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 follow-up 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, and have extended that ban to LLM-generated content of all kinds.
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Before we go on, a few words on my fiction. As I think most of you know, my novels have migrated to a new publisher. That’s not surprising; I don’t write mass market fiction — in fact, I’ve been pleased to hear my novels described more than once as cult classics — and that means they necessarily lead a hole and corner existence with small publishers. This move wasn’t my doing; Aeon Books, who remains one of my main publishers for nonfiction, sold their fiction imprint, Sphinx Books, to another small press.
So far things with the new firm, Sul Books, have gone very well. One result is that the fourth of my Ariel Moravec occult detective novels, The House of the Crows, is now available for preorder and will be released next month. You can preorder it here, in paperback or hardcover; use the discount code JMG2026 for a 20% discount.
The earlier volumes in the same series are also being re-released in paperback and hardcover, with new cover art. The first volume in the series, The Witch of Criswell, is accordingly available here, and the same code, JMG2026, gets you the same discount.
With that said, have at it!
So America and Iran are bombing all the oil refineries in the Middle East, leading to fuel rationing around the world. Meanwhile, California is trying to keep an oil pipeline shut down:
https://apnews.com/article/california-offshore-oil-order-lawsuit-e961fe0f713ed3cb4d5999f87de2c1b2
In America, all roads lead to Boston. As such, I have decided to start publishing my three part article on the psychogeographic history of Route 128 MA, the first circumferential highway, and the belt that cinches up the fat waistline of Boston, a week early.
This first foray into American Psychogeography can be found in these two places:
https://www.sothismedias.com/home/looking-backwards-at-route-128
https://justinpatrickmoore.substack.com/p/looking-backwards-at-route-128
(The articles are the same, but after hanging out on subslack for well over a year, I was convinced by some of my fellow writers there to start a subslack. At the same time I am well aware of enfrackification and enshaleification of internet platforms and I very much like maintaining my own website, hence the two places. It does seem that people who hang out in that gated community of subslack do not like to leave, and so the experiment has been going well so far to get their eyeballs on my words.)
This part of the psychohistory gets into a brief look at the land and first peoples of the Boston area, Saint Botolph who rules over boundaries and is patron saint of travelers, the work of Edward Bellamy and how his Looking Backwards inspired movements in garden cities and regional planning that becomes important later, and the military development of our roadways, all of which have had a profound impact on our landscape.
The next installment will look at the work of Benton Mackaye and his plan for the beltway that was not followed, along with ideas from his fellow Lewis Mumford and Clarence Stein.
JMG, have followed your work for a number of years now. I can’t help but view current events through your model of collapse. Feels like the Trump/Netenyahu attack on Iran – humourously, referred to as a ‘war of choice’ in the British press, rather than a ‘war of aggression’ – is brewing up a big step down the staircase. Shell are predicting fuel shortages in Europe in April. Farage is desperately trying to put clear, blue water in-between him and Trump. There is talk of planning for rationing.
What is the feeling that side of the pond? Are prices biting? I read the NYT website the other day, and the war (sorry – ‘special military operation’ ) wasn’t even the first story.
ICKY
Since 1st January 2026, I have been experiencing waves of fairly high anxiety in regard to United States events, from various sources. I feel as if I am walking on the ceiling, my whole body upside down,— just plain icky. I am upset enough that I can’t write about anything cohesively.
I would love to hear the commentariat’s (regular writers’ of this blog) opinions on current events of the last three months. Western culture is in decline, but how does that downward trajectory apply to this last quarter?
Sorry for being so befuddled…
💨🤢💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Hey John, I know this needs to be fixed on the publishers end, but just thought I’d mention the promo code isn’t working for me… I am delighted to pick up your book in hardcover. I got a copy of George Macdonald’s Phantastes annotated by Rhyd in hardcover and its very nice. Glad that Sul provides that option.
Bill and I are enjoying our second annual Ocean City Do-It-Yourself writers’ retreat.
