half the price is ludicrous, not that it keeps a lot of people from believing it.
A friend in England was telling me recently that many young people are not even thinking of getting a car because of the high prices of vehicle, licensing, fuel, insurance, etc. I think it is no longer quite the social symbol it once was either.
my guess is that there are so many factors at play that it will be hard to pinpoint exactly what starts the decline, especially since everyone in the oil, automotive,financial, etc industries and the governments will try to obscure peak supply in order to keep the show on the road for as long as possible.
Stephen
Hollywood is in trouble:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/post-production-los-angeles-music-tax-incentives-1236190752/
It might even become the next Detroit, according to some entertainment professionals.
William, last I checked it’s a hereditary monarchy. You may not like him, but Britain’s had plenty of dunderheads and blackguards on the throne before now, you know.
Clay, hmm! No, I hadn’t noticed that. Interesting that the media added a new word to their 700-word vocabulary. 😉
Tony, not quite. Pick a political party. No matter how much you dislike it — and indeed, this is especially true if you dislike it — there are parts of your personality that correspond to it. They may not carry the same name, but they have the same dynamic. Since Godwin’s Law remains one of the few eternal principles we have left, let’s go straight to the Nazis. All of us without exception have Nazi-like parts of our personality. All of us sometimes want to blame other people for our own deeply personal problems; all of us sometimes imagine that if only (insert person or group here) was erased from existence the world would be a much better place, and so on. That’s your inner Nazi. Being aware of that is not the same thing as joining the Nazi Party. In fact, if you’re aware of that presence in yourself, you’re much less likely to join a close equivalent of the Nazi Party under the illusion that by doing so, you’re fighting fascism…
Douglas, good heavens, yes. All their lessons are now in the public domain and can be downloaded free of charge here:
https://archive.org/search?query=psychiana+lesson
Devonlad, Glastonbury in particular has an energy I find immensely appealing and pleasant; I could easily see myself living there, or anywhere in the county or two around it. I haven’t gotten that same reaction in Wales or Scotland. It was something I had in mind once it became clear that my late wife was going to predecease me by many years. Unfortunately the state of British politics by the time Sara died was such that I regretfully shelved the idea.
HippieViking, thanks for this. Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me.
Jeff, you’re most welcome. The long legal battle to end the right of private war had a huge impact on European societies generally, which I don’t think most people grasp.
Patrick, good heavens, are they back to postulating land bridges again? I thought most of those went out when continental drift came in.
Other Owen, yes, but it takes years of practice to make a competent archer, and a few weeks to make somebody who can follow orders and shoot a musket in volley fire. That’s what made muskets such a revolutionary weapon: you could take thousands of peasant boys, give them muskets and crude uniforms, and turn them into an army that could decimate the other side. That is to say, muskets were the FPV drones of their day.
Calliope, okay, that does sound funny. I may just read that. Thank you!
J.L.Mc12, hmm! Interesting.
Stephen, for the last ten years I’ve been seeing more and more young men hotdogging on bicycles instead of doing the same thing in cars. It strikes me as a very hopeful sign.
Kevin, so they’ve noticed! I’ve been predicting for more than a decade that the west coast of the US will be the Rust Belt of the 21st century, though my money’s on SF rather than LA for the Detroit-equivalent. Once the global economy comes apart and the west coast ports no longer have the economic dominance they once did, I expect huge economic losses all through the three west coast states, and their decline to the kind of fringe status they had in 1900 or so.
Mary Bennet (end of previous post): ” I am reading through the hipcrime blog series about neo-fascism. Am still on part one, but I have one question which is how ever do “back-to-the-landers; hippies; occultists; misfits and cranks” get lumped in with reactionists, monarchists and traditionalists?”
A: Because the Nazis were big into crunchy nature-based pagan stuff, like the Wandervögel.
JMG, in one of your works, I recall you stating that Rosicrucian rituals are (or recently were) still being held in the headquarters of the Philosophical Research Society. For some reason I’ve been having trouble locating this passage again. (I thought it was in “The New Encyclopedia of the Occult,” but apparently no. ) Do you recall which book this was from? Or am I completely misremembering?
“I would be interested in your thoughts regarding the ongoing constitutional crisis in the United States due to the executive branch defying the orders of various courts”
The three branches are in open warfare. Various courts are infringing on the Executive Branch’s right to run its own shop. (Article 2, section 1, “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”
Congress delegated far too much of its power to write the laws and set penalties to the executive branch in order to avoid losing votes and that is being rolled back. (Chevron Deference).
Executive Orders are supposed to be limited to internal organization of the Executive branch, but both parties have been using them to create almost laws, infringing on Congress who is to afraid of losing votes (or having their graft cut off) to say no.
Congress is incapable of passing a budget, much less a balanced one. If they raise taxes enough to do so it’s about a $10,000 a year tax hike for every employed person in the country. But every dollar of spending is precious as it buys votes.
The only thing left of the economy is low wage service jobs (minimal taxes to collect), auto assembly from imported parts, Intel’s obsolete chip fabricating plants, (they just announced 20% of employees to be laid off), and the MIC which produces a mix of obsolete weapons and modern weapons that don’t work.
To that we can add the tech brothers who are making money but the AI is already replacing the lower ranks of that workforce, Hollywood frantically producing endless regurgitations of drivel, and our greatest export, Advanced Swindling Theory, aka the financial sector much of which is devoted to avoiding taxes (carried interest provision and offshore accounts).
So yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s going to go crash thud tinkle tinkle. I think I’ll stock up on canning lids. They were really hard to find during the virus panic. The ones I did find were from (drum roll) China.
On the subject of the Nazis, and the risk posed by the radical left. I have noticed that sacred language is being adopted by them. I recently received communications from a radical left party in my country where a staff member, described something relatively ordinary as “hallowed” work. If this is the latest shift in language, I am worried.
JMG,
My friend has said he is too busy to find sources for any of the individual rafting events right now, and is unaware of anything which discusses the slate of rafting events together; it is a pattern he has observed, and which a number of paleontologists have seen, but which no one wants to touch with a ten foot pole.
On a different topic, I’ve noticed the media here is now starting to talk about how antisemitism is pushing Jews to voting Conservative. Here’s a CBC article on the topic:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/jewish-community-federal-election-antisemitism-1.7511453
I’m getting increasingly troubled, because the CBC is about as close to the mouthpiece of the Canadian establishment as it is possible to get, and is running a ton of anti-Conservative articles because our political establishment leans Liberal, with preference for the NDP over the Conservatives. I hope this isn’t a sign we’ve reached the stage of the game where the Canadian establishment has reached the point where they no longer care to even maintain the illusion their preferred parties are fighting antisemitism. Since there is a strong link in the collective consciousness here between antisemitism and Nazis, this is very troubling to me.
You’ve said before you expect corporate liberalism to transform into Nazis in the near future. I’m really starting to worry that this will happen in Canada while they still hold domestic power….
Patrick,
How does a land-bridge between North America and Asia explain the rafting events into and out of Africa, Australia, India, Madagascar, and various Pacific Islands? Also, is there evidence for it beyond the odd slate of rafting events?
Kimberly Steele, I do the same with the Armenian national anthem.
William, channeling Monty Python: “Well *I* didn’t vote for yer!”
Tag Murphy, for wealthy people who think the world is collapsing, 10-15 pc gold holdings might be reasonable. As we’re discovering, there is no truly safe place to park investments–not land, not stocks, not even milk into babies (they may disappoint you when they grow up!). And there are a million reasons for the world to shift trade away from the US dollar, but none of the alternatives (euros, crypto, some kind of BRICS currency) are ready to displace it at that level. The dollar is dropping something like, 1 pc per year.
JMG,
I recently finished The Carnelian Moon and just wanted to say I enjoyed it very much! I’ve been trying that crystal scrying exercise, too (sadly with no exciting lupine apparitions so far, heh.)
At this link is the full list of all of the requests for prayer that have recently appeared at ecosophia.net and ecosophia.dreamwidth.org, as well as in the comments of the prayer list posts. Please feel free to add any or all of the requests to your own prayers.
If I missed anybody, or if you would like to add a prayer request for yourself or anyone who has given you consent (or for whom a relevant person holds power of consent) to the list, please feel free to leave a comment below and/or in the comments at the current prayer list post.
* * *
This week I would like to bring special attention to the following prayer requests.
May Ron M’s friend Paul, who passed away on April 13, make his transition through the afterlife process with grace and peace.
May Corey Benton, whose throat tumor has grown around an artery and won’t be treated surgically, and who is now able to be at home from the hospital, be healed of throat cancer. Healing work is also welcome. [Note: Healing Hands should be fine, but if offering energy work which could potentially conflict with another, please first leave a note in comments or write to randomactsofkarmasc to double check that it’s safe]
May David Spangler (the esoteric teacher), who has been responding well to chemotherapy for his bladder cancer, be blessed, healed, and filled with positive energy such that he makes a full recovery.
May Giulia (Julia) in the Eastern suburbs of Cleveland Ohio be quickly healed of recurring seizures and paralysis of her left side and other neurological problems associated with a cyst on the right side of her brain and with surgery and drugs to treat it, if providence would have it, and if not, may her soul move on from this world and find peace with a minimum of further suffering for her and her family and friends.
May JRuss’s friend David Carruthers quickly find a job of any kind at all that allows him to avoid homelessness, first and foremost; preferably a full time job that makes at least 16 dollars an hour.
May Princess Cutekitten, who is sick of being sick, be healed of her ailments.
May Pierre in Minnesota be filled with the health, vitality, and fertility he needs to father a healthy baby with his wife.
May Viktoria have a safe and healthy pregnancy, and may the baby be born safe, healthy and blessed. May Marko have the strength, wisdom and balance to face the challenges set before him. (picture)
May Liz and her baby be blessed and healthy during pregnancy, and may her husband Jay (sdi) have the grace and good humor to support his family even through times of stress and ill health.
May 1 Wanderer’s partner Cathy, who has bravely fought against cancer to the stage of remission, now be relieved of the unpleasant and painful side-effects from the follow-up hormonal treatment, together with the stress that this imposes on both parties, and may she quickly be able to resume a normal life.
May Jennifer’s newborn daughter Eleanor be blessed with optimal growth and development; may her tongue tie revision surgery on Wednesday March 12th have been smooth and successful, and be followed by a full recovery.
May Mike Greco, who had a court date on the 14th of March, enjoy a prompt, just, and equitable settlement of the case.
May Cliff’s friend Jessica be blessed and soothed; may she discover the path out of her postpartum depression, and be supported in any of her efforts to progress along it; may the love between her and her child grow ever more profound, and may each day take her closer to an outlook of glad participation in the world, that she may deeply enjoy parenthood.
May Other Dave’s father Michael Orwig, who passed away on 2/24, make his transition to his soul’s next destination with comfort and grace; may his wife Allyn and the rest of his family be blessed and supported in this difficult time.
May Peter Evans in California, whose colon cancer has been responding well to treatment, be completely healed with ease, and make a rapid and total recovery.
May Debra Roberts, who has just been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer, be blessed and healed to the extent that providence allows. Healing work is also welcome.
May Jack H’s father John, whose aortic dissection is considered inoperable and likely fatal by his current doctors, be healed, and make a physical recovery to the full extent that providence allows, and be able to enjoy more time together with his loved ones.
May Goats and Roses’ son A, who had a serious concussion weeks ago and is still suffering from the effects, regain normal healthy brain function, and rebuild his physical strength back to normal, and regain his zest for life. And may Goats and Roses be granted strength and effectiveness in finding solutions to the medical and caregiving matters that need to be addressed, and the grief and strain of the situation.
May Kevin’s sister Cynthia be cured of the hallucinations and delusions that have afflicted her, and freed from emotional distress. May she be safely healed of the physical condition that has provoked her emotions; and may she be healed of the spiritual condition that brings her to be so unsettled by it. May she come to feel calm and secure in her physical body, regardless of its level of health.
May Linda from the Quest Bookshop of the Theosophical Society, who has developed a turbo cancer, be blessed and have a speedy and full recovery from cancer.
May Frank R. Hartman, who lost his house in the Altadena fire, and all who have been affected by the larger conflagration be blessed and healed.
May Open Space’s friend’s mother
Judith be blessed and healed for a complete recovery from cancer.
May Peter Van Erp’s friend Kate Bowden’s husband Russ Hobson and his family be enveloped with love as he follows his path forward with the glioblastoma (brain cancer) which has afflicted him.
May Scotlyn’s friend Fiona, who has been in hospital since early October with what is a diagnosis of ovarian cancer, be blessed and healed, and encouraged in ways that help her to maintain a positive mental and spiritual outlook.
May Jennifer and Josiah and their daughters Joanna and Eleanor be protected from all harmful and malicious influences, and may any connection to malign entities or hostile thought forms or projections be broken and their influence banished.
* * *
Guidelines for how long prayer requests stay on the list, how to word requests, how to be added to the weekly email list, how to improve the chances of your prayer being answered, and several other common questions and issues, are to be found at the Ecosophia Prayer List FAQ.
If there are any among you who might wish to join me in a bit of astrological timing, I pray each week for the health of all those with health problems on the list on the astrological hour of the Sun on Sundays, bearing in mind the Sun’s rulerships of heart, brain, and vital energies. If this appeals to you, I invite you to join me.
When I went to check if there were any replies to the Magic Monday Prayer List entry of this week, I discovered that it didn’t seem to exist at all. Although Dreamwidth does eat things once in a blue moon, my own human error also seems likely. In any rate, apologies and on with the normal way of things next Monday.
@JMG
Apparently, they’ve found fossils of a freshwater fern in the Arctic Ocean. Pop science articles say this shows the Arctic Ocean was a giant freshwater lake during the early Eocene (and that’s what I thought), but Googling it now the actual studies are making more modest claims of a “seasonal freshwater cap” that might not have covered most of the Arctic. That’s their evidence for the land bridge hypothesis, but the After the Dinosaurs book I read was confident of those land bridges before those fossils were described.
Maybe a technological sea-faring civilization was responsible for those mass mammal migrations and the PETM itself.
Speaking of boilerplate coding,
“On Monday, the State Bar of California revealed that it used AI to develop a portion of multiple-choice questions on its February 2025 bar exam, causing outrage among law school faculty and test takers.”
How much of a lawyer’s career is spent stitching together boilerplate contract language and court pleading? AI bait!
Add this thought to my previous posting, judges by definition are members of the PMC. I suspect the majority of them were born into PMC families and so they are increasingly estranged from the rest of us.
Kind Sir,
In your response to Stephen you said: “Since I haven’t seen any significant number of leftwing activists being hauled away by Mephistopheles to a flaming inferno”
I’m not so sure. What does being hauled away by Mephistopheles look like in practice? There have been a significant number of lefty meltdowns that might qualify.
Roy Smith, those are interesting essays. I read Morello’s take as “the Catholic Church has lost its enchantment, so it needs to graft some onto itself from Hermeticism,” like the frog DNA spliced into dinosaur DNA from “Jurassic Park.” Thomas Merton thought much the same thing, but about Eastern religions. Morello points out that Hermeticism has a long Catholic presence, and that even even Thomas Aquinas taught crystal healing (in a manner of speaking)! Well okay, but how is this supposed to work? What specific Hermetic teaching or practice is capable of revitalizing Catholic spirituality? It would be a mistake to approach an organic, living tradition as one would some lines of computer code.
It seems to me that there is a more obvious candidate for such an infusion, namely the spirituality of Orthodoxy and the Oriental churches. It wouldn’t even be a foreign graft, since the Catholic Church already recognizes Uniate groups based around most of them. The Prayer of the Heart has a certain New Age appeal (which Orthodox clergy have been known to decry), and even Anglican theologians share their respect for patristics. Granted, Orthodox politics stink to high heaven, but that’s true all around.
Before any such renaissance can happen, though, the Catholic Church needs to clean house, pedophilia is only the most obvious of a number of deep-rooted corruptions. (The list of religions in need of such house-cleaning is very long.) If the new pope does that, the whole world will scream hallelujah.
There’s been a flurry of fairly reliable reports about a substantial reversal in the decline of people attending church and identifying as Christian in the UK (and other European countries), especially among younger people and especially people joining the RC Church. Is this a second religiosity phenomenon, a pushback against failures of secular liberalism and globalism, or something else?
On the most recent Magic Monday, someone brought up the idea of occult symbolism in the works of Thomas Pynchon. Now that it’s open post, does anyone care to continue that conversation w/r/t Pynchon, or John Crowley, or Sigrid Undset? I’ve made it through the first two novels of “Kristin Lavronsdottir” but I’m having trouble committing myself to read the third. It’s such a soap opera; I feel like I’m reading a Harlequin Romance or something… Just too many adjectives. Too much telling instead of showing.
Ludovic Vigor, congratulations on your forth coming book and on your new substack, which I hope to find time to read soon.
Jim Edwards @ #8, Americans are not going to go on general strike on behalf of international students, who are, fairly or not, seen as taking up positions which their kids ought to have. We. many of us, tend to think that if you go overseas, you takes your chances.
Bradley, the problem with Musk is none of us voted for him. Plus, he bought the Tesla Company, so the image of strong man entrepreneur, a la Andrew Carnegie, is fake.
Just to add to my last comment about peak oil supply/demand.
World wide supply peaked in 2018. Pretty much the only growth since then has been in the Permian, which will peak in the next couple of years. Without getting into the epidemic itself or the treatments, there was sufficient demand destruction from Covid to obscure the supply peak. Not saying there was any connection or not, but I reckon, if peak supply had been acknowledged it would have tanked the markets. Since then there has been the Russo- NATO (Ukraine) war and the strife in West Asia, which I feel has blurred the line between supply and demand and provided a perfect cover should anyone bring up peak supply
Hearing everybody’s horror stories about the US medical treatment, I feel very blessed and/or very lucky. I got a hip replacement a year ago in CA, and received courteous, professional medical care all covered by Medicare and supplement, physio therapy included.Granted the supplement is not cheap. They all took all the time I needed to answer any questions before and after the operation and were friendly and polite. Almost like we experienced treatment on different planets.
Stephen
Hi JMG (and others),
Have you ever looked at or played the RPG Unknown Armies?
It’s a modern occult RPG, one of the things I liked about it, is that of instead of squeezing in Cthulhu equivalents like so many other do, it was humans all the way down, including creating the current, previous and future universes. I’m sure that is very Faustian, but I did like that it had both responsibility and horror (humans being human after all), rather that just punting that responsibility to other forces. Until I encountered your versions of Cthulhu, etc. I was pretty bored whenever they turned up in fantasy RPGs.
Also magic being driven by human obsessions rather than some abstraction like manna.
Thanks,
Drew C
@JMG and Jeff
If I may, I should like to break my long hiatus by adding a few sword points to your discussion.
The first point I usually like to make with regards to this topic is that in the context
of historical warfare, swords were almost always carried as a sidearm, i.e. as a secondary weapon
to back up one’s main weapon, whatever that would have been (a polearm at first, then firearms later,
which were large an cumbersome), very much in the same way a contemporary soldier often
carries a pistol in addition to his rifle. A few exceptions to this were Roman legions, who
used relatively short swords in combination with large shields fighting in tight formation
(after softening up the enemy with javellins first), and the infamous Landsknechte and similar
units of the 16th century who would carry swords the size of a man, called a montante, which
works just as well if you use it as a polearm, and which sported an extra crossguard halfway up
the blade for this purpose (in keeping with the theme, they would carry a small cutting-sword
as backup).
The second point is that none of the developments Jeff asks about took the form of any linear progression
where everyone went from using sword A to suddenly sword B to suddenly sword C etc… In European martial
culture in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries the sheer amount of widely different sword designs
being operational at the same time dazzles the mind. At the same time, shields did not drop out of use,
smaller shields such as the buckler, the rotunda and the targe where in use for quite some time.
The third point to make is that grouping the rapier with smaller thrust-heavy items such as the
smallsword or (heaven help us) the foil, confuses matters more than it clarifies. This is partly
a hangover from the Errol Flynn glory days when cinema would depict 17th century rapier combat, but
with the actors and stuntmen using swords that were much smaller and lighter than actual rapiers (it’s
kind of like watching Dolph Lundgren in that movie where he handles a rocket launcher like it were a
sporting pistol, great fun movie, but still…). A real 17th century rapier is a beastly weapon, up
to 130 cm long and weighing almost twice as much as a saber. It did not come about through any distinction
between military and civillian combat, for the sake of “duelling” or “social-whatever”, and any man
fighting in i.g. a Spanish Tercio (pike and shot warfare) would favour it as his sidearm. Duels were
fought with it also, of course, for the simple reason that one normally uses whatever the sidearm du jour
is for this purpose since the sidearm is what you normally have available when not on a battlefield (at
the same time, the saber was filling the exact same role in eastern Europe, Richard Marsden has written
a good book on the subject).
Instead, how it came to be is through a long process lasting several hundred years, which started from
the basic medieval one-handed sword that you are familiar with, and went from there. As time went on, the
one-handed sword slowly became more elongated, with a thinner blade, while not actually shedding any of its
mass, only redistributing it. This gradual development ran parallel to all the other developments you both
mention, and the key to what’s going on here is that as a general rule of thumb, reach is king, and a thrust
is deadlier than a cut. As pike and shot became increasingly dominant, armour became less and less of a thing
to bother with as it slows you down and won’t stop a bullet. The redistribution of weight to make the swords
longer and pointier followed the process of gradually shedding armour, because when you don’t have to worry
about all the plate armour, you allow yourself to go all in for a design intended to maximise thrust and reach.
Hilts were increasingly designed for better hand protection as the iron gauntlets fell out of use, and by c.
1600 the old arming sword had gradually developed into the rapier, with the sidesword (spada da lato) being
the midpoint in the process.
I’ve heard the rapier described as the deadliest sword ever, and after two decades of studying swordsmanship, I’m
not at all certain how badly inclined I am to disagree. It has one major disadvantage, however: It is practically
useless on horseback, which is largely why it fell out of fashion after the Thirty Years War, when cavalry again
began to assert itself. This brought back the need for swords who can cut. This came first in the form of straight
edge swords with thicker blades, then the saber was adopted from the Polish and the Hungarians.
Getting a bit carried away with the historical details, but the point I wish to make is that duelling has very rarely
taken place in a context isolated from the prevailing conditions of warfare as a whole. The weapons and techniques normally used in duelling are those who are in general use at the given time, and do not exist in a “civilian” vacuum. One noted exception is the already mentioned smallsword, specifically designed for this purpose, and used in a somewhat narrow context. The second point is that swordsmanship was not taken any less seriously as time went on after the appearance of firearms. In some instances it was the other way around, and more often than not, if we do make a distinction between civilian and military swordsmanship, it was the latter who would often draw heavily on the former and then simplify it. An example of this is the British army finally figuring out that it needed to get serious about swordplay in the 1790s (having neglected it for way too long) and proceeding to comb the highland broadsword traditions for techniques, and then simplifying them to create the first British doctrine of saber fencing, published in 1798 by Roworth.
Polecat @ 13, Senator Van Holland is senator from Maryland, the state where Mr. Garcia’s family live. He doubtless thought he was doing his duty by a constituent, and I would like to know where was the other Maryland senator who appears to be MIA? If Mr. Garcia is a person of interest to law enforcement, where is the evidence and why has there been no arraignment? If one of us nobodies make a mistake, we are generally expected to set things right, not just get off with “Sorry, my bad.” I for one am glad to see a member of the senate who remembers his duty to HIS constituents, rather than playing to the living room in Peoria.
Hi JMG—Thank you for your excellent post last week.
You often say that nuclear power doesn’t make economic sense. I’ve been thinking about that recently (discussions here in Europe about whether to classify nuclear as green etc.), and I was wondering if you can recommend any posts/websites/other sources to read up on that.
@Scotlyn #15 – I would frame the question even wider: We have the means to continuously raise fully anonymized, time resolved data about treatments and diseases on an individual level. We have the means to continuously mirror all the data to various places and make them available to the public so that anybody can run their own analysis and ask the data so many questions. All of this is being done, right now, right here, with vast amounts of data of any kind you can imagine and with a wide range of applications. So why does someone in such a position ask such a stupid, narrow and suggestive question like “I want to discover the cause for X”? If it’s not more than this, it will be sad waste of resources and authority. I will be very surprised if this goes anywhere.
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
@ Jeff. Short answer: Complicated economic stuff. Happy to help confuse and annoy you. The Oakeshott typology is a good start for considering pointy things. On metal technology, De Re Metallica and De La Pirotechnia might be worth your attention. I think the halberd and the crossbow are more important than the sword with the big hint being their status as lowly, but cheering for underdogs is a habit with me… so… Three cheers for Brown Bill! Oh, and gunpowder might have had just a little influence on the decline of the sword. You might find the Tannenberg handgonne might be a worthwhile digression.
@ Jim Edwards: Good heavens! Where are you and where are you getting your information?
And many thanks to our host for the opportunity to weigh in.
Rhydlyd
JMG, I have been chuckling all afternoon thinking of the Kamala supporters, who dislike Trumps actions having a general strike. The linemen, construction workers, engineers, truck drivers etc. would ignore it and go to work as usual.
But on the fine morning when the strike went down the tumble weeds would be rolling though the NGO’s and main stream media dens. The DEI departments would be empty along with the graphic arts studios etc.
I think we would survive.
JMG,
King Charles III pissed off a lot of Brits and Christians in the past few weeks by first hosting an Islamic call to prayer at Windsor castle during Ramadan:
https://www.gbnews.com/royal/king-charles-role-islam-ramadan-windsor-castle-royal-news
and then praising Islam during the Easter holy week:
https://www.gbnews.com/royal/king-charles-islam-easter-message-royal-news
The comment sections of British social media and news websites are now filled with calls that King Charles abdicate and/or Britain become a republic, from a lot of conservatives / populists and people who were formerly monarchy supporters under Queen Elizabeth II. I’m not surprised to see this sentiment pop up in the comment sections of your open post.
The whole situation in Britain reminds me of the last time Britain had a civil war on its soil: the Glorious Revolution in 1689. King James II and his government then was under a lot of suspicion that they were going to convert Britain back to Catholicism so anti-King and anti-government forces invited the Dutch to come and invade Britain to overthrow King James II and replace him with the Protestant King William. Today, there’s a lot of suspicion that King Charles III and Kier Starmar are going to convert Britain to Islam, so I’m not surprised that there is a lot of energy building in Britain now to overthrow the King and the British government so Britain stays out of Islamic rule.
On hospitals: my mom, at 102, spent a weekend in the hospital last year following a medium sized stroke that left her showing signs of dementia for the first time. (She had still been driving and living independently at 100.) I saw the line item bill; they gave this 102 year old woman a full body CT scan that cost medicare about 19k. Money well spent? Where’s Elon? I got her out of there as quickly as I could.
@Deathcap #11: There is a DNA test – a methylation test I think it is called, try searching on it – which identifies genetic propensities for requiring more/less than average amounts of certain nutrients and/or the ability to process specific nutrients. Note that the results should be interpreted like astrology – they incline rather than compel. It identified for me that I *probably* need higher than normal levels of B vitamins and folate in my diet (which might explain my love of thickly smearing marmite on bread as a child). It also suggested that I process caffeine quickly and that its effects wear off just as quick, which matches to my experience.
There are some well known British people on social media speculating that King Charles III is a secret Muslim in the past few days:
https://xcancel.com/calvinrobinson/status/1897868029523825053
https://xcancel.com/real_shirelass/status/1897943770512986170
This is fatal to the legitimacy of the British monarchy, who is supposed to be the head of the Church of England and the Defender of the Faith, and it seems very likely that King Charles III will meet the same fate as King Charles I and King James II.
Pierre at the end of last week’s thread requested more information on EMF issues. I was out of town and too late to respond to him there, so I will provide a few links here.
My Dreamwidth page has several articles on various facets of the issue, each with its own set of links: https://sinners4diseasecontrol.dreamwidth.org/
Especially noteworthy is Panagopolous et al.’s description of one important mechanism of harm (voltage-gated ion channels). Because it is quite technical, a friend wrote a summary for the average person, which I posted, but I think it is a bit condescending. The original in all its diffculty is better: Panagopoulos DJ, Karabarbounis A, Yakymenko I, and Chrousos GP (2021) Human-made electromagnetic fields: Ion forced-oscillation and voltage-gated ion channel dysfunction, oxidative stress and DNA damage (Review). Int J Oncol 59: 92; http://www.spandidos-publications.com/ijo/59/5/92
The BioInitiative Report of 2012 covers a wide range of biological effects from EMFs. https://bioinitiative.org/
There is a long history of research on EMF bioeffects, but much of it was conducted in the Soviet Union so it has been easy to rationalize its suppression in the West. The US Navy commissioned one of its officers Zorach Glaser to translate some of the Soviet literature, then in 1973 decided to suppress the matter. Prof. Magda Havas acquired the typed manuscripts from Glaser a few years ago and has scanned and posted them. Her website is here: https://magdahavas.com/ And check under “Historical references” for Glaser’s work among others.
Hi John Michael,
It’s hard to know what’s going on with the oil market. Prices are err, sort of low (not historically), and all that fracking business must be hurting. Have you got any rough insights as to where we’re headed?
Cheers
Chris
About sewing your own clothes.
Lathechuck is kindly taking my dead Kenmore. It may be more valuable than it looks!
So may all those old, mechanical machines. Because they’re mechanical, a non-electronic machine can be converted into a treadle sewing machine. That is, the flywheel moves the needle because the operator works the foot treadle up and down.
The old mechanical machines were built to be maintained and to last. They may have a future.
Sadly, an electronic machine like my Babylock probably can’t be converted even though it has a flywheel. Too much electronics and not enough cogs and gears. Maybe it could just do a straight stitch but that’s valuable all by itself.
“Expecting Someone Taller” by Tom Holt is indeed a lot of fun.
It’s more fun if you know your Wagner.
I reread my copy periodically.
@erika, I am so glad to see you commenting again! And so sad to hear what happened to James. It’s just like what happened to my father a decade ago. He went in for pneumonia, they let him get severely hypoglycemic the first night (but we had evidence one relative that clearly wanted him dead may have been involved), and his organs all shut down after that. It was a miserable, slow death.
Dear JMG,
There’s lots of talk on X about how the GOP congress people aren’t doing anything to enact Trumps executive orders or agenda. Something simple like making English the official language in the USA has seen no action. Forget about something hard like immigration or censoring activist judges.
They’ve been on vacations for half the time since Jan. 20th. Speculation is that most of them are never Trumpers, so they’ll just stall till the mid-terms, and let the Dems get the majority, and then they can say it’s not their fault nothing got passed.. So The grift and fraud continues.
Do you see anyway around this? I don’t think enough MAGA congress people will be elected in two years to help. We might not be able to vote our way our of this.
@HippieViking
Not sure how long you’ve been reading the archdruid, but what exactly did you think the his saying “collapse now and avoid the rush” meant? If i may: Covid was more then a wake up call with regards to how quickly people can turn on each other and be riled up into frothing nazis, it was a financial crisis. Everything that should have been a warning sign from the 08 debacle was happening again. The first tremors were at the end of 2018 when the stock market began to have the vapors. Then powell started to lower rates early 2019, then in the summer he ended QT, then in the late summer early fall the repo market began to blow up again, just like 08. They never fixed the problems from 08. The losses that should have been felt by the upper crust of society was never felt by them, because they were bailed out and rates were set to 0% for a decade. Essentially the people who didn’t take part in the stock market mania were made to pay the tab for the greed and mistakes of others. We should have restructured the economy in 08, that is why a lot of people voted for Obama (even though it was obvious at the time he wasn’t going to do any such thing). My reaction to 2020 was very different from everyone else. It was the blow up i had been waiting for since 08, my position now is much stronger because of this different reaction then the rest of society. My question i suppose to society is: Are you really paying attention? Will you finally take responsibility for your life? Assert your own agency in the world? I can’t help but laugh a bit over people crying about 401ks and the like now. The market doubled from 2019 to 2024, did people think it was going to double again? Do people even understand why it double in the span of five years in the first place? A hint: That was the true purpose of 2020 😉
Dear JMG,
Are you familiar with the spiritual developments occurring in quantum physics? I have been following with great curiosity the works of Federico Faggin among others.
I think I read or heard somewhere that the new era we are entering will see the return of science to the realm of the spiritual and divine, if that is the case quantum physics seems to be leading the way. I would appreciate your thoughts on this.
What do you think about the mystery of the Hibernian initiation ritual? (With the 2 statues, etc)
Ambrose, Hall’s Rosicrucian affiliations are pretty well known. He belonged to Max Heindel’s Rosicrucian Fellowship as a young man, and this was the symbol he used early on:
Later on, his inner circle of students apparently used The Trinosophia of the Comte de St.-Germain as a core text and the Comte’s famous triangular manuscript as the working ritual. The latter may be what you’re thinking of.
Peter, I’m less worried by that. I think it shows how many of them, whether they realize it or not, are getting ready to convert to conservative Christianity.
Moose, thanks for this anyway. I’ll see what I can find. As far as goose-stepping Canadians, well, given the way your government’s cheered on genuine Nazis in Ukraine, I think you may be right to worry.
Jennifer, thank you! Lupine apparitions unfortunately can’t be guaranteed. (Owoo.)
Quin, thanks for this as always.
Patrick, have they considered the possibility of fern fronds being washed into the ocean by rivers or meltwater floods/ I’d check for that first…
DropBear, I’d expect at the very least to see the persons in question no longer among the living. Arrival in Hell usually follows death.
Sam, those aren’t two different things. It’s precisely because the ideologies of each culture’s age of reason fail that the Second Religiosity finds its footing.
Stephen, we’ll see if the 2018 peak is exceeded in the near future. If not, yeah, peak liquid fuels is here. From here on in it’s the decline rate that matters most.
Drew, I haven’t. Anyone else?
Sven, thanks for this.
Demos, not offhand. Anyone else?
Clay, no doubt! My guess is that they’ll never even make the attempt, though. They want other people to strike on their behalf, just as they want other people to save carbon on their behalf.
Anon, interesting. It would certainly be in keeping with British history. I wonder, if that happens, if the House of Windsor will hole up in one of the Gulf states and try to stage a comeback, and future songs will be sung about Bonnie Prince Georgie…
Chris, one consequence of the end of economic globalization is a decrease in the amount of petroleum needed to ship products around the world. One consequence of Trumpismo is a removal of barriers to petroleum drilling. Both those will drive prices down over the short term.
Karl, it’s early days yet, and people said many similar things about FDR early in his term, when federal judges were blocking many of his programs. We’ll see.
Sebastian, no, I haven’t followed that at all — I’ve had plenty of other things on my plate. I’ll take a look as time permits.
Joe, as I’m not a member of that order, I don’t know anything about their ritual — and since I’m not Irish by ancestry, I don’t suppose I’ll have the chance to find out.
I’d like to add my two cents about the state of hospital care these days. Story number one: Last year I had a cardiac cath procedure on my heart and had to stay overnight at the hospital. Confined to a bed, I wasn’t allowed to move for eight hours or else I risked tearing open the incision in my groin (where the cardiac catheter had gone in during the procedure). And because the kind of cardiac cath procedure I had required that I undergo general anesthesia, I was given a urinary catheter. Almost as soon as I was sent to the hospital room, a nurse said it was hospital protocol to remove urinary catheters immediately, because the hospital wanted to lower its incidences of urinary infections. (I have had several surgeries requiring urinary catheters before and this one and this was the first time that a urinary catheter needed to be removed so early after a surgery. )
So I had to lie still in bed for eight hours; meanwhile I was hooked up to an IV tube filling me with saline solution, and after about an hour I had to urinate. I was unable to use a urinal for various reasons and as each hour passed my bladder expanded and expanded and it became more and more painful. And all this because of some stupid hospital infection control goal. I would have rather have kept the urinary catheter in and risked infection. I should have been given the choice. But the hospital’s infection goal was more important than the comfort of the patient, and the nurses treating me were completely indifferent to my misery, reminding me of the behavior of the perpetrators of WW2 atrocities.