On the way down, we deliberately drove down Delaware 1’s coastal highway from Rehoboth through Dewey Beach, Bethany Beach, Fenwick Island (all in Delaware) and into Ocean City, MD.
Some notes:
You can see the Delaware/Maryland state line as you approach. In Fenwick Island, state law and zoning keeps the buildings lower and smaller. In OC, the condo towers leap up to 20 and 30 stories and line the ocean front.
We drove past BILLIONS of dollars of property: houses, townhouses, condos, apartment towers, hotels, even a few singlewides in ancient trailer parks. Houses ranged from antique beach houses (you can tell because they’re tiny) to mansions. I’d guess, basing on the empty parking lots and what we’re seeing at Ocean Walk East (by the empty Carousel Hotel) that 95 percent of those properties are sitting empty.
Think of that! Billions of dollars of fully furnished, with all utilities properties up to date on their taxes and insurance and they sit empty.
The majority of businesses were also closed; maybe 75%.
All these homes, hotels, and businesses are waiting for the summer tourist crowd.
In OC, the population swings from about 10,000 in January to 100,000 in the summer with 150,000 or more on summer weekends.
It is astonishing when you think about it. Just astonishing.
JMG,
It appears that studying the city of Portland gives one a good insight in to the future of collapse. One of the main drivers of collapse is that the built infrastructure of civilization becomes too expensive to take care of in relation to the actual ( not fictional) wealth of the economy.
Cities and counties are mostly funded by property taxes with additional income from gas taxes and fees like parking, sewer and water. But the amount that can be collected from property taxes is limited in most places and gas tax revenues are on the decline for multiple reasons. So when local government’s insatiable need for revenue runs up against this, they of course look for new avenues to tax.
Portlands streets ( like many places) are in terrible shape and the bureau of transportation thinks they need much more money than they have to fix them ( of so they say). The answer is a street maintenance fee to be added in to every consumers water and sewer bill. The mentality is that there is no shortage of ability to pay from the citizens just a shortage of clever ways to extract it from them.
There is zero awareness among anyone in the public sector that we can not afford to keep up the infrastructure that we have, and no sneaky fees will fix that.
Back in the 2000’s my wife was the director of public works for a small industrial city in Oregon. Money was always tight there for roads, even 20 years ago. Occasionally she would introduce the city fathers to the idea of infrastructure triage. Things like returning some of the less important roads back to gravel. But even though the city council was pretty grounded and mostly republican such talk would make their skin clammy and their eyes spin back in their heads.
So I guess we are in for a future of junk fees while the infrastructure winds down.
A question I’ve been wondering about.
Why has our culture gone so all in on freedom, freedom, freedom? Where community matters not at all? Where you, a citizen of your community, should not have to contribute in any way to your community but you should expect to be catered to because you’re you?
I’m not sure if I’m phrasing this correctly.
It’s like we’re being deliberately atomized from each other and then whining about a lack of connection.
You can’t have connections if you don’t put in effort.
How can you expect your family and friends and community to rally around YOU if you don’t support them with your efforts? And yet we seem to think that’s the way it should be.
Independence over all!
Any ideas why?
As Easter approaches, I’ve been thinking about the secularization and commercialization of the holiday. Even when I was a child 40 years ago, the outward expression in the culture was that of egg hunts and chocolate bunnies. While I am aware of the pagan origins of some of the celebrations and festivities surrounding Christian holidays, and I don’t have an issue with some fun or parties outside of the religious tradition, I do find it disturbing that a mention of the religious foundations are barely spoken about outside of churches. Saying “He is risen” is almost a symbol of a secret society these days and is not a common greeting during the season out in public. Most of the world may have religious freedom, but outward manifestations of faith in public seem to be unwelcome by the society at large and even governments to some extent. However, as more people begin to turn back towards religion, perhaps public displays of faith will renew. Easter is after all, Christianity’s holiest day, and there should be no shame in expressing faith, especially at this time.
Second, I had a good experience at a Catholic shrine/convent last week. I sat in a church silently regarding the Eucharist wafer on the alter while the nuns chanted and prayed behind a partition behind the altar. I was pleasantly surprised that after a few minutes, my brain shut up and I was able to meditate with a silent mind. God bless all.
Hello John,
What are your thoughts on the Iran war?
I am excited to announce that my own book is coming out, published by Aeon Books called Sacred Homemaking: A Magical Approach to a Tidier Home in May and possibly sooner than that. It’s at the printers at the moment and there will be an audiobook version read by me, the author. Sacred Homemaking is my occultist’s take on the tidying genre as popularized by Marie Kondo’s The Art of Tidying Up and Swedish Death Cleaning. In it, I take the primary focus off of the stuff itself and methodologies of sorting it and emphasize relentless and diligent gratitude. The problem I address in the book is the endemic spiritual detachment we have as a collective and the resulting urge to hoard stuff, and I am certainly not perfect when it comes to stilling this urge within myself. There has not yet been a book out there to my mind that talks about the sentience of stuff and places in this kind of deep and thorough manner. I also tried to eliminate all forms of gatekeeping, as I perceive the aforementioned tidying books as more than a bit elitist in their tone. My wish is that Sacred Homemaking is not only an easy read, but provides easy ways of improving your personal ecosystem and fortifying the all-important protective barrier of home that helps you and your loved ones to develop spiritually. I will be interviewing for the Plant Cunning podcast about this book next week. You can pre-order the book with a 20% discount until the end of this monthat Aeon Books using the code SACRED20. Here’s the link: https://spirit.aeonbooks.com/product/sacred-homemaking/95403
I posted this comment on the YouTube channel of a Gen-Z social commentator (Alex Wei) on his most recent video:
I turn fifty-nine years old this year, and I can tell you that the real turning point that made this time the way it is started happening in 1989 and lasted through 1992 at the latest. Human beings need purpose, meaning, and direction in their lives, but starting in 1989, a kind of dark spiritual revolution happened in which the love of money, possessions, status, and ego pushed meaning, purpose, and direction aside with a speed and completeness that brainwashed people into thinking it was all normal by the time it was done. When acquisitive materialism and ego take over a society to that degree, the values of community and basic human decency, all the true human virtues, really, become degraded and even actively denigrated by people who think they’re “cool” when they are really just cold. I’m not sure what caused this transformation, but the nascent Internet with the way it enabled people to communicate to an extent that wasn’t possible previously accelerated without being the cause of this change. The point is society became a completely different place in a way that seemed “overnight” compared to previous cultural changes. And it has stayed that way ever since, and I hope it is your generation who has been psychologically traumatized by having born and raised in this “great hollowing out” in its full bloom who finally looks around and says, “Okay, this is just sick and wrong”. Sorry for writing War And Peace in a YouTube comment, but I think it would help your generation a lot to understand this history.
My question for you is, did you sense the kind of sea change in the social culture that I believe I experienced, or had you insulated yourself from the mainstream of society enough that it didn’t really register for you? The change for the worse in society that you have spoken of in the past is your generational cohort exchanging its idealism for material comforts in the late seventies and early eighties, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you built some kind of “firewall” between yourself and mainstream society in response to that change knowing things would probably get worse instead of better (which I would say it did in a way I experienced very viscerally).
Firstly, I want to wish everyone a Happy Spring. It has just turned Springtime Proper in our corner of Donegal with the arrival of lambing – as per usual just as the weather took a turn for the stormier! Busy, busy time for Himself Outdoors, I can tell you! 🙂
Secondly, yes, looking forward to the new Ariel Moravec novel. I’m taking a second read through the first three just now, and enjoying them very much.
Blessings on everyone who will have them.
Overly interesting summer is likely on the way;
https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/wildfires-tear-through-nearly-750-000-acres-as-state-declares-emergency/ar-AA1ZiuDl
This is in Nebraska. Here in Washington although the total precipitation is doing fine, most of it came as rain so the snowpack in the mountains is well down from expectations.