Story number two. Comedian Steven Wright told a joke which I will paraphrase: I am going to have an MRI next week to see if I suffer from claustrophobia. My first few times I underwent an MRI procedure, I absolutely did not suffer from claustrophobia. In fact I found the procedures quite restful. During those initial times in the MRI tube, I was in constant communication with the MRI technicians as they gave my directions on when to hold still or hold my breath, and so on. But that all changed after I was referred to a vascular specialist who ordered an MRI of my hands. In all of the previous MRIs I had had, the technician gave me a bulb to hold which I could squeeze if I ever wanted to talk to the technician or if I needed to signal that I was panicking. But for the MRI of my hands, I was not allowed to hold a panic bulb as my hands were strapped across my chest so they would be completely still while the MRI collected its data. In my previous MRIs I didn’t mind that my nose was about an inch from the top of the tube, or that I couldn’t see either of the open ends of the tube. But this time with my hands tied to my chest, I felt like the contents of a sausage.
I asked the technician if he would be able to hear me during the procedure, and he assured me that there was a microphone inside the MRI tube and that he could hear me. The procedure began, and I soon fell asleep. When I woke up, it seemed like I had been asleep for an hour, so I figured that the procedure must almost be over. I asked the technician, via the microphone in the tube, if we were almost done, but there was no answer. I asked again, this time a little louder, and again, no answer. I called out several more times, but was met with silence each time. It was at this point that full panic set in. My imagination began to run wild with thoughts like, “What if the hospital is on fire, and the technicians have abandoned me?” And things became worse when I realized how trapped I was in the MRI tube. I was strapped down so tight in the tube that I would never be able to wriggle out. At this point I began to scream wildly, and still no one answered me on the speaker or came out of the technician room.
After what seemed like ten minutes, a nurse finally entered the procedure room. She didn’t apologize, or explain the silence, but instead scolded me for yelling. I told her to get me out of the tube immediately. I had her un-strap me. I sat up and took deep breaths. A few minutes later we finished the test. I went home thoroughly angry.
When I had my next MRI , a few months later (this time for my heart, so I wasn’t strapped down), after less than a minute of being in the tube, I panicked and wasn’t able to finish the test. Since then, to have MRIs I have to be on a sedative, and I insist ahead of time that my wife sit with the technicians to make sure someone will help me if I panic.
So thanks to the stupid hospital, I now have claustrophobia.
.
Ambrose @ 45, the Nazis may have been into crunchy, back to the land stuff, but that does not mean Americans who like a simple life also are. Is that not some kind of logical fallacy? I read through all three blog posts. Some folks might have TDS, that author has Russia derangement syndrome. I was also previously unaware that this quiet, offbeat corner of the internet where bookish weirdos like me can indulge in intelligent conversation was a subversive influence. The blog author is anti-Catholic as well as opposed to all things occult and Druid but I recall very little mention of the president’s Evangelical and Fundamentalist support, arguably far more important in the coalition which elected him than either Catholics or Druids. No mention of the rabid neocons either, and that, combined with the Russia hatred tells me pretty much all I need to know about him.
I will take this opportunity to remind all that the 8th Annual Ecosophia Midsummer Potluck will be held June 21, 2025 at our house, behind the Charles Dexter Ward Mansion in Providence, RI. Only 59 days to go! Sign up here. I look forward to your presence, and once again, whomever comes from furthest is welcome to stay in our guest room.
After the JMG’s Ring Cycle, I started to watch Wagner on DVD. First was the Ring Cycle by The Metropolitan Opera from 1989, with retrained classical staging. No fat ladys, but the music and voices were great.
The Parsifal is the 2005 Nikolaus Lehnhoff production, where the stage is dominated by a gray concrete Brutalist wall. The battle of the Egos begins!
In the third act, the wall has a large opening from which emerge a set of railroad tracks. The knights are all outfitted with gas masks on the back of their heads. The only thing missing was the sign reading “Arbeit macht frei.” Kundry and the knights all slowly walk into the darkness beyond the opening at the end, leaving Parsifal alone on stage, a leader without followers.
@ Mr. House #79
Sure, the economy in real terms is cratering and has been for a long time. Collapse now and Avoid the Rush? Why that is precisely what I am doing and have been working towards. My wife and I have radically cut our (already frugal) living expenses. We produce a substantial amount of our own food. I have no plans to go back to work in the productive economy in the next several years/ possibly ever. I will work but for our household economy rather than outside it. Am I perturbed that my retirement disappeared in a puff of smoke? Perhaps a little, but then I never expected it to keep existing. I have no money in stocks. I have no 401k or whatever. Indeed, I would say that the collapse happens individually and I have just collapsed myself in an effort to avoid the rush.
As for getting poorer because of machinations in the stock market, I was blessed to be born, like my wife, as the sort of person for whom money doesn’t hold power. Not sure why, but I couldn’t care less. If you put ten million dollars in front of me, my pulse wouldn’t change, I might note it as mildly interesting.. or something and go about my day. For no amount of money, at all, would I be interested in investing in the stock market. For me, it would probably be about the equivalent of telling JMG that he just needed to watch tv for four hours a day and he could be RICH! I’d rather spend four hours a day jabbing myself in the eye with a stick. Glad you made out well though. If you happen to have some money perhaps you ought to think of how to change it into something useful?
HV
@Helix #18 et. al. re hospitals,
A year and two months ago I had an uncommon but instructive experience in a hospital. My wife was there for outpatient surgery for a broken wrist, that had been initially treated at a different hospital a few days before. After prepping her for the procedure, including removing the wrist splint the original ER had put on, a complication arose that delayed the surgery until after another test could be done —that is to say, the next day. As a result she spent the whole day and overnight, 20 hours straight, in a curtained bay in the emergency room, not because there were no patient rooms available but because no administrator was available to process an admission.
We were there and not-there, in an eerie time-suspended liminal way, like the “just visiting” space behind the jail on a Monopoly board. She didn’t need or receive any attention from any doctors, but the place around us was so crowded and hectic (despite it being an ordinary winter weekday) that nothing merely routine was being done for anyone, let alone her. Loud beeping alarms from monitors in every direction went unheeded hour after hour because they weren’t the most important kinds of beeping. Everything about the place spoke of a system that was running on the verge of collapse, and had been for long enough to have become completely accustomed to it.
Secret priorities were in effect. The wildly inaccurate blood pressure readings from my wife’s automatic arm cuff caused no reaction at all, but every time I removed the thing (because its sudden inflation twice an hour startled her out of any sleep she might otherwise have managed) someone hurried over to replace it.
If I hadn’t been there with her she wouldn’t have received any food, water, pain medication, blankets, or (while stuck in bed with an unsplinted broken wrist) toilet assistance. I snuck her the low-grade pain pills the original ER had prescribed her, which I’m certain was against the rules. Despite several requests no one could be bothered to bring a bed pan until I told the nurses she was trying to get out of bed to go to a rest room instead of wetting the bed. Alerted to this urgent need, they immediately brought her… a bright yellow “FALL RISK” wrist band. How useful! But fortunately, soon after, they also brought a bed pan and helped her use it. After that first time, I assisted her with it myself, emptied and cleaned it myself, and guarded it with my life for the rest of our stay. I puzzled out the cryptic controls of her bed (it was a surgical gurney, not designed to be operated by the patient like a regular hospital bed) to make comfort adjustments. I spread my winter coat over her one thin woven blanket for needed extra warmth. Around midnight at shift change time I almost convinced a sympathetic cleaning staffer to bring us an inflatable wrist splint, swearing eternal gratitude and eternal silence, but couldn’t close the deal. If only I’d thought to bring my own first aid kit to the hospital that day…
We were fortunate and I didn’t forget gratitude. No one tried to kick me out over “visiting hours,” there was a curtain between us and the patients being tested for RSV and flu, and after the first eight hours standing someone even found me a chair. The circumstances would have been precarious without me there, but I was, so my wife wasn’t in real medical danger. I wouldn’t have traded her situation for any other patient’s there. But it was a sobering peek into the abyss.
I wrote in a journal a few days later: “This is how one adapts to a system that’s accustomed to running on the verge of collapse. You do for yourself, you take control of what you can, and you put up with what you must, acknowledging that you’re dependent on it. I couldn’t fix my wife’s wrist bones myself, so there we were. Sometimes you have to walk into the belly of the beast and hope for the best. Just try, for the love of all that’s holy, not to be there alone.”
Anonymous (no. 72), King Charles used to do a retreat in Mount Athos every year, in the monastery of Vatopedi. It was widely rumored that he was, in his heart, Greek Orthodox (like his father), and that Elder Ephraim (Vatopedi’s abbot) was his spiritual father. I once made that Peter Sellers joke, that maybe I could use his room at Vatopedi, since he wasn’t going to be there. The reply was that he had his own *wing*.
On the other hand, King Charles had New Age leanings as a young man, acquired via Anglican bishop Mervyn Stockwood and Jungian conservationist Laurens van der Post. More recently, he has supported interfaith dialogue (literally anathema to many Athonites), and mooted the idea that rather than being the Defender of *the* Faith, he would like to be the defender of *all* faiths. Sure, he’s visited mosques, but he’s also visited Sikh, Hindu, Jewish, and Baha’i gatherings. He was even circumcised by a mohel (as an infant), which, come to think of it, certainly removes one obvious barrier to conversion to Islam.
@Scotty #32 re: Culture and Energy Impacts on Sword Length
Thank you for the kind wishes and your response! The long-term net energy angle is not one I had considered, but strikes me as potentially fruitful and certainly on brand for this blog.
As for culture, that’s an area I had thought about a bit more, but mostly edited out for clarity and conciseness given the time-period and region I was focusing on, though you’re right that widening the scope provides some good perspective. I had (stupidly) forgotten about the prevalence of longer swords among bronze and early iron age Celts and their Germanic neighbors, though I had somehow missed Caesar’s anecdote of them straightening swords in breaks in the fighting. For what it’s worth, beyond energy and organizational/training considerations, I also assume that the improving armor of the middle ages would have rendered the once-dominant tactics of the Romans (fight in close order in a shield wall, stab the other guy in the belly, no wild swinging that breaks ranks, centurions yelling at you to remind you of all of this) distinctly less effective.
Anyhow, once again, thanks for these further lines of thought!
Cheers,
Jeff
@Sven #63 re: Development of Swords
Thanks very much for this! I was familiar with some of these details and leaving them out to try to get at the broad strokes (if you’ll forgive the pun), but not with much of it, so thanks for that!
(I’m only about 3 weeks into studying swordsmanship (German Renaissance Longsword), and so far haven’t had a chance to get much into the reading).
Cheers,
Jeff
During the PETM, Australia and the tip of South America were in the process of pulling away from Antarctica, which was ice free at the time. Biologists believe that marsupials evolved in South America and spread to Australia via Antarctica. Africa might have had land connections to Eurasia at the time– I’m not sure. While the scientists seem to be convinced that lemurs rafted to Madagascar and monkeys rafted to South America, they don’t know when it happened. In the case of the monkeys, it happened well after the PETM. India was an island approaching a collision Asia, and it seems to layperson that positing a landbridge there is a bit of a stretch.
Random rafting events are not a viable explanation for lots of lineages appearing in multiple continents at the same time, so palentologists think there must have been equivalents of the Great American Interchange happening during the Thermal Maximum, since the notion of a seafaring late Paleocene civilization disrupting the biogeographical realms is beyond the pale to them.
A quick comment and a few responses.
One of my favorite comments online (another below) was from Reddit this month. Someone was on a tirades about Trump doing this, that and the other, about the money system and “they said this” and “who did that!”. Top comment was “Anyone else wonder where all the insects have gone?” – it is such a wonderful way of cutting through a lot of the noise of nowadays. Keep your feet on the ground and head held up.
@Bradley RE : DOGE.
Personally speaking, there are some valid issues with Doge, but they mostly focus on Elon’s role – particularly the “move fast and break things” nature that is a big fan of. It is style of management that typically gets a lot done up front but ends up with a lot of technical debt that others have to clean up years down the road.
What I mean is, when a new manager comes into a business there are three kinds. The 1st comes in and does nothing of note, is generally gone in no time and few remember them even being there. “Remember Ted?” “Who?”
The 2nd type spends time to get a full grasp of the wider situation and roles in the organisation and then makes deliberate and efficient changes that are targeted and effective. They look useless at first but end up leaving major cultural changes. Tend to promote those that are engaged and drop those that are dead weight. They are rare and it take a lot of gusto to convince others of the plan despite the urge for quick returns.
And there is the 3rd one which I fear is what Elon is. They come in, guns blazing, saying we are doing all these things, my way or the highway, GO GO GO! Quick action, quick results but then leaves things in an absolute mess. But some of these folks can be teamed up with the 2nd type where bold ideas get executed these things with precision. Maybe Elon has this but from the outside it is impossible to tell. Trial by media is a game in futility.
With that, I am completely behind the idea of DOGE but the execution hasn’t been without faults.
The counter argument to that is, the go slow and steady also hasn’t worked out great either and has allowed the bloat to accumulate up to this situation. Sometimes you have to move fast otherwise a sense of immunity can build up to the cuts and bloat can be retained/hidden.
There is also the double functions of their actions. Yes, they are removing a lot of overhead and bloat but this is also being directed exactly benefit of Elon and his businesses. There was a real risk that he was heading into major issues with his companies, and was actively being investigated by many US government agencies. Those issue have vanished since DOGE have actively dismantled any part that was investigating him. Elon is using this as a mutually beneficial transaction. Think of him like a parasite that causes a rash but also cures your cancer.
Many folks are desperate for him to have some sort of fall as revenge, I don’t think it will come in any significant fashion. My guess is that the best they will get out of him is that in about a decade or so when a lot of his business ventures have stalled out due to lack or results and the general decline of industrial society, he will skip out to some country friendly to him with as much wealth as he can keep. Don’t take that too seriously, just a shoot from the hip idea.
I have not been a fan of Elon’s personal/business ways for a very long time, he is a peddler of a Tomorrowland future that can never be delivered and has sucked up an obscene about wealth for himself in the process. But that is not surprising, someone was always going to latch onto that vein of desperation of people clamouring for the future they were promised.
But it has been wild seeing him become the target of what I call ‘The Machine’. That thing the mass media does in focusing on a single person, typically a white male, as being the focus of the directed rage. That is every 6 to 12 months, they need a villain to focus the outrange of the masses. This time it is Elon, in the next cycle it will be someone else. I am intrigued to see if there is lasting damage to his reputation or if this is just a passing storm. The mistake that he made was being the public face of a billionaire in politics rather than others that flex their power quietly behind the scenes.
I also suspect this is because Elon and Trump are the only two billionaires now that show any kind of personality greater than drying paint. Most of them are just the most bland folks and people aren’t used to them having any form of personality even if flawed.
@Siliconguy. I would say the Tariffs as they are shaped now won’t work, at least not for direct economic means. I suspect a big part of them is Trump flexing that they are willing to be much more pro-active about the economy than any other government. It is a show of intent. This doesn’t mean tariffs cannot work.
The best solution I could think of is incremental tariffs. Goes up 10% every 6 months and then caps out at 300% in 15 years time. It means customers aren’t immediately slugged with the huge cost swings and it give plenty of incentive for manufacturing to be ramped up locally. By the time they are at 100% tariff, there has been 5 years to get up to speed. 10 years till 200% etc. Gradual but with a clear message on how the future would play out. It is also one of those things that when the democrats came back into power, they would be seeing the huge cash flow and be much less inclined to roll them back. They may not say it but I suspect there are many of them that are secretly loving what has gone down.
Related, my favourite comment online of the last few weeks comes from ‘Hacker news’. Because it is a den of the true tech believers who have benefited from the existing structure, they have become ignorant of their privilege. It was all about the Tariffs and the impact on the economy. The Casandra like comment was “How is that services based economy working out?” *mic drop* The commenters where not happy at all! How dare they speak the unspeakable! 🙂
@Stephen/JMG re : Cars in England. It was on the motor head TV show ‘The Grand Tour’ a few years back highlighted that new drivers licenses have declined from a peak of 40,000 a month (week?) down to only 4,000 over the last 50 years. The trend while not showing up in car sales yet is clear, long term it is a dying industry.
@60 Mary Bennet
Back in 2020, I voted for Biden, not for whoever was actually running the country the past four years in place of Dementia Joe. After the extent of Biden’s cognitive decline became known to even diehard liberals in their echo chambers, the party insiders chose an unpopular, incompetent DEI candidate who had not received a single vote in the 2024 primaries.
So since both parties give unelected officials a lot of power, I’m not going to get worked up about Elon Musks’ grifts.
@Milkyway #23,
I visited Stonehenge 11 months ago. To say that this place was touristy would be an understatement. There were huge crowds, shuttle buses, and very modern displays with some superficial information on the subject. There were guides reciting learned texts with no shred of interest or curiosity. The stones themselves were fenced. I could not get near them, let alone touch them. Glustonbury Tor (visited 11 months ago also) was much more peaceful. I walked on a nice trail to get there. There were no crowds, buses, displays, or tour guides.
I want to express my deepest gratitude to John-Michael, Quin, and the Druid community for the blessing of my name on the healing prayer list and for all healing thoughts, for me and for everyone on the list.
JMG, thanks and yes! I do remember you writing about the triangular ms. in connection with the PRS. After some looking around, I found your original write-up–it is in the entry for “Hall, Manly Palmer” in the “Element Encyclopedia of Secret Societies.” (I had been searching the various entries in your New Encyclopedia of Occultism.”)
For the commentariat, came across this wonderful three part piece about “The End of Truth and Death of the Modern Age”
They waive a wonderful tapestry starting in 2nd century Alexandria thru Martin Luther, alchemy the rise of sciences and the “misenlightenment” on up to the materialism of the 20th century.
It feels like a condensation of many of JMGs writtings in a summary of the predicament of our times.
If you have a half hour, I would recommend a gander at this.
https://substack.com/@salomonsolis/p-161123228
“Heresy, evidently, isn’t a passing trend created out of 4chan servers by meme-wielding trolls.”
Sebastian #80
I recently read Faggin’s Irreducible as part of a project comparing occult metaphors. Overall it seemed as though he was laying groundwork and presenting ideas in a way as to not scare off the materialists. I had hoped to find some hint of practical application but concluded that was not the book’s purpose. Having seen an interview of him he seemed quite ‘sparky’ – do you know if he has written or spoken on any practical application of his theory rather than just from an academic perspective? i.e. Has he applied his theory in practice?
@Jeff
If I might encourage you to take a look at the sword type the Naue ii https://www.bronze-age-craft.com/naue_ii.htm.
In use for 700+ years. The design transitioned from the bronze age to the iron age. It is, in a sense, the original cut and slash sword and it was as long as a medieval arming sword. Predates the Kopis. It may have been developed by the early Alpine cultures and caught on from there. Dozens of cultures used this sword design, from Rhaelians to Greeks, Germans and so on- there are tons of examples of it. Studying its history and the archaelogical record of it encouraged me to rethink some ideas I had about sword use and development. It is one of the most beautiful and straightforward sword designs. The riveted hilt to the tang for example makes alot of sense from a blacksmithing perspective…I am going to make one out of steel. How much did sword making really progress/develope past the naue ii design is the question i have been asking myself.
Saul Goode posted at #365 on last weeks post
Not sure if the posting window for replies to that post remains open, but that is most interesting:
***
Looking at the links below does the UK continue to exist?
Collectively a society can only provide for it’s needs (infrastructure, services, etc) if it has a surplus of production, so how can they live?
The only exceptions we have seen are enterprises such as the City of London and wealthy individuals who own or control sufficient capital.
What can they do to fix their problem or as JMG might ask, how can they best mitigate the national predicament?
“When all else fails they send us to war” together with “hope” (the one remaining evil in Pandora’s jar) that somehow the Ukraine itself or the vanquish of Putin might might yet provide some resource that would help.
Balance of trade chart (imports v exports) 1970 to 2025
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/GBR/united-kingdom/trade-balance-deficit
UK energy trends chart (pdf) 1998 to 2024
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67e4f62cf356a2dc0e39b522/Energy_Trends_March_2025.pdf
***
A discussion we’ve been having here at home is why did the main political parties adopt the apparent cause of 0.5% to 1% of the population who also seem to be very misogynistic. We concluded the establishment must be behind it and desire it but could not think why.
JMGs comment at #261 last week:
“I see the embrace of wholesale misogyny on the part of the British Left as part of the process by which they’re preparing to convert to Islam.”
And Anon this week #69 & #72 on has King Charles gone Muslim…
Whilst the aristocracy might not be the sharpest of knives in the drawer, they can afford the best advice – perhaps they have realised the predicament that the UK is in and all of these seeming unrelated things actually indicate a pattern – certain of them are preparing to abandon what appears to be a sinking ship?
The story of Vortigern being ‘held by his cape’ by Hengist while the other Britons were massacred and surviving by doing a deal with the Saxons strikes me as a shift in time and echoes of patterns… betrayal after betrayal… Charles Windsor turning to Islam as a way to save the family bacon (pun not intended) would be about par for the course and misogyny being engendered would fit with the modern attitudes of the religion of peace regarding women.
Then throw in Robert Mathiesen’s #363:
“Maritime trade relations between Russia and England go as far back as the late 1500s, by way of the Russian port of Arkhangel’sk in the White Sea.. This was also when the idea of a great British maritime empire first took root in England. It was the famous mage, John Dee who first presented Queen Elizabeth I with a detailed plan for a future British maritime empire. It may be significant that John Dee’s son, Arthur Dee, served as a physician to the then Tsar of Russia, Michael I, for about 14 years during the first half of the 1600s. So the English-speaking world has had designs on Russian resources for about four centuries now. ”
If the plan to dismember Russia and steal resources has gone pear-shaped as a result of the last three years and the ongoing destruction of Perfidious Albion’s proxy armies, maybe the Islam angle for Charles III is ‘Plan B’ 😉
…gives the makings of an entertaining story to my mind.
Hopefully just an extravagant imagining!
Hi John Michael,
Ah, that makes a lot of sense. It’s that demand destruction rearing its head again. Don’t you reckon it’s funny how there are self correcting aspects to all of this stuff? Still, I get the impression that the economy can’t abide high oil prices above say $70/barrel, and the fracking mob apparently struggle making money at that price point. Perhaps it’s a good use of reserves and catabolising of infrastructure and capital? Who knows. Way back in 2005, I read about peak oil, but had a naïve understanding of how it would play out, although things are definitely not peachy out there in economics land. Watched a guy in a very large European SUV try and scam a $100 of fuel the other day, so community responses are weird and varied.
Now, err, we’re into a federal election cycle down here (which is thankfully short). Should all be done early next month. Anywhoo, another dirty little secret was released today. I’m absolutely filthy about this one because I was unable to attend the funeral of an old friend during the health subject which dare not be named, mostly because there were very strict limits on funerals (and things were worse here on that front than anywhere else – lucky us!). Thought you might be interested in this one… Victorian ambulance union defends paramedics after secret COVID-19 funeral gathering revealed. My dislike is palpable.
Deep breath, serenity now! 😉 On a lighter note, I forgot to mention to your readers last week in the talk on blogs (because I totally forgot), that we’ve been running a YouTube channel for about a year now. Every week there’s a brief 5 minute or less video showing some of the work which goes on around here. Drop by and say hello folks: Land of the Wombats.
Cheers
Chris
>My question i suppose to society is: Are you really paying attention? Will you finally take responsibility for your life? Assert your own agency in the world? I can’t help but laugh a bit over people crying about 401ks and the like now.
And that’s why I don’t want anything to do with trying to fix what’s breaking right now. The root cause is the reserve currency. If you were to ask the public which do you want – Zero deficits or a reserve currency? I suspect the answer you’d get back from the public (the ones who can understand the problem) is “Is there some way we can have both?”. Yeah, and that’s why my palm and face are united.
As far as 401k’s go – those things were always a scheme, a scam, a way to convert people’s salaries into boats and hookers for Wall Street. Nothing inherently wrong with boats or hookers IMHO, but I’d rather not donate to someone else’s boat-and-hooker fund. The moment you contributed to a 401k, that money was already gone, never to come back. Not that real pensions are in much better shape. So many empty promises.
Tag,
Thank you for bringing up the issue of gold. I’ve been advocating for this community to park whatever extra money it might have in gold for the last 18 months. I don’t think I’ve been a broken record about it; I’ve mentioned it exactly twice, year-over-year. Blessedly, I took my own advice that same 18 months ago, and have enjoyed watching the value of my little pile move north every month since. Added to it yesterday on the dip actually! Good day.
I think one of the most important things to recognize here is that the Bank of International Settlements reclassified gold as a Tier I asset first of 2023, on par with the dollar and U.S. treasuries, and immediately the world’s central banks started dumping massive quantities of dollar holdings for gold. I simply followed what the big money was doing. And I expect gold to be revalued higher, probably much higher, at some point in an effort to balance the world’s trade accounts. (Telling that the U.S. holds its gold in a “Revaluation Account!”)
I know the whole idea is quite foreign to a lot of folks, but if you want to have any purchasing power left by the 2030s I’d certainly consider buying some of that so-called barbaric metal! (And read G. Edward Griffin’s classic “The Creature from Jekyll Island.” Fascinating book.)
Cheers.
@Scotlyn re: Autism
I said as much in the last post’s comments: Autism is a trashcan diagnosis: it’s a whole bunch of different disorders grouped by a vague set of kinda sorta similar symptoms. ANY serious attempt to pin down a cause, or find a ‘cure’ is going to have to start by splitting that diagnosis into a dozen or more *much more specific* diagnoses. As autism is currently defined and diagnosed, it is not possible to research causes because it’s likely multiple causes and multiple disorders. It also screws with things like funding for programs, because as our current admin helpfully points out, something like 26% of diagnosed autistics are in the “profoundly disabled” category who need fulltime caregivers for life, etc., but then we go around saying people like Musk are “autistic”– and this seriously muddies the waters. Back in 2013 when Asperger’s got lumped into “ASD”– that’s when we stopped trying to figure this out. Before that, there was some movement to try and differentiate between “the autisms”. And then… ended. Why?
Even among high-functioning people who can answer questions about subjective perception and internal states, there’s a huge amount of variation. My husband and I are both “on the spectrum” and I do not think we have the same thing, whatever it is. We have similar habits and outward difficulties, but mine are clearly downstream of sensory distortion and lack of critical sensory filtering mechanisms. He has *none* of those problems. Likewise, I’m kind of an anomaly in my family– it doesn’t seem to be genetic, whatever it is. But husband: strongly heritable. His dad, his grandfather, our son, all very similar. And none of us have much of anything in common with the poor headbanging kids.
Some years back, there was a book by Olga Bogdashina… Sensory Perceptual Issues in Autism and Asperger Syndrome. She argues that while we define Autism by *behaviors*, there’s a core element of altered/damaged/dysfunctional/abnormal sensory perception that can be tested for, and may be universal, or even *causal* in autism. I think she’s partly right, and that she nailed down something very important… and I think she’s also partly wrong in that not all autistic people seem to have these issues, and among those who do there’s huge variation in degree, and in what sensory modes are affected. And abnormal sensory perception itself is likely downstream of other things: neurological damage, interrupted development at critical stages… which can be caused by any number of things.
All that said, I think if our health officials concentrate their efforts on the regressive/profoundly disabled category of autistic, it’s possible they might get somewhere. I’m hoping the reason rfkj promised answers “by September” is that he knows the answers are already there in the unreleased research data, and now it’s not even an investigation, just an editing/collating/publishing project. That timeline wouldn’t make any sense if the goal were to *do the research and find out*. It does make sense if the research has been done already and suppressed. We’ll see.
@clay (post 68) and @jmg
spot on!
I think this has been summarized by the recent David Brooks op-ed calling for an uprising (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/opinion/trump-harvard-law-firms.html) . He is a clueless person and part of a class that has not read the room.
Matt Tiabbi had a hilarious piece on this (https://www.racket.news/p/in-highest-comedy-david-brooks-arch) (this may be paywalled).
But I’ll share the closing paragraph:
===
Maybe it will be time for a “civic uprising” sometime soon, but advice to future elites: make sure to use some of your metis to remember that there is no such thing as a non-aristocratic aristocrat. When things go bad in the real world, neither boots, socks, nor a ponytail will dull public anger, at all. Pretending to not be an asshole is a surefire route to being taken for one, a tough position to be in when you suddenly need a crowd.
===
Good times!
Jerry
@Jim
As far as I can tell, more than half the electorate put the current guy in office to do *exactly* the things he’s doing right now. I’m not sure who’d be doing a general strike: perhaps the managerial class? The problem is, we apparently have been overproducing those for a very long time, and there aren’t enough jobs for all the hopefuls we’ve been awarding very expensive degrees to… so I think there are large numbers of qualified job-seekers out there who’d be absolutely thrilled to see a general strike in that sector. They’ve got some student loans to service.
Otherwise, Americans mostly approve of these actions. If the more recent polls are to be believed, the people who hate Trump the most are largely boomers over age 70, so they’re retired anyway and don’t have the ability to go on strike.
Greetings all!
JMG wrote: “Unfortunately the state of British politics by the time Sara died was such that I regretfully shelved the idea.”
Can we have a very brief comment of where you think the UK is heading in the coming years? For you to regretfully shelve the idea of moving to Glastonbury sounds quite ominous for the UK.
Regards and Thanks!
Thought folks might enjoy this article on mkultra and historical efforts in government mind control (https://stylman.substack.com/p/mkultra-the-hidden-hand-part-1-the ). This is envisioned as a four part series (with the mkultra stuff as background), so I’m interested to see where it’s headed.
Peter, thanks for this.
Patrick, and yet a seafaring Paleocene civilization is far and away the most parsimonious hypothesis — it explains all the anomalies very readily, without having to postulate all kinds of convenient land bridges that then vanished without a geological trace. It would be interesting to see whether close comparison of the biogeographical anomalies of our period to that of the PETM would show common features not found outside of other greenhouse-event periods…
Michael, that’s very good news. Britain is small enough that US-style car culture never really made sense there anyway.
David, you’re most welcome. I hope things are going well for you.
Ambrose, you’re welcome. I have a copy of the triangular ms., by the way — Adam McLean reprinted it a while back. It’s a fascinating document.
Michael, thank you for this.
Earthworm, Britain’s in a very difficult situation at this point and it’s far from sure it’ll be able to get out of it.
Chris, delighted to hear about “Land of the Wombats”! As for demand destruction, one of the fascinating things is that it’s not just the price of oil that’s driving it. Everything is becoming more expensive, partly via knock-on effects of energy prices, partly from depletion of other resources, and partly from the oversupply of parasitic regulation and bureaucracy. It’s definitely helped me refine my models.
Jerry, ha! Thanks for this.
Karim, that’s not the issue for me. The issue is simply that Britain these days has very broad “hate speech” laws and a lot of people are being arrested for what seem, by US standards, to be innocuous social media posts. Since I very often take controversial stands on political issues, I don’t want to have to constantly police my blog and journal posts with an eye toward whether some minor bureaucrat in Whitehall might decide that something I wrote counts as “hate speech.”
Paul, thanks for this.
Hi John,
First of all, thanks for starting on A Vision next. I have fished out my copies and have started the reread.
As a topic for a new post, would you consider a post on divination/prophecy, with automatic writing as a focus. I am assuming that automatic writing is in fact a form of divination. What are the sources of the messages (spirits, the subconscious, god)? How do you test the spirits? Why can’t we use divination to predict the lottery nos? 🙂 What kinds of questions should be asked? etc.
I have heard of a person who when asked a question, replied with the first thing that came to mind, and generally answered correctly. Is there a similarity here to automatic writing.
Thanks,
Kevin.
@Hippieviking
“As for getting poorer because of machinations in the stock market, I was blessed to be born, like my wife, as the sort of person for whom money doesn’t hold power.”
Then you and i are kindred spirits sir! I have the exact same “problem” 😉
In my opinion people who do not get “excited” about money should be the only people running for any kind of office. Much harder to be corrupt if money doesn’t excite you. Also if i came across as harsh in anyway i apologize, that was not my intention. I’m glad to hear you aren’t troubled by recent events, and that you are well on your way to “avoiding the rush”! Someday the readers here will need to actually meet in person, perhaps the Archdruid can have a retreat of some sort in the woods and let kindred spirits meet. That is our largest weakness, scattered all over this country and world, only communicating via internet.
“As far as 401k’s go – those things were always a scheme, a scam, a way to convert people’s salaries into boats and hookers for Wall Street. Nothing inherently wrong with boats or hookers IMHO, but I’d rather not donate to someone else’s boat-and-hooker fund. The moment you contributed to a 401k, that money was already gone, never to come back. Not that real pensions are in much better shape. So many empty promises.”
Couldn’t agree more, and i’d add one bit. They were made to hold the public hostage to the desires of wall street. And now we suffer a sort of stockholm syndrome! Also i agree with regards to the reserve currency, a depressing thing when you come to the realization that collapse is the only solution. Thank you for the response sir!
JMG,
I recall you mentioning at one point that you had your eye on several countries where your royalties would enable you to gain residency or citizenship. Would you be willing to say which countries on that list you think might remain reasonably safe and stable through US decline? Thank you!
to Patricia A. Ormsby #73
Thanks much for sharing/listing those EMF resources.
Pierre
@HippieViking
I have nothing to add, but I always appreciate your commentary, and particularly this sort of inside view, into spheres otherwise opaque to me. This is fascinating.
First off, hello to both JMG and the commentariat, and hope those of you who observe it had a happy Easter. This week I’d like to ask you to elaborate on the idea of “earned” and “unearned” wealth, from the perspective of the traditions you follow. Maybe this is one of those “it’d take a full post if not a book” questions, and I’d love to see both, but in the meantime I’d very much appreciate the short version.
At first glance the idea is obvious, but the more I ponder it, the more uncertain I become. Especially when we leave the clear-cut examples and get into the edge cases. Is earned wealth (in our societies) simply any paid, legal work? But as you’ve pointed out yourself in The Wealth of Nature, and others like David Fleming and William Catton have detailed too, pretty much everything we do in modern industrial society could be seen as a windfall from burning fossil fuels. Our whole culture is arguably built around unearned wealth, and even the lower classes benefit from it compared to people in most other times and places. That makes the whole concept feel distorted and hard to judge as part of that society, unlike earlier times when people either did tangible work producing physical goods and services or were aristocrats.
Or as commenter HippieViking put it above at #31: “I’m under no illusions that my job is actually necessary to anything in the grander scheme. Then again, I’m under no illusions that anyone else’s employment is either…”
So what are the implications of this for the wealth obtained by the people working in all those jobs? Especially when they themselves might see what they do as hugely important and meaningful, even if it’s mostly manipulating abstractions and paperwork? Even worse, what about jobs many of us would agree are actively harmful, like advertising, designing addictive videogames, or clearcutting forests? Does the wealth from all those activities count as “earned”? How about the stock market? The salaries of CEOs, high-powered lawyers and Congresspeople, who do (claim to) work hard and a lot of hours, even if what they do is of questionable value to society? Or is the idea more along the lines that wealth is legitimate and earned as long as obtaining it takes genuine effort, skill and the willingness to endure discomfort, regardless of moral judgements?
As a bonus question, it’s fair to say I’m someone who’s benefited from a fair amount of unearned wealth in my life, by any definition. That’s one reason I find myself pondering this topic a lot. What would you advise to deal with the karmic implications of this?
As always, thank you for hosting this space and for answering our questions.
Mary Bennet (no. 84), Mulligan is anti-Trump and generally leans Left. He writes:
–quote begins–
Let’s start with those [JMG] quotes I listed above: Kamala is a “DEI hire” and her campaign is a “dumpster fire.” Those are the exact quotes verbatim. I’m going to be blunt here, but that is some racist f***ing s***. They also happen to be the Trump/Republican talking points du jour, which tend to creep into Greer’s writings a lot lately.
He also says the Harris/Walz campaign is incoherent (or agrees with that, anyway). Really? He writes this just days after Trump waxed rhapsodic on the size of Arnold Palmer’s junk. Has he not heard Trump’s rambling and incoherent speeches about electrocuting sharks, or whatever?
—quote ends–
I agree that Mulligan ought to have hesitated before throwing around words like “fascist,” but don’t get the sense that he would be opposed to enviromentalism in general. He sees magic, peak oil, Spengler-philia, etc. as aspects of a dangerously romantic irrationality to which the Republicans–like the Nazis before them–appeal for support. The essay reads a bit like a long list of complaints about goth kids or Juggalos or something. The fact that JMG is not really a Trumpian goes unacknowledged.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818117300723
The above has a map of the configuration of the continents at the PETM. It’s in section 3.1. The northern hemisphere was still pretty well connected. South America was doing its own thing with the terror birds.
And this plan would seem to be at odds with solar panels,
“Experiments to dim the SUN in bid to curb global warming will be approved by the UK government within weeks”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14638689/Experiments-dim-SUN-curb-global-warming.html
But it seems they have chosen their savior.