Related since the snow that didn’t fall won’t melt in late summer to power the turbines,
https://www.yoursourceone.com/columbia_basin/report-grant-county-sees-power-demand-double-as-data-centers-grow/article_77300fef-149c-4466-91ed-92e7cbab1a62.html
“MOSES LAKE — Data center capacity in central Washington surged past a major milestone in 2025, with total inventory nearly doubling to more than 400 megawatts, according to a Feb. 26 report from commercial real estate firm CBRE.
The report found the region added 154.5 megawatts of net absorption last year, pushing total capacity up from 246.4 megawatts in 2024. The rapid growth reflects increasing demand from cloud computing and artificial intelligence, industries that require massive amounts of energy and infrastructure.”
Long time reader but seldom comment. I’m a big Ariel fan and went to pre-order your new book. The discount code is wrong. It should be JMG2026.
Thanks for all you do!
Hello JMG and commentariat:
First of all, congratulations to you, John, for your two Ariel Moravec books covers you’ve shown in this Wednesday Open Post. I think they’re cool (congrats to those pictures author), but I also hope their content it’ll be good too (I think the novels author will be good too, methink). I guess you haven’t Ariel Moravec stories translated to Spanish yet, so to enjoy them I’d have to read it in English (well, I have no severe problem to do that, so…)
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On the other hand, it seems unavoidable to use current Open Post to write about the Middle East mess which soon it will reach its first month. I’ve got many ideas and doubts about Iran war reality and its several many consequences for the whole world (especially the West), but I’m going to write by now my opinion in the short form, to not be boring.
If the USA&Israel first idea was to repeat a bigger and bloodier decapitation strike against the Iranian theocracy (like it worked with the clean strike against Maduro in Venezuela), well, after their first apparent success (killing old Khamenei and some more Iranian high spheres leaders), following days have shown the Western “silver bullet” hasn’t achieved its goal: to provoke a regime change toward a more friendly government in Tehran (breaking possibly the BRICS alliance). Indeed, younger and more fanatical leaders have occupied soon the void seats left by the dead leaders…so a future peace deal with them is more difficult that after the beheading strikes (in the doubious case Netanyahu would allow Trump peace talks with Iran govt).
Before ending my current commentary, I’d like to point you a Trumpian decision which may have been ignored within the war fog during these war time. I’m thinking about Trump idea (some days ago) for lifting oil sanctions against Russia, so starting soon again to buy oil to the “Bad Bear”. This made EU got angry (evidently). I think there could be a geopolitical reason to do it (maybe to “divert” a part of Russian oil production to bother China oil supply), or it could have been a “friendly warning” for Putin (more oil incomes for Russia in exchange for not sending military help to Iran?). Well, I can guess Iran regime has been receiving China and Russia help until today (if not, I think Tehran would have lost war before first week of war, methink), so…
Maybe Trump promise to buy Russian oil can be explained by his fear to an explosive situation: higher oil prices or eventually real oil shortages in the West. Time should give me the reason (or not).
What do you think about this “strange”
act?
Hi all,
‘Maid’ – an old word. Looking to the past… to prepare for the present. Maid also means young girl, or young unmarried girl. Maids work as servants but the word reminds me of a time were the young people served the older people, among others thing, to learn manners from them. A time when in any typical Spanish village the difference between being young or being old was much more important than the difference between high class and low class. A time past. Congratulations on your new Ariel book.
By the way, I used to sign as Tired21, but I changed that to Agnes. I don’t feel Tired anymore.
At my age I have clear memories and a feel for the world back in the very end of the 1950’s and into the 1980’s in the United States We are in the passing and dying of a civilization and a culture. “the center does not hold”
I am not saying that the America of the past was a paradise. No culture at its peak of vigor and creativity is – Roman, Chinese, Islamic, Victorian England, Incan, Mongol, Aztec is, there is always a number of failings and even horrors by good moral standards.
You write frequently about “the myth of progress.” Is that really the myth driving modern societies?
In my view, the proof of belief is sacrifice. What you believe in is what you’re willing to sacrifice for. What, then, are Western countries sacrificing for the sake of? Progress?
The fanatical “woke” movement that not long ago fought to transform every aspect of life in the West claimed that fields like science and mathematics are racist and that being on time and valuing hard work are manifestations of white supremacy. Governments, corporations, and all the most powerful institutions fell in line with this agenda and charged down a flagrantly self-destructive path as a result.
A society that gives credence to ideas like “math is racist” is not a society that believes in progress. The true driving myth behind the modern West is equality, the idea that all people are equal. The claim that STEM fields are racist and misogynist came about because despite all the efforts made to recruit a diverse student body into these fields, their demographics hardly budged. This led to a crisis of faith among people who believe that all humans are identical, interchangeable clones inside different-looking wrappers.
In your recent “end of bureaucracy” post you wrote: “There’s a reason why NASA has to hire private contractors to put people into orbit; despite more than ample budgets, the bureaucracy that once put bootprints on the Moon hasn’t been able to design and build a working spacecraft in more than a quarter century.” I have spoken to people who work at NASA, as well as Microsoft and private companies that need similar assistance from outside consultants to get anything done. The biggest drivers of the stifling bureaucracy are the myriad policies that have emerged downstream of the Civil Rights Act and pro-equality pressure movements. If people in those workplaces so much as have a conversation mentioning breastfeeding or pregnancy, it can trigger lawsuits and social media smear campaigns.
One of the most powerful driving forces in popular culture today is nostalgia. A viral video game called Retro Rewind that recently came out simulates being a clerk at a 1990s video rental store. This is clearly not the product of people anticipating a better future, and the unspoken undercurrent of it all is a yearning for a time before the myth of equality had the cultural dominance it enjoys today.
Saw a new Pixar movie (Hoppers) with my kids that was surprisingly good, and it’s more data on how the cultural landscape is changing. Data that you’ll miss since you don’t watch screens.
First, it wasn’t woke. Even the environmentalist message it contains (the main character, a young female Asian activist, starts out as an unhinged activist trying to save a glade from being paved over) is more nuanced than usual and resists the urge to cast the developers (led by an older white male mayor) as evil. The main character also calms down quite a bit after accidentally starting an animal revolution which quickly evolves from “Save the Glade!” into “Squish the humans!”
Second, the movie introduces the idea of humans being just another mammal, with the other animals chastising the mammal king (who’s a beaver) for letting humans get out line. That’s also a very different message than the usual fare where humans are presented as existing outside of nature and having control over it.
Third, the movie features a hilarious plot point where the only reason the villain’s scheme fails is due to a failure in MFA (facial recognition technology) to unlock his phone. Got a huge laugh out of the audience. It’s not an anti-technology movie, but it does reflect the increasing exasperation the public has with a lot of this crap that has intruded upon our lives.
It’s popular, both conservative and liberal parents are taking their kids to see it, the only controversy around is some of the dark humor, and it gives me some hope that our cultural rift can be healed around a different set of ideas that are starting to show up in mainstream entertainment.
So I’m sitting in the ol’ buckboard’ .. waiting for the light to change, when I notice a bumper sticker on ride in front, which read: Do you hate trans people? Then go kill yourself! What came to mind was Emperor Palpatine giving Luke the deadly static treatment; where the pasty hooded one projecting All That HATE is, in reality, the trans comm./sympathizers … with Luke representing most of the general public. Not sure where Vader fits in just yet. “sigh”..
I hope you are all fine and well in these interesting times!
I published an essay today about the topic of war. Telling the story of my family, it’s a lot more personal than what I usually write, and also less light-hearted – but I would be very grateful if some of you read it, and, if you should be so inclined, would also pass ithe link on to others:
https://thehiddenthings.com/the-story-of-my-family
And on a lighter note, the world could definitely do with more blessing and spiritual healing right now! 🙂
One very useful way to achieve this is to practice the Modern Order of Essenes. You can find it as posts on JMG’s dreamwidth ( https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/tag/modern+order+of+essenes ), as pdf files on the Order of Spiritual Alchemy’s site ( https://octagonsociety.org/archives/modern-order-of-essenes ), or in an online course format on my site ( https://thehiddenthings.com/topics/moe-course ).