“The UK government aims to quadruple its offshore wind capacity by 2030 as part of its net-zero carbon goals.”
https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Wind-Power/The-UK-Is-Doubling-Down-on-Wind-Energy.html#:~:text=The%20UK%20is%20expanding%20its,its%20net%2Dzero%20carbon%20goals.
Patrick @ 94, as someone who did not vote for the current president nor his immediate predecessor, I am afraid I am a bit unimpressed by the kind of argument which states it is ok for me the rob a bank because someone else did so.
Most of us do have standards for our personal conduct, no matter what the neighbor might do. That is part of adult life and responsibility. Those two words, ‘adult’ and ‘responsibility’ are precisely what I see lacking among the present gaggle of clowns in DC. I recently saw reports that former DC officials are going to be running for elected office all across the country. Get that garden planted before the commissar in charge of “Public Health” decides you can’t have it.
@JMG
In your recent post about Yeats, I asked you about affirmation and visualisation – as it was an off-topic question, you answered it very briefly, in that you said that they do work very well, when used for realistic objectives and as part of a wider strategy towards accomplishing these objectives, rather than being the strategy itself. Now since this is the open post, I’d like to ask you about some more details, as in, if there are any specific methods you could recommend for visualization and affirmations, especially methods which do not involve ritual worship or “serious” occultism. While I do agree that these two are also a type of occult practice, they’re much “lighter” than the rituals and methods that usually come to mind when we think of the word “occultism”; so, could you recommend any solid methods of such variety that you know of? Can writing things down in a notebook daily be a helpful method? If yes, how do I convert it into a visualization/affirmation? I prefer to write things down over deliberating things over in my head alone, as the former brings a lot more clarity to the thought process; so I’d really appreciate any advice on turning this into a visualisation/affirmation exercise as well.
Greetings John-Michael, and everyone else. Long-time lurker (decades), and this is my first post, so I’ll first say many thanks to our host for this website.
I had two questions – first, I seem to recall that you posted a (brief) discussion, somewhere, about comparing systems of decision-making among small groups – consensus-based, versus majority-rule (?), with observations that both had advantages and disadvantages. Do you know where that was?
My second question is related – do you have thoughts on Instant-Runoff Voting, and similar systems? I admit, on first glance, I’d have thought IRV was a pretty good idea. But Alaska had it, and it trying to get rid of it, after a process-failure last election, where the “worst” candidate won. And other states seem to be pre-empting it happening in their state.
Many thanks. JPC
One of the things that the Musk detractors seem to ignore is one of the main purposes of DOGE. In his first term Trump faced an organized assault from the Democrat Establishment in Washington in the form of Russia Gate, Mueller Gate, etc along with an organized law fare attack in the courts once he was out of office. To help prevent this in his second term Trump used DOGE to defund this shadow money laundering operation that was embedded in the likes of USAID, NED and even the EPA that funded these deep state shenanigans. This is why some seem puzzled by the furious pace of Elon uncovering the Financial Rackets that had been set up to thwart him.
It is not some vague data stealing schemes by the Russians, or Vague accusations of canceling medicare that really got the Dems to crank up their armies of Tesla Vandals and elderly street protestors. It is this defunding of their money laundering operation that really has them riled up. But interestingly they never seem to wave signs that say, ” Elon is stopping us from stealing from the Tax Payers.”
@Rhydlyd #67 re: Sword Development
Thanks for these as well! I had purposely left out disruptive technologies (like guns, but as you point out, also polearms and crossbows) in trying to focus on “to the degree swords were still used, what drove their changes?” though, of course, as you and others have pointed out, the conditions under which they were used changed quite a bit due to such changes, so that may have been an unhelpful simplification.
Anyhow, once again, thanks much!
Jeff
@Ian Duncombe #100 re: Swords and the Naue ii
Thanks very much for this! I likely had encountered this design in passing in various reading I’ve done, but I’ve never taken a close look, and it sounds like it might be worthwhile to do so.
Cheers,
Jeff
Hello JMG and Michael Gray,
When I visited Britain about a year ago, I noticed that public transportation was much more popular there than where I live (San Francisco Bay Area). Buses were full in Southern Britain (where I spent a lot of time), even during the day and in the middle of nowhere. Another thing that grabbed my attention was that people were wearing normal watches. Makes sense if you are doing grocery shopping and know that the bus will not wait for you :)). Where I live, it’s either an Apple Watch (annoyingly beeping in the middle of a conversation) or a cell phone for time. My guess is that collectively San Francisco Bay Area will have a very hard time collapsing.
Re: PETM and the Saurian Hypothesis
Academic paper on the topic by some astrophysicists:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-astrobiology/article/silurian-hypothesis-would-it-be-possible-to-detect-an-industrial-civilization-in-the-geological-record/77818514AA6907750B8F4339F7C70EC6
Which was discussed in the Atlantic:
https://archive.ph/QWlRM
They talk about the chemical similarities with our own fossil fuel use. The oxygen and carbon isotope ratios look the same. But, they see the timeframe as mostly too long. Although, they concede the possibility that a short lived civilization could have initiated a climate change that then had positive feedback loops continuing after it’s demise. They don’t discuss the species rafting.
But, there is another possible similarity. The wonderfully named Eocene Layers of Mysterious Origin, was a lesser PETM a million years later. Mapping that onto our own situation, Homo Sapiens could cause the Anthropocene with industrial civilization, die out, and then be replaced by another primate that evolved along the same path a million years later, say a still intact population of Homo Florensis (the dwarf hominids or hobbits). The hobbits, being very similar to us cause their own lesser Anthropocene with whatever fossil fuels we missed.
Hi John,
Two interesting data points for you:
https://www.politico.eu/article/us-military-support-nato-europe-armies-without-american-assistance-donald-trump/
A politico article on how useless Europe is without US military and intelligence assets.
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news-corner/vienna-public-schools-largest-religion-islam/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
A startling article on how many Muslim kids in Vienna schools in 2025.
What does that suggest regarding future islamification of western Europe.
Kevin, I’ll consider it.
Jennifer, I don’t feel comfortable making that list public any time before I relocate, if in fact I do so. Keep in mind that as I’m 62, my concern is purely that the place in question remain stable and safe for the next thirty years or so…
BorealBear, it’s possible to analyze anything into vagueness, and this is a common cause of that very common modern malady, paralysis by analysis. I think it’s reasonable to use terms such as “earned income” and “unearned income,” not as abstract conceptions reaching all the way down to some fundamental truth, but as convenient labels for categories one may wish to differentiate — in this case, income that comes from paid employment, profits from a sole proprietorship, or royalties from one’s own work, on the one hand, and income earned without labor on the other. I also like to differentiate between income and wealth — income is denominated in money, of course, and wealth consists of goods and services that may or may not be so denominated. In every such case, of course, an effort should be made to define one’s terms, not to facilitate infinite analysis but so that readers who want to make the effort can get some sense of what you’re talking about.
Siliconguy, thanks for this.
Viduraawakened, you can find a basic guide to affirmations here. I’m not a visual thinker so I don’t use visualization as a standalone technique; maybe another commenter can help you.
JPC, (1) I discussed that back somewhere in The Archdruid Report, but I can’t find the reference at this point. (2) All the various gimmicks that are being circulated to “improve” democracy are methods to prevent the majority from ruling, so that a minority can rule instead. (The same thing is true of consensus, of course.) As Winston Churchill said, democracy is the worst of all systems, except for all of the others.
Inna, I’ve noticed that as well. As a lifelong public transit user, it’s one of the things I appreciate about Britain.
Team10tim, thanks for this! The Eocene Layers of Mysterious Origin are just begging for a Lovecraftian treatment…
Forecasting, thank you for these. As before, I see no need to change my prediction; things are playing out along the timeline I sketched out earlier.
@120 Mary Bennet
Those who do not hold politicians to different standards are either in denial or very demoralized, because political groups behave worse than the vast majority of individuals, and that’s not going to change. In future elections, I’m going to vote based on my interests and not abstract values, if I vote at all.
And if you are not a Republican or swing voter in a competitive state, the Trump administration has no incentive to listen to you since they wouldn’t be getting your vote either way.
I half expect the Trump tariffs and inflation to destroy the US economy and get voters desperate enough to throw their support behind an incompetent Democrat presidential candidate who won’t do anything substantial to fix the situation, which will pave the way for the rise of a Fred Halliot figure.
Hopefully, that doesn’t happen– Trump’s policies turn out to be an overall success. Or Dems scrap the virtue signalling and stabilize the situation after being voted in to do just that. Or the Caesar figure is actually a decent ruler.
Dear Patricia A. Ormsby,
thanks for even remembering me!
i’m floundering writing painting and floundering again.
Papa here loves to write but for me it’s like holding my own head in the toilet whilst flushing it over and over.
(smile)
x
erika
Papa! i second Kevin’s request because i think there’s something to automatic writing and maybe even drawing.
“As a topic for a new post, would you consider a post on divination/prophecy, with automatic writing as a focus. I am assuming that automatic writing is in fact a form of divination. What are the sources of the messages (spirits, the subconscious, god)? How do you test the spirits? Why can’t we use divination to predict the lottery nos? 🙂 What kinds of questions should be asked? etc.”
erika
@Jeff #91
Thank you. I think all of us deployed broad strokes and curious details with equal verve. Though I will point out that the weapon associated with the Landsknechts is not a longsword, but rather a greater-than-greatsword. The longsword hails from the end of the 14th century and, as you probably have discovered yourself, is a far more elegant item. Good of you to take it up. Are you working with Liechtenauer or Meyer, by any chance? I went deep into Fiore starting about 3-4 years ago.
@JMG
I hope you are well in these interesting times. If I may, I learned of Sara’s passing, and wish to extend my condolences, and for your father as well. I know how much Sara meant to you. You have my prayers, should you wish them.
Thank you for the clarification, and noted. So more of a practical category along the lines of “salary class” or “tertiary economy” than an esoteric or moral one, then. If I recall correctly there’s a Buddhist concept along the lines of “right livelihood”, and I thought this might be a Western take on a similar idea. Your definitions here make sense, and I’ll add the deeper implications of “earned” to the pile of fine themes for meditation instead.
Patrick,
One issue I see with a lot of popular paleontology is ignoring the error bars. Scientists don’t know exactly when the PETM happened. It was around 55 million years ago, give or take. I’ve seen estimates differ by a couple million years either way. The genetic evidence for New World monkeys is that they split from Old World monkeys around 40 million years ago, give or take, from the studies I’ve read on the topic, close to twenty million years. Anywhere from 60-20 million years is compatible with the genetic evidence; this means that while the median date does not overlap with the PETM, the range still does, especially if the PETM occurred closer to the present.
I’m also skeptical of the land bridge theory, because they are often postulated to explain the spread of animals and plants. Unless there is better evidence, I don’t accept the argument that the land bridges exist because they are needed to explain the spread of animals through the northern hemisphere; postulating they exist to explain an oddity and then insisting because they address the problem it doesn’t exist seems to be a bad habit in science these days.
As for marsupials, yes, they got to South America and Australia from a common source. That doesn’t explain why there is one random genus of South American marsupials embedded in the Australian marsupial clade; if there was still extensive mixing occurring, it should be far more mixed up than one random group of South American marsupials being closer to Australian marsupials.
All,
Since the idea of the PETM has been popular, I’d like to add to it with a second period of time I’m thinking it makes a lot of sense to postulate an advanced civilization as a hypothesis: the Late Triassic. This one has left behind a legacy that suggests a technological society that went hard into genetic engineering: in particular, a number of groups of animals and plants appeared rather suddenly, at about the same time. Many of these (at least, the animals) are classified as dinosaurs, but not all. Some of these, such as modern turtles, have truly weird features which are hard to explain. In the case of turtles, the shell is a modified rib cage, and explaining exactly how this happened has left plenty of biologists scratching their heads. The oldest known turtles have most features of the modern ones, but turtles with shells appear rather abruptly in the Triassic, seemingly out of nowhere complete with the odd inverted shell that was their rib cage.
Genetic evidence is also a nightmare with turtles. Some genetic analyses place them closer to crocodiles; others to lizards. The problem apparently boils down to different parts of the turtle genome seeming to have different histories. Combined with the weird problem of how ribs ended up transforming into turtle shells, this suggests something very odd happened in their history. While the absence of transitional forms does not mean much given how few fossils exist from that far back, it is hard to figure out what any transitional form could have looked like. This is quite unlike other complex systems, such as the eye, where it is possible to see and also imagine transitional forms that are biologically plausible. With turtle shells this is a much harder task.
The fact that there is now also some fossil evidence (it is disputed, but there are paleontologists talking about it) that angiosperms (flowering plants), another group that has weird conflicting genome pieces and which has features which are really hard to explain by gradual evolution might have come into existence around the same time raises all kinds of further questions. I’m not sure I buy this, because there’s still the massive mystery of why angiosperms suddenly diversified in the Cretaceous, but if it turns out they actually do date from the Triassic, then there’s another major odd mystery of the same sort from around the same time.
Since both of these might be similar in time, it seems parsimonious to me to postulate a single cause. A society that went deep into genetic engineering seems like a plausible one. It is not the only explanation by a long shot, but it does seem to me to be a hypothesis at least worth considering.
Hi,
Data point 3 regarding the spooky parallels between the Balkans now and on the run up to 1914.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/in_focus/3389255/putin-shows-nato-his-dangerous-balkan-hand/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
I’m seriously thinking the next European war breaks out around 2030.
Around the time I expect the Americans to have pulled out and global economy implodes.
Ambrose @ 118, I understand Mulligan is anti-Trump. What I object to is his using a gallimaufry of people and movements he (I believe) thinks are unpopular, such as our host, environmentalists, organic gardeners, back to the land hippies, et al, accusing all of the above of fascist or fascist adjacent leanings in order to divert attention from certain parts of the coalition who did actually elect Trump. This spurious argument he bases on an outrageous logical fallacy, that the occultists and greenies of today are in any way responsible for the actions, behavior or sentiments of persons who flourished long before many of us were even born. What is important is not the fact of influence of those who went before, but what the present generation makes of it.
I wholeheartedly support Kimberley Steele’s proposed endeavour to strengthen the egregore of my unfortunate country. For those understandably uncomfortable with singing in support of the current monarch, might I suggest ‘Rule Britannia’ instead? I have always rather preferred the tune, to be honest.
I’m perplexed by one of the ways post-peak oil has panned out, and I wonder if you are also perplexed, or if I just misunderstood the prediction of how it was to pan out.
I’m genuinely perplexed that suburban sprawl is still metastasizing.
You know I’ve been around since the Archdruid Report days. Almost 20 years ago now!
And since then, they’ve just been building more and more sprawl. Farther and farther away from the cities. Creepy corporate parks and all. And gas is cheaper than it’s ever been!
I just don’t get it. It was unsustainable way back then!
How many more rounds of sprawl building do you think we’ll go through before it stops?
I am taking the train across country next fall and change trains in Chicago to the train that goes along the great lakes. If the first train from California is on time, I have 7 hours between the trains, from 2:30 to 9:30pm. So this means I have to start and end at grand central station, but I might have time to do or see something, I know nothing about Chicago in general, let alone for the area by the train station. I was thinking maybe an interesting museum although they may close too early for the timeframe I am there, any good ideas, let me know here as I know nothing about doing something and getting dinner in Chicago.
I am then going to be in Massachusetts for the next 5 or 6 days, I havent made my return reservation yet, but will fly home from some major airport, Mass or NY. I believe the only Green Wizard or other gathering from this group is only in the spring/summer, and I have free this oct 4 or 5th on time frame. But, posting here just in case
Hey JMG
I recently attended a talk at the Brisbane theosophical society, by the travel-writer Walter Mason, about Alexandra David-Néel. I had heard of her before, but the talk definitely makes me want to look into her work as it was quite interesting. Apparently only a small amount of her work has been translated into English. I think that you have mentioned her previously so I assume that you have read stuff by her, and so I wanted to ask about what you thought of her writing and herself in general?
@ kimberly steele #4
Err I live in Scotland (though i am English) and at least half the native population here would be very offended by your singing of what they consider the ENGLISH National Anthem. Here’s verse 6 you missed it out (it is in fact rarely sung so I don’t blame you, but it still exists!):
“Lord grant that Marshal Wade,
“May by thy mighty aid,
“Victory bring.
“May he sedition hush,
“And like a torrent rush,
“Rebellious Scots to crush,
“God save the King
Perhaps you should also sing “O flower of Scotland to balance things out? 😉
Or perhaps, respectfully, you should not do magical workings on behalf of others of whom you don’t have indepth knowledge. Your singing of “God Save the Queen/King” and waving of the ‘butchers apron’ as the flag is known in some circles is in my opinion likely to exacerbate the likelihood of British civil war! It certainly is not a uniting force You do not seem to appreciate the tribal nature of these symbols and that they only represent a subsector of the British. Monty Python on the other hand… All together now: “spare a shekel for an ex-leper!”
“Strange women lying in ponds, distributing swords, is no basis for a system of government!” “He’s not the messiah, he’s a very naughty boy!” 🙂
Re: Possible abandoned expressways.
1: There’s already an expressway that was built, used, left to rot and torn down – NYC’s West Side Elevated Highway. It was closed down (in part) in 1973, after a section fell down.
2: There’s a couple of rural expressways I can see closing down after one final insult – I-40 in the Pigeon River Valley (Tennessee/North Carolina) and I-70 at Tenmile Creek (Colorado). If the latter closes, there’s a stretch of I-70 in Utah that could be closed with no issues.
3: There’s a couple of bridges out East that could be signs of the collapse of Infrastructure. Between the F. Scott Key Bridge (rip) and the Washington Bridge in Providence, I can see the beginning of the Fall being one (or both) these bridges not being replaced. And if the Geordie Howe Bridge in Detroit and Windsor ends up collapsing (or being closed) within ten years…
@Anonymoose: Re: Turtles
That is the most delightful thing I’ve read all week! I love turtles, and I love that there is a weird advanced-civ bioengineering theory about their origins. Though I prefer to think they exist simply because God loves them. Anyone would.
Can someone from SE Asia explain what is going on between India and Pakistan? Restricting Indus River water, if that does happen, sounds rather serious. I gather there was a brutal terrorist attack, with substantial loss of life, condolences to the families of those killed. Has Modi decided that enough is enough? This time is going to be the last time?
Ambrose, I buy seeds, food and plants from hard working organic proprietors who manage to do business with integrity and with no or minimal government support, a claim the industrial farmers and processors cannot make. Maybe I am overreacting here, but I don’t care to see these folks being tarred with the you’re a nazi brush by some high urbanite opinionator who doesn’t know what he is talking about.
Hi John Michael,
Thanks! 🙂 And did you notice that the cheapest and easiest to modify variable in your summation / modified theory was: regulation and bureaucracy?
Cheers
Chris
Erika, so noted! Glad to hear from you again.
Sven, thank you and I’d be grateful.
BorealBear, exactly. Most esoteric categories are just as practical, by the way — one thing most systems of initiation teach is just how little we can actually know about the universe.
Anonymoose, interesting. Do you have a specific Triassic epoch in mind?
Forecasting, Bismarck wouldn’t be a bit surprised! I’d keep an eye on points further north as well — the possibility that Hungary might choose to adjust its borders in the traditional way is worth keeping in mind.
Blue Sun, it’ll keep on going until the financial system that mandates it can’t function any more. Real estate at this point is the uber-bubble that props up the banking system, and endless manufacture of suburban real estate values is the air pump that keeps it going. Once that pops, down it comes.
Atmospheric, let me know when you’ll be in Boston. It’s easy for me to take the train up from here.
J.L.Mc12, she’s very much worth reading.
Donald, there’s that!
Chris, yep. I gather that somebody orange has noticed this too.
Gas was $4.06/gal when I filled up the motorcycle earlier today. The Seattle Democrats plan to drive the countryside into poverty is working nicely. (We have a carbon tax.)
As to what to see in Chicago. Way back when I was at Great Lakes Naval Training Center I took a commuter train to Chicago and visited the Field Museum. There is also the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry with the U-505 among other things. I don’t know if they are in range of the Amtrak station, but it’s a possibility.
I’m going to take an unpopular position here and defend the 401k system. I grant bad 401ks do exist, but most of them are reasonably well run. The usual problem with some investors is they panic when the market has one of its periodic hissy fits and sell thinking ‘I’ve got to save something.” Then they are too frightened to get back in until the next boom and finally jump into the market just before it goes poof, again. The Market requires strong nerves, or complete disinterest “I’ve got 40 years to save, today is irrelevant over that time frame.”
One other item on the 401K is that the contribution is pretax. As I am and was single and therefore very popular with the IRS the 401k let me lower my taxable income to stay out of the 28% bracket. When you are single the 28% bracket (24% now) is not all that high.
One last observation; “a watery tart” could hardly do worse at choosing a presidential candidate than the Democratic National Committee. Maybe The DNC should make an offer.
Re. Kimberly Steele’s pledge
As an American who doesn’t really care about Great Britain, I’m going to instead sing “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” in addition to saying the Pledge of Allegiance to bolster up America’s astral pyramid. It has the same melody as Britain’s national anthem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Country,_%27Tis_of_Thee
Those who want to help out America are welcome to join me and do the same.
Atmospheric River @140 wrote’ ” If the first train from California is on time, I have 7 hours between the trains…”
I rode the California Zephyr a number of times back in the 80s and 90s — from Martinez to Chicago and back. In my experience its being on time is not something you need to worry too much about. I’d plan on it being about five hours late. The area around the station in Chicago isn’t bad. It’s near the skyscraper formerly known as the Sears Tower. I hope you have a sleeper berth. It’s a much nicer experience than coach.
Mary Bennet (no. 137), Mulligan is proceeding from a few examples (JMG, Kingsnorth, Dreher, Vance) to a more general phenomenon (Dreher’s “crunchy conservative”). His method wouldn’t be expected to shed any light on Trump’s coalition, in which such movements play a very minor part. For example, I doubt that Mulligan would want to divert attention from the religious right–he would likely view them as similarly irrational. He mentions techbros, and people living in the Rust Belt, in passing (these being other parts of the Trump coalition).
Of course, a big part of Trump’s support was due to dissatisfaction with the Democrats. It occurs to me that those comments of JMG’s which Mulligan identifies as racist (e.g. Kamala’s campaign being a dumpster fire, Biden being incoherent), turned out to be the plain truth, even if the Republicans were spreading the message.
Mulligan writes (III, 6) that “While not necessarily fascist by themselves, these [crunchy] ideas make one predisposed to modern Neo-fascism as obsession with humiliation and decline, anti-modernity, Romanticism and palingenetic ultranationalism are all core aspects of historical fascist movements as we’ve seen previously.” In Part I, he gives 22 features of what he calls “Twenty-first century Neo-fascism” (of which MAGA is an example), observing that it appeals to much the same coalition as paleo-fascism. Let’s look at these features one by one, and note whether JMG seems to fit:
–“Subordination to a messianic leader and his cult of personality”
JMG is charismatic but not messianic, no talk of “subordination.” Or should we be looking for some other leader whom JMG follows?
–“Illiberalism and contempt for democracy and democratic institutions.”
JMG sees these as dependent on an industrial base which is ultimately unsustainable
–“Dehumanization, othering and scapegoating”
No
–“Militias, extra-judicial violence and stochastic terrorism as political tactics”
No
–“Culture war and an obsession with degeneracy and decline”
JMG could be called “obsessed” with decline, but rather than crying for vengeance, he metaphorically grabs popcorn. Culture-war issues do often figure into his posts, but his perspective is not very mainstream. “Degeneracy” is vague.
–“Apocalyptic language and rhetoric”
Is “long descent” apocalyptic?
–“Revolution and rebirth (‘palingenesis’)”
This last term is from Roger Griffin and “refers to a sort of ‘rebirth’ which will take place once the nation is cleansed of enemies, degenerates and subversives.” JMG’s collapse will inevitably coincide with the downfall of the PMC, but the regime to follow may be dire. “Retrotopia” is only a hope.
–“Reactionary and paleoconservative politics”
I would characterize JMG as alienated by traditional politics.
–“Populism”
Vague term. Anyway, JMG is popular only within certain niche subcultures, and is not really one to follow a crowd.
–“Conspiracy theories and paranoia”
By Mulligan’s standards, yes. Of course, some conspiracy theories turn out to be true.
–“Ultranationalism”
No
–“Replacement of transnational economic and military alliances with ‘spheres of influence.'”
JMG applauds the disintegration of international alliances, but the “sphere of influence” he has in mind for the rump USA appears to consist of New York + the Great Lakes.
–“A loyal media apparatus which dispenses agitprop and curates an alternative reality for party members”
No, inapplicable. Even the comment sections of his websites are quite diverse ideologically.
–“Hypermasculinity, machismo, and a preoccupation with the “feminization” of society. Celebration of “masculine virtues,” misogyny and contempt for women.”
No, none of these.
–“Natalism, anti-feminism, and traditional gender roles.”
No, except as adaptations to collapse.
“Glorification of violence”
No.
“Scientific racism, hierarchy and Social Darwinism.”
No.
“The merging of church and state and the promotion of religiosity.”
No to the first, yes to the second–but it’s a very ideosyncratic and diverse religiosity.
“Disparaging of education and intellectuals.”
Yes.
“A quasi-mystical world view. Occultism and mistrust of science and expertise.”
Yes.
“Embrace of cutting-edge technology and progress.”
No.
“An eclectic and non-ideological economic program (i.e. ‘whatever works’)”
I guess so?
So, by my calculation, JMG fits only a few of these unambiguously, and can be safely excluded from nearly half. The “common denominator” of JMG, Kingsnorth, Dreher, etc. is that “All of these writers embrace a mystical, magical world view wherein we live in an enchanted universe where unseen forces battle for control over our souls.” I agree that JMG’s universe is enchanted, but am not so sure about the battle-for-control-over-our-souls part. These writers share “cultural pessimism” (check), “a pervasive sense of decline” (check), “a puritanical obsession with ‘decadence’ ” (I don’t see it). “a disdain for rationality” (okay), and “a hostility to modern life” (but what is modernity?* JMG opposes the Myth of Progress).
*Schmuel Eisenstadt, call your office!
Patrick,
Judging by how JMG predicts that the left / liberals will end up as misogynistic white supremacists / nationalists with their current trajectory, I expect the next Democratic president in 2028 to be the Fred Halliot figure if Trump fails.
Free Rain: “Perhaps you should also sing ‘O flower of Scotland’ to balance things out?”
With the, ah, traditional interjections?
I am a Canadian living in the province of Alberta. Depending on the results of our upcoming election, if the WEF/Liberal party wins, Alberta may seek a divorce from Canada. The only way I see this succeeding is if we join the US as the 51st state. What do you think of the wisdom of trying to move from a vassal status to a direct part of the US? The Liberal leader seems to have tight ties with China, so it seems that the status quo is no longer an option
Dennis
Ambrose #57:
You write: “Well okay, but how is this supposed to work? What specific Hermetic teaching or practice is capable of revitalizing Catholic spirituality?” That, of course, is the biggest question raised and notably not answered in this series of essays.
“It seems to me that there is a more obvious candidate for such an infusion, namely the spirituality of Orthodoxy and the Oriental churches.” Yes, perhaps. I need to explore Orthodox spirituality more.
FWIW, I am Anglican (or, perhaps I should say I am a member of an Anglican congregation – I don’t identify myself as Anglican, but as Christian), and am committed to being non-sectarian, with the caveat that I think Nicene Christianity is, and should be, the normative form of Christianity.
After reading these essays the first time, I asked our host for recommendations for good introductory books into Neo-Platonism. One of the ones he recommended was “Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus” by Gregory Shaw. Interestingly enough, the second edition (which is the one I have) was published by Angelico Press, which (according to its website) “is dedicated to making the rich tradition of Catholic intellectual and cultural life more available to families, students, and scholars.” The forward and the preface to the second edition both draw out parallels between Christian theology and Iamblichan neo-Platonism, and it seems clear that the intent of publishing the second edition is to enable Christians to perhaps learn something from Iamblichus.
Also interesting is that the forward is by one John Milbank, a proponent of “Radical Orthodoxy”, which I had not heard of before, but what I have found about it via internet searches thus far has been thought-provoking.
Re: real estate —
The other thing is that real estate, at some point, requires residents. When prices are skyrocketing you can afford to leave houses empty, as the equity gains will more than make up for no buyer or rental income. When RE prices are dropping, stagnant, or even rising but not by enough, you need to actually find people to live there. If population happens to be stagnating or decreasing as well…
@JMG
Thank you so much for the link! Although it wasn’t working, I managed to locate your Dreamwidth article on affirmations using the tag option, and found it there. The points you’ve mentioned make total sense; while I was already familiar with some of them, there were four points, that is, points number 4 and 5, and the two useful notes at the end of the article. I’ve decided to set aside a notebook dedicated exclusively to affirmations, and will write them down daily while keeping in mind the points you’ve made, of course. Much thanks once again:)
@Mary Bennett
There was a jihadi terrorist attack in Kashmir by Pakistani jihadi terrorists who had sneaked in – there seem to have been some security lapses on the part of both the Central Government as well as the State Government. They seem to have taken inspiration from Hamas’ October 7th attack, as they directly targeted tourists. Also, they specifically killed Hindu men – survivors have said clearly that the jihadis specifically asked their victims if they were Hindus or not, and had them recite the kalma to check if they were telling the truth or not. Upon confirming that the tourists were Hindus, they shot the men fatally, and told the women to “go and tell Modi”.
Yes, retribution will come. Not only the armed forces, but also most Indian common folks want revenge, and Ganesha willing, we will have it – a violent, bloody revenge, that will make Pakistan rue the day they were born. We’ve had enough of this nonsense about non-violence, compassion and that subversive depraved cockroach called Mohandas Gandhi – we want blood, and we will have it. We will not forget, nor will we forgive; and the Indus Water Treaty suspension is just the beginning. It was just a teaser; the trailer is yet to come, followed by the rest of the movie.
Ambrose #153 I’d be very interested to read the ‘traditional interjections’ but can only find the ‘official’ version – might you have a copy to hand, or a link if, given the Scots relationship with the English, it falls foul of JMG’s rule regarding courtesy, profanity, abusive language?
Thank you.
So in other words the construction could go on longer than there are people who can afford to occupy it, because it would have to go hand in hand with a banking system collapse. And from what I’ve observed the financial system can continue on for some time disconnected from the real economy (for how long exactly is anyone’s guess).
I do wonder how much of this new construction is actually occupied, because some of it doesn’t seem to be.
As far as timescale, then, I could envision sprawl-building still taking place 100 years from now in certain pockets, just as there will still be talking heads at that time saying a return to 20th century prosperity is just around the corner.
Just to take a break from the politics, I am a little curious as to people’s opinions on the following:
If some alien civilization knew nothing about us but found Voyageur I (or II, I guess) and could surmise its launch date, could it guess our current state of technology (approximately) or social order/stability based on that single data point? I mean, the computer and communications technology was actually pretty barbaric by today’s standards, but I don’t think we ended up improving much on rocket fuel since then…
Also, if I were a really rich eccentric with nothing better to do with my time and money (and, sadly, I am not), I would have had a lot of fun sending out my own space ship, but instead of a golden record, I’d have stuck a Rubik’s cube and maybe a slinky, a snow globe, some shoe laces (without the shoes), a few paperclips, and a boomerang. I wonder what kind of conclusions they would draw from it, other than that there was a planet on whom once dwelled a rich eccentric with nothing better to do with his time and money…
@ Atmospheric
The museums are great in Chitown( I am a native), but it may be close — since the trains never run on time.
Across the street from Union station is the Sears Tower. If you want to see sprawl, go to the top. It is a great view (and again, very close to union).
Tons of food in Chicago, but I if you like pizza, Chicago is home of the “stuffed” pizza. And although Giordano’s (https://giordanos.com/) is a chain, it started on the South side and is one of the original stuffed pizzas (and it is pretty good if you like Pizza).
Have a gr8 trip!
Jerry
@HippieViking
Even if all you do with the Hell’s Angels is sweep the clubhouse floors, people don’t know that, all they see is the club jacket and then they treat you accordingly. You could say similar things about a Marine that has a desk job and spends all his time in military court but all they see is the uniform and treat him accordingly. Same with you and whatever park ranger uniform you wear too. You join an organization, it has consequences, whether you want them or not.
>Judging by how JMG predicts that the left / liberals will end up as misogynistic white supremacists / nationalists
Meh. I think they’ll end up as muhsogynistic muslims and then they’ll join the rest of them in driving trucks of peace and finding really inconvenient times to explode in really inappropriate places while going on about something ackbar.
The only real question I have is whether they’ll go Sunni or Shiite.
>I grant bad 401ks do exist, but most of them are reasonably well run.
Like with all pension schemes, you’ll be able to pull something out of it when you need it. Russia is still honoring its Soviet pensions, for instance. The real issue is whether what you pull out for the month will let you buy a nice cup of coffee from Starbucks or a miserable gas station cup of coffee, when you actually need it.
I made my warning. Boats and hookers.
Hey JMG
On the subject of weapons that was in last weeks comment section, I am curious if you had any thoughts on the importance of knife fighting in the history of warfare.
I ask this because I just finished a essay by Kulak which goes into the subject with quite a bit of detail, and in his opinion the knife is one of the most important yet overlooked weapons in the history of warfare, going so far as to suggest that pretty much all weapons are just different solutions for besting the knife.
https://www.anarchonomicon.com/p/war-to-the-knife-the-knife-to-the
Re Stonehenge: I was fortunate to visit Stonehenge in 2019. I was on a tour, and the director had made arrangements for us to visit early in the morning, before the normal open hours. There are a limited number of seats for that, and I’m not sure how you get it–probably well in advance. I took a glance at the website and didn’t see anything about it. There weren’t more than 20 or 30 people. We were allowed to walk among the stones, although we were strictly forbidden to touch them, and there were security people. Even so, we had about an hour, which included time to do ritual there. My amateur opinion: Stonehenge is truly a ruined temple. It’s a shadow of its former self. Still a remarkable and impressive place, but so many of the stones are missing or out of place. I think that if the whole thing was in its proper form, walking in would be a mind-altering experience. JMG, if you’re in touch with Penny Billington, you might ask her if it’s possible to get this kind of early-morning visit.
But if you want to visit a megalithic site up-close, go to Avebury. It’s wide open, with no admission control. Walk among the stones as much as you like. I stood in the line formed by the stones, between them, and when I turned to my left I could feel something, like a current, flowing toward me. I didn’t feel it when I turned to the right. Many, even most of the stones there are also missing, but still there’s something going on. Just my amateur opinion.
@Forecasting intelligence, @JMG about Europe
At the present moment, both main political movements in Europe are closely supervised by Americans. The mainstream elite depends on the established globalist institutions while the right populists are dominated by Trump. Europe is vulnerable, dependent and helpless. There is no reason for the US not to exploit the situation. Their presence can provide enough value (for a time) to cover the costs. Western Europe is still relatively rich. Why would the US leave before real opposition emerges? The Ukraine war ensures that Russia won’t help the Europeans. Alliance with the Muslim world is also a dead horse due to the chaos of mass immigration but the frozen conflict in Bosnia is ready if a coup de grace is needed. There will be real opposition eventually but its nature is very vague at this point.
I want to leave another short comment about the borders of Hungary (as I am Hungarian). The revision of our borders – with or without force – is realistic only if the attempt is not based on the concept of the ethnically homogenous nation state as the the historic territory of Hungary is not homogenous in this regard (probably never was). The right today (Viktor Orbán) is inseparable from ethnic nationalism. On the other hand, the left today is inseparable from the established international regime including the present borders. Again, I am not saying that it won’t happen. I just say that serious ideological changes must precede it and the solution is vague at this point.
“Tons of food in Chicago, but I if you like pizza, Chicago is home of the “stuffed” pizza. And although Giordano’s (https://giordanos.com/) is a chain, it started on the South side and is one of the original stuffed pizzas (and it is pretty good if you like Pizza).”
Two comments about the pizza, in the FWIW category:
1. If you are not American, almost all the food in US restaurants (or at least the ones I visited) is really laden with sugar, and you may experience mild indigestion afterwards. It took me about a week in the US to adapt.
2. I absolutely love Chicago, the food, and yes, the pizza as well. However, for some strange reason, the deep dish pizzas don’t taste good when you get the small size–they really only taste good when you get a medium or larger.
I can’t explain this, but I was not the only person in my group to notice this, so if I am crazy, I guess I am not uniquely so.
Siliconguy, I think a strong case could be made that we should replace both political parties with committees of watery tarts whose sole job is to lie in ponds and lob scimitars at people. Having supreme executive power derive from farcical aquatic ceremonies could hardly have worse outcomes than the present system!
Dennis, it’s certainly an option, and the current US administration would be delighted to assist. If Albertans want to further that, establishing close ties with Republican party units and state governments due south of you would probably be a very useful move.
Brendhelm, exactly — but as long as prices can be made to rise, by hook or by crook, that downside doesn’t come into play. When it does, watch out below.
Viduraawakened, you’re most welcome.
Blue Sun, exactly. At this point it has nothing to do with human needs and everything to do with propping up the banks and, with them, the net worth of the comfortable classes — basically, everything from the upper middle class on up.
Frivolous, my guess is that they wouldn’t be able to make heads or tails of any of it. Alien intelligences will not think like us, and will make eldritch burbling noises of puzzlement as they try to figure out the first thing about us.
J.L.Mc12, well, in a historical sense, sure — the knife is the metal equivalent of the primal human tool, the chipped stone hand ax, and everything else evolved as a response to that. The point I’d make is that by and large the guy with the knife loses as soon as he comes up against a guy with a stick — this is why no soldier in the last five thousand years carried a knife as his primary weapon — and everything that follows is a response to that. Do you put the knife on the end of a stick? That’s a spear, an ax, or a polearm. Do you make the knife good and long, so it can match the reach of the stick? That’s a sword. Do you pick up a rock instead and throw it at the guy with the stick? The road from there leads to the sling, the bow, and the gun.
S Adam, oh, the ideologies will be there when needed. Coming up with convenient ideologies for war is something that European cultures do very, very well.
One of the first signs that we are entering a big step down in catabolic collapse will be the grass and landscaping. I am not talking about the ordinary residential front yard, or small urban parks. I am talking about the vast swaths of “officially tended” grass and shrubs that cover newer suburbs, ex urbs and corporate business parks.
Huge armies of landscapers now toil away mowing square miles of grass, spreading barkdust and tending decorative shrubs and trees. The way these places are constructed this “landscaping” covers everything. Once the wealth needed to keep all this up goes away it will devolve in to overgrown brush, weeds and fire hazards ( out west). Also the way these places are laid out it is not easy for any one business to take over its own area.
This is not a problem in traditional urban areas where buildings are pushed up to the sidewalks and parking takes up the leftover space. But it is the defining feature of most of corporate America and suburbia built after the 1960’s.
One day, further along, these spaces will become places to grow food. But in the near term they will become new wild lands with effects ( perhaps good or bad) that we can not yet predict.
Viduraawakened, Thank you for this explanation. Is it thought that the attackers were in some way part of the Pakistani govt., or merely supported and enabled by them? Given that Pakistan is assumed to be a Chinese client, I am sure you know better than I do to what extent that is the case, is the Modi govt. planning for the possibility of the PRC using the emergency to grab more territory on your northern border?
Dannis, I think if Alberta is wanting to leave Canada, I strongly suggest the Albertan negotiators hold out for two separate states, giving them 4 senators,– Alberta is huge and I think more densely populated than Alaska,– and fair representation in the House of Representatives, even if the law limiting the number of Congress critters has to be scrapped. Make whoever is the president pay a fair price for his or her Big Win. And don’t limit outreach to Republicans.
Re: God Save The Quee– er, King:
If I remember right, England actually chose to submit to Scotland and have James VI/ Jamis I become their ruler. From what I understand, it was that or submit to Rome; and Rome was the LAST place London wished to submit to. Sure, England would come to rule, but they submitted first.
Hi JMG and friends,
Recent events seem to be a vindication of the “Lords of the Fall” post. Trump somehow has convinced himself that the best way to further the American empire is to preemptively collapse the American empire. While I think he is in for a surprise, I do think retreating from world affairs and rebuilding the States is the best path forward for the US. Trump’s overall grand strategy is not a bad plan, honestly, but the hap-hazard implementation of it, combined with his administration’s cruelty and (for lack of a politer word) stupidity will doom it. What comes after will be the interesting part. I hope for the return of decorum and a quiet, humble rebuilding of the country.
Jim #8, I wish that what you call for actually happens. But it will not, as much as we want it. Trumpism is going to have to burn itself out, it cannot be stopped by an external force or resistance. These sorts of waves will eventually crash and fade away, but until they do the most one can do is lie low. I just hope not too many lives are irreparably ruined when all of this is said and done.
Viduraawakened #157, I am sorry for the loss of Hindu life at the hands of Islamists in Kashmir. All the same, to be blunt I think the Indian government’s response is unwarranted and unwise. The suspension of the Indus Water Treaty (even if currently its only a suspension in paper and not on the ground) lays the foundations for an inevitable water war in the not-so-distant future.
@The Other Owen @JMG
Re: The Islamization of the Left
1. Is it the European left you’re talking about, the American left, or both?
2. You, JMG, have said that the left’s conversion to Islam will probably be short-lived. So will leftists upon the collapse of their secular ideologies be unconsciously seeking to reconvert to Christianity and rejoin regular society via an Islam phase? Or will they get so much backlash from the rest of society that they’ll have to fall back in line to keep their positions in society (the latter is likely if they have the guts to become a terrorist insurgency)?
During the course of Canada’s current snap election, a report published by Policy Horizons in January of this year has surfaced. Somehow our state-funded TV, radio and newspaper outlets didn’t pay any attention to it – but the leader of the Conservative Party has, and he is reading sections of it out loud during his daily massively attended rallies. Election Day is Monday, April 28.
Policy Horizons reports to the federal Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion – so, it’s directly part of the government. The organization’s Director is Kristel Van der Elst, who also just so happens to be the former Head of Strategic Foresight at the World Economic Forum (it’s not just the political parties in Canada that are infected with WEF; its bureaucracy is absolutely swarming with WEF agents).
The report is innocuously entitled “Future Lives: Social Mobility in Question” but would more appropriately be entitled “Dystopian Doom Lite”. It imagines how Canada will look in the year 2040: a time in which the economic strata are more or less static and the only way to move is down because the new aristocracy ‘hold all the cards’. It is a country in which the Proles have no university education, little employment and little access to social services, never own property, and are reduced to bartering and subsistence activities on public lands in order to survive. Funny thing is virtually all the aspects of downward social mobility described in the report are already happening, just to a sizeable minority of the population rather than the majority.
The report concludes that “[p]eople may lose faith in the Canadian project. They… might embrace radical ideas about restructuring the state, society, and the economy”. But no worries – Big Brother can make things right because “[l]oss of belief in social mobility could also make space for positive ideas”. What kind of ideas? I don’t know, maybe something like “you’ll own nothing and be happy eating the bugs you just caught in the field”!
The brief, easy-to-read report can be found here: https://horizons.service.canada.ca/en/2025/01/10/future-lives-social-mobility/index.shtml
In a somewhat related matter, about a year ago Canada’s federal police (the RCMP) published a report that in essence said that once the public realizes that they’ve been gang-r@ped by their government for many years they are going to be sooooooo pissed! Perhaps this is why the ruling Liberal Government has been pushing so hard to ban every firearm in existence (even guns that are only good for shooting small game)? And with that cheery thought, I’ll sign out.
I’ve noticed recently that there is a very weird class of advertisement that shows someone acting like a complete jerk towards someone else; things such as someone sticking his dog in someone else’s shopping cart and then stealing it, or a mother freaking out and losing it on her children because they made their dad something nice for his birthday.
These ads seem to be usually, but not only, for tech products and services. They seemed really weird, but it’s suddenly hit me what’s happening: I’m not the target demographic; the fact these ads are turning me off these products is not a problem to the advertisers.
The target is people who identify with the jerks. The jerks are usually older than the victims, and always better dressed. These products are being aimed at (well off) members of older generations. What makes this really interesting is that most of these ads are for tech products. I’ve seen ones for food delivery, as well as for Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft that fall into these categories.
I find it highly implausible that the advertisers could be making these ads without realizing this will alienate a lot of the younger population, so either the tech companies are incompetent, supremely confident, or are starting to make a pivot. A couple years ago I would have said that the tech companies are not going to be making a pivot, but I’m starting to wonder.
I’m having a hard time finding reliable sources, but the mass media has been making noise lately about the youth rejecting things like smartphones, and my anecdotal observations are that it is quite common for younger people to refuse to use social media; a lot of people born after 2000 or so, rising to close to half of those born after 2005 or so, have a visceral dislike of social media, a profound dislike of smartphones, and wish that they had normal childhoods instead of the social-media mediated mess. There are other things I’ve noticed, but as these would risk crossing a line around a certain technology, I won’t mention them here.
Some of them have started organizing, and there are a lot of things which seem to suggest to me that people are getting nervous about this. Articles in the mass media such as an NYTimes article about on how parents can talk to teens who refuse to use the smart phone bought for them; or a news story about how a local college is being forced to rethink it’s two authentication policy because too many of the students are refusing to play along. Another one I saw was advice for grandparents when their kids have children and want to keep them away from the internet until they are older.
It looks like despite the very real pressures, a lot of younger people are breaking with the internet to various degrees; and I wonder if the tech world is starting to pivot away from the business model of trying to ensnare everyone, with a special focus on children, towards focusing on the older generations they already have. If these advertisements are a leading indicator of this, this could be one of the best signs I’ve seen in years for the future: a pivot from the tech companies away from the explosive metastasis of the internet could do a lot to stabilize things, at least for a while.
“Anonymoose, interesting. Do you have a specific Triassic epoch in mind?”
The epoch I’m thinking of is simply called the Late Triassic. I’m not at all sure who came up with these names, but it looks like when paleontologists got around to naming the epochs in Mesozoic they gave up on the idea of creativity. 😉
I have a few books ordered through inter-library loan on the time period, and I’m going to wait until I get those before I narrow the time where this hypothetical species might have existed down any further.
Methylethyl,
I’m glad to hear my hypothesis has made someone smile.
@ Vidura
Let’s stop to think about this for a second. What is the objective for the Pahalgam attack? Well, it was as flashy as it gets – they used a religion filter to identify their victims, killed Hindus, said terribly provocative things, and left survivors to go tell others what happened. Among the victims was a navy officer.
It’s obvious that (1) they wanted to kill the navy officer. The other deaths may well have been decoys to hide the real target. (2) They wanted to provoke us. That’s why they left survivors, and made the killing such an outrageously flashy example of zealotry. And (3) they wanted to shock people. They weren’t subtle about it at all.
Now why would they do that? My guess is that the officer was the real target, the other deaths were there to smokescreen what was essentially tactical murder, and the flashiness was for provoking Hindus to prevent any strategically effective response in time, and to prove that the ISI still has the power to tactically strike our side of the border.
What is a strategically effective response? Investigation. A good investigation should be done discretely. A discrete investigation cannot be done while reassuring the populace that action is being undertaken, since the action is secret. So the government has a choice between discretion and public morale, and that’s the aim of the outrageousness.
The other aim is distraction. They want to make us focus on this so that they can do more nasty stuff at the Kashmir border. The Kashmir border is the sight of much smuggling and contraband exchange, including the exchange of kidnapped people as bonded labor – the “terror” organisations on the other side of the border finance their operations by peddling drugs and victims across the border. They don’t want effective investigation of such routes, so they want to distract the ongoing investigation with this kind of viciousness.
Here’s Richard Heinberg on localism and tariffs: How Eco-Localism Differs from Tariff Terrorism. A predictable take, although the Orange One does seem to be shooting from the hip. But I think so was FDR.
John Michael,
(Going back to your _Natural Magic Potions and Powers from the Magical Garden_) If anyone was considering starting a new spagyric tincture during the waning moon starting April 27th, what planet is in the best astrological position to be the working, and which herb would you choose?
Also, is there a program for casting horoscopes that you would recommend for an astrology beginner? Lots of explanation…
Thank you!
Johnny B
John Michael,
Ugh!!!
Waxing! I meant Waxing Moon!
Johnny B
Clay Dennis#26 & Mr. Greer#44, respectively..
“Decry” .. as opposed to “BOMBSHELL!!” .. within which the Leader Board section of MAGA dudes (and dudetts..) on Rumble seem to now BLAST, er, insert .. in virtually EVERY post headline!
Sooo overdone, that I now skip said ‘headings-of-fatigue’ clickbait.. and the attached article postings altogether..
Their loss, not mine.
@Michael Gray #98
I am reading the Salomon Solis link you posted, and am bemused by this:
“civilization may well face the equally real chaotic danger of seeing any opinion become just as valid as the next…”
I would have thought that every opinion IS as valid as the next…. that is the thing about opinion… 😉
@Other Owen – re Boats and Hookers…
Sometimes, these are the one and the same… 🙂
To wit – the Galway Hooker – there are a couple of them pictured at this link: https://www.galwaytourism.ie/the-galway-hooker/
Frivolous Musings, thank you for that. I laughed so hard I woke up the cat. Just for fun, why not include a garlic press with your offerings?
Clay, I’ve already seen that here in Rhode Island. Landscaping generally never recovered from the Covid disruptions.
Hobbyist, it interests me that you think that Trump wants to further the American empire. My take all along is that he recognizes that it costs more than it’s worth at this point, and his goal is to get rid of it. The Democrats are still invested in maintaining the empire — not surprising, since their main constituency for many years now has been the managerial class, which has ballooned in size and prominence since the US went into the empire business. Getting rid of the imperial bureaucracy in DC is an important part of that, of course.
Patrick, I’m not sufficiently familiar with the European left to judge; I foresee a lot of radical American leftists becoming Muslim in the decade or so ahead. As for “short-lived,” I mean that it probably won’t outlast the current generation. Leaving Islam is a lot harder than joining it.
Ron, interesting. I wonder why they were foolish enough to put that on paper.
Moose, here’s hoping! As for the Triassic, fair enough. Looking at a chart right now, I notice that the Carnian pluvial event, 234-232 million years ago, is associated with a sudden burst of speciation among early dinosaurs and a lot of extinctions among marine organisms, so that might be a plausible date.
John, no surprises there. It’s a source of some amusement to me, though no surprise, that the theory of economic relocalization got praised to the skies by many of the same people who are shrieking about the practice.
Johnny, it would take me a good half hour of time I don’t have to go through the ephemeris and work out what planets are well placed all through those fourteen days. As for astrology programs, I recommend studying books until you can use any of the standard programs; I use SolarFire, but it doesn’t have a lot of explanations.
Polecat, there’s that!
Anonymoose, @176 if the tech world wants to appeal to us oldsters, their products are going to have to be a lot more user friendly than they are at present. I would guess that the younger refuseniks got fed up with being stalked and harassed online.
Rajarshi, does the smuggling and kidnapping you allege go one way or both ways? Just asking. No accusations, just trying to understand. There have been terror attacks before now. Was your strategically effectively response, discrete investigation, used then? Because if it was, it doesn’t seem to have been much use as a deterrent. There is this to be said for Viduraawkened’s comment: at some point, one has to take a stand and say no. This stops here. Now, one does need to have the ability to make that stick. Do Pakistan and China have a military alliance?
@ Nachtgurke and @ Methylethyl
Thank you both for responding.
Nachtgurke – I will be very surprised too. 🙁
Methylethyl – “Autism is a trashcan diagnosis: it’s a whole bunch of different disorders grouped by a vague set of kinda sorta similar symptoms.” An excellent summation, and also, a pretty nifty haystack in which to camouflage any specific needle you don’t want located. 🙁
@ Ron M #175
I just peeked at the social mobility report you posted.
Section 3.4, titled “People might find alternative ways to meet their basic needs” actually reads as though the report writers are giving some consideration to the cohort of people who might “collapse now and avoid the rush”… 😉
>Is it the European left you’re talking about, the American left, or both?
Like with JMG, my perspective is Murican. The average screaming bluehair here, is obviously (to me at least) a fundie without all that old fuddy duddy protestant christianity. My guess is they’re not going to go back to that fuddy duddy worn out christianity they abandoned, they’re going to move “forward” towards something else. My best guess is that will be Islam. But it could be something else entirely. If you have a better guess, let me know.
As far as Yoorup goes – what little I saw back in 03, there were already way more mosques than churches there. I didn’t actually attend any church service while I was there but then again from what I could gather – neither does anyone else. And then you see the recent photos crossing your feed of all those white capped people with their butts pointed away from where is it again? Mecca? And this is happening in any given part of Yoorup from France to Germany to the Yookay. Methinks that region is going Islamic, whether it wants to or not.
So the prominent AI scientist Geoffrey Hinton finally concluded that analogy is the basic function of the human mind, not reasoning. I recall that Levi refers to analogy as the core method for reaching the ultimate truths. Poetics too employs analogy to accomplish it’s ends. I have long suspected something of this kind.
Here is the article: https://officechai.com/ai/fresh-understanding-shows-humans-are-analogy-machines-not-reasoning-machines-geoffrey-hinton/
@JMG
That makes sense. Spengler predicts based on the history of Rome that the masses will stop caring about political ideologies as Caesarism develops so this could be the end of leftist political movements.
@Inna (#95) and Karen (#166),
Thanks a lot for sharing your experiences – that’s about what I would have been expecting, judging by the website… ;-( Glastonbury Tor is already on my radar, and Avebury looks awesome, just what I had in mind. An online source even praised the scones at the local café – perfect! 😀
Thanks to both of you, this was very helpful,
Milkyway
Pakistan is already fighting a war against the Taliban on the west side of the country. Now is not a good time for Pakistan to pick another fight with its much larger eastern neighbour.
If things continue to get worse, I wouldn’t be surprised if in five years, India and Afghanistan partition Pakistan up between themselves.
Hi JMG,
I think that Trump’s speeches, his actions in the sphere of North American politics and some of his “cultural actions” are indicative of an attempt to revitalize the American Empire in a 19th century sense. There’s a reason he hearkens back to President McKinley so much, whether in the renaming of Denali or in the references to tariffs being at the core of American industrial policy. In my eyes, Trump sees the inevitable decline of the post-1991 American hegemony, and rather than unwind things in a way that would minimize harm both to the USA and the world, has decided to double down on exploitation of the “imperial core” (Canada, Europe, certain regions of MENA and possibly Japan/SK) while jettisoning off those responsibilities and structures which cannot be supported. In short, he is attempting to sacrifice a doomed global hegemony for what he hopes will be a more sustainable (and as part of that, more exploitative) Western Hemisphere or North American hegemony. (I say “Trump” but in reality it is a whole faction of American politics behind this, of which Trump is the mascot.) The Democrats are in general trying to maintain global hegemony, and it is this conflict which has animated much of the swings in American foreign policy as of late.
I do not think that this plan will work, and the only real benefit to the world will be the winding down of American military action in regions outside the core, like Africa or South/Southeast Asia. For Latin Americans, Americans, and to a lesser extent Europeans/Canadians, this will only lead to more problems. Say what you will, but Americans (barring groups like African Americans and Natives) have been shielded from most of the excesses of American imperialism. Now the guns are turning inwards, and things like an empowered ICE, crackdowns on free speech that make our past fretting about “woke” seem childish, and the gradual collapse of the three branches of government bode ill for all Americans. A gunboat approach to diplomacy bodes ill for those still under the empire.
And of course, the almost gleeful destruction of American protected lands and the embrace of fossil fuels is bad for everyone. I do not think climate change will lead to human extinction, but we certainly risk mass tragedy, and Trump’s attempts to frustrate shifting away from carbon-emitting fuels is arguably his greatest crime.
What needs to be done is to accept that American hegemony of any sort must end, to slowly and calmly unwind the empire in as orderly a manner as possible. Collapse now, in other words. We must try to make amends with the myriad groups we have wronged, if only for our own safety in an age where America will be more vulnerable. We must rebuild American education, American health, American decorum, etc. in a sustainable manner. Trump and his ilk are simply not up to the task. At best they will demolish the current state of things and in the wake of their failure and crisis a true leader will be able to rise and actually accomplish things. It is that leadership, not Trump, who will deserve the accolades and support. Trump is the America of Empire reaching its inevitable conclusion, and I feel we as a collective must imagine and create an America after Empire, an America that can actually be good. Not great, good.
I find it more likely that the European leftists convert to Islam, simply because the political alliances there consist of leftists and Muslims fighting against European ethnonationalists. And that conversion will be more permanent, simply because of the sheer numbers of Muslims in Europe these days.
My trip east:
I am signed up for a roomette on the train, I have been saving up my Amtrak miles up for a decade or more to go cross country, then I bought the remainder of the points. I take Amtrak, the coast starlight quite a bit and I do realy prefer a roomette, but most of the time if I am traveling alone, as its just overnight and the price difference is alot, I go coach and bring a pillow and a small lap quilt and then buy breakfast in the dining car. It is always in a beautiful spot heading north at 7am and I meet interesting people at the table. I hear the last leg I have on the lakeshore limited will not disappoint for a great breakfast and lunch view. The trains are running much more on time, at least the coast starlight, than 10 years ago, so it may be close to on time
Thanks for ideas for chicago, things to do and food, I do like Pizza, so that may be a good choice.
JMG
sounds good, most likely I’ll be available all day that saturday, first one in oct., I’ll email and fly out crack of dawn on sunday
If you want to guess if Europe can succeed in pushing back the tides of Islam, look to Sweden. After being the worst offender in terms of shipping them in by the truckload, they have now (with the success of the Sweden Democrats) made a sharp U-turn in their migrant politics. Whether or not that will be successful remains to be seen.
Mary Bennet (#171)
Yes, Alberta is quite large but once you get north of Edmonton, the population is quite sparse. Field crop agriculture seems to end not too far north of Edmonton. The entire province has a population of about 5 million, so even with one pair of senators, it would be slightly over-represented.
I have spent time there and have may friends there. None of them are eager to join the US medical system. But they are mostly Edmontonians.
About the whole Canada as a state thing
First I dont think the comment by the president was a serious proposal for such as he realy likes to troll his naysayers, and also he likes to set up the idea of something much further out than he wants to go to set the stage for some sort of deals or cooperation.
And then, I and alot of Americans do not want Canada to be part of our politics ! Who would want the influence and voting they would bring ? I dont want the model of Canadian healthcare, I dont want the way they disregarded peoples rights during COVID, shutting off access to finances, arresting priests, shutting down free speech. Euthanasia, Poiticians they dont even have the pretense of voting for ( how did the current contender get in ? Not by a vote by the people to get nominated). Why in the world would we want to integrate with that on laws and politics ? No thank you.
which is to say, relax, you are not going to get taken over. We would love for you as our neighbors to get free from what you are fast becoming….
@Writing Hobbyist There is something to be said about the difference between calling for a sustainable collapse and rebuilding process, and it actually being feasible given political, social, and economic realities. In this regard, I simply don’t see the hypothetical leader you’re calling for that will “accomplish things” and reimagine America as “good” actually manifesting, especially considering that, in reality, such a process is going to be messy regardless of who’s in charge.
Hi JMG and commentariat,
I just learned that my now nephew and former niece of the age of 12 has begun getting puberty blocker surgery. I had hoped that the new administration would manage to prevent this type of thing being done to minors but I guess they have failed. I feel overwhelming anger. I know anger is a second order emotion and guess that what is behind it is the grief I feel for the child, the grief knowing that everyone else in my family is capable of supporting something like this and the fear of what it will do to our relationship if I make my “opinion” known.
I’m wondering if anyone has a link to any information regarding the harmful effects of these surgical interventions on children that might not be dismissed out of hand by devotees of the current Liberal thought-forms that rule many of our cities that I could show the child’s parents, or if anyone has been through a similar situation or has advice of any kind.
If this is inappropriate for this forum, please feel free to delete JMG. I just figured I’d reach out here as it’s one of the few bastions of sane folks I’m aware of.
Thanks for hosting this Space,
Tyrell
“The entire province [Alberta] has a population of about 5 million, so even with one pair of senators, it would be slightly over-represented.”
Really? Delaware has a population of just over a million. They get two senators.
For that matter the county where I live is larger than Delaware even including its territorial waters.
Anyway the Senate represents states, the House represents population. Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba would make fine states. Ideally BC would join forces with Western Washington and achieve Greenness and ultimate Wokeness on their own and Eastern Washington could be its own state. The East side population is a half again that of Delaware so that’s no problem either.
JMG – well, it has been the hubristic habit of the WEF for many years to blithely publish exactly what unspeakable horrors they have planned for humanity; perhaps their acolytes occupying powerful bureaucratic positions within national governments share that same habit with the supreme confidence that since they are on the side of the Supreme God Progress, resistance is futile and therefore being open about their dystopic vision has no downside. We’ll see about that!
@Scotlyn #188: I had the same thought as you as I went through that section of the “Future Lives” report. Presumably the baleful bureaucrats like to figure out these consequences of decline in advance so that they can come up with laws, rules and regulations to prevent the proles – including the early-collapse types – from successfully surviving by their own wits (the whole ‘backyard gardening produces more carbon than mass-scale trans-continentally shipped produce and therefore should be banned’ propaganda reminds me of this approach).
Hey JMG
Speaking of knives, have you ever looked into the rather bizarre knife, sword and spear designs used by the Indonesians? I’ve recently been going through the book “The martial arts of Indonesia” by Donn F. Draeger, and the bizarre designs they use ironically remind me of the impractical “fantasy” knifes that you can buy off the internet.
Also, while I’m talking about this book, it also mentions some of the occult powers and practices that are used in Indonesia by some martial artists, such as hypnosis of enemies and curing heavy bleeding with a laying of hands by a master. All in all a great book.
JMG,
I’d like to know what you expect to happen with RFK Jr. and HHS. Specifically, how you expect the news media to react when he uses large government datasets to show what’s causing chronic diseases.
I imagine that we are going to find out that the mercury and aluminum in vaccines cause a number of neurological and autoimmune conditions, that SSRIs and other antidepressants are behind many/most school shootings, that the additives in processed foods are behind most metabolic disorders, covid wasn’t dangerous and the mRNA “vaccines” did more harm than good, etc. But, what I can’t imagine is that the media will admit that it was actively on the wrong side of these issues for decades, even calling the proponents crazy conspiracy theorists.
The closest comparison that I can think of is the nonexistent WMDs in Iraq. But, in that case, there wasn’t a single, specific event that disproved the narrative. Instead, it was months a failing to find something that supported it. Russiagate is a close second, but one has to dig through a lot of material to see all the pieces. This will be different, simple and straightforward data that shows a clear correlation between putting certain chemicals in people and adverse reactions. If I were writing the headline it would read “BREAKING NEWS: Food and pharma industries have been poisoning you slowly and making billions” byline – “And we here at TrustedNews got a cut for suppressing the story.” But, I won’t be writing the headline and there will be some differences between how the MSM and The Onion/BabylonBee cover it.
What’s your best guess about how the news will cover it and how millions of Americans will react to shifting paradigms without a clutch?
Hi John Michael,
Did you spot this? FBI arrests judge over allegations she obstructed immigration arrest
Some pundits routinely suggest that it’s the bigwigs who go down, but in practice what tends to happen is that some small player is made a public example of, and the bigwigs generally then fall into line. It’s worth mentioning that absolute justice rarely happens in practice, and it’s also expensive to prosecute. Easier to take out the smaller players. I’ve seen that happen down here. Best not to ever be involved.
I love that film! Yes, it probably would work better. Couldn’t be much worse…
Cheers
Chris
Regarding the Canada being taken over conversation;
We are the seat of power for the remnants of the managerial class in North America. This will of course continue if the Liberals win this election. Carney’s plan is to continue to go into debt to grow the economy, to partner strongly with China and EU, to back Ukraine. The current ruling party are moths to the dying light of globalism and they are a terror to the people who value the freedoms we have. Trump is trolling them. He’s using tarrifs to leverage power over the global economy, however with our current set of elites I think it’s more deep, more personal. I think I’ve already been corrected on here that complaining about it, pointing it out, is inconsequential. I am going to plant seeds in our enormous interconnected forest of a nation this weekend.
JMG, I understand that Heindel’s “Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception” is broadly Steinerian. To your knowledge, does it contain any significant departures from Steiner?
Roy Smith (no. 155), now I’m going to have to read that Shaw book. Reading up on neo-Platonism is a medium-term goal of mine. (We kind of skipped over it in college.)
For Catholics (and maybe others) searching for spiritual revitalization, another possible source would be the Ignatian Method. There’s a lay group near me working through it. (There are no Jesuit tertiaries per se, but there are things like the Jesuit Volunteer Corps.) Or they could just do the rosary. Protestants might dislike the repetitive nature of it, but I can’t think of any content that they would find objectionable.
In the USA, the biggest challenge to the Episcopal Church is demographic–it’s all old people now–and some estimate that barring some new spiritual infusion (ha!), it is doomed to collapse within a couple of decades. To most outsiders, and probably many insiders, they are indistinguishable from the Presbylutherans. Of course they recently split between the (anti-gay) US “Anglicans” and the (pro-gay) rump Episcopalians, neither wing of which particularly impresses, and that’s not even getting into all the weird scandals and cover-ups. Try as I might, I can’t think of any reason that this tradition deserves to exist, other than “it’s church! just like on TV!” or “oh well, at least they’re not crazy like the Baptists.” Maybe my attitude would be different if I liked organ and choir music. I do remember liking Thomas Browne, and being impressed by Simon Magus’s (*) discussion of 19th-c. Anglican divisions in his recent dissertation on Rider Haggard, so I realize the tradition was once a lot more substantial.
(*) the British psychiatrist, not the Samarian heresiarch
For everybody thinking that liberals are going to convert to Islam, how would that even work? They order “Islam for Dummies” and give it a read, then turn up at the mosque down the street? This sort of thing does happen, but the cultural gap can be formidable, much like what one would experience at a Coptic church, for instance. Not so much because of language, or because the people are unfriendly or anything (usually the opposite), but the feeling of *not being one of them* will be palpable. Add to that issues like circumcision, pork avoidance, gender roles, and not understanding the prayers, and I don’t see many of these people coming back. An Alevi group might be a better fit, and of course there are all those Sufi groups that attract white people, and may not even require conversion to Islam. (I’ve heard it suggested that the Baha’is appeal to liberals looking for “Islam-lite.”)
@Jim #8:
“My sense is that this situation will not be resolved without the direct intervention of the people through an ongoing general strike.”
Have you ever read Methland, by Nick Reding? It’s about the hollowing out of America during the (still ongoing) meth epidemic. Towards the end the author talks to several DEA agents, who describe how they are completely outmatched by the cartels, who use sophisticated intelligence techniques. It apparently is routine for cartels to surveil the agents and threaten their families.
The point is, we have a large population of illegal immigrants who are more or less benign, apart from the economic distortions caused by their presence. However, they shelter a smaller group of extremely hostile and extremely capable criminals.
I favor deportation of as many illegal immigrants as possible, at this point, but I otherwise bear them no ill will. But as for the cartels, there’s no way to address this situation that is not extremely harsh and messy.
Long story short, me and several million Americans look at the current situation and think, “More deportations. Harder.”
Marxist indoctrinations are getting pricey.
“Families earning $300,000 annually — placing them among America’s highest earners — are increasingly finding themselves unable to afford elite college tuition without taking on substantial debt. Bloomberg’s analysis of financial aid data from 50 selective colleges reveals households earning between $100,000 and $300,000 occupy a precarious middle ground: too affluent for meaningful aid but insufficiently wealthy to absorb annual costs approaching $100,000.”
That will certainly keep the riff-raff out.
Washington State University (not elite, in fact the elite often sneer at it as a ‘land-grant degree mill’) costs $12,997 for tuition and $17,535 for books, miscellaneous fees, and on-campus room and board. Total $30,532 per year. Oops, that was from 2022 – 2023. Last year was $35,368.
Eight miles east the University of Idaho has the 2025-2026 prices posted already, $28,307 including $3,000 for transportation to and from campus.
I had assumed that fuel and commuting costs to and from these far flung locations would have reached a point of diminishing returns that would have undermined the whole system by now. But I guess commuting doesn’t factor in when they are only partially occupied, or when the occupants are retired, working remotely, or on government assistance.
Rajarshi, good heavens. Someone in that industry got a clue. Color me shocked!
Patrick, and also conservative political movements. It’s the end of movements and the rise of warbands with charismatic leaders.
Hobbyist, I think you’re mistaken about Europe — that’s part of what Trump clearly wants to discard. Yes, he (and the faction of the elite behind him) are moving toward a strategy of North American autarky, while the Democrats want to maintain our global empire. As for climate change, I’d encourage you to look at a graph of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere sometime — the Democrats aren’t doing anything about that either, they just love to talk about it. (I’m planning an upcoming post about the crisis management strategy, in which governments keep crises going and exploit them instead of doing anything about them; global climate change will be the central case study.) Finally, er, I admire your idealism; do you think that more than about 5% of Americans will agree with you in practice, when it turns out (as it will) that this means accepting a collapse in standards of living to Global South levels? The “true leader” you’re daydreaming of is a fantasy, not a realistic image of anything we can expect.
Anon, fair enough. I don’t know Europe well enough.
Atmospheric, glad to hear it. I’ll get it on the calendar.
Athaia, good point. We’ll see if it works!
Tyrell, I’m very sorry to hear this. This is an open post, so asking for support and information about something like this is appropriate.
Ron, it’ll be interesting to see what they can do now that they can’t count on laundered USAID money to pay their bills!
J.L.Mc12, yes, and in fact I read that book many years ago. Draeger was a real scholar.
Team10tim, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Too many variables, too many overheated passions, and too many outside factors to tell!
Chris, yes, I saw that. She was one of two judges who just got busted. It’ll be interesting to see whether this has a chilling effect on our judiciary.
Ambrose, Heindel’s work does vary from Steiner in important ways, not least because it’s based on Steiner’s relatively early ideas and Steiner went in new directions later on.
Blue Sun, exactly. Anything to keep the charade going!
Hey JMG
I’m pleasantly surprised that you have also read Draeger’s book. Was there anything in it that particularly interested you?
Yes, JMG, it will be interesting to see how WEF and its octopus tentacles of acolytes fare now that its sugar-daddy sold their sportscar! If we are really lucky, WEF will have a fit of total insanity and elect Captain Blackface (Justin Trudeau) to be Klaus Schwab’s permanent replacement: that would guarantee the organization’s swift descent into oblivion (like what he did to Canada)!
JMG, I doubt the Democrats want to keep the empire intact, I think, rather, they want to go on believing they are part of an international elite, cream of the cream. The nation state is obsolete, don’tcha know? I doubt it occurs that the empire is the source of their overpaid employment.
Jessica, (speaking hypothetically of course) any territory being admitted to the Union wants or ought to want as much influence as possible. Four senators, 2 for each new state, means 4 votes for issues, like national health service maybe, important to the folks living in that area. Alberta as a single state would have 2 senators and maybe 2 or 3 congress persons, which means 4 or 5 electoral votes in presidential elections. That makes Alberta a small state. Presidential candidates might not even visit, except for vacations. Hypothetical Alberta, split into North and South Alberta would get 4 senators and possibly 5 congresspeople (2 for NA and 3 for SA), for a total of 9 electoral votes. Still not that many, but you might at least rate a visit and your leading citizens might be in line for judge and ambassadorships, as well as Secretary of the Interior, who is almost always from the West. If those 9 congresspersons voted together as the Canada block, the big shots like Chuckie Schemer would have to pay attention to them.
@ Mary the “terror” outfits on the Pakistani side have people here in India who do the kidnapping, and carry the kids to the other side. This much I know.
Investigation is actually the road not taken here. Vidura has a point, we do need to strike them. But the only counter-attacks that have been effective against jihadist organisations thus far are well calculated ones. They set up camp close to the Indian border and operate from there, to stop them we need to locate the well camouflaged camps.
In early 2019 (or late ’18, I can’t recall) the Indian government precisely located such a camp, and dropped a thousand kilograms of explosives on them, obliterating the lot. It took years of calculation to locate the camp, of course.
We have tried the violent response for a long time now, it doesn’t quite work. Raising security doesn’t work either. Only calculated, precise responses have a real impact.
Tyler #201
About a year ago, a British physician published a major report questioning the validity of the “science” behind the push to transition children.
https://apnews.com/article/uk-transgender-health-care-children-e3e94aad2994da7296880915f9b2e6ed
Until about 5 years ago, transwoman Violet Cabra was active in this community. From things she said, her teens were difficult, and I believe she transitioned in her mid to late 20s. She was extremely skeptical of the push to transition pre-pubescents. Unfortunately, her Dreamwidth account has been scrubbed, and I don’t know of any other way to contact her.