If you should have any questions about the MOE, I’d be happy to answer them, and I presume JMG and the other MOE Master Teachers would be, too.
Finally, I also perform a formal blessing each Wednesday, and I welcome signups: https://thehiddenthings.com/categories/weekly-blessings
I wish all of you a blessed and peaceful week, and JMG, thanks for hosting the Open Post again! 🙂
Milkyway
With JMG’s permission, I’m sharing this opportunity to purchase a Blasting Trident of Paracelsus. These are handmade to order with the utmost attention to craftsmanship and quality by myself (a blacksmith) and two other local makers. They ship from Canada a week or two after receiving the order.
The final design was reached with JMG’s input, and we are quite happy with how they’ve turned out.
https://reforgedironworks.com/product/blasting-trident-of-paracelsus/
JMG, would you be so kind as to share this image? link: https://reforgedironworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/DSC_1275-2.jpg
Hello Mr. Greer,
I was hoping you could help me better understand the occult view of reincarnation. In particular, I am trying to compare and contrast the views described in your occult philosophy workbook and those exposed in Yeat’s vision. Your book made me think of reincarnation of the spiritual handmaiden to growth, evolution in the broadest sense, and general improvement. The idea I got was you build up as you work through bad karma and carry talents over from previous lives. Yeat’s vision seems to be as much about going backward as forward as you circle around the wheel. You might develop incredible talent in one life only to have to walk away from it in the next.
I understand that these are just models. The map is not the destination, after all. But it still feels like these two models pull in opposite directions. One seems to say that you keep building based on successes in past lives (assuming you are doing your part and not back sliding). The other says you build up in a particular area only to walk away and transition into something very different, even contradictory, in your future lives.
So have I misunderstood something or are these just two separate models that are not fully compatible?
I am pondering the nature of stairs. Right now, here in ‘Murca we appear to be going into a couple of steps down. I am not of the ilk that loves to predict an complete catastrophe, but I tend to think that “the American way of life is not up for negotiation,” is in fact up for negotiation.
My best guess is that we are around ten steps from the bottom, using that as an convention for measurement, I am thinking that we will be going down two steps in the next two years. I don’t see the end of the world, and should it happen there isn’t a damn thing I can do to plan for it.
I would love to hear others thoughts, but right now I am not going to sweat it and work on my understanding of tarot. Seems to me to be much more useful.
Always grateful for this community and your work, JMG. Did a pre-order on “The House of Crows,” of course. These books remind me of the teaching fiction of Violet M. Firth, only of course they are better written. You sneaky devil you! Talk about detournement!
I’m 11 weeks into the Essenes course, and it’s been a very interesting ride. It really has helped me incrementally change and improve my life and I’m only eleven weeks in. The seemingly innocuous suggestions to drink more water, breath, relax, etc. every week really help to create healthy and helpful habits.
This week’s lesson is primarily about vision; to pursue something that’s of value to others and to focus on doing that thing well. The Essenes repeatedly state that the benefits of being of service will flow naturally from there. I see the wisdom in that because it keeps the mind focused on creating value instead of trying to get something for nothing, or ruminating on lack in one’s life.
What I wonder is what if that vision or chosen purpose just isn’t working out? A big part of success seems to be circumstance or luck. When is it time to hang up the towel and move on?
Here is a link to the online archive of the Essenes lessons: https://iapsop.com/archive/materials/wing_lessons/order_of_the_essenes_florida/
John: Don’t mean to be ungrateful, but are you going to do an e-book version of your Ariel Moravec books? I live in a small space and having physical books is something that is a luxury reserved for reference books.
And if possible, and you do decide to do an e-book format, could you please not release it so that Amazon will take their cut? I have one month left on my account and I hope that I can manage never to give those b^%$tards another dime.