Next week is the 5th wednesday? If so can I vote for an Essay on FDR compared to the king in Orange?
JMG,
The worst part of the climate change crisis, in my opinion, is that industry and the collective culture found an easy way to reduce carbon emissions that many people liked, remote work made possible by the internet, and then decided to do a 180 and mandate return-to-office mandates. While it’s certainly not possible or beneficial for most jobs, for other jobs, like programming, it also boosted productivity. Worst of all, most of companies mandated a return to those awful open office environments where it’s very difficult to get work done without a pair of headphones (or earplugs), and blinders.
Between that, cryptocurrency, the “mining” of which requires vast amounts of energy, and using AI for basic things like writing e-mails, trading brainpower for electricity, literally, I’ve concluded that the society as a whole is actively against reducing carbon emissions. There’s no other explanation.
Re all this talk about Trump threatening Canada’s sovereignty; could Canada not go on the offensive (you know, just for once, stop being a punching bag) and court US states – especially bordering blue states – to break off the US and join confederation?
I mean, wouldn’t it be annoying to have Canadian government officials on US news shows making the pitch, the selling point being sanity, well, relative sanity maybe, plus living under a regime of gun control (no shortage of guns in Canada but we’ll just keep that between us), plus a health care system that may creak (sometimes pretty badly) but which will treat you (they will eventually) and which won’t bankrupt you (usually anyway), plus education systems that put Canada’s high school students in the top international ranks in PISA test scores (top ten just behind the usual obsessive, study-holic Asians), and university tuition that costs about one tenth as much as in the US. Just imagine, higher ed at a reasonable price and kids that can read and write BEFORE they finish high school.
Ask the question, aren’t you sick of being American? Don’t those three letter agencies make you barf? Aren’t you tired of the lunatic politicians? Imagine, no MAGA, no ‘squad’. You will watch the antics and laugh from your perch in a foreign country.
You instead will be entertained by Jagmeet and his mighty beard who confronts hecklers nose to nose, the latest generation of Quebec separatists, and let’s not forget Western alienation. Yes, all that and so much more.
And maybe if you’re lucky your kids will be accepted into French immersion schools after which they will be on the road to Canada’s elite. Imagine your kids spouting French at you. Won’t that be something? And just think, your kids taking French even in non French immersion and actually sounding kinda sorta civilized.
So, there’s an alternative. Join Canada! Canada can help fund the referendums and run the vote. Yes, imagine, results before you go beddy-bye. Won’t that be something? Won’t a passport with a leaf on it be refreshing?
I mean, you see those Canuck officials whining on CNN and other networks so here’s some advice, stop it, it’s pathetic and demeaning.
A country worthy of the name who’s being threatened the way Trump has been threatening would be making plans, ie to expropriate US assets with no compensation, to shut its own Washington embassy, to shutter the US embassy in its capitol city and to kick out every US diplomat, and then to burn the building.
Would it be painful? Imagine shutting the border. For now Trump is talking non-violent means. But that could change. What if it does? So here’s something else, stop doing the tremulous whining ninny thing and order a call-up. Do it now. Are there any men left in Canada?
In 1974 I stumbled on Stonehenge quite by accident. I was motorbiking around southern England, came over a rise, and there it was, standing in a field with no kiosk, no signage, no touristy trappings at all, just a gravel parking area. There were maybe half a dozen people there, total. I was quite amazed that it wasn’t promoted as a tourist attraction, seeing as it was so famous.
It was smaller than I expected. For maybe half an hour I wandered around, touching the stones, speculating how they built it, trying to figure out how it looked at equinox. I didn’t feel anything mystical, although in my mid-20s you’d have to hit me with a mystical hand axe to make me feel anything of that nature. From memory, I sat on one of the horizontal stones, had a smoke, and went on my way.
I took one photograph:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Zo6qrM6S7c4T7pJia1nfVCqFhLDGFC74/view?usp=drive_link
Mary Bennet (#145)
About the brutal terror attack in Kashmir, Indian viewpoints on this have been presented, so for context I will try to give the other side of this. I am not Pakistani, have never been there, am not Muslim, and find the prospect of Islamization of Europe appalling. I am not attempting to justify any of the actions of any of the forces in Kashmir. I just think that it would be better to have some idea of how both sides see the matter. (I have a bit of a compulsion to ensure that all sides are heard from. I sometimes jokingly call it Social Tourettes.)
Pakistan was founded in 1948 as a specifically Muslim state when the former British India gained independence. Kashmir was and still is a Muslim-majority state and if the population had been given a choice, most likely would have chosen to join Pakistan. The ruler of Kashmir was Hindu and made a deal with the new Indian state to join India. The first war between Pakistan and India ensued. India wound up holding most of Kashmir, though Pakistan has a portion. There have been three Indian-Pakistan wars. Both sides of this dispute now have nuclear weapons. In 1948, what is now Bangladesh joined Pakistan as East Pakistan. One of the India-Pakistan wars was about Bangladeshi independence from Pakistan. The Pakistani attempt to hold on to Bangladesh was particularly brutal. (I thought that India deserved a Nobel Peace Prize for its role in that war.)
From the Pakistani and general Muslim perspective, India holding Kashmir is invalid from the start. From that perspective, the brutality of the terror attack must be placed in the context of what is claimed to be ongoing brutality by the Indian authority against Kashmiris. Over the years, tens of thousands have been killed by one side or the other.
In the 1948 agreement under which Kashmir joined India, Kashmir and Jammu were given a substantial amount of autonomy. The Modi government revoked that autonomy a few years back and for the first few months after the revocation, news out of Kashmir was largely blacked out. Some are concerned that the loss of Kashmiri autonomy will lead to what might be called ethnic drowning, similar to the Hanification of Tibet. The Pakistani side would place the brutality of the recent terror attack in the context of what it would claim are ongoing killings by Indian authorities in Kashmir, both recently and over a longer time span. Again, I am not justifying anything and not sure if even Pakistanis would, but at least from their perspective, this would be a counter-attack, not an unprovoked first strike.
More broadly, forming a successful nation state is difficult. One can attribute most of the wars of the 20th and 21st centuries to these difficulties of doing so. (The conversion of the Hapsburg, Ottoman, and Tsarist Russia empires into nation states) In the case of the south Asian subcontinent, it was until recently more comparable to Europe than to say Germany or China. When I was in India in the 1970s, I was told that most Indians in those days had multiple identities that were more important to them than their identity as Indian, for example their caste, sub-caste, religion, language, and state. The same was also once true for other nations. France, for example, was forged into a nation through, for example the Albigensian Crusades (before which parts of southern France had more in common with Catalonia than with northern France). As late as the 1830s, much of the country spoke languages/dialects that were barely mutually understandable with Parisian French. In many nations, linguistic unity was achieved only with the advent of compulsory mass education. China is still in the process of achieving such linguistic unity but this process is made less visible by the fact that the languages being replaced are all called Chinese. (“Chinese” is a language family, not a language. Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu (Shanghainese) are some of its languages.)
Linguistic unity for India is complicated by the fact that it has multiple languages with a long literary tradition, which makes them more coherent and resilient than a language that had no standardized form. In addition, the four main southern languages are from a different language family (Dravidian) than the northern languages (which are Indo-European).
The Modi government has been attempting to forge India into a more unified nation-state, a nation-state in which people identify more as Indians and less by their other identities. As in every place that this has been attempted, it is difficult. The Soviet Union failed at the attempt. (Though it was somewhat ambivalent about the process all along.) Pakistan, whose unity has been founded only on Muslimhood may well fail. (The unified West Pakistan + East Pakistan nation-state already did fail.) The United States nearly failed in its attempt to forge a nation-state and needed a bloody civil war to get the job done (for now).
The unifying principle around which this attempt at greater unity is being built is Hindutva (= Hinduness). Forging a more unified nation this way raises problems around the status of non-Hindus (mostly Muslims but also some Christians) and around the status of those assigned to the lowest ranks of the Hindu caste system. The status of Muslims in India is further complicated both by the existence of a Muslim state on India’s border and by the two very different sources of the Muslim population in India. Some of the Muslims in India are descendants of Muslims who invaded and conquered much of India for nearly a millennium, people who were very high status historically. Resentment against former conquerors is not unique to India. Other Muslims are people who converted to Islam in order to escape the caste system. There are also Christians and Buddhists in India who converted for the same reason. These populations and the conversion process are not necessarily accepted as valid by some Hindus. A greater unity based on Hindutva makes this religious issue that much more contentious. The treatment of Dalits (formerly called untouchables) and Adivasis (indigenous populations not included in the caste system) has also become more contentious and intersects with the religious problems because many of those who have converted to non-Hindu religions had been Dalits.
On the PETM and Triassic civilization theories: I love to think about these ideas and wouldn’t rule them out, but to Anonymoose‘s point of weird turtles, I‘d like to point to animals with analogous body plans, such as the giant armadillos of pre-human South America. Their ribcage became a solid shell as well, and they’re not the only lineage that has tried that path.
If a physiological trait proves really helpful, such as the shell of a turtle, or – even more dramatic – powered flight, it may allow a species (or clade) to spread very quickly. If the trait was developed by a succession of species in a limited geographic range, that whole process may be lost to us due to the low rate of fossilization, thus making it seem like turtles, pterosaurs, or bats entered the world fully formed.
A seafaring culture of dinosaurs that might spread some species around is more easy to imagine for me than Triassic reptiles that practice genetic engineering.
Re: Anonymoose #176:
To me, that sounds like the tech world is simply projecting their own behaviour in those ads. They have been bullying their users for years, disregarding what these people might actually want and forcing stuff unto them.
That said, I hope you are right about young people moving away from the tech world. That would be very good news, indeed!
Re #176 the younger generation and smartphones
This is really good news in my book. I have not seen this where I live, on the contrary. But I do not come into contact with many people born after 2000.
I don’t own a smart phone and I hope I will never have to. It’s getting more and more difficult though. WhatsApp is taking over from SMS and even phone calls; some businesses communicate exclusively via this proprietary channel. It’s like saying email can only be exchanged between people who use the same email client.
Two factor authentication is the bane of my work life existence. And for some reason the company doesn’t accept the argument that they must give me the tools to accomplish my work. I bring my brains and my time and they must provide the hardware and the software.
Often people bypass this anyway by getting a colleague or a client to authenticate on the colleague/client’s phone on their behalf. most companies’ IT policies expressly forbids this. I asked one of the LLMs if it agrees with on this point and it did! Definite proof of intelligence 🙂
In the book ‘The Tyranny of Metrics’ the author argues that people will always find a way to fudge/cheat the metrics used to monitor performance and so most of those metrics are useless.
Tyrell #201
“Irreversible hormone blockers have dozens of severe side effects which affect between 5-50% of users. Millions have been injured by these drugs, and dozens of lawsuits have been filed by those they permanently disabled.”
https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/hormone-blockers-are-very-dangerous
>For everybody thinking that liberals are going to convert to Islam, how would that even work?
For the boomerlib you’re thinking of, the Unitarian crowd, you’re right. But they’re not fundies and probably never will be. I’m thinking of the Screaming Bluehair True Believer crowd. You haven’t spent much time around fundies, I take it? Those wide wild eyes. Man, it takes me back. As to a plausible path? They’re coo-coo for Palestine and part of that is being Islamic. I guess I answered the question I had earlier for myself – they’ll go Sunni, not Shi’ite. Maybe a few might find the Sufis over there in the corner, a few always do.
To paraphrase a Journey song, they can’t stop believing. They’re going to believe in something, it’s just a question of what. I put it less likely that they’ll show up at an evangelical church than at a mosque.
All this talk of God Save the Queen, and Stonehenge, and Avebury, has me reminded that I am planning a family trip to the UK next year. (My kids jokingly call it the “uck”, rhymes with yuck.)
Part of the reason I want to do it now is out of genuine concern that it might not be possible, or advisable, in the future.
I have loved Stonehenge, and standing stones, for as long as I can remember. JMG may recall sometime last year I had been asking in Magic Monday about the advisability of erecting my own stones in the back forty.
Anyway it all reminds me that I had the chance to visit Avebury a number of years ago, while on business-related travel. I had never heard of it, and I could not tell you how we stumbled across this, but somehow, my wife and I were looking for something to watch and we wound up finding this children’s miniseries from the 70s:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_the_Stones
^ which is worth a watch if you’re looking for something wholesome with spiritual allusions. Filmed in Avebury of course
@Ron M
“Perhaps this is why the ruling Liberal Government has been pushing so hard to”
Of course that’s why; it never had even a tittle to do with “public safety”.
Do you know what’s interesting though, I personally find that with Trudeau gone, it’s now much easier to see how he was never actually in charge of anything or coming up with any of these policy decisions. The awfulness train keeps a-rolling.
Hi John Michael,
It’ll be interesting indeed to see just what happens from that alleged incident, and if I read the article correctly, the case will be heard in a higher court.
For all we know, this could be a test case, or an example of being given enough rope. Hard to tell, but one way or another, we’ll find out.
As a side note, I looked at a photo of Mr Patel, and his eyes and face has to me the look of one whom means business.
Interesting times.
Cheers
Chris
JMG: “Ambrose, Heindel’s work does vary from Steiner in important ways, not least because it’s based on Steiner’s relatively early ideas and Steiner went in new directions later on.”
Interesting. Thank you. I suppose I’ll have to review Steiner with an eye to the timeline. Does Heindel add anything significant that is not in Steiner at all?
Taking advantage of open week to get your opinion on using ammonia as part of folk magic.
In Draja Mickaharic’s 1982 book Spiritual Cleansing: Practical Ways to Rid Your Home, Office and Self of Negative Energy, Mickaharic mentions putting ammonia down the drains to settle one’s house. I had never heard of using ammonia to deal with negative energy/spirits until I read this book.
However, using ammonia to rid your home of negative energy/spirits is all over tiktok. It looks like using ammonia is a regular part of folk magic.
I checked your Encyclopedia of Natural Magic and you don’t mention the use of ammonia in your potions, baths and washes sections.
Ammonia and bleach mixed together makes mustard gas. — (I know that from a King of the Hill episode when Peggy Hill was planning on listing the mixture as a household hint to the readers of the Arlen Texas newspaper until Hank stopped her by explaining how mustard gas is made.) — So clearly there are some dangers to using ammonia unthinkingly.
But still, curious as to your thoughts on using ammonia in one’s home as part of spiritual cleansing it. I just think of ammonia as something in the laundry cupboard.
@Roy Smith #155
Why bother with Iamblichus when you can go straight to source as seen in the experience of George Fox, an early Quaker. Quakers were explicitly Christian originally before their drift into liberal generic spiritual mush. Praying you meet the New Testament call
“the simplicity of Christ” He is the one who gives the Holy Spirit and reveals the Father. Such a deal, three for the price of one. The Trinitarian dance.
“as I had forsaken the priests, so I left the separate preachers also, and those esteemed the most experienced people; for I saw there was none among them all that could speak to my condition. And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what to do, then, oh, then, I heard a voice which said, “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition”; and when I heard it my heart did leap for joy. Then the Lord let me see why there was none upon the earth that could speak to my condition, namely, that I might give Him all the glory; for all are concluded under sin, and shut up in unbelief as I had been, that Jesus Christ might have the pre-eminence who enlightens, and gives grace, and faith, and power. Thus when God doth work, who shall let (i. e. prevent) it? And this I knew experimentally”
Plenty of available, accessible gnosis in the old time religion!
Tyrell/#201 — My Assigned Male at Birth nephew transitioned to being a female sometime during her teen years. She’s in her mid-20’s now. I don’t think her nuclear family (mom/dad/sisters/brothers) took the situation lightly. I lived in a different US state from them when the serious discussions began, but initially (I believe) there was active resistance to the idea on the part of the parents.
However, the family, including the extended family where I come in, always knew that my nephew would at a minimum be gay. The preferences for certain toys and activities were present from when the child was very young, even before the socialization that comes with going to school.
Getting to the point where my niece became my niece took years and was not a trivial decision.
Maybe something similarly serious is going on with your young relative and family unbeknownst to you.
I wish you and your family luck at this time. It’s definitely non-standard territory for families. I hope everyone ends up where they want to end up.
I must commend this blog with being reasonable and sane. The arrest of the judge has had all of my anti-Trump friends screaming dictatorship and quoting from Hitler about judges.
In that vein, I offer the following from conservative sources. Jonathan Turley is a Constitutional Law professor, who has testified at Trump’s impeachment trials as being unconstitutional and overreach by certain zealous Representatives.
https://jonathanturley.org/2025/04/26/this-is-not-normal-democrats-appear-to-miss-an-obvious-problem-with-the-arrest-of-the-wisconsin-judge/
“This is not normal.” Those words from Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., are undeniably true after the arrest of Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan. However, the reason it is not normal is far more debatable. Dugan is accused of becoming a lawbreaker in seeking to obstruct an effort to arrest a man wanted by federal authorities. If true, that is manifestly not “normal.”
He concludes with:
I have often criticized the reckless rhetoric directed against judges, including those who have ruled against the Trump Administration. We need to maintain our civility and respect as we work through these often difficult questions.
However, that works both ways. Judges have to reinforce respect for the judiciary in their own conduct. That includes showing restraint and respect in relation to the countervailing powers of the Executive Branch. It certainly includes avoiding actions that could be viewed as criminal or unethical in resisting this Administration.
That is also a “red line.”
—
The other is from Brian York, commentator of the “Washington Examiner.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/daily-memo/3392405/will-judge-hannah-dugan-become-next-hero-trump-resistance/
WILL JUDGE DUGAN BECOME THE NEXT HERO OF THE RESISTANCE? The Trump administration’s campaign against sanctuary jurisdictions took a big step forward on Friday when federal agents arrested a county judge in Milwaukee after the judge allegedly helped an illegal immigrant accused of multiple crimes hide from federal immigration officials who had come to detain him.
The judge is Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan. The illegal immigrant is Eduardo Flores-Ruiz. According to court documents, Flores-Ruiz, a Mexican, came illegally to the United States more than a dozen years ago. Immigration authorities issued a final removal order for him in January 2013. He was deported but at some point reentered the U.S. illegally. Now, he is still in the U.S. illegally, and he is also charged with domestic violence — three counts known as battery-domestic abuse-infliction of physical pain or injury.
He ends with:
Here’s the thing. We know who the villain is, but who are Democrats going to make the hero in this story? The answer, of course, seems to be Dugan — but remember, all this was done on behalf of Eduardo Flores-Ruiz. Will Dugan be called a hero for protecting an already-deported-and-illegally-returned accused domestic abuser from federal authorities? That might be a hard sell.
It’s similar to the problem Democrats face in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case. With that, Democrats have argued that even if Abrego Garcia is a gang member, which they still deny, the case is really about due process and everyone’s rights in America. In the Milwaukee case, they’ll certainly try to make it about due process again. But people might still ask: Why should a judge of all people obstruct federal agents and the enforcement of immigration law when the facts in the case seem so clear-cut?
—–
I am still baffled by all this attention to protecting illegal aliens who have broken the law. I don’t understand why the Democrats are rallying around this murky point.
The only thing that I can figure out is that they have some sort of narrative such as Trump is der Furher that they wish to convince the rest of us with. Is this because they are desperate for their old world to come back? Or is this the last gasp of a group of gobsmacked people who had their world shattered beyond repair?
Clay Dennis #170,
Well, consider that there’s a bright side to this potential future devolvement of modern landscape maintenance: !MGHGA! ** ..
**Goats .. and the men/women who’ll tend to stare at them, as they munch their way forward. ‘;]
p.s. – throw in some llama and alpaca and we’re all good.
J.L.Mc12, I’m sure there was, but I last read it well over forty years ago! In my teen years I was crazy about the martial arts and read everything I could find about them, including Draeger’s books. I couldn’t tell you much about them now.
Ron, that would be entertaining, but I don’t expect it. Look up “useful idiot” in the dictionary and you’ll find Trudeau’s picture.
Mary, oh, I’m sure the whole business about being a post-national elite class is how they phrase it to themselves, but it amounts to defending the empire at all costs.
Dagnarus, we had the vote at the beginning of this month. You can certainly bring that up the next time there’s a fifth Wednesday.
Dennis, it was certainly pleasant for the members of the comfortable classes who got to do that. I’m far from sure it did anything to decrease carbon emissions, however, as those classes don’t make up that large a share of the work force, and I’m also far from sure that productivity went up in any real sense over the affected industries in general. Your conclusion, however, is quite correct; I’ve been pointing out for a long time that the people who chatter about reducing carbon emissions don’t actually have any interest in doing so — it’s purely a pose, and you can see this most clearly if you try to get them to reduce their own carbon emissions. More on this in an upcoming post!
Smith, “the tremulous whining ninny thing” is my favorite phrase from the last year or so of comments here. Thank you! You get today’s gold star.
Eike, oh, granted, but it’s such a fun idea — and think about how entertaining the frantic foam-flecked rage of rationalist pseudoskeptics confronted with such notions would be!
Bloupanda, I’m glad to say that here, at least, some of the two-factor authentication things will now call on a land line and give a voice message. I don’t use the ones that won’t.
Chris, it’s a fascinating case, and the reaction to it is even more fascinating.
Ambrose, not in that book. Heindel’s later work goes in other directions.
Elizabeth, I hadn’t studied hoodoo when I wrote my natural magic book. In hoodoo, certainly, ammonia is much used as an additive for protective floor washes and the like. Lemon scented ammonia was especially popular for that purpose in the one folk-magic culture I contacted directly. Put a cup of it into your floor wash in place of the white vinegar sometime; it works well.
Neptunesdolphins, Trump has set a ghastly trap for his opponents and they’re falling face first into it. He’s learned that whatever he does, they’ll oppose it, and so he’s using this to back them into defending more and more obviously criminal behavior. If things go the way they’re going, a year from now he’ll have them insisting at the top of their lungs that some creep who raped and murdered half a dozen toddlers is a victim of the oppressive system and should be set free, while the grieving parents who testified against him are the monsters. Then they’ll wonder why they only got fifteen per cent of the vote in the 2026 election. It’s really astonishing to watch intelligent people falling for this over and over again, completely oblivious to the fact that they’ve become Trump’s political assets despite themselves.
Alberta is an interesting place. There is a warmer than expected for the latitude pocket up by Grande Prairie which should be too far north for agriculture, but they can and do grow something.
As for how the All-Glorious State will respond to the revelation a profitable product is harmful? We have an example from about 20 years ago. Trans-saturated fats went from good for you because they did not contain extra evil cholesterol to satanic practically over night. Very quietly too. It was right out of Orwell. “No, we always said they were bad for you. You remember it wrong.”
The word that ‘evil substance’ has to go will be sent to the appropriate companies who will quietly remove it, maybe with a note on the package similar too “trans-fat free” or maybe not depending on Marketing. The news media will mention it in passing, maybe, and the whole embarrassing affair will disappear from the narrative.
The creatures that build a technological civilization must be able to build machines and tools, in addition to having a mental sheath. For example, if the descendants of housecats become sapient, they won’t be able to build great stone monuments or internal combustion engines, or even works of literature with their paws and jaws. Whatever cultural, philosophical, or religious innovations the Felids come up with won’t leave a trace in the geological record.
This of course applies to the possibility of past industrial civilizations– was any animal alive at the time capable of manipulating matter in that way?
>who are Democrats going to make the hero in this story
There are no heroes in this story, only villains. Always has been, always will be unless something unforeseen changes.
Jeff #3:
There is a pretty good overview of Middle Age weapons in a book Mediaeval Warfare , by Terence Wise. Things were different for foot soldiers versus knights. The big thing is armor; by the 15th century full plate was so good that shields were not carried by well equipped knights. Foot soldiers in the Middle Ages, according to this book didn’t carry swords; their sidearm was a knife (although some were pretty substantial). If you are really into this, that book is a good, quick reference.
Cugel
Dear Tyrell Number 201
Apologies if this is badly written, I haven’t got much time today.
People do not seem to realise what a serious thing it is to undergo a gender transition. It is something you need to think about long and hard and you need to exhaust every other possibility. You then need therapy and then have another long hard think about it. After all this child might just be a cross dresser and doing a full gender transition would be a disaster for them. I should know because I have undergone a gender transitions and had the op. Someone who is 12 does not have the maturity or life experience to start going down that road. How can they understand the implication of it. What has been done with children is criminal and seems to be part of the same madness as the covid vaccine.
Unfortunately I do not have time to look into this for you, but I would like to make a few suggestions.
First there is the official Cass report that was done over here in the UK and led to the closure of the Tavistock clinic and stopped the use of puberty blockers. Secondly you should try Buck Angel and Blair White on you tube. Buck especially has done a lot of work on the dangers of transitioning children. They are both trans like me so can’t exactly be accused of being transphobic, so that might help if the parents of this child think that you are being prejudiced. You might also want to try putting puberty blockers into the search engine at you tube and google. I am sure you will be able to come up with stuff. You might also want to try Debbie Hayton who writes for the spectator. She has an own web site which you can find on google. She again is trans. If you want a good example of the sheer scale of lies and duplicity indulged in by doctors in relation to transitioning children then try this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-6oBqAbxdI
This child could well be transexual and could go on to lead a happy life if they undergo a gender transition. However, this needs to be balanced with the risk if they get this wrong and regret it, they will be scarred and traumatised for the rest of their life. This is why it is best to wait until they are in a better position to make this decision. This is probably the best approach to take with this child and their parents. You are not saying they should not transition, you just want them to make the right choice. The other thing to point out is that there are real limitations on what medicine can do. I am never going to be a biological woman with the ability to menstruate or get pregnant. The other problem is that thanks to the activism of the left, hatred towards trans people has gone through the roof in the last tens years. Are they ready to deal with that?
This isn’t directly related to your problem, but other people will be reading this. It has become clear in the last few years to me how much this trans agenda has been pushed by the liberal establishment, left, PMC or what other term you might use for this. Yes, there are lot of trans people who support it, but they simply do not have the numbers or muscle/wealth etc to push this on the rest of society. For example, a lot of teachers are pushing this agenda on children in this country. The number of teachers who are actually trans is going to be pretty small; and as far as I know there were no trans members in the Scottish parliament when they passed the self ID act a couple of years ago. It is also extraordinary how when Stonewall put forward the idea of gender self ID around 2017 every main stream party, including the Tories adopted it with almost no debate. Did you know that US aid was helping to fund Stonewall in the UK. Until the recent supreme court ruling trans people in the UK probably had better rights than in the US and we could get the op on the NHS, although it would take time. So, your precious American tax dollars went to fund Stonewell in the Uk.
Stonewall has done more than any other organisation to incite hatred against trans people and destroy our rights, because the left could not accept the idea that in order for trans women to live in the world with the 51% of the population who are biological woman, they are going to have to make compromises over things like woman’s sports etc. I am having to spend a lot of my time doing meta bhava and blessing walks at the moment to stop myself from being consumed with hatred of the left and the PMC.
Anyway, that’s enough about my problems. Tyrell, I hope this child and their parents make the right decision. There are a number of video’s on Bucks website about people who transitioned and then regretted it and hopefully this might open their eyes to what is really going on here with the trans agenda which is literally destroying trans people. The medical establishment are not interested in the welfare of trans people. If they were they would adopt a very cautious approach when it comes to children. I am afraid the whole world has gone mad. Look at the covid vaccine thing.
I wish you all the best
Anon one
Neptunesdolphin#235..
My take is that since the truth re. all things Covid × the Jankyjab + the related malicious propaganda efforts are FINALLY piercing the now tattered invisibility cloak of the previous ‘presidential admin. by autopen’ .. corp$erate media.. ex-PERT$ ..etc, the blu jacobins and their rHino simps have fallen back to their only default – OMB!
And remember, BUILD BACK BETTER was, afterall .. a campaign of ‘weffian’ proportions .. to which I believe the Democrats and their useful idiots thought they could appropriate wholesale, enabling societal change with little to no push-back.
FAFO!
@ Tyrell #201 – Sorrow! 12 is a very young age to be experimented upon!
I note that the midwesterndoctor blog has already been referenced – and that blogger is pretty thorough, and supplies multiple references that might be followed up. Very worthwhile, for your own information, even if all you are ever able to do with it, is continue to be there to listen, as the chips fall where others will.
However, for me, the real horror of this kind of situation is the non-trivial risk of being permanently deprived of the capacity to experience orgasm in a sexual relationship. (Or, at all). But sex is certainly the erotic glue for certain types of relationships that are profoundly satisfying to the vast majority of us (again, not all), and to be deprived of the capacity to enjoy it, at all, ever, even should one wish to, and even should one choose to, seems to me a very grown-up risk which no 12-year-old could *possibly* give their informed consent to undertake.
Also it is perhaps the greatest irony (not in a good way) to see that our society’s “sexual revolution” (aspects of which, I myself have taken deeply to heart, by the way), taken to its logical conclusion, appears to abhor sex so utterly.
What I’m working out here for myself, is that somehow, our social discourse is now subject to a vast miscommunication tangle, based on the fact that sex is analogue, embodied, palpable, tangible and given… while gender is digital, virtual, abstract, and as immediately changeable as one’s online avatar. Depending on a person’s sensibility – whether more analogue-friendly or more digital-friendly – engaging in mutually comprehensible conversation may be next to impossible.
May all involved be blessed in any way they themselves are willing to receive. My blessings also to yourself, if you will have them.
Did Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson really just say (paraphrasing) “it’s not a problem if the public school is teaching your young (5 or 6 year old) child about gay and transexual people, because you can put them in a private school or home-school them if you don’t like it”?
Because everyone has enough cash for private schools, right? (Assuming there is even one available where you live). Or, you know, just quit your job and stay home so you can teach your child.
This seems like another nail in the coffin for public education. People get really upset when you mess with their kids.
I’ve meant to ask this for a while, but have you read “Atlantis” by Rand and Rose Flem-Ath? They have this theory that Atlantis is Antarctica, and while it’s been a while since I read the book, it was a fascinating read.
One thing that’s been on mind from time to time over the last decade is the role of self-sacrifice in virtue. Certainly virtue will occasionally demand you give up something you would have rather had for some worthier, if less pleasant, cause — otherwise there’d be little point to “virtue” as a concept.
But at some point, sticking to your principles despite those leading to failure after failure — even if we politely term those failures “moral victories” — stops being the sign of moral virtue and becomes the sign of a chump. I’d go so far as to say there’s something cowardly about hiding behind abstract principles as the world burns around you. As the quote goes, “If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”
I don’t mean that it’s OK to embrace cruelty and chaos, but when you get in this situation, the old norms need to be reevaluated and renegotiated, not followed blindly. However much you value peace, principle, law, and order… sometimes you just have to throw the tea in the harbor.
I just want to thank you for the Wagner posts. That was a real educational moment that has increased my enjoyment of those operas, amongst other things.
Your posts also inspired me to finally get around to read “Parsifal” by Chretien de Troyes. It is probably not the first story of the genre, but as far as I can tell, it was the oldest one we have written down. I was quite astounding to read and suddenly see how it inspired a pop-culture movement around the now-classic storyline of: bored young man, living in isolated place brought up to be kept safe (and bored… did we mention bored?), discovers warriors and excitement and action, goes off, discovers he has a special natural talent, meets a mentor who hones that talent, and the hero goes out to save the damsel, fights off the bad guys, saves the day and gets the girl. That was where it started, wasn’t it?
What teenage boy doesn’t love to see himself in that role. In modern times, we’ve permitted young girls to picture themselves in that role, too. Who doesn’t want to be born with some special, untapped ability, secretly destined to be the saviour of the world?
…and that is why the Star Wars franchise has become such a massive cultural force. I have been told Lucas took his inspiration from Kurosawa’s “The Hidden Fortress” but I’ve watched that and if there is a connection, I’d love to have some film buff sit down and explain it to me. No, he took the classic western medieval Arthurian tale and set it in space.
Thanks for leading me to that realization.
Bruce
Hey JMG
An odd idea I think about occasionally is, given how much the technology of the book has developed over the millennia (paperbacks, pop-ups, choose your own adventure) what other innovations could be developed in the millennia ahead? If humanity could exist for 10 million years, then it seems improbable that book shall stay exactly as there currently are.
Not only that, but could some new method of recording information supplant the book and the computer?
Patrick, one of the things that makes the saurian hypothesis so interesting is that quite a few of the early dinosaurs were bipedal and had forelimbs that were entirely capable of manipulating objects. Here’s a late Triassic example, Daemonosaurus:
That specimen’s 5-7 feet long, btw, so its body mass is comparable to yours and mine. There continued to be dinosaurs built on that body plan all the way up to the end of the Cretaceous. Thus it’s by no means impossible that critters along those lines gave rise to bipedal, tool-using saurians who caused some bursts of climate change.
Slink, it’s also another nail in the coffin of managerial-class ascendancy. The managerial class has used a pretense of social mobility as one of its standard propaganda themes; Jackson saying “Well, if you belong to my social class, it’s not an issue” was not a smart move.
Athaia, it’s an interesting book, though I found it unconvincing. One of the problems with most of today’s alternative sciences is that too many researchers in those fields spend all their time looking for evidence that would support their claims and not enough looking for evidence that conflicts with them. Atlantis is especially beset with that problem. I think the Flem-Aths have made a case that there could have been a civilization in Antarctica during one of the warm intervals of the past, but they don’t address any of the challenges in associating that civilization with the Atlantis myth — which does, after all, require something in the Atlantic…
Slithy, excellent. Yes, that’s valid, and it’s also worth noting how often the people who are trying to insist that you and I engage in self-sacrifice are all too obviously not willing to give up anything themselves. “Self-sacrifice” can be a polite label for letting yourself be exploited and abused.
Renaissance, you’re welcome, but George Lucas himself has said that Hidden Fortress was a major influence on Star Wars, though that’s not where he got the character of Luke Skywalker — that came from Joseph Campbell, again by Lucas’s own admission. (Michael Kaminski’s book The Secret History of Star Wars is one source for this.) According to Lucas, C3PO and R2D2 were inspired by the two peasants who play so central a role in the film, while the general and the princess were the originals of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Princess Leia.
J.L.Mc12, the computer probably won’t last long — it’s very resource-intensive and has already gone through dramatic changes in the short time it’s been here. Books are a good deal older, having become standard in Roman times. Along similar lines, here’s a knife from the Bronze Age:
That’s kept the same basic pattern since metal came into general use. No doubt book technology will change in various ways, and it’s certainly possible that other things will supplement or temporarily supplant it (as ebooks did), but I suspect it’s around for the long haul.
Scotlyn, this what you said below is fascinating. why is it so??? what happened???
“Also it is perhaps the greatest irony (not in a good way) to see that our society’s “sexual revolution” (aspects of which, I myself have taken deeply to heart, by the way), taken to its logical conclusion, appears to abhor sex so utterly.”
erika
Smith #220
There has been a suggestion by some here in Maine that we join Canada which is not only a major trading partner with us but also surrounds about 2/3 of the State. A Canadian also wrote a letter to our State’s largest newspaper, inviting us to join. It got me thinking if we did Join Canada then it would allow me to remain on the East Coast should climate change require a move northward!
@Jeff #3, JMG, @Sven #63
Sven is quite correct, that the development was not linear. I’d add to his post that the development of the two-handed sword has to do with the development of plate armour that obviated the need for a shield. Plate armour can only be made in more economically complex societies.
I would add that there are rapier treatises as late as the early 17th Century which have techniques to deal with classic longswords, which were still in use at that date.
@Scotty
The Celts tended to fight as a semi-organized mob (as all armies are depicted in every Hollywood movie, ever), the Romans fought in tightly knit formations. The loose mob of Celtic warriors would have longer swords, but short swords work better in close, disciplined, lines, stabbing to the front behind large shields, not leaving the group, and keeping together.
The early medieval Romans changed tactics to looser formations and their swords grew in length accordingly.
Hi JMG,
A few years back, when you first started talking about the Sun being afflicted by Neptune being an indication of imminent collapse, I couldn’t imagine how that could be or what that would look like. I also wasn’t sure what part of the world might be going to suffer such a collapse. By now, though, particularly for those of us living in Europe and, more specifically, the EU, it’s becoming plainer every day that we are the ones who are going to collapse. Just the word, “collapse” seems to be everywhere at the moment, from businesses, to peace talks, trade, energy provision, you name it and it’s collapsing. Our governments have hitched their wagons and pledged their undying allegiance to the genital pianoforte playing “comedian” in some desperate bid to avoid financial collapse, yet everything they do only seems to make things worse. I’m reminded of that song by Dido from a few years back:
We will go down with this ship,
We won’t put our hands up in surrender.
There will be no white flag above our door;
We’re in love with the greedy green gremlin.
@Smith #220: Your prayers have been heard, and Elizabeth May changed the past to make the speech you asked for!
It’s interesting to keep seeing similar political developments on your side of the border as on ours, though it’s certainly more bombastic over there. For instance, the judicial’s conflict with the executive. Here in Mexico, the supreme court was a thorn in the side of our previous populist president “AMLO”. After winning big in last year’s elections, his ruling coalition passed a constitutional amentment to subject the judicial branch to elections. The supreme court held it back for a long time, but ultimately allowed the reform to pass.
Meanwhile, the opposition parties continue slipping into irrelevance at every level of government as they fail to offer any sort of alternative vision. Too soon to say for sure that your democrats will end up as impotent, but they sure look to be trending that way.
Neptunes Dolphins, what law(s), exactly, did Mr. Abrego Garcia violate? I have yet to read or hear of any evidence, much less an arraignment. I understand he was legally residing in the USA, and is married to an American citizen, precisely the same situation as one Melania Trump prior to her becoming a citizen. As for his “gang membership”, again, where is the evidence? If there were any, we would surely have seen or heard of it.
As for the Dugan case, good grief! If what is being reported is true, I hope she will be disbarred.
@Mr. House
I’d agree about the meetups, it does seem to be a rather dispersed group though. I’m in Washington state and making it to… is it Rhode Island where the annual potluck is? Is way too far away to be practical, especially on the even tighter budget!
@MethylEthyl
Thanks! It is interesting to catch a glimpse into things. It’s always a bit sobering when you see a member of “them” who should be one of our overlords with the brilliant master plan (new brilliant master plan, now that we got those other guys out!) and they are so clueless as to nearly be a caricature. It’s when you see things like that that it really brings it home (for me at least) that there is no evil cabal of villainous masterminds.
@Other Owen
Very true. I have made several efforts to point that out to other folks at work over the years. Trying to get the point across that most members of the public, especially the blue collar public, don’t perceive the slightest difference between a member of the FWS or the FS or the BIA, BLM etc etc etc. Really, there isn’t much incentive for them to understand the actual division of the federal government in all it’s byzantine complexity. I’ve never taken offense at folks not being able to parse it.
HV
And while we’re on the subject of transwomen: There’s been a lot of talk, even on this blog, along the lines of “They were born male. they’re men; in women’s space, they’re a danger to women.” Well, not quite that simple. My take: It they still have male organs, yes, of course they’re men, and they no more belong in women’s space than male officials and guards in womens’ prisons. (Why aren’t the restroom police howling their heads off about that outrage? Because a captive population attracts abusers the way large sums of money attract thieves. )
Now, If they were born male and no longer have those organs, then they’re eunuchs.
If the surgery was done after they got their full growth and strength, they can appear to be men and dangerous, another matter entirely. And they certainly don’t belong in womens’ sports. Perhaps – a league of their own? If done before, no problem. (Though anyone of any gender can be a menace if they have hands and/or weapons, another story entirely).
Then, the statement that “there are only two genders: male and female, end of story,” ignores the wide variety of well-known genetic anomalies. Some can be very misleading. Back in the day, when chromosome testing for women athletes was new, one of them was shocked to be accused to cheating becasue the test showed XY. She had a woman’s body and had always considered herself a woman. It turns out one can be XY, but not respond to androgen, so the embryo defaults to female automatically. There are other forms of being born intersex, some of which , IIRC, didn’t show up until puberty. Now all of these are rare, but exist. I was around and avidly reading everything new and different in the news abut the time this issue was just starting to be aired. Again, IIRC, there was one such who parents had him/her surgically altered to conform to the norm, and again, IIRC, at puberty sued the parents because “I’m a boy! And you turned me into a girl!”
But then on the other hand, I read a long first-person magazine article by a woman who transitioned to male and rejoiced in the liberation it brought. The comment I remember was “….And I can become a doctor!” In my view, she didn’t need to change her sex; she needed to change her culture. (Ah, Betty Friedan, where were you when she took that drastic step?) Of course, there are, or were. a lot of social benefits, including getting more respect; not having to put on an act, etc, etc, etc….. history, especially on the frontier, has a number of 19th century characters who passed as male. Mountain Charlie, in California, a local legend. The reasons for that are pretty obvious, and actually, no longer apply today except in places like Afghanistan.
Now, that said, having such things done before you’re old enough to be a legal adult is a very bad idea. But, then, locking them into stereotyped behaviors – or being bullied for not being macho or femmy – can be quite damaging as well. Well, there’s my $0.02, with no easy answers except a society which accepts that “There is no One True Way for everyone.”
Regarding the off-shoring of industries, there is another reason for the loss of industrial jobs that I have seen seldom mentioned.
In 1965, when my husband began working for the mining company he retired from, there were 22,000 hourly (unionized) employees. Thirteen years later, in 1978, that number was down to just under 17,000. By the time he retired in 1997, that was down to about 5,000. By the time our oldest retired a few years ago, it was only about 4500 or so.
Now, there is no way you are going to send a mining operation overseas, and the company didn’t cut back on production. The answer was automation. Work that had taken 10 or 20 men to do was taken over by a machine. Almost everything these days is done by a machine, computer, or whatever.
When I was growing up in the 1940s and 50s, my father hired a local man who had a plow and a team of horses. He built a garage and a new chicken house using a hand drill, hand saw and a hammer. My mother baked delicious cakes using an egg beater (for you youngsters out there, an egg beater is a hand mixer without the cord) and she sewed all my clothes using a treadle sewing machine.
Can anyone go to a store and buy a hand drill, egg beater or treadle sewing machine? You might find them at an auction, or a second-hand store if you’re lucky.
I would really like to see small factories start up that make these things. They could be advertised as useful for anyone who is living off-grid or for anyone who wants to lower their carbon footprint.
I have an egg beater. Much handier than an electric mixer since I don’t have to pull out a cord.
Along with Slink’s comment, among the other bills the Seattle component of the Legislature came up with was one that will allow the State to discuss transitioning with children behind their parent’s backs. The parents are not allowed an opinion on the matter.
The unintended (at least to the teacher’s union) consequence to that will be even more kids pulled out of public schools. Public school enrollment is declining even though the population is increasing and this will make it worse. I’m a little surprised that the All-Glorious State isn’t trying to ban home and private schooling, but then that would require the PMC to send their kids to the public schools. That would never do.
Hippy Viking & House
When JMG moved near me in Rhode Island, I suggested a potluck and he concurred. Since then, between 20 and 40 people come each year, most from the Northeast, but at least one or two from the West Coast.
I have hope that Chris from Fernglade will somehow make it someday. Scotlyn has come in spirit several times, by way of a fine bottle of Irish Whiskey.
My suggestion to you: announce a time and place at least 3 months, if not more in advance. I suggest a Solstice or Equinox. Host it at your house if possible. I called mine the First Annual Ecosophia Midsummer Potluck, implying continuity. We’re up to 8th. I used a Google Docs sign up sheet so I had an idea of who and how many were coming.
Post monthly on the open post.
Someday you too may be designated a Khan of Potlucks!
Thanks. I appreciate the Gold Star.
I think that this tremulous, whining ninnyism is at the root of a lot of troubles one of which I see flaring up right now, right under my nose.
The lady down the hall from us, Ms M., a university admissions employee who tells me she’s making 80G per year, is going back to Romania. The fellow across the hall, Mr A., a youngster in his 30s, coincidentally working in admissions but at a different university, curses the day he set foot here, he sez why of all the places he could have chosen, did he pick this place. My financial advisor, Mr H., quit the bank and headed back to India.
Mr H told me that he can’t afford to get married or support a family or buy a house or even a car. The others voiced similar issues, that the cost of housing and of living in general is so onerous that you just survive. So, enough of this nonsense, back to the homeland. For Mr A though, the homeland is Libya, so for the time being he’s staying put and scouting other countries.
I read an article dated 2010 about a project in the city of Cavite, in the Philippines, involving building houses for ordinary workers.
Typical wage? P6000 to P15000 per month or USD 129 to 322 Not much. Size of a typical unit? 240 sq ft. Pretty small. Price? USD 8,600. Peanuts. Monthly mortgage payment over 25 years? USD 46. Imagine. Then again people there only make a couple hundred a month. But the point is that they can afford it. A house of concrete and blocks is better than salvaged wood and corrugated metal.
These are not apartments. These are small houses referred to in the article as duplexes. Pictures show them as small cottage-like structures with power and water hookups and indoor plumbing.
Could such stuff be done on this side of the waters? You know, building according to what people can afford ie nothing palatial, and judging from the interior shots, nothing luxurious, the finish pretty rough. The answer? Well, you know the answer, developers, nimby groups, city hall, bankers wouldn’t have it. They’d rather have homelessness and widespread desperation.
Why can’t we solve our housing problems? Because we can’t. It’s the tremulous whining ninny thing. There’s nothing here that can’t be solved and especially that an application of common sense couldn’t have averted in the first place.
Hereward, that doesn’t surprise me at all. The question in my mind is purely how far of a lurch downward Europe will undergo. Stay safe, and be ready to flee if you have to!
Valenzuela, I’d be very, very impressed if your country, or any country, came up with a head of state as bombastic as ours! That said, Mexico and the EE.UU. are much more similar than our politicians and intellectuals, at least, are willing to admit, and so it doesn’t surprise me that the same broad political transitions are taking place in both countries.
Aldarion, thanks, that was hilarious. Why not Alaska, a natural fit, all those fantastic vistas, and HAWAII!!! Why not Hawaii? The most beautiful place on Earth. Ever been to Hawaii?
@Smith #220 – regarding Canada courting some US states, that is certainly an entertaining idea! But the way I see it the proposal is not particularly practical for a number of reasons. (1) Unless they are bamboozled, the US businesses would balk at the high wages that they’d have to pay their workers and the insane amount of tax that will be extracted from them (there’s a reason why there has been a flight of capital, businesses and brains from Canada for decades – and at an increasing pace as of late); (2) the citizens of these states would have to face the prospect of having to surrender every single firearm in their possession to Big Brother (Canada’s Constitution ain’t got no 2nd amendment!) and give most of their earnings to Big Brother in terms of taxes; (3) since Canadians have an attitude of moral superiority over the USA, the concept of annexing part of another country to ‘grow’ Canada seems to be very American-ish if not Bad Orange Man-ish; and (4) if Canada decided to take a state or two by force, all the USA would need to do is send its New York City police force to the battlefront: at 35,000 cops versus Canada’s 13,000 troops, plus the fact that the New York cops have actually handled firearms (Canada sent all its military equipment and ammo to Trudeau’s coke-buddy Zelenski, our troops have had to pay out of their pockets for their helmets, and all our military budget has gone to installing tampon dispensers in men’s washrooms on the military bases) I’d say the battle would last 6 hours tops – quite likely half the Canadian troops would surrender in order to defect to the USA! And whether or not Canada has any men left – a lot of them drive trucks, in case you haven’t noticed.
@Bofur #229 – I totally agree with you: my question was rhetorical. Regarding Trudeau being an empty vessel, a few years ago I read a piece written by a senior civil servant who travelled with both Harper and Trudeau in which he noted their contrasting styles: Harper would work constantly when flying while Trudeau would constantly play some childish video games – and I fully realized that our Prime Minister was Peter Pan and had no role to play other than act on cue.
This comment is for entertainment purposes. I came across a post (I am not sure on which social media platform) in which a fellow by the name of Ken Cheng stated the following about AI which really cracked me up:
AI will never be able to write like me.
Why?
Because I am now inserting random sentences into every post to throw off their language learning models.
Any AI emulating me will radiator freak yellow horse spout nonsense.
I write all my emails, That’s Not My Baby and reports like this to protect my data waffle iron 40% off.
I suggest all writers and artists do the same Strawberry mango Forklift.
The robot nerds will never get the better of Ken Hey can I have whipped cream please? Cheng.
We can tuna fish tango foxtrot defeat AI.
We just have to talk like this
All. The. Time.
Hi Peter #252, about a move north, have you ever been to the Gaspe region? My wife and I took a car holiday up there in the 1980s. Really nice area. A re-organization of national boundaries sounds far fetched but most of what happened since about the year 1900 would have sounded far fetched ten years before they actually happened.
Hey JMG
Your scenario is the most likely, but I can’t help but wonder if there’s some possibility in book technology that is unrealised despite being obvious in hindsight, like how people spent centuries carrying trunks or chests before realising that they could put wheels on them.
Also, while I agree with you on computers, I think mechanical, or maybe electromechanical, audio technology such as gramophones are in it for the long haul, especially the simple wax or soft metal cylinder ones. Such technology is a lot simpler to make than disk systems and can be completely non-electronic in nature. I could see Ecotechnic civilisations having archives of cylinders, stored like scrolls, and maybe made from ceramic as well as metal. Such devices could store audio information for a long time, maybe centuries?
Also, long time ago in an old popular science magazine (1934, Feb) I came across an article about an inventor named Merle Duston who invented a way of recording audio on paper tape. It essentially involves getting paper tape coated in a chemical that turns black when exposed to electrical current, having it go through an electrode that varies the current in response to audio input, which produces black patterns on the paper that are then read with a photoelectric device that converts the varying intensity of received light back into sound. Considering how long a book of paper can last, about 500 years at the longest, I could also imagine future ecotechnic civilisations having archives of these kind of paper tapes in boxes similar to video cassettes, read on some simple and possible solar powered machine.
For Mary Bennet;
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1k4072e3nno
There is no doubt he was in the US illegally. His employers should also be in jail. Sadly that never happens.
He is legally a Salvadoran citizen in their jail because they also think he was in MS13. It may be that he was a recruit then backed out in which case the most surprising thing is that he’s still alive.
Speaking of employers trying to save a buck,
https://www.yoursourceone.com/columbia_basin/local-grower-to-reform-hiring-practices-pay-180k-after-discrimination-probe-at-orchards-in-mattawa/article_a2164cbe-07b6-4095-82e6-fa02678ab892.html
This, from a French journalist is perhaps the best explanation I have seen of what the current president is up to https://www.voltairenet.org/article222128.html. Not very far from the opinion of our host. Me, I have three problems here. First is the bizarre appointments, and, by all means, Senate Dems who voted to confirm are complicit here as well. More important is the shocking neglect of environmental considerations, the president has been heard saying that global warming “is a hoax”. Yes, he did say that, and IDC of it was merely trying to annoy someone, it was still a highly irresponsible statement. Worse yet is the ongoing Nuremburg level war crimes being committed in Gaza, the West Bank and southern Lebanon, on our dime. I am no fan of Islam, I will never accept my country becoming Islamic, should that seem likely, but I can’t believe that anyone who voted for Trump voted for Bibi’s genocide.
Rajarshi and Vidura, how likely do you think it is that another war might break out between India and Pakistan? The cross border smuggling and kidnappings must have been going on for some time now. Has there been increased effort from Indian law enforcement to end these crimes, which in turn provoked the recent terror attack? It is rather bleakly amusing to think that zeal for Allah turns about to be about money.
One of the talking points which has been leveraged against the King in Orange on immigration is that the number of deportations carried out by him is in fact less than Biden. This seemed bizarre to me, so I looked into it, and sure enough this figure failed to take into account the fact that people attempting to cross the border are also substantially down, so the criticism would be like complaining that the new toothpaste isn’t working because I’m getting less fillings.
It has also been mentioned that the whole furor about the judges being arrested seems a bit bizarre, given that it does look like they broke the law.
That all said the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case seems different to me at least. The supreme court did vote 0-9 to have him released. My understanding of the governments case is that he already had a deportation order against, and a judge in 2019 found sufficient evidence that he was an ms-13 member to deny him bail. Against that Kilmar Abrego Garcia did manage to get a “Withholding of Removal” order (after he was supposedly found to be part of ms-13), and my personal intuition is that, if the guy was actually ms-13 the goverment would be talking about all the gang activity he had been involved in between 2019 and 2025, rather than just the 2019 hearing. Am I missing something here?
Re #259 Trans issues
On the Darkhorse podcast I learnt that sex is specified by the gametes produced, not the chromosomes. Apparently even people who have non standard chromosomes produce only one kind of gamete
@ Patricia Matthews:
I’m not sure that the existence of intersex people necessarily invalidates the fundamental binary of male and female. Georgi Marinov argues very much the opposite in his article “In Humans, Sex is Binary and Immutable”, one of the clearest explanations of this issue I have found from the viewpoint of mainstream biology:
“All “intersex” conditions, when examined, clearly arise from single-gene mutations or chromosomal aberrations on a genetic background that would have indisputably been producing male or female gametes had these mutations not occurred, and, rarely, due to chimerism (i.e. individuals made up of both male and female cells). True hermaphrodites possessing both sets of functional gonads and genitalia have never been observed in Homo sapiens.
Therefore the “intersex” argument against the sex binary is simply not valid. Intersex individuals exist only because of continuous de novo reintroduction of the relevant mutations in the population, recessive genes becoming unmasked, or disruptions of normal embryonic development.
Sex in mammals is on a fundamental level binary and immutable, and claims that “intersex’” individuals disprove that can only be made in the absence of any consideration of the biological nature of humans and how our evolutionary history has shaped our biology. Which brings us to the most worrying aspect of the widespread adoption of such denial.”
The full article is very interesting and well worth read, and it can be found here: https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/33/2/in-humans-sex-is-binary-and-immutable
Hi John,
Interested in your thoughts on this – my sense is this is broadly right and if the Americans are out of the European security business by 2029/2030 the Pandoras box will open in Europe, but particularly the Balkans and eastern Europe.
John Helmer, who has been a journalist in Moscow since before the collapse of the Soviet Union and whose reporting is known to be generally accurate, says his sources indicate that Russia will accept a bad deal now because they see a bigger war coming and they need to prepare for it:
“The Russian source who has long been in a position to know explains there are good reasons for Russian strategy to take a pause. “At this point in time, we have no reason to want to fight a US president who says he doesn’t want to fight Russians. We also know he can’t lift the sanctions legally without Congress. But he can use his executive orders to stop enforcement, and that’s a break we can use to our advantage, as well to the benefit of the Chinese and Indians. We understand a bigger war is coming. The military needs two to three years of preparations, improvements, reorganization. Also, Putin needs to prove he has tried peace with the Americans, and they can’t be trusted. Russians have no illusions about the stability of US politics. This is a deal that is as stable as Trump’s mind.” “
> history, especially on the frontier, has a number of 19th century characters who passed as male. — Patricia Mathews
A British military surgeon who practiced in Cape Town in the 1820s, James Barry, was allegedly discovered to be a female after his death. An abrasive character who did much to improve sanitary conditions throughout the Empire, his precise sexual nature is disputed. He might have been female, or undeveloped male, or intersex, but all agree he was an excellent doctor. — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Barry_(surgeon)
It is the end of our Anzac Day long weekend. I would like to say thank you to the United States for saving our bacon during World War II. It would be easy to come with all the smart comments about why they did so, but I am not going to. Just Thank You.
Hi John Michael,
I will not be able to go to Glastonbury so I’m hoping to see you in London when you stop over.
Do you have any speaking or book signing gigs lined up ?
cheers
Lurksalong
@Mary Bennett and Ambrose:
I’m not going to bother reading the Mulligan substack (you guys have already done a fine job of making it sound not-worthwhile), but I did think it was worth highlighting something Mary said last time:
how ever do “back-to-the-landers; hippies; occultists; misfits and cranks” get lumped in with reactionists, monarchists and traditionalists? I would have thought those two groups would be sworn enemies. The latter, traditionalists, et. al. love regimentation, they call it ‘order’, or ‘an ordered society’, while the former can’t stand it.
Many people have this supposition, but in fact it’s an outdated view, no longer true and hasn’t been for some years.
Who is more of a “misfit” than a monarchist? Who is more of a reject from the reigning Hollywood-PMC vision than a “traditionalist”? The utter and total cultural domination by the Left, over the past several decades, has made for strange re-arrangements, and as often as not, when you see someone who appears “hippie-ish”, rejecting the mainstream culture, what they are rejecting is the modern woke-Left paradigm.
It’s not really true that traditionalists “love regimentation, order” etc. At least, that is something of a caricature – it reminds me of a webpage I was browsing not too long ago with a title like “misunderstandings about each MBTI type”.
By the same token, you could also see why “loving order” would drive someone into misfit hippie-dom today, given that our entire culture is premised upon dis-order.
By the way, it’s also worth pointing out something else that the modern sclerotic left doesn’t grasp, which is that part of the reason for the right’s budding cultural ascendancy is that rebels are cool (see: Star Wars, but also a thousand other stories).
I myself am a back-to-the-lander, hippie, misfit and crank, as well as a reactionist, monarchist and traditionalist, and a Christian with occultist sympathies to boot, and nothing gives me more glee than when someone who meets me for the first time “can’t figure out” what I think.
(Sorry @JMG – this comment was for the Open Post!)
@JMG, you made me dig out that book again! The Flem-Aths actually do address the “Atlantic Ocean” problem, in two ways:
1) They posit a sudden and catastrophic shift of the Earth’s crust, following Charles Hapgood’s theory (which isn’t scientifically accepted, but as I remember you saying, that was true for the theory of continental drift, too. The two theories don’t exclude each other, since Hapgood doesn’t claim that those shifts occur all the time, or explain all geological and archeological phenomena; but they do explain some of the stranger ones. And hey, Einstein thought it was possible – he wrote the foreword to Hapgood’s book). That shift moved Atlantis from its spot in the vicinity of the equator to its current position on the South Pole. They cite a lot of myths from around the world that tell of the day the Sun was losing its course and was careening all over the sky…
2) The changing definition of the term “Atlantic.” Turns out that at the time of the Egyptian priest telling his story to Plato, there was only one world ocean, and “beyond the Columns of Hercules” simply meant “out there in the Unknown.” Sort of like the Deep Space of Antiquity. It was only during the Age of Sail that the planet’s ocean was (artificially) divided into subsections, one of which was called “the Atlantic Ocean.”
I’ve only skimmed the book to find those dimly remembered passages, but I might give it a full reread. I remember that it made a whole lot of sense to me back then, and I was looking forward to the melting of the poles so we could go there and have a look 😀
Re #17 Helix: I just got back from the hospital and had as good an expierience as I might hope for. The food was good (meat ans vegetables), nurses checked on me multiple times a day, and all the IT ensured I was moved along some predefined trajectory. The trajectory was adjusted by physicians to something close to what I wanted.
It seems to me if you are better off home, the hospital is not wrong in dragging their feet. What would a better experience have looked like for your wife?
@ Erika #251
I really wish I knew… I am still puzzling.
I know I myself played a small part in the ungluing of sex from gender, during my feminist youth, in the course of asserting that anything that THIS (sexed) body *could* do must be appropriate for THIS (gendered) person to do. Nowadays a person can change their gender five times before breakfast, just by a voluntary act of “identifying”, but the sex of their in-the-real body, simply cannot be changed into a sexed body of the other kind, it can only be experimentally, medically or surgically folded, spindled or mutilated.
But such medical experimentation, which transforms sexed bodies into folded, spindled and mutilated bodies, by surgically removing their most overt outward sexual characteristics, and by messing with their internal hormonal communications systems – is presented as “gender-affirming”, which sits in the same conceptual space for some people, as photoshopping one’s online avatar.
I do not get involved in discussions of what people may inhabit what spaces, because a) there is a lot of projection of power going on there (in every direction), and I don’t like being involved in projections of power over other people at such a distance from me, and b) there is no mutually intelligible language with which all the parties can even begin to understand one another’s positions, or any basis from which to properly negotiate livable compromises.
Where I draw a hard line is upon medical (drugs and surgery) experimentation on minors who are not capable of being fully informed as to the meaning and potential of “sex-negating” treatments, and therefore cannot meaningfully consent. Therefore I am in full agreement with bans on under-age surgical and drug treatment.
To this, however, I will add, the observation that the castration and genital mutilation of minors is not new – many cultures are known to have carried out such practices under a variety of pretexts. So, just to throw a wee cat among some pigeons, a person might even say that these practices are rather “traditional”, while wearing the shiny modern face of “technological progress”.
@Tyrell
Get this book from the library (https://www.amazon.com/Irreversible-Damage-Transgender-Seducing-Daughters/dp/168451228X). I saw this happen to my niece (and it has ended badly). This book is a great starting point and the author is spot on. You can follow her as she has other books on this as well (I think).
12 is way too young.
@Mary Bennett #257 —
You asked what had Abrego Garcia been charged with? Well his wife filed a restraining order against him when he beat her up and refused to let her out of the house. There is no instance whatsoever that I will support keeping an illegal alien in this country who is a domestic abuser. It is really annoying to have him called a “Maryland man.” Nope, he is a wife beater….
https://abc7.com/post/kilmar-abrego-garcia-restraining-order-wife-deported-maryland-man-jennifer-vasquez-sura-said-he-hit-2021-court-docs/16187365/
And that guy in Wisconsin that the judge tried to spirit away from ICE, yep, he was in court for domestic abuse…
I feel we have enough domestic abusers in the US who are actual citizens. I don’t think we need to import and support anymore in this country.
Good Sunday everyone,
If I may tap into the expertise of JMG’s commentariat:
I’m looking for help thinking about the process by which a people’s knowledge and experience is encoded into traditional stories. I’m thinking about story here at the level of localized folklore and legend, rather than at a mythic/archetypal level. How do we know we can take local oral tradition seriously as a source of information about the nature of life in a particular place? Why is such lore not dismissible as only trivia, ‘superstition’, entertainment, etc.?
I haven’t dug into Joseph Campbell, who I know may be resource for this, but I’m curious if anyone can suggest other resources.
Thanks!
re: Star Wars
Aha… so that is the stated source of the story of Lucas’ inspiration. Right, I remember now. Very interesting. Now I am wondering where Kurosawa got his inspiration? I know for a fact that two of his blockbuster movies were adaptations of Shakespeare, because that’s exactly how he described them, and he took many of his inspiration from European sources. He was erudite.
The gist of “Parsifal” is, as my girlfriend commented, “Every knightly romance ever written.”
So I am, I suppose, just contemplating the parallels between two wildly popular cultural phenomenons, separated by 800 years, and wondering whether and how much the latter was informed by the former, and was it directly, or indirectly?
Annette2 said:
“Can anyone go to a store and buy a hand drill, egg beater or treadle sewing machine? You might find them at an auction, or a second-hand store if you’re lucky.”
One of the joys of living in an antiques town…I find all sorts of useful manual tech being sold as decorations to tourists! (As an aside, my 16 y.o. daughter actually does most of her sewing on her great-grandmother’s treadle.)
There’s also Lehman’s online (or brick and mortar shop if you live near Kidron, OH) which is a low-tech prepper wonderland.
Cheers.
@JMG and J.L.Mc12 #249, re. books and the future
Over the last few years I’ve been looking for a handcraft to pick up and made some attempts with bookbinding, and I’ve also become interested in typewriters, so this is something I’ve been pondering as well. I think JMG is right that the book will stay in recognizable form due to the basic physical requirements of the form, unless future cultures ditch the “codex” concept entirely and go for something like scrolls instead. Still, I’ve been surprised at some of the changes I learned about when reading about the history of books, like how medieval tomes tended to be stored lying horizontally in chests rather than vertically on shelves like we do, which has implications for binding techniques (ie. the need to round the spines or not). Or how books from before 1840 or so have often aged better than ones from then until the 1980s, since they went from cloth-based paper to wood-based, acidic paper that doesn’t age well because it was cheaper.
Anyway, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on bookbinding as a craft for the early deindustrial era. In one sense it’s obviously sustainable: like you said, it’s a good bet it’ll be around thousands of years from now. All the ingredients are in principle sustainable. On the other hand, as currently practiced, bookbinding depends on industrial paper, glues and board. Making these locally by hand is possible, but complicated, slow and knowledge-intensive, and more, knowledge few people have these days.
The biggest problem in my view, though, is how dependent the production of the actual text blocks is on digital technology. Without a computer or a printer, you’re back to writing out every letter of every copy by hand, like they did in medieval monasteries…unless of course some kind of lower-tech printing press survives. I know there’s a regular Ecosophia reader who runs a blog about mimeographs? I suppose the survival or not of small-scale, low-tech printing is going to be an important bottleneck for whether book culture and literacy survives as a mainstream phenomenon or an elite pastime. Either way, bookbinding is weird that way: in principle a very old and sustainable technology, but also one that’s under threat of becoming “orphaned” when computers go away. In the meantime, though, it could be one way to preserve a lot of texts that only exist in digital format for the longer term. That would be one of the most important uses for me personally if I ever get good enough at it to do it properly.
Finally, do you think the (manual) typewriter has a future in the deindustrial age? Could a village artisan make one, or are they just too complex? Sometimes I like to imagine a scene from a deindustrial story where a room full of monks at a monastery hammer away at 200-year-old typewriters to make copies of old textbooks and classics…
The Hubble space telescope is 35 years old.
https://scitechdaily.com/hubble-at-35-unveiling-a-universe-of-dazzling-images-and-deep-discoveries/
There are some nice pictures further down the article.
@ron #267
You might like this video about a musician who has figured out how to disrupt and innovate. It is what he is disrupting and how he is innovating that I find absolutely amusing. TL;DW – machines listen (and read) very differently than us hoomans do. That has all sorts of hilarious implications.
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=xMYm2d9bmEA
@J.L.Mc12 #269: Why do you think books on paper last only 500 years? I have handled a more than 500 years old print of Lucretius – with great care, to be sure, and under the false pretext that I needed it for a research project, when it was just for pleasure! The book looked in great shape and as if it could last many times more its current age. The most interesting part were the handwritten annotations, or rather scribbles. One could see that the tome had not always been venerated to the extent it is now.
In fact, as I have mentioned before, I own a small edition of Horace that was printed when Prince of Wales Henry was supposed to succeed James I. on the throne. It would badly need to be rebound, but the paper is just fine.
The Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus are more than 1600 years old, and some luxury editions of the Aeneid are as old. They are on vellum, not paper, so there is a difference there, but nothing would stop us from printing particularly important texts on vellum today if we think it conserves better. We don’t have older books only because the idea of bookbinding hadn’t caught on earlier. I assume scrolls conserve less well than books.
So I tend to agree with JMG – it is hard to find a technique that preserves visual information with as little technology and for as much time as books can.
Ron, hmm! I could ambidextrous orange topiary definitely see the point in that.
J.L.Mc12, (1) that’s at least possible, but you’d want to go looking and see if there’s any such thing. (2) audio recording in analogue formats is much, much easier to keep going through dark age conditions than any digital format, since digital formats require computers and analogue formats can be done much more simply. This is one of the things that pleases me about the revival of vinyl records going on these days (in which I’m an enthusiastic participant, at least as a customer).
Forecasting, well, I’ve been talking about the imminence of the next European war for a while now, so none of this comes as any surprise. I also note that Russia has now publicly announced that all those claims about North Korean troops in Kursk were correct; that’s the act of a country that wants to point out that it has tough and heavily armed allies — who are now, not incidentally, trained in real combat in a full-on ground war.
JillN, you’re most welcome!
Lurksalong, as of now I believe I’m scheduled for a booksigning at Atlantis Books on June 3 and another at Watkins on June 4.
Athaia, the Flem-Aths’ argument sets out to find ways to argue around to the possibility that Antarctica might have been Atlantis, and neglects to notice that exactly the same argument could be used to locate Atlantis on Greenland, or Australia, or Hawai’i, or just about any place short of the Moon. Plato specifically says that Atlantis was opposite the Straits of Gibraltar — not just beyond them — and close to another continent on the far side of the ocean. That defines the location for Atlantis as such fairly precisely. What’s more, we know that right around 9600 BC — the date Plato gives for the sinking of Atlantis — sea level worldwide jolted upwards, due to a sudden drastic shift in climate, and a lot of inhabited real estate across from the Straits of Gibraltar, close to the continent on the far side, went full fathom five then. If somebody’s going to suggest that Plato was talking about something other than that submerged area, I’d want to see something other than “well, it could have been somewhere else…” Mind you, I think it’s entirely possible, and indeed likely, that there were civilized communities in many places before 9600 BC, and I also think it’s quite plausible to suggest that the Antarctic ice cap may conceal the remnants of lost human societies. If the old occult chronology is correct, that might be a plausible location for the Polarian civilization, the first of the five great civilizations before the present cycle.
Jonathan, I don’t seem to have them bookmarked, but you might look around for material on the fact that legends in Scotland and Australia both preserve accurate information about what was above water when sea level was much lower than it is now, thousands of years ago. I saw a couple of articles on that theme last year.
Renaissance, here again, don’t neglect the other sources of Lucas’s inspiration. Joseph Campbell modeled his “Hero’s Journey” monomyth quite precisely on Arthurian stories, and Campbell was another major influence on Lucas.
BorealBear, bookbinding is a technology worth preserving, but (a) you’d better learn how to do it with locally available materials, and (b) you’d better either learn how to use a hand letterpress or hook up with someone else who will do so. A letterpress is much simpler to build and operate than a typewriter — it’s literally medieval technology — and it makes hundreds of copies instead of just one. This is an example from 1811:
So it’s well within the reach of dark age technology. It’s just that somebody has to take that as their project, and find heirs.
Wer here
Everytime someone opens a newspaper it should made me question the sanity of the people who write it. Recently there was a hullaballo here in the polish edition of the focus magazine where someone (it can’t show it here the papaer is behind a paywall) where someone exclaimed and showed graphs saying that ” the cost of lithium batteries” had been steadli declinig therefore a bright and tech advanced future is at hand. Those people really should have read JMG post about “Lords of the fall” JMG wrote there “if someone lives a healthy lifestyle he will live long but he will not escape his death” “civilisations are like people they wither and die” “industrial civilisation had benn living very inhealthy” It should be written below every cornucopian nonsense out there…
And speaking about Ukraine the amount of nonsense that the media had been sprouting had reached new lows. Some newspaper pronounces something then Russians and American officialy disprove this 100 of different contradicting news report are being published . Lawrov said that “Demolitarisation of Ukraine is non negotionable and will not accept anything else . Crazy people Zelensky demand that ukraine join NATO even if nonbody is treating it seriously. Crazy news about a casefire are being circulated (like the Eastern one when both sides violated it after 10 minutes?) Russians had been consistent about Ukraine unlike Trump and otheres when different conflicting visions had been published…
Don’t get me started on the “I will end the war in 24 hours after being reelected” “ukraine will sign a resource deal in February and conflict will end shortly” “There will be a summit about Ukraine in London on 24 April” “Russians and Ukrainians will not shoot at eachother during the Eastern ceasefire” and other garbage coming out of Trump
In my opinion the US will leave Ukraine (because there are too many problems elsewhere and the mess in Ukraine will continue until Zelensky runs out of weapons and cash considering the US provided like 80 procent of funding and the EU can deliver the goods by themselfs the Russians only had to wait. And The british goverment just announced that the will not send troops to Ukraine. The Russians had won simple EU wants to prolong hte war but with Us support they can’t and have massive problems on their own.
Dagnarus @272, What you are missing is the sentiment that we can’t ever back down because then we would look weak. Also, from the article linked by Silicon Guy:
On 15 April, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also accused Mr. Abrego Garcia of involvement in human trafficking.
Well, there you have it. Blue eyed blond babe outranks 9 oldsters in ugly black caftans any day.
There always have been perfectly legal ways to deter illegal migration. A few include require hiring of American citizens only by governments at every level and contractors who work for those governments. National taskforce to investigate and prosecute identity theft. Executive order from the president to disallow the intelligence agencies settling their pets and proteges in the USA. Which it appears to me, is how Rep. Omar’s family arrived here. Requirement for employers to use e-verify, and enforcement of minimum wage laws. As well as building a wall. Archeologists use technology to find buried cities and settlements; we could be using it to detect tunnels. No administration of either party has been willing to use these and other legal tools. As for the present administration, could someone please direct me to the report that shows rich folks being deprived of their housekeepers and grounds crews? This current administration looks to me like it is by rich people for the benefit of rich people, with a few DEI hires like Vance for the optics.
Ron M. 267: Or the LLM could try incorporating “Finnegan’s Wake”: Finn, again! Take. Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till thousendthee. Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the
Or even “Dhalgren,” for that matter. My leaves have drifted from me. The sky is stripped. I am too weak to write much. But I still hear them walking in the trees; not speaking. Walking here, away from the terrifying weaponry, out of the halls of vapor and light, beyond holland and into the hills, I have come to
Re discussion on book printing, someone wanting to learn it might be interested in resources via the Heritage Crafts Association which attempts to find people to learn endangered crafts traditional in the UK.
https://www.heritagecrafts.org.uk/categories-of-risk/
Letterpress printing is in their lists as Endangered. Budding Green wizards in Britain or even further afield if mobile who haven’t come across it might like to consider training in a craft from their Extinct, Critically Endangered and Endangered lists. Extinct means recently discontinued within the current generation, with the hope that the skills in living memory may be partially preserved or recoverable. It’s even posdible some funding grants could available to help with training as the HCA is supported through the King’s Fund https://www.kccf.org.uk/project/heritage-crafts-association/
@JMG (#292), replying to BorealBear (#288):
The technology of hand-powered letterpress printing is still well understood; there are still some people who do that sort of printing expertly, and there are also good how-to books. When I was a boy, of course, there were more people who had learned that technology: my Junior High School in Berkeley even had a mandatory course, print shop, which all boys had to take, along with metal shop, wood shop and mechanical drawing. (Girls had parallel mandatory courses in household skills such as sewing and cooking.)
You need a press like the one shown by our host, which is fairly easy to build out of wood and metal. You need to know how to cut steel molds for casting each individual piece of moveable type, how to use these molds with a casting-frame when you actually cast the type, how to store the type in some convenient way reflecting the frequency with which you will end up using each letter (or combination of letters), how to set this type–upside down and backwards–in a composing stick, how to lock each stick-full of type into a page-sized frame that will be fitted in to the press, how to choose suitable paper and suitable ink, and so forth and so on. Each individual step in the process is fairly simple, but the process itself is quite complex and time-consuming. The man who first designed the whole process — probably Johannes Gutenberg of Mainz, who had been a goldsmith before he became a printer — had a first-rate mind. Yet once you’re done inventing the whole process, you can make and sell very many copies of a printed book in the time it might take you to make and sell a single handwritten copy of it.
Before that invention, there was printing from woodblocks in Europe, both images and complete (rather short) books. And in Asia woodblock printing was much. much older than in Europe. It took longer to carve the text onto the woodblocks, but the woodblocks could be used for much, much longer than frames of metal type (sometimes even for centuries), once you had finished carving them.
Book giveaway: 2 items. Free. Will mail anywhere in the U.S. and possibly even Canada. Just text me your snail mail address to 505-239-9670, or email me at mathews55@msn.com, and give me your name and address.
Our Archdruid’s “The Way of the Four Elements.” I read it cover to cover and realized I’d done all that in my earlier training in Albuquerque, but a very useful book for those who haven’t.
“Spiritual Cleaning and Protection” by Violet Bertelsen. Again useful, if you’re not living in what amounts to the Marriott Hotel on a closed (if you don’t have a vehicle or a ride) campus, as is the case with me.
Finally, just in case you want to look up something from the past 4 years, “The American Ephemeris, 2020-2024. Clear and readable, unlike the latest one.
High-tech is going through a down cycle again.
“Not so long ago, working in tech meant job security, extravagant perks and a bring-your-whole-self-to-the-office ethos rare in other industries,” writes the Wall Street Journal.
But now tech work “looks like a regular job,” with workers “contending with the constant fear of layoffs, longer hours and an ever-growing list of responsibilities for the same pay.”
…
“More than 50,000 tech workers from over 100 companies have been laid off in 2025, according to Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks job cuts and crowdsources lists of laid off workers…
Even before those 50,000 layoffs in 2025, Silicon Valley’s Mercury News was citing some interesting statistics from economic research/consulting firm Beacon Economics. In 2020, 2021 and 2022, the San Francisco Bay Area added 74,700 tech jobs But then in 2023 and 2024 the industry had slashed even more tech jobs — 80,200 — for a net loss (over five years) of 5,500.”
If you can add AI to the resume in a convincing way times are good. Prospects are not promising for regular programmers.
Hi Smith #268,
Yes we went to Gaspe in the summer of 2001 and it is indeed beautiful. We also like Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia as well as the SW coast of Newfoundland.
I have just a few chapters left of The Carnelian Moon, which I started late Friday night. A great book! Its great fun following Ariel’s life, adventures, and training… and it made a good break from the internet and the news cycle, which I had been too keyed into the past few months, with steadily diminshing returns on my state of mind. Ariel is a great reminder that old fashioned is an option!
It’s been a hectic few months for my household. The heavy storms a few weeks ago brought the necessity of repairs to the old rubber roof on the back part of our house. Knock wood, the shingled part on the main part of the house we had put on some ten years ago, but it still has some decades ahead I hope. And we’ve been cleaning out my mother-in-laws apartment: she has dementia now and is in a nursing home, since it is now past my wifes ability to care for her on her/our own. She lived around the corner from us the past 8 yeats or so, and that was good for everyone. We could walk there in five minutes. Anyway, our schedule has been all topsy turvy and I’ve been a bit cranky. That crankiness coming out in my Gen X poem and other places. Yet… This too shall pass.
Work has been busy, but good. Just more impingements on our time this year so far between mom-in-laws health crisis leading to sharp turn with her already ongoing cogntitve decline. That and the attention our home needs while my wife is busy has caught me up in a grindstone moment, trying to keep sharp while juggling all these plates -including my writing and occult ambitions. How to do it at all in a state of equanimity? More practice required.
A break from the internet and news yesterday, cooking a homemade meal, and getting most of the rest of the stuff out to the thriftstore and the place 90% clean has me feeling better again. But I could do worse than follow Ariel’s old fashioned example and sharply limit my inputs again. Not being on substack or reading the news for two days hasnt hurt at all.
I do enjoy social interaction online but it can get to be too much to.
Wishing you all peace & happiness with whatever issues of life are going on in your life. Heaven knows everyone has something going on.
@JMG
I just found out something from Vedic Astrology that covers roughly the years of Trump’s second term except it applies to the entire planet. Starting May 14th Jupiter will go Atachari for the next eight years. That means it speeds up (doubles its speed) and will only take 5 months to cross each zodiac sign rather than the usual amount. There are also times it will appear to go retrograde but that won’t change the overall ‘atachari’ behavior the rest of the time.
So Mukesh Vats says atachari brings instability and sometimes chaos. I guess it’s similar to what Sadhguru once said about people going around trying to ‘bless’ others. If that other person’s spiritual evolution level is not ready for the blessing it will instead end up being a curse.
So Jupiter, by going Atachari, I suppose will double up on it’s effects on earth – regardless of whether societies or even the biosphere is ready for the coming Jupiter deluge. So some people I suppose will have a surprisingly fabulous 8 years coming up. Their spiritual evolution will be ready for it. The rest of us though – who knows? That goes for societies overall so watch societal instability ratchet up globally over the next 8 years.
My question is this a ‘thing’ only for sidereal astrology or is this ‘Jupiter Double Speed’ effect known about and accounted for in western astrology too?
I’ve linked the video below where Mukesh talks about Jupiter’s upcoming 8 years of Atachari. I always mute it since I don’t understand his language but Youtube makes a great english translation and the transcript is in english.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7H8hA8jBMA
Oh good. I’ll be there.
JLMc12–Does Draeger’s book mention Gerald Gardner’s (founder of Gardnerian Wicca) booklet on the kris? I have wondered whether Gardner borrowed any of his ideas about the witches athame as a magic knife from his study of the Asian knives. Of course the athame functions strictly on the non-physical planes and is never supposed to be used to cut anything.
Aldarion–re vellum vs. paper. I beleive it was only in the last couple of years that the British government dropped the age-old requirement that the copies of new statutes destined for the archives be printed on vellum.
Atmospheric River–I’m not sure whether the east bound Zephyr has the timing right but when I was coming west through the canyon of the Colorado I discovered that it becomes “Moon River” around Steamboat Springs. The residents out rafting were mooning the passing train. As for Chicago–the view from the former Sears Tower, now the Willis Tower is spectacular. Four glass enclosures project from the 103rd floor. I forget what the admission was, can’t have bee exorbitant or I wouldn’t have gone. Fields Museum is worth a visit. Has Sue, the Tyrannosaurus fossil. They also have 44 of the 104 bronze sculptures of different racial groups produced in the 1930s by Malva Hoffman, a student of Rodin. Although intended as illustrations of now-obsolete theories of race they are still works of art. Unfortunately I must agree that you cannot rely on that 7-hour layover as the Zephyr frequently runs late. Have a good trip. I took Amtrak the other way in 2023, from Vermont to California.
JMG–it is ironic that UK enforcement of anti-hate speech laws is so severe when the police do nothing to stop people carrying signs advocating the murder of those who oppose transactivist ideology. After the recent top court decision that “man” and “woman” in law refers to biological sex there were parades of pro-trans people carrying signs calling for execution of TERFS, burning of J.K. Rowlings, etc. Of course, the misogyny has other results as well with the police in working class towns ignoring the rapes of young English girls by Pakistani gangs lest they seem Islamophobic. No wonder some “right-wing” parties are rising.
Tyler–I feel for you. I have a 12-yr old granddaughter and live in California, a hotbed of this insanity. Schools here (and in some other states) are forbidden to tell parents if their child asks to be called by a different name or declares themselves to be a different gender. Fortunately my granddaughter shows no sign of gender confusion, but it is still a worry in this atmosphere. At the other end of things, adult women in prison may find themselves with a male cellmate, one who may be a convicted sex criminal but has self-identified as a woman. There are ongoing lawsuits by women who have been assaulted.
And on the corruption and delay front–the California high speed train project claims that they will begin laying track next year and that the connection from Bakersfield to Merced (165 miles) will be complete by 2033, only 25 years after the first bonds were approved. Don’t even ask how many billions over budget it is.
@ SCOTLYN:
whoa… i was gonna write you as an aside but figure that’d be rude to this forum, but i also am in a vomitous emotional/ugly writing place and don’t want to be rude and run on too long with my responses:
SCOTLYN: “Also it is perhaps the greatest irony (not in a good way) to see that our society’s ‘sexual revolution’ (aspects of which, I myself have taken deeply to heart, by the way), taken to its logical conclusion, appears to abhor sex so utterly.”
ERIKA: “Scotlyn, this what you said below is fascinating. why is it so??? what happened???”
SCOTLYN: “I really wish I knew… I am still puzzling.”
ERIKA (new):
i’m actually relieved to hear that because a part of my writing/art is trying to understand where/why i think or thought certain things. visiting my devouring mother/sister was a shock how i see them now so clearly, but what is “clearly” anymore? momentary/temporary clarity is life’s constantly highlarious and predictable wedgie.
i’m trying to see how my mother/sister as well as san francisco, and i, managed to co-exist at all because as you said, words mean nothing to either party, and as i heard how literal but oblivious my mother and sister were, no parsifal mystery of anything else or other… it was like i’d just met them for the first time. they were doing same routine and i almost went unconsciously back, but James isn’t here to pull me back and i’d be down for a year. can’t go back to that thinking. it’s suicide. i’ll go mad. i’m sure of it. without James i worry i already AM mad, maybe that’s why i’m confessing here. i can’t continue to know ANYONE because of the lack of focus and when it’s there they freak out and can’t handle it.
James made it seem so easy even though i know it wasn’t. it’s why we stopped having sex. hard to be this deep intense, then physical, and also live in 400 square feet without murdering each other. and the rent’s gotta be paid.
—
SCOTLYN:
‘I know I myself played a small part in the ungluing of sex from gender, during my feminist youth, in the course of asserting that anything that THIS (sexed) body *could* do must be appropriate for THIS (gendered) person to do. Nowadays a person can change their gender five times before breakfast, just by a voluntary act of “identifying”, but the sex of their in-the-real body, simply cannot be changed into a sexed body of the other kind, it can only be experimentally, medically or surgically folded, spindled or mutilated.
‘But such medical experimentation, which transforms sexed bodies into folded, spindled and mutilated bodies, by surgically removing their most overt outward sexual characteristics, and by messing with their internal hormonal communications systems – is presented as “gender-affirming”, which sits in the same conceptual space for some people, as photoshopping one’s online avatar.’
ERIKA (new): part of what i want to write for the world is atoning for what i, myself, put out there publicly as i was figuring out what Woman meant to me. i tried the whore thing and mentally and often sexually it had me curled up in the fetal position in a corner. i never cried uncle. i just assumed i was doing this Feminism Free Thing wrong. but it made me sick for a time.
so when the lesbian butch culture i so loved for their complexity and strength and beautiful audacity, went all in on the cutting off tits thing and they’d proudly lift their ubiquitous white short-sleeved tshirts to show their scars, i felt gut punched so now i had to swallow down and hide the sad horror that this is what all this Womyn Self Love had somehow led to more damn self mutilation??? had we not seen enough in junior high and high school??? now it was sanctioned.
what was wrong with the complexity of having the beautiful breasts but still swaggering into a room like a man and commanding awe in male drag? that’s an art the blend the energy. i didn’t see the switch when feminism made Womanhood into pink and genders as caricatures that i thought we’d agreed to leave behind???
everything must’ve gotten co-opted around the same time because art and philosophy stopped being a “thing” and morality was old fashioned guache, a sucker’s route. and feminism embraced that and turned daughters into gold digging raping and pillaging psychopaths for crappy jobs.
where was this concept?: “men need to be freed from their roles, too!”
it was psychic psychological all that. the art was making YOUR world co-exist in the larger world and doing it your way. you didn’t want to assimilate.
does assimilation have to kill everything???
i’m not even at pro or against trans anything because i’m still stuck on the NEED and why it blew up among the normies as it did. because what was fringe isn’t and i wanna know why. were they out of ideas? was this another boredom thing which as Terekhin (?) was writing about i think, boredom in young men leads to violence.
the gender/race/identity discussions are so tediously boring it’s all i can do to stay awake because i’m desperate for odd quirky weirdo CHARACTER. character! like Baldwin was saying something about yeah, yeah, so you were discriminated as a black man, but at the end of the day, you’re a MAN… who are you? what’s THAT gonna be all about?
it’s too circular and boring because they are their identities en mass victims together. the personalities are various numbers they chose from. there’s the bitchy gay man who once was my ally but now hates me (James said i take their role), and …yeah, i’m confused, Scotlyn. in all this “inclusiveness” here, i feel like i’m back to being the weirdo in high school who hid my secret life at home or away from home as the case often was.
—
SCOTLYN:
‘I do not get involved in discussions of what people may inhabit what spaces, because a) there is a lot of projection of power going on there (in every direction), and I don’t like being involved in projections of power over other people at such a distance from me, and b) there is no mutually intelligible language with which all the parties can even begin to understand one another’s positions, or any basis from which to properly negotiate livable compromises.
‘Where I draw a hard line is upon medical (drugs and surgery) experimentation on minors who are not capable of being fully informed as to the meaning and potential of “sex-negating” treatments, and therefore cannot meaningfully consent. Therefore I am in full agreement with bans on under-age surgical and drug treatment.
‘To this, however, I will add, the observation that the castration and genital mutilation of minors is not new – many cultures are known to have carried out such practices under a variety of pretexts. So, just to throw a wee cat among some pigeons, a person might even say that these practices are rather “traditional”, while wearing the shiny modern face of “technological progress”.’
ERIKA (now): actually that makes a lot of sense, the sacrificing part. i know people had mentioned it during covid regarding kids lives being ruined, but yeah… seeing how my mother stunted my sister like a bonsai tree to keep her close so she could take care of her when she was old/sick (and has and does), while encouraging others’ children into lucrative careers including taking over her own, i see this “love” thing is very complicated as a word that also most definitely means different things to each person who practices it.
(smile)
x
erika
I don’t want this to come across as an advertisement, but I’m fascinated to see the launch of a new, small, minimalistic electric truck made in Indiana. It has no screen except the one used for the instrument cluster, has no audio system, manual climate controls, roll-up windows, is not even painted (it uses plastic body panels), but allows for extensive customization. It’s designed to come in under $20,000 after the federal incentives. The company is creating a repository of videos for people to understand how to modify it and repair it themselves. It seems like someone has finally figured out how to undercut the bloated car offerings to some extent, reflecting some of the themes of simplicity and do-it-yourself discussed here. I think this has the potential to become a new Model T.
@Smith and Peter and the “moving north” – Well, I have seen floated – in circles-even-more-far-out-than-this-one – the idea of a Northern New England / Maritime Union.
On the eve of our election, I don’t feel like getting into all that just now, except to say that I think something *like* that notion is probably inevitable as collapse sets in and regionalism becomes more important.
@siliconguy: re: declining school enrollment:
According to some theories, this is a controlled demolition of public ed. Public schooling is a subsidy to the middle and lower classes, just like police (remember “defund the police”?), public parks, and basically every public utility or tax-funded thing accessible in lower-income areas, but actually paid for in the main by higher-income people (rich people pay the bulk of the taxes in the US). In the globalist, neoliberal scheme of things, public subsidies should all be ended, and that wealth transferred to… the people who are already raking in the big bucks. Government no-show jobs for failsons and bubble-daughters of the well-connected (the dissection of USAID funding lays bare a lot of this– look at all those congressional wives, sons, daughters, nieces, and sons-in-law drawing paychecks from NGOs taking federal funds). The accepted strategy for accomplishing this, is to gradually make those previously-beneficial public subsidies unpopular, either via propaganda (defund the police), or by allowing them to degrade to the point where everyone who is able stops using them (taking your kids out of school), and then they become so terrible that the public demands the thing be ended.
This works better than simply ending the subsidy, because taking away free stuff is political suicide. But obeying the will of the public when they demand government get out of education and close the schools (because they are worse than prisons)? Now you’re just serving your constituents.
The key is: when that public service (whatever it was) gets defunded… does the money get returned to taxpayers, or reallocated to nobody-quite-knows-where?
Prayer request
My DH is having out-patient surgery on May 2. Prayers for successful procedure and speedy recovery would be much appreciated.
AH
@Phutatorius #295 – excellent examples of text that will tie AI in knots! Thanks for the chuckle.
Ambrose, BeardTree:
The comments and questions you have posed have helped me clarify my own thinking somewhat, so this discussion has been worthwhile. I still need to think more on this, but here are some initial comments:
1) Ambrose @57 and 208: I think the real problem that the church faces (here speaking of the church universal) is not a revival of personal spirituality or mysticism; there are plenty of sources for doing just that, they are somewhat well-known (you yourself allude to at least two of them), and noticeable numbers of believers are pursuing them more seriously. The problem, which is where Morello starts his essays, is the loss of authority of the magisterium, and experience seems to indicate the Christianity, if it is to remain Christian, depends on an authoritative magisterium (see my next comment). Additionally, as Morello points out, no branch of Christianity is immune to this; the Eastern churches, in particular, may have retained more of their mysticism, but corruption, in both the economic and political spheres, is a well-known problem in the Eastern churches, with corrosive effects on the spiritual authority of the hierarchy.
2) BeardTree @233: your comment about the Quakers “drift into liberal generic spiritual mush” highlights exactly the problem with the approach of relying entirely on a self-directed mysticism. I was raised in a denomination called “The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)” which has followed the exact same trajectory as the Quakers, I think for the same reasons. Both Quakers and Disciples generally reject creeds and proclaim the priesthood of all believers (and so at least implicitly, and at times explicitly, reject the notion of an authoritative magisterium), so there are no guardrails preventing slides into universalism or other tendencies that more orthodox denominations regard as outright heresy.
3) It is not entirely clear to me why Christianity seems to depend on an authoritative Magisterium in a way that some, or perhaps most, other religions get along fine without having; but I am starting to form at least some outlines of reasons why this may be the case. Another area for further exploration and thinking upon.
4) Circling back to the starting point of this discussion: does Hermeticism have anything to offer regarding this crisis of magisterial authority? As Ambrose points out, a thorough housecleaning is needed to address more mundane threats to magisterial authority. But another threat to magisterial authority is that the Magisterium itself seems to have calcified into a form that is overly reliant on rationalism and legalism, while the spiritual aspect has been neglected. It is at least plausible that more deeply attending to Hermeticism, Neo-Platonism, and the Eastern church fathers (and I would point out here that there are significant amounts of overlap between these three categories) may offer some inspiration for how to effect the spiritual revitalization of the Magisterium.
Wer, when a powerful cultural myth contradicts the facts, the facts are in for a bruising. That’s especially true when, as in the myth of progress, a lot of people have anchored their entire sense of identity and their hopes for the future to the myth. The more obvious it becomes that progress has failed, the more frantic the attempts to deny that fact will become.
Alice, thank you for this!
Robert, when I was at the University of Washington I had the chance to look at some of their collection of printed Tibetan scriptures, all produced from woodblocks: a very simple, elegant, and effective way to print, and one that’s good for the long term; I’ve read of a famous Korean collection of Buddhist scriptures, on 81,258 separate woodblocks, carved from birch between 1237 and 1250. The blocks are still in pristine condition and entirely usable. So that’s another option worth considering.
Siliconguy, I wonder if it’s started to sink in that large language models aren’t going to be the bonanza they were expected to be…
Justin, glad to hear it and thank you.
Panda, medieval and Renaissance astrology used to pay attention to planetary speeds, and the old texts still talk about planets being “swift of course” and “slow of course” — the first was a dignity, the second a debility. I haven’t seen much mention of it in the last two centuries or so of Western astrology books, though. It might be worth checking out.
Rita, “hate speech” is a very flexible label these days. It bends whichever way the people in power want it to bend.
Brother K, good heavens. That’s very good to hear!
Bofur (if I may), the Republic of New England and the Maritimes was mentioned in Retrotopia, for that matter.
Hey Rita
Draeger’s book does mention a book titled “Keris and other Malay weapons” by G. B. Gardner in its bibliography, but so far Draeger doesn’t mention him otherwise. But I have not finished the last 2 chapters yet so maybe he does.
Ron M, do you remember the Turbot War of the 1990s? It entailed exactly six shots fired over the bow of a European fishing boat to shoo it away from the Grand Banks. Six shots, the sum total of bullets fired by the Canadian military directly for the sake of Canada’s national interest. It’s not that Canada has a widespread peace gene in its collective DNA but I can’t see Canada taking US states by force. Not yet anyway.
But I hope the US doesn’t embarrass itself (yet again) by trying to invade. I have a lot of American family and I don’t want them to lose face and I couldn’t bear the crowing triumphalism by my Canuck relatives. I just don’t want that friction and aggravation.
Let’s set aside for the moment that Canada has millions of guns in private hands, thousands of armed police that get into gunfights on a daily basis with the ever widening assortment of loons and criminals infesting city streets, plus something like 60 thousand regular military that ostensibly can handle firearms plus an assortment of militia battalions.
What cannot be ignored is the fiasco of the Afghanistan pullout a few short years ago, mostly unbothered by armed locals relieved to see the Americans gone. What it showed the world is that a supposedly exorbitantly funded and equipped and trained and educated US military cannot manage an uncontested bug out, not without abandoning billions worth of military vehicles and other assets. It was just a mess.
The US military can no longer do a retreat without screwing it up completely so how would they manage an actual invasion without making an even worse hash of it? I doubt that they’d make it as far as the border before capitulating. If they did make it, and never mind the local at-loose-ends young guys with a gun looking to make a name, just imagine what the Brampton car-jackers would do to them. We’d be watching container ships full of US army vehicles heading to African and middle eastern seaports. If I was an arms dealer I’d make a bee-line for Lagos.
As for truckers, what I hear is that they earn about half of what they made in the early 1980s so the number of guys in that business is dwindling. You cannot make a living at it. Of course the idiots in the Trudeau govt figured the way to solve labor shortages is to open the immigration spigots as if the rules of household arithmetic are different for people from overseas. It never occurred to any of them that jobs go unfilled because they don’t pay.
For that matter, the knucklehead contingents in the respective Carney and Poilievre camps are no smarter. What I’ve learned through close observation is that the Canadian so-called elites, like other national elites, drink each others bath water. They all got down on bent knee and with clasped hands and begged in unison for a Freedom Convoy. Well, they got one. They didn’t like it much. And now they’re begging as fervently as they were before for yet another one. It’s like a rule of nature, when you look for trouble, you generally find it.
@JMG: Of course you may! (You know what they say about great minds, and errr, fools…)
In turn, I hope you will not be offended if I say that I purchased Retrotopia and never started it because I Got Busy. Darn it all, I should have, I would been tickled to read about that.
Bofur #307
A number of people in Maine have relatives in Quebec or the Maritime Provinces so there are still strong ties across this region despite the existing national boundaries. Lewiston is Maine’s second largest city and is 15% French speaking.
Since my posts this time have almost all been about books, I’ll add one more and put in a word for “Star’s Reach.” I read it a third time recently, and I find it enjoyable. If there’s a puzzle or a code to be solved, I have not solved it. Among my favorite parts were the seemingly chance encounters with “Plummer.” I suspect there’s some similarity between him and John Gilbert. The patent medicines. Even the ever-present whiskey bottle?
In regard to illegal immigration we don’t need new laws, we need to enforce the ones we have.
8 U.S. Code § 1324 – Bringing in and harboring certain aliens
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1324
Powerful people do not want this enforced. So it isn’t.
We’ve really got ourselves in a pinch. If we pay domestic industries fair wages we can’t afford their products, so we have to outsource to low wage countries.
If we pay farmers enough so they are actually making minimum wage then the food costs too much unless you industrialize the whole process. It may be Advanced Food Substitute, but it tastes good, has calories, and is cheap. Lack of large sons wasn’t the only reason Dad gave up on farming. And it continues, small orchards are going out of business here because if they are honest they can’t afford the labor cost. So hire the illegals or come up with an H2-a dodge like what I posted earlier.
High food prices bring down governments, I don’t see that situation changing. I suppose you could put the whole country on SNAP to subsidize food that way.
There is a political platform. SNAP cards for everyone, cards limited to real food only (no sugar water, buy that with your own money). Paid for by downsizing the military, parking the aircraft carriers and converting them to data centers. Army reduced to 50,000 professionals and a very large reserve, back to the ‘rifle behind every blade of grass’ concept that made even the IJN just go “no.”
That should upset everyone, small government conservatives (government handouts), warmongers of both parties, and the left (AR-15 in every closet.)
@JMG (#312):
I’ve heard of those 13th-century Korean woodblocks, too, and I think I remember reading that a few other, smaller woodblock sets of the same sort are kept in one or another Asian monastery, equally usable even today for printing copies of this or that sacred text.
Bofur, I’m crushed. Crushed, I say! On the other hand, you did purchase it, so thank you for helping to pay my rent! 😉
Phutatorius, thank you! That book still has an important place in my heart. Yes, Plummer’s partly modeled on John Gilbert and partly on a couple of other teachers I’ve had; John wasn’t a drinker when I knew him but he’d had trouble with alcohol earlier in his life.
Robert, good. I just wish I had the funding to do that with some Western occult texts!
Hey JMG
I don’t remember if you have already answered this before, but have you ever considered visiting Australia?
The Tibetan town of Derge (sde dge) was famous for Tibetan Buddhist xylography from the 18th to the 20th centuries. Their printing house produced the whole Kangyur and Tengyur, among other texts, and housed hundreds of thousands of engraved blocks.
https://www.phayul.com/2024/05/11/50236/
https://www.pamela-logan.com/conservation/sacred-art-of-the-derge-printing-house/
Roy Smith (no. 311), “The problem, which is where Morello starts his essays, is the loss of authority of the magisterium, and experience seems to indicate the Christianity, if it is to remain Christian, depends on an authoritative magisterium.”
Oh, I thought we were talking about reenchantment. Why is a magisterium important? Sure, if everybody get to believe whatever they want, then that way lies the UUs, but the alternative is to arbitrarily elevate some people or beliefs to the level of authority. Why is this desirable, apart from a purely practical need to hold the group together? (And then I have to ask about the purpose of the group.) Is the goal is to return to some kind of premodern (un)consciousness in which only a few oddballs can even imagine disbelief? Again, why should we want that? Europe has its state Protestant churches–are those okay as they are, or do they need to be given more (or less) authority? I see a parallel in how some groups lament the decline of traditional marriage and family life–any solutions proposed are bound to be even more problematic.
By the way, I understand that from very early on in Disciples history, there was an anti-Trinitarian minority who argued that since the Trinity is not mentioned in the Bible, it ought not to be invoked during worship.
JMG and Bofur
The Maritime/ New England coalition seems such an obvious configuration at some stage in the decline, as does a Greater Quebec including the francophone areas of both regions., hopefully as allies not adversaries.
@Roy Smith #311 Oh, the direct encounter with the Lord George Fox referred to is quite available in Anglicanism, or just generic protestant Christianity, experienced it myself. As for authoritative magisteriums in religions other than Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Taoism all have their versions complete with persecution of heretics. Look at the history of Tibetan Buddhism in the 1600’s among many examples. Early converts to Catholicism in Tibet in the 1700’s were flogged for refusing to give divine honors to the Dalai Lama.The Christian magisteriums like the Buddhist on is quite divided up into subsections when you look at the whole. All religions have turf battles and magisterial claims to being the best connection. There was a big Taoist led persecution of Buddhism in China before 1000 AD. As Puck said to Oberon in Midsummer Night’s Dream – “Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
Since Star’s Reach has come up, I have a question and a comment. So, if you haven’t read it yeat, spoiler alert.
The chords, was that roll invented for the needs of the plot, or is there some element of the tarot that I’m not familiar with?
The printer, I love it that out of all the salvaged, refurbished, cobbled together, and other assorted technological artifacts, the d*** printer is the most consistently disfunctional. The more things change the more they stay the same.
Hi JMG,
Following your response to Forecasting about Hungary wanting to adjust its border. Would you be able to explain more your thoughts and information. Its population and subsequently its army are tiny. I knew Hungary tried a pact with Hitler to recover lost territories post Trianon but that was about it. Nowadays, Hungary is a shadow of its former self so it would astonishes me quite much of such a high ambition.
Kind regards,
Hi JMG,
I have an Atlantis question. Why was it so common in the 20th century to insist that Atlantis was anywhere but where Plato (and the Egyptians) said it was? The 19th century didn’t have this problem. Does anyone know where that change came from?
As an aside, I know there is a lot of lore about a number of human civilizations that are supposed to predate our own. From what I can gather they were the Polarian, Hyperborean, Lemurian and Atlantian. I know Lemuria was supposedly south of south east asia and the Polarian age was at the poles, but where was Hyperborea? I know the Greeks considered it far to the north, but was it separate from the Polarian civilizations?
Cheers,
JZ
Thanks,
JZ
@kornhoer
The company is called Slate Auto. Not a fan of electric vehicles, the batteries are expensive and guess where they’re all made (and poorly too I might add these days)?
Not sure how big the market is, but there are definitely people out there who have been talking about wanting a easy to afford, easy to diagnose and repair car, and what it would look like. I think to a large degree, the big automakers don’t want that, they want you in debt or renting a car and making a monthly payment to them. To a large degree, they don’t respect you as a customer anymore either.
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=AIqUf89deVo
TL;DW – GM is constantly monitoring how you drive and selling that info to insurance companies who then use it as an excuse to jack up your premiums. But their competitors are almost as bad.
And to figure out what’s going wrong with even a car that’s 10-15 years old, it takes a PhD level brain to run down the wiring diagrams and pinpoint the fault. And the scary thing is sometimes the PhD level brain can’t figure it out, that’s how complicated cars have gotten. This state of affairs can’t continue for long, something’s gotta give.
And it looks like what’s giving is new car sales. This is a sample video, there are like at least 10 different others on the topic, just type in “car market crash” and start watching.
https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=r0krhElD0_s
“A US government agency will begin assessing federal workers based on their loyalty to President Donald Trump, the Wall Street Journal has reported. […] high-ranking civil servants will be judged based on their “faithful administration of the law and the president’s policies.” The documents described advancing Trump’s agenda as the “most critical element” in measuring the performance of the officials, the report read. ” — https://swentr.site/news/616386-trump-loyalty-official-us/
Oath of Loyalty for All State Officials as of August 20, 1934:
“I swear I will be true and obedient to the Führer of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler, observe the law, and conscientiously fulfill the duties of my office, so help me God.” 9
[Translated from Reichsgesetzblatt I, 1934, p. 785.] — https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/oaths-of-loyalty-for-all-state-officials
No comment needed.
@Other Owen: re: adversarial noise link: that is AWESOME.
Hi Peter the Khan of Potlucks,
Thanks for the shout out. Ah, sadly an unlikely circumstance, it’d be a fun catch up. 🙂 If your group ever catch-up virtually over something like zoom, please do let me know and I’d be pleased to attend. Always nice to meet fellow readers.
Cheers
Chris
Mary B.
I believe others have answered your question about Garcia. The story is local to me (Wash. D.C.) and the local press is confused about it as well. It seems to come forward when CASA and his wife together push to have what happened made known. His wife is confusing in her statements but refers to CASA and the lawyers for answers. The reporting is fluid.
JMG and everyone else,
I am a cynic these days. After reading about how the Gay Movement pivoted to Trans issue after Gay Marriage was recognized made me suspect of all ‘do-gooding’ organizations. What I read is that money corrupts, and people who are employed in these movements (Gay and other movements) need to have the money flow continue. Hense, the goal posts are always moving with new issues for people to get exercised over.
I wonder where was CASA when the deportations started? They did not pop up on the news until recently, unless I wasn’t paying attention, and they did. I do know what my neighbor told me about where he works – a depot for trucks and the like. They maintain the parking area, shovel snow, and all that. He said when the news about Trump and illegal immigrants was broadcast, the workforce emptied out. He ended up being the only legal person that they had employed.
What I have noticed about these “issues” is that they are like lightning, striking, but only briefly. The hard work or focus seems to be missing. I haven’t heard any protests about DOGE or Musk lately, for example. I am sure that there are issues that need to be addressed but the meme factory has moved on.
The latest is David Brooks writing that there should be an uprising against Trump for well– being Trump.
Martin Beck–some years ago I took a seminar on the early novels of John le Carre. These novels involve a fictional British intelligence agency known to its workers as the Circus. The enemy at this time was, of course, the Soviet Union. Many of the plots involve the agents of the Circus ignoring or circumventing the actual policies of the government in power and even violating the laws of allied nations, because they are the experts who know what really needs to be done, not those silly elected politicians. That is a kind of definition of what some call the Deep State: unelected and perhaps well-meaning workers who follow their own ideas of what needs to be done rather than the plans of the elected government. That is exactly why leaders need to worry about the loyalty of the civil service.
There have been a number of reports in the past few months that made me suspect malicious compliance on the parts of some Federal workers–reports such as information about women and POC disappearing from government web pages in response to anti-DEI orders. Of course, without journalists willing to actually do some investigative journalism it is difficult to know what really went on. Did the orders received say “Remove all mentions of women and POC” or did someone think–“I hate the elimination of DEI. I can make Trump look stupid by taking the name of the first woman astronaut off the NASA webpage.” No way to know. Some of the “mistakes” in deportation orders might be similar ploy–not that there can’t be actual mistakes, I had a female friend who got a draft notice back in the 1970s and it certainly isn’t unknown for SWAT teams to bust in the wrong door or regular police to make errors in arrests or even for prisons to release the wrong inmate. People do screw up. There are also some instances of clear defiance such as a couple of base commanders who refused to display the official photos of the president, vice-president and Sect. of defense in their offices and have been releived of duty for it.
How can one run a democracy if members of the civil service feel free to ignore or even work against the elected officers and their appointees.? I’m not saying I endorse everything that Trump is doing, but the same question would arise for any president–or governor, mayor or other elected executive officer–“can I rely on my orders being executed or are people who disagree with me going to sabotage what the voters asked for in electing me?”
And, by the way, the comparisons to Hitler have been so overdone as to be a parody of themselves–your fellow commentariat should expect better. For a humorous treatment of this situation, I refer you to the “Yes, Minister” comedies from England. Scripts of some were printed up as a book.
> How do we know we can take local oral tradition seriously as a source of information about the nature of life in a particular place? — Jonathan #284
This is a bit of a long shot, but you might look at the Bushmen. They were known to be great story-tellers. From memory, many were captured and used as convict labor on the breakwater of Cape Town harbor, where it was observed that they spent hours telling stories to one another. Unfortunately, no one could understand their language so those stories are lost, but modern scholars have translated many of their current stories.
My personal theory is that as itinerant hunters over a wide and resource-poor territory, they need some method of remembering the location of waterholes, what plants are nutritious and what to avoid and where to find them, the seasonal movements of game, etc, as well as tribal mores and customs, and somehow these are encoded in stories which are easier to remember. Of course, maybe the stories are just to identify tribal affiliations, like the prisons numbers gangs I’ve mentioned before, or maybe they are purely for entertainment, I simply don’t know.
As I say, this is a long shot. I have no idea what experts have to say about the stories.
Here are a couple of pieces of topical interest.
The first is by our old buddy, Jim Kunstler:
https://www.kunstler.com/p/now-you-know
“Woke liberalism is exactly what Christopher Lasch predicted in The Revolt of the Elites, published in 1995 the year after his early death at 61. Lasch saw how the juvenile idealism of Boomer hippiedom would slide into the narcissistic, sado-masochistic degeneracy of open borders, drag queen story hours, Covid-19 despotism, DEI racism, showbiz Satanism, censorship, forever wars, and now, the legal insurrection of lawfare.
“In doing so, Lasch also predicted the ‘mass formation psychosis’ described by Belgian psychologist Mattias Desmet, spawned by a crisis of meaning and purpose in the thinking classes of Western Civ.”
He goes on to say:
“The juvenile idealism of Boomer hippiedom wrecked the crucial idea of a common culture, and I will tell you exactly how that happened. Two crusades: first, the civil rights campaign, and second, stopping the War in Vietnam, defined the era.” He then expands upon both.
The other article is from a pseudonymous blogger who publishes under the handle of “The Z Man,” who makes points very similar to those our host made in the waning days of the old ADR:
https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=33992
“There is the belief among the managerial elite that they can meme things into reality. If they just pack enough versions of their desired truth into the information control system, at some point this becomes reality. This has been repeatedly seen with the war in Ukraine, but it has been a feature of every major event. During Covid, they operated as if the news stories they made up were true for a couple of years.
“One possible explanation for this is that a key pillar of the managerial state is the assumption that people respond to information, so if one controls the information, one controls the people. Since another pillar of the managerial state is that reality is made by people, it follows that one can control reality, or at least the perception of reality, by controlling the people through control of the information. The old expression, perception is reality, has become an article of faith among the elites.”
“Western elites now operate as if time is always on their side. If they cannot shape reality to their liking now, then they just need to wait until reality comes to its senses. …
“This sense of time probably stems from the fact that managerialism is a world measured in process rather than tangible accomplishments. Normal people measure their lives by what they have done. The managerial class measures their lives by the networks and processes in which they are a part. …”
“This is what gives the West the same feel as pre-revolutionary France. The ruling elite of France assumed they had time, which allowed them to avoid dealing with the serious problems facing the system. …
“A similar situation happened at the end of the Soviet system. Gorbachev was something like Jacques Necker, in that he was in his position to fix the problems of the system, but the system refused to be fixed. … Similarly, Trump exists because of systemic failure with the expectation that he can fix the system. Like the reactionaries of old, the managerial elite assumes it can wait him out.
“Historical analogies are never perfect, and that is true here. The French elite, for example, understood the system’s problems. These were mostly smart, educated men with a deep knowledge of the system. The modern managerial elite is populated by mediocrities skilled only in the sort of scheming that is the basis of drama. They also possess a stunning lack of self-awareness.“
I have a proposal for the conversation concerning future evolution of books. This is technologically plausible, even with the lose of considerable technology, and I think even economically efficent compared to many printing press competators.
Reel to reel micro film cassettes. A cassette of micro film text could store an encyclopedia worth of knowledge in a pocket sized device. A stable, flexable, clear substrate for the silver particles to be stuck too is the most difficult technology, but doable with relatively modest industrial base, nothing much more demanding that producing paper at scale. Lenses for the photography and the later reading of the micro pages is something that once made can be used for generations, and one lense could be used to read many different cassettes of knowledge.
Microfilm technology was possible in early 20th century using relatively simple devises, some small enough that spies could sneak even the cameras into little pocket devices, though producing enough images for a book would likely be done with workshop devices with good indexing and fixed focus.
A down side, is it might be stressful on the eyes to read for an extended time, and therefore ill suited for long form fiction, but for knowledge reference, short stories, and vast compalations of poems it would do excellent.
There are many niches where such a technology would not displace books as they have been known, but there are alot of applications where I think such a technology could find a niche in cultures yet to be.
Martin Back, people from primarily oral cultures are known for their prodigious memories–it seems that being able to write things down, and look them up later, has ruined our memories in the same way that calculators have ruined our maths. Tibetan Buddhism is a literate culture, of course (consider all those blockprints), but its monastic educational system emphasizes oral teachings and memorization. So when the Dalai Lama wants to learn about science, rather than read some books, as you or I might do, he invites some scientists for a chat. His “books” are edited transcripts of his talks.
Brother Kornhoer and The Other Owen,
There is another modular truck out there, but it isn’t available in the US (yet… fingers crossed, though!). It runs on gas or diesel and has lots of modifications available. Unfortunately, it currently doesn’t meet safety and emission standards. 🙁 Starting price is $13,000.
Details here:
https://www.toyotahiluxchamp.com/
https://www.toyotahiluxchamp.com/how-to-buy-toyota-hilux-champ-in-usa/
I’ve been busy all day so am catching up on the lights out in Spain.
Apparently the inverters on all those renewable energy installations (needed to change the DC to AC) started chasing each other’s transients causing oscillations that brought down the system.
The generators on conventional power plants (including hydro) have tons of spinning metal that don’t care to respond to ephemeral glitches. Conservation of angular momentum damps out frequency twitches, the capacitance between the insulated conductors damps out the voltage twitches and inductance of the windings damps out the current twitches.
Apparently there was very little spinning mass at the start of the problem as the electrical system was mostly running on wind and solar.
The official write up on this will be interesting.
Massive black out in Spain Portugal , not hearing any explanation as to what caused it, that’s a huge outage that happened very fast. Anyone hear a good explanation yet ? Is everyone here remembering to keep up your own preparations if things like this, or other things, happen ? things like this get our attention and make a good reminder to get your just in case stuff in order.
You dont want to have to go to a store or out. You just want to ride it out at home. Because sometimes people panic and its best to stay away from panicky crowds. If you have family you need to take care of, get home with them as expeditiously as possible. At home have on hand enough food and water for… well, do what you can, for 3 days or one week or more if you can.
Dont let medications get low, keep a one ahead stock, so always have the next bottle full at hand. Especially if insulin is needed have a back up to power your fridge. ( You can even get a used Rv fridge from a otherwise ruined RV and the older or newer small ones are 3 way, will work on regular AC power, a DC 12V battery or bottled propane tank ( like for your barBQ).
You can charge your phone in the car, if you have one, but do not count on always being able to use Cell Phone towers and infrastructure, make sure you and your family have a plan ahead of time if you cant reach each other.
Then once the outage starts, just have fun at home. Because at that point, there is nothing to do but wait it out. One of my first long ones, I broke out my rocket stove ( look for online plans to stack cement blocks in the yard for one to have on hand) and put a cast iron pan on it to cook up flat bread and heat up soup. Break out the puzzles, board games, crayons etc… with the kids. Pretend you are camping. If it is cold, make your dining table into a “tent” by covering it with a large sheet, and everyone put their pillows and bedding inside the “tent” to “camp out” .
I remember seeing a blog years ago from a guy in a 700 sq ft apartment in San Francisco with a shared back patio and how he stored lots of emergency preps, including under the bed, etc… Looks like he is moving his blog, so here is a couple links on his old site, from his earlier days https://granolashotgun.wordpress.com/2014/10/01/emergency-preperation-wherever-you-live/
https://granolashotgun.wordpress.com/2016/12/23/how-to-ride-the-slide-apocalypse-lite/
https://granolashotgun.wordpress.com/2018/07/08/little-experiments-on-the-cheap/
I forgot to mention, if you work away from home, you should be prepared to have to stay there for a day or two if things get crazy. Assuming you are not the one who has to fetch the kids, but all schools and daycares have plans to feed and take care of them in an emergency for a day at least. So, make sure you can take care of you. In your desk, enough packaged foods to get thru a day or two. Or in the car, a get home bag, which in my case is not some kind of prepping live off the land, it is simply an MRE with a heater and a few energy bar type things , a few tea bags and a simple fold up contraption to heat up water on my hood, a quart or two of water, a blanket. Sometimes you cant get thru the roads and continue on your way, so you have to stay put is the point. Might as well have a cup of tea and a snack and bed down for the night. I like to have a roll of toilet paper too and a little shovel. But I live by rural roads. On the freeways and cities, I recommend just not getting irritated or panicking. If other people are losing it, stay in your car, but otherwise smile at the car next to you , roll down the window and strike up a conversation. get out and sit on the hood and get some sun and smile. Maybe we should have a deck of cards in the car bag. But, maybe someone has a soccor ball ? Take turns on which car radio is on, so batteries dont get run down. When its your turn, maybe put it on a music station. Do not leave your car there to be in the way once they take care of the gridlock, just turn it off and ride it out ( if you are not in a wildfire or immediate danger)
I dont know what it is like to be stranded in a city without working transit, but again, might be pretty good if people keep their heads. I remember the big New York New jersey Hurricane, places in New York that could were making food and giving it away to the people around them, one was a pizza place. This is the way to be.
@JMG “Glastonbury in particular has an energy I find immensely appealing and pleasant; I could easily see myself living there, or anywhere in the county or two around it. I haven’t gotten that same reaction in Wales or Scotland.”
There are some places like that, you can’t put a finger on it but there is a deep sense of place. Every time I am in the southern end of New Zealand it feels like home despite having no direct connection to it. Like you, I was planning on making the move until the whole Covid shenanigans, a steady decline of their situation and having my personal situation change. Alas, the path not taken.
As for you, a search of “Glastonbury Inn’s” yields some very nice results but listen to the locals over Google. Have a rich Ale and a batters fish and chips. Cannot top it, absolute paradise!
J.L.Mc12, I’m open to the possibility now that I’m single and have few responsibilities. I hadn’t really put much thought into it, though.
Team10tim, the whole set of officers in the Rememberers was taken from one end of Western esoteric tradition, where the Cord represents the element of spirit. As for the printer, why, yes, that was inspired by decades of experience…
Foxhands, little countries are not necessarily harmless; you might look into Serbia’s role in the opening moves of the First World War. Still, we’ll see!
John, I have no idea. It’s baffling, not least because they never provide arguments against other claimants — it’s always just “Here’s a lost civilization, it must be Atlantis!” Some of them aren’t even under water. As for Hyperborea, it’s Greenland now.
Martin, if you get your news from the WSJ, yes, you’re going to hear it framed that way. Put another way, the federal bureaucracy is about to be required to follow instructions from the legally elected president rather than doing whatever it pleases.
Neptunesdolphins, we’ll be discussing that in an upcoming post over at the blog.
Michael M, Jim’s in fine form these days! I wasn’t familiar with the Z Man — thanks for the heads up.
Ray, interesting. Now somebody has to put the labor and resources into doing that.
Siliconguy, one more win for green energy…
Atmospheric, all very sensible.
Michael G, I have that well in mind.
JMG,
Greenland ok! That makes sense and it also explains some geopolitical oddities regarding interest in that landmass since the time of the Second World War.
A follow up question, I hope you don’t mind; Were the Polarian civilizations presumed to be at the north pole or the south pole? I know there are some medieval and early modern maps that show Antarctica dating before the Russians and British formally found the landmass in the 1820’s. Also, are there any books you would recommend on these topics? I’ve only read Donnelly’s Atlantis and have picked up some scraps here and there. I know the Theosophists wrote about this stuff, but I’m not sure where to dive in to their literature.
Thanks,
JZ
to Mary Bennett et al: There was a photo that made the news (not the mainstream news, of course) of Garcia’s gang tattoo on his hand that spells MS13. This doesn’t prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt, but given that such gangs don’t tolerate imposters very well, it definitely points to his membership.
@ Siliconguy RE: The Spain black out. That conventional power plants have a physical spinning mass to regulate frequency is one of those things that is really fascinating. Something so vague as electrical vibrational speed is backed something so incredibly physical. This is part of why Vaclav Smil says we are still, in part, operating on a 19th century energy system. Until we aren’t and this cascade of fragility happens.
Do wonder if there is a difference in turbine wear out time between US and European systems due to the 50Hz/60Hz difference? Couldn’t find anything online.
Reporting from Spain. It’s 7:55 am local time (19 hours after the blackout) as I type this. Power and water came back to my home during the night. There are still people without power or water in Seville, which is the fourth biggest city in the country. I suppose service must be worse in smaller cities and rural areas, but I can’t confirm. Admittedly, we’re recovering more quickly than I expected.
I’ve been told conflicts started in supermarkets fairly quickly as people scrambled to get water, food and batteries (as well as toilet paper, of course). Consequently, most stores closed within a few minutes and those that didn’t ran out of the basics quite soon. So, the lesson here is to get your preparations in advance.
So far the official explanation is that we lost 15 GW of generation (60% of national generation!) within five seconds and it came back online 15 seconds later for unknown reasons, thus starting the blackout. Of course this is impossible.
My opinion? The day was very sunny and temperatures were mild, so the conditions were perfect for peak PV generation. We’ve been producing a lot of our power via renewables for a while, which, according to experts who aren’t in the renewable lobby, makes the grid less stable for the reasons Siliconguy explained. I don’t think this will be publicly admitted.
Hi John Michael,
It’s hard to know what went on with the Spanish blackout, but my best guess is that the voltage rose too high on the distribution (i.e. home and business) side of the sub stations due to all of the installed grid tied solar. The effect of over voltage is to basically shut down the sub stations one by one, and the really big generators have to have somewhere to send their electricity, or they disconnect too, and the problem can quickly cascade. The thing people forget with solar photovoltaic panels, is that on cold and cloud-free sunny days in spring, the panels over produce. They have a 20% uptake on roof space in that country.
I’ve been looking at this solar renewable energy technology every day since 2009, and it’s complicated. Have to laugh when the pundits talk about a renewable energy transition like it’s a great thing to achieve. The thing is, most of those folks have never had to run their houses solely on this technology. They won’t like it… 😉 But that ain’t my problem, I’m just trying to make this stuff work, and have to perform some maintenance on the oldest locally made inverter here in the next couple of weeks.
The grid tied inverters installed are really dumb devices in that they are unable to sense the grid voltage and throttle down their output. Off grid inverters are very expensive devices because they have to manage that trick of matching supply with demand 24 hours per day, every single day of the year, for years. As Siliconguy correctly noted (nod of respect), the disparate multitude of machines do their best to match the established frequency as well (swapping the positive and negative nodes down here it’s 50Hz or cycles per second), but that requires one big monster spinning machine to set the overall pace. Hmm. On King Island in Bass Strait, they have a large flywheel to manage that aspect.
When the electrician installed the off grid inverter here, he was amazed that the voltage was rock solid at 233V, with no under/over spikes. The grid by contrast, is all over the shop. What amazes me, is that it works as well as it does. Why not recognise this fact and invest in its maintenance is an issue which bothers me deeply. The present economic arrangements are not possible with an unreliable grid. Do you wonder what might happen to the arrangements when the reality of years of poor choices become too hard to notice?
Cheers
Chris
Hi Michael Gray,
Hope that your personal situation is OK now, and that you’re doing good.
Cheers
Chris
Hey, I needed a laugh just now, and I thought others might too. I was looking over the very thoughtful comments regarding singing God Save the Queen to help support Britain’s astral pyramid (or not, as the case may be). As I got towards the end of the comments it struck me that since I am an Ohioan I might want to strengthen Ohio’s astral pyramid. So if anyone would like to join me in singing Hang On Sloopy to help support the Buckeye State, I won’t mind at all. (It’s our official state rock song. The fact that it was written by The Strangeloves -who have their own incredible story – is a bonus.)
https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/325239.html?thread=55230839#cmt55230839
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nuw8GJbqx94&ab_channel=TheMcCoys-Topic
When I thought of singing this song as a spell, I cracked a wide smile. I think we could all use some of that just now!
Hang on, Sloopy
Sloopy, hang on
Hang on, Sloopy
Sloopy, hang on
Sloopy lives in a very bad part of town (ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh)
And everybody, yeah, tries to put my Sloopy down (ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh)
Sloopy, I don’t care what your daddy do (ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh)
‘Cause you know, Sloopy, girl, I’m in love with you (ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh)
And so I say now
Hang on, Sloopy
Sloopy, hang on
Hang on, Sloopy
Sloopy, hang on
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Give it to ’em (yeah)
Sloopy, let your hair down, girl
Let it hang down on me (ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh)
Sloopy, let your hair down, girl
Let it hang down on me, yeah, yeah (ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh)
Come on, Sloopy (come on, come on)
Well, come on, Sloopy (come on, come on)
Well, come on, Sloopy (come on, come on)
Well, come on, Sloopy (come on, come on)
Well, it feels so good (come on, come on)
You know, it feels so good (come on, come on)
Oh, shake it, shake it, shake it, Sloopy (come on, come on)
Oh, shake it, shake it, shake it, yeah (come on, come on)
Ohh
Hang on, Sloopy
Sloopy, hang on
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Hang on, Sloopy
Sloopy, hang on
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Hang on, Sloopy
Sloopy, hang on
There is a great episode of America’s Untold Stories on The Strangeloves here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcHUJnm6ok0&ab_channel=America%27sUntoldStories
And here is a wonderful song called Parties in the USA by the great Jonathan Richman (whom I love) which riffs off Hang on Sloopy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0ihS9HvIr4&ab_channel=shykid8
It’s actually an interesting meditation on togetherness and loneliness, and how there aren’t as many parties as there used to be… well, it’s even more the case since the song came out in 1992.
“Well could there be block parties of which I know not?
Wild beach parties around some open flame?
I know there’s got to be parties, I bet there’s a lot
But the USA has changed somehow that I can’t name…”
@JMG
‘…by and large the guy with the knife loses as soon as he comes up against a guy with a stick…’
True. Unless they are Chinese butterfly knives which are the nemesis of all polearms (the pole can be gripped fast by being locked between the knife blades and their extended tines).
@BeardTree
‘…converts to Catholicism in Tibet in the 1700s were flogged for refusing to give divine honors to the Dalai Lama…’
It’s probably too late in the cycle to ask for a source for this statement. It seems very doubtful to me because there are no gifts of ‘divine honours’ to the Dalai Lama, especially from the other sects. There were also Nestorians and Muslims in Tibet for many centuries before the arrival of Catholic missionaries. It’s also worth noting that in the Tibetan legal system all of the participants in litigation were given a cursory flogging before the proceedings for having failed to behave themselves and resolve their differences outside the courtroom. PRC anti-Dalai Lama propaganda is unfortunately very widespread and well funded.
Hi John
Mercator located Hyperborea and Greenland as two separate places, with Greenland in its usual place and Hyperborea centered on the North Pole:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Mercator_Septentrionalium_Terrarum_descriptio.jpg
Distortion of that map owing to misalignment of the planet’s magnetic axis with respect to its rotational axis would indicate that the area shown on the 1595 map as Hyperborea would actually be what is now the territory of Nunavut. A traveller from the eastern Mediterranean could get there by a northeasterly route, but it would be an extremely long trek across Siberia (‘beyond Boreas’) crossing the Rocky Mountains (Riphean Mountains, perhaps?) to a far-north region of eternal sunshine (well, six months at a time, at least!). The only part of this that doesn’t seem to make sense is that the Canadian Archipelago is currently a frozen wasteland, not an idyllic paradise.
Great picture of Spain last night.
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/power-restored-spain-portugal-net-zero-becomes-headache-brussels
Net zero achieved!
At least they had enough black start capability.
Tengu (#352): “It’s also worth noting that in the Tibetan legal system all of the participants in litigation were given a cursory flogging before the proceedings for having failed to behave themselves and resolve their differences outside the courtroom. ” Hmm, that might be worth implementing universally, at least for civil cases!
John, most of the older literature I’ve seen either doesn’t specify or assigns it to a lost north polar continent, but my guess for a long time has been Antarctica. During ice-free periods it would have made a very good place for civilization, with 24-hour sunlight during the growing season.
Miguel, many thanks for the update! I’m glad that you and your country got through all this in good shape.
Chris, that’s another of the many mismatches between abstract notions and concrete realities. As the gap between them gets wider and wider — well, in the case of power grids, I expect smart businesses to move toward supplementary power systems that don’t depend on the grid, such as generators, and those will gradually take over from the grid as the latter becomes more and more unstable; then the scramble for generator fuel will become a major issue, with rationing (by government or by price) coming into play. Of course the economy’s going to take it in the teeth, and frantic jerry-rigging will be the order of the day.
Justin, ha! I’m sorry to say that Rhode Island doesn’t seem to have an official state rock song, which sucks — the state song is, as state songs usually are, complete twaddle. (Though it’s not as bad as Washington’s, which doesn’t even get taught to kids in elementary school, it’s so lame.)
Tengu, granted — for every weapon there’s an effective counter-weapon, and in China, double, triple, and square that.
Old Steve, granted, but Mercator was writing about 115,000 years after the fact, and can’t be blamed for getting some of the details wrong. I bet he didn’t even call it Iqqumandu. 😉 As for the climate, remember that in the Eemian interglacial, which is the period we’re talking about, hippopotami frolicked in the rivers of Yorkshire and forests extended north to the shores of the Arctic Ocean — it was much warmer than today.
That solar problem is specifically grid tied problem, a stand alone solar system does not need to have frequency align with anything else. And, if it glitches in a way to temporarily shut off power from the charge controller as the panel output is too high, it just goes right back on again as it doesnt need to coordinate with anything else.
I have what is an off-grid type solar system that is grid tied. Sometimes called DC coupled meaning that the connections to my house and batteries comes off of the DC side of the inverter, actually the 3 sources are literally just connected together, the DC side of the inverter, the batteries, the output from the solar panel charge controller ( that device modulates the solar panel output to be the steady DC voltage the inverter and batteries have/want). Anyways, my inverter on the AC, grid, side looks for an AC voltage from the grid, if there is none, it does not feed any power to the grid, if it sees one it will take some if it needs it for the batteries, or if it has excess generation and it has been told to do so, it will match the waveform on the grid and send out power. So a grid disruption should not stop me from having some power, when the power poles burnt down, it tripped the circuit breaker to the inverter and everything survived and my backed up loads could get power. My system is very small actually, it just powers some things in my house, not everything. I get the refrigerator and some of the lights and outlets that are connected to the back up sub panel. The water tanks are up hill enough to trickle down at very low pressure if mains power is down, and then heat comes from a wood stove.
Ian Welsh has explained the Canadian election for his readers: https://www.ianwelsh.net/ Maybe someone here from Canada might also be able to parse your election for the rest of us?
Jean, et al, about the Garcia case, for us nobodies the relevant, and frightening fact is that this administration evidently thinks it gets to ignore or defy a court order. Us no accounts, we rely on the courts as a backstop against local elites, such as the real estate dealer who wants to buy Grandma’s house out from under her, or the credit card companies who pretend they didn’t receive your payment. See, for example, some of the outrageous shenanigans perpetrated by Wells Fargo recently.
@Atmospheric and all
according to Ben Davidson, it was a weakening magnetic field.
https://x.com/SunWeatherMan/status/1917160226467483787 (he chats about it in a video — part of his pole flipping theory)
Things are going to get spicy!!!
For anyone who does not have doubts about the future of the power grid here is some food for thought coming on the heels of the nationwide grid outage in Spring.
Now that the media, entertainment industry and glitterati has decided they can replace the likes of Neil Armstrong and Jim Lovell with Katy Perry and Lauren Sánchez in the realm of space travel it will not be long before our power grid will be run and managed by the Kardashians.
Stock up on the treadle sewing machines and wood stoves now.
Bofur #307, there’s an affliction circulating called preposterosis, mostly among the ruling class, though it’s not unknown among the lower downs. From what I’ve heard there’s no cure, once beset, it’s usually a lifelong condition.
Anyway, given the wide prevalence of this disorder which disturbs intellectual functioning chiefly in perception and reasoning, I have little hope that a redrawing of political boundaries will be accomplished without a lot of mess attending. Much of the world has been burdened for decades with an economic order that doesn’t work, that was obviously flawed from its inception with logic bombs that would eventually guarantee its demolition. Yet here we are.
The dotcom disaster, the 2008 calamity, the economic destruction of much of the interior, all this and more did nothing to dissuade decision makers from defending this dispensation by any means necessary, making, breaking, bending laws, sending millions to misery and destitution and perdition.
Hence Trump. Will he succeed in this venture of his? Are his team really onboard? I suspect that his most powerful ministers – along with some of the usual suspects – lay in wait.
Look at the state of leadership. They’ve lost their bloody minds.
@ Chris in Ferndale
tell me more about doing maintenance on your inverter. What do you do and how often ? I have never opened mine, maybe there is something I should be doing ?
A mild bit of linguistic pedantry: “Werewolf” is actually the masculine form; Old English, like Greek and Latin, made a distinction between human beings (Anthropos, Homines, Man/men) and the adult male of the special (Andros, Vir, Wer.) An adult female lycanthrope would technologically be a “Wifwolf; a young lady, a “Wolfmaid.” Trying to remember what the term for a widow would be.
I now return you to the present century.
JPM @ 350: Re “Hang on Sloopy”; I’d never paid attention to the lyrics before. I didn’t know that was Ohio’s state song, and I was born in Dayton! My niece’s daughter recently got Carjacked in Columbus, which could be the title of another song — or something. But most of my Ohio relatives have passed on to the other planes by now.
Mary (#186)
I think it might be a subset of the older generations. The thing I’m noticing though is that a lot of the Big Tech products have much older audiences than I expected; and the only people I know who seem excited about AI are all Boomers or Gen X. The younger generation will use the tool, but do not seem to be getting quite as sucked into the hype machine. If they end up alienating the bulk of the older generations as well, and the tech world dwindles into serving an ever smaller number of people trying to cling to the days when the world looked like it shared their faith in computers, I’m not sure I would object.
EIke (#223)
I was wondering about that, and did briefly look into armadillos. It looks like scientists are pretty sure that it’s a modified hair; and turning hair into spikes and bony coverings is a well known Mammal thing. What makes turtles so strange is their mechanism for the shell; complete with some fairly drastic remodeling of their entire bodies during embryo-genesis. The shell is obviously a remarkably useful thing to have; but they way that they got there is just bizarre, and it is hard to imagine the intermediate forms being able to survive, let alone thrive.
Hamster (#224)
Maybe it is projection, but I think there’s something else going on. I don’t want to do the deep dive I’d have to in order to find out if these ads are actually new, but they seem new to me, and I’m not sure I buy projection happening on a major scale would start as abruptly as these ads seem to have started.
Jerry, interesting. We’ll see!
Clay, er, “nationwide grid outage”? If you mean this nation, I seem to have missed it, and Rhode Island is part of the US last I checked.
Patricia, thank you for this! That may eventually come in handy in the Ariel Moravec stories.
Hi all,
More on the blackout in Spain
One of the causes mentioned is ‘And poor maintenance planning left without enough hydraulic muscle to respond to a crisis.’ It’s on purpose, many big companies plan to stop and do maintenance during Spring time, when electricity is cheaper., to reduce expenses or to win more money. It’s business as usual at it’s best.
The government apparently approves it, how can you prove that the maintenance can also be done when electricity is more expensive?
Kind regards,
Tired21
Rod Dreher just published this today:
We Have To Be Truthful About This Mess
Our Civilization Is More Fragile Than We Think
https://roddreher.substack.com/p/we-have-to-be-truthful-about-this
He expresses my own views quite well:
“If you think we have dodged the totalitarian bullet in the US, you are mistaken.
Once again: I think Donald Trump was the best thing on offer in the 2024 election. But his chaotic and often pointlessly destructive governing style is making things worse than they have to be, precisely at a time when we Americans need steady, determined, and wise leadership. The world order is breaking up, and re-forming. This could be done peacefully … or not. The Right now has political power in America, but it won’t hold on to it if it makes the lives of ordinary Americans worse. The Left has no answers. It is urgently important, from a civilizational perspective, that the Right gets this right. .. This is a hinge moment in American history, and in world history. The old order has exhausted itself, and discredited itself in misgovernment. Something new is being born.
There is no guarantee at all that what is coming next will be better than what it is replacing. This is a historical moment that requires serious men acting seriously. We don’t have that. And it does nobody any good to pretend that we do. Maybe the power-holders now can change course. I have my doubts. Prepare yourselves, spiritually and otherwise, for the upheaval.“
@Phutatorious: sorry to hear about your niece. That is no fun. I’ve spent time in both Dayton and Columbus. That is cool you are from Dayton. No one else might say it is cool, but I think it is cool. You know, Ohio might be why we both like Dhalgren. I was grabbing a beer before a poetry reading once with this guy who was touring his book and he knew Delany. He asked him if he based it on Cincinnati, b/c of our old observatory. Anyway, lots of great musicians from this state. Akron and Cleveland were incredibly influential for punk… I was sad to learn that proto-punker Dave Thomas of Rocket from tbe Tomb and Pere Ubu passed away last week. I have a deindustrialpoem about Dayton I will post. Guided By Voices and Enon are probably the big indie rock bands from an hour north of here. Hope your niece recovers from the assault.
Oh yeah, Delany denied Cincy or Ohio influencing his book, but I could see it happening like that in the right Midwest city.
In regards to generational excitement towards Tech and AI
I disagree that it is Boomers and Gen X, or predominately them. I see millennials very very into it. This is my eldest offsprings generation, the millennials. As far as I see, that generation is very into tech solving all our problems and not only use a tool but they develop the tech products, write documents and software with the large language models ( which they tell me are actually very very dumb. I was told that using these tools saves time on some things but often makes as much sense as ” talking to a freshman college student on acid”, not intelligent in the way us regular people would use the word) Look at the ones working for Musk which are Gen Z ( in their 20’s) writing programs using this stuff to quickly crawl and search data for the feds. To get that quick auditing is not just using some tool, it is programing and embracing it. The millennials also are very into the whole off planet, space travel, solar power, electric cars stuff. Millennials right now are in the age range of 29 to 44 years old, so you can see this is the age range that is making all this tech and software, the hands on work, along with some Gen X managers
Hey JMG
Well, Australia has a lot going for it if you did decide to visit. It doesn’t have the same issues with free speech that Britain has developed (yet?), it has a few freemason lodges and theosophical societies, amazing natural scenery (many of the surrounding areas of Brisbane are quite forested), and of course our wildlife, not only the well known marsupials but our under-appreciated birds. Also, no one expects you to tip staff in restaurants and cafes, but you still can if you really want to.
The only bad things about my country is that it doesn’t have the large amount of architectural history Britain has, and the weather can be hot, humid or stormy. Also most of Australian buildings are notorious for being badly insulated so they can get very cold in winter.
As for the Iberian blackout, I wouldn’t rule out that the weaknesses of EU’s misguided green revolution were exploited by sabotage. Moriarty has pointed out for years there is a tit-for-tat going on where an explosion in Russia or Iran is followed by a similar explosion in the west and vice versa. After the severe explosion in Iran (https://apnews.com/article/iran-explosion-bandar-abbas-port-shahid-rajaei-53387f4f71dba2788569655297c57cff) I expected something in the west, especially after I learned that it was Chinese rocket fuel that exploded.
Maybe the blackout was the retaliation, maybe more is coming. A Portugese minister said initially that he couldn’t rule out sabotage, but that seems to have been scrubbed now. Ayatollah Khamenei also suggested sabotage in the Iranian harbour (https://apnews.com/article/iran-explosion-bandar-abbas-port-shahid-rajaei-53387f4f71dba2788569655297c57cff).
In the meantime the explosions continue. Today an Iranian gunpowder factory exploded (https://www.iranintl.com/en/202504298879). First rocket fuel, now gunpowder… And in the US a gunpowder factory also saw an explosion last februari (https://apnews.com/article/virginia-army-plant-explosion-no-injuries-3b99eb0bcb371f768d43de25ef220190)
The optics are not good. There seem to be a lot of “accidents” happening and even if it were not sabotage, the perception is trending that way.
I also notice that the speed of events is just dizzying. Just this week we also had Pakistan and India preparing for war, China joining the party by pledging support for Pakistan, China seizing an island in the South Chinese sea just a few miles away from a Filipino military basis and the pope died. And the wars are not going our way. Just look at this from 4 days ago https://apnews.com/article/houthis-us-warships-red-sea-e6e97a7131c48640ccf74b1916628234
I think the time to get your preparations for trouble in order is now.
JMG,
The spell checker turned Spain in to Spring and I carelessly did not catch it.
If anybody wants to start some trouble, try proposing an Official State Rap Song.
Tengu (no. 352), I remember one of Robert Ekvall\s books (he was a Christian missionary in southern Gansu in the early 20th century) mentioning Christians in some town there being regarded with suspicion for not joining the local religious festival which was thought to be necessary to the general prosperity–were they like, witches or something?–so the Christians organized a parallel prayer meeting for the same purpose, hoping that would be taken as proof of their good wishes.
Muslims came from two basic directions–India or the northeast, primarily as traders–and were treated as foreigners. (One of the DLs granted them land for a mosque.) The ones from India tended to take Tibetan wives. There was a regular trade caravan from Ladakh led by Muslims, and bowing to the DL was indeed an issue that had to be worked around. (They used substitutes; everybody understood.)
The US justice system effectively punishes litigants / the accused for not settling out of court / accepting a plea-bargain.
@ Atmospheric River #140
While you’re in Chicago, one of the best experience to check out is the Chicago Architecture River Cruise – here’s a link:
https://www.tripadvisor.com/AttractionProductReview-g35805-d11452109-Chicago_Architecture_River_Cruise-Chicago_Illinois.html
All the best!
I looked up the Mr. Z blos and found this gem:
Of course, slavery was not what modern people imagine. Slaves often had rights and there were rules for how slaves must be treated. The very first law codes were created to deal with the treatment of slaves. This makes sense since if there are a lot of slaves, there is the risk of a slave revolt, so keeping the slave classes happy was always going to be a primary consideration for society.
This was true in the American South. Contrary to the nonsense version of history taught in schools and popularized through movies and television, the African slaves in North America were treated well. They were valuable property, one of the most lucrative investments in the New World, so slave owners took care of them. A happy slave was a productive and profitable slave.
In the first place we do not have “the first law codes”. We have a handful of steles from different contexts, those from Babylonia and certain cities in Iron Age Crete being the best known. The first paragraph quoted is a variation on “everybody did it”, which is by no means certain. The authors of The Dawn of Everything found references to some indigenous North American peoples who kept populations of subordinate helot like groups but that was not true of every tribe. (Z’s take on ancient history is both bizarre and credulous, check out his hero worship of the murderous G. Cornelius Sulla, for example.) I know his rival Marius, whom Z does not mention, was just as murderous.
As for the second paragraph, good grief. And is he talking about just the American South or the New World in general?
@Mary Bennett,
here’s my take on the Canadian election. Before Trump came to power and started throwing tariffs and threats of annexation around, the country was all set to go conservative. People were very sick of Trudeau and angry with him, both on the right and the left. But then Trump got elected and scared and angered a large portion of the Canadian population, Trudeau resigned and Mark Carney is a new face that people associate with successful handling of the 2008 banking crisis (whether his reputation is fully justified is a question I don’t know enough to answer). Polievre got associated with Trump in many people’s heads, because he is as close to a right wing populist as federal Canadian politics get, so anger at Trump got directed into distrust of Polievre and the conservatives in many people’s heads.
In the actual election, the vote for smaller parties like the NDP, green and Bloq Quebequois dropped dramatically, and they lost a lot of seats. The NDP in particular lost official party status, and their leader Jagmeet Singh just resigned. Presumably a lot of those voters went Liberal.
The conservatives didn’t actually net lose seats, I think. I’d have to check to be sure. I think they may have net gained some. It’s more that the liberals just ate most of the leftward end of the political spectrum. However, the conservative leader, Polievre, lost his seat. Not sure if he’ll stay on as leader of the party or not. Not sure what this means for the future direction of the conservative party.
The result is a large liberal minority government, a large caucus of conservative MPs, and 22 Bloc, 7 NDP, and 1 green. Presumably the liberals will join forces with either the NDP or the Bloc in some manner to form a working government, either on an ad-hoc basis, or with a more formal arrangement like the confidence and supply agreement the Liberals had with the NDP for most of the previous four years.