Supporting Teresa Peschel’s remarks #8 on community: I recall hearing that R H Tawney pointed out that the poor man is not free to dine at the Ritz; analogously I feel like saying that the libertarian is not free to participate in a community – because if everyone is like him, there isn’t one.
@Northwind Grandma
The strategies Trump plays on the international stage, the ones we can speculate about, are looking less effective in our Canadian media. The Saturn/ Neptune conjunction changed the world stage, on the day he proclaimed blanket 25% tarrifs after U.S Supreme Court struck down his IEEPA tarrifs. I saw this as a sign that his game of leveraging power is overblown, pancaking consequences when things don’t work out can look like desperation.
Some broadcasters do seem to be cheering on the potential that U.S power will be checked in Iran and thats not new. U.S strategy generally seems to be Trump appears on legacy media, and on his truth social site, reassuring the public that negotiations are going well right before another devastating strike happens. That seems to be gearing up as we speak, but the trick is also now an old one? I guess everyone is waiting to see if the US can pull it off without enormous reprecussions for the rest of the world. The best armchair analysis i can put together on a wednesday.
This morning, my packrat memory coughed up a memory of the post-WWII s/f that explains a lot about today’s Boomers, or at least the ones who read those tales and took them seriously, like the Boomer Tech-bros with serious cases of Social Deficit Disorder. That is, the old “Children of the Atom” theme, which revolved around young mutants with super-high IQs, who were being Persecuted by the Normies, or were In Hiding. And one of which, I recalled, was still adolescent at an age when most people were mature, because supergeniuses took longer to grow up. Ring any bells? Especially of said generation in elderhood?
One thing you have to understand, if you’re not a senior like I am, is the intense importance placed on being Normal in that period. “Normal” was a goal everyone was supposed to achieve, or to want to achieve.
“Adjustment” was another byword. And there was a lot of pressure, especially from the Freudian school of psychiatry, to actually justify that “Persecuted by the Normies” meme in those tales.
[Now run that by one who was not Normal nor Well-Adjusted, could not do anything right, and had one and only one superpower that created the illusion, both in her own mind and in the ears others, of being more intelligent than she really was – and who took a long, long time to grown up. Brr………Grrrr….] And BTW, having coughed up that memory also disinfected it.
But …. looking at or listening to some of the Boomers of today through that lens explains a lot of things about the those who have usurped the center of moral authority today. And the games they play.
Anon, when I predicted an oil crunch in the mid-2020s, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind!
Justin, thanks for this. I hope you’re wrong that all roads lead to Boston, though — having lived in New England, I’m not especially fond of it at this point.
Paul, gasoline/petrol at the gas station a block from my apartment is US$3.99 a gallon and there are no shortages. I’m pretty sure that the point of the US takeover of Venezuela was to make sure that there would be plenty of Venezuelan tar sand extract to mix with our fracking liquids (you need both to make something roughly approximating gasoline). US fossil fuel companies are raking in money like nobody’s business — but then we get almost none of our fuel from the Persian Gulf these days. Nearly all of that goes to Europe and Asia, which are getting hammered. It’s occurred to me more than once that this may be deliberate.
Northwind, oh, we’re definitely moving into crisis territory. May I suggest daily meditation and regular massage to keep stress levels down? I don’t expect it to get better before the end of the decade, if then.
Justin, no, it’s my fault — I just corrected it on the website.
Teresa, yeah, that’s typical. I used to live in Ashland, Oregon, which doubles in size during tourist season. A common local tee shirt reads, “If it’s tourist season, why can’t we shoot them?”
Clay, that’s utterly typical of societies in decline. Nobody wants to deal with the need to allow catabolism, so they wreck the economy trying to prop up infrastructure that isn’t affordable any more.
Teresa, I think a lot of it is because talk about community has been so reliably weaponized in an attempt to enforce conformity and enable exploitation. HOAs are still at it — they talk endlessly about community standards when what they’re trying to do is boss you around and drive up real estate prices.
Watchflinger, I get that. For the same reason, I find most Christmas “cheer” repulsive in the extreme — er, it’s a religious holiday about the birth of a child in a family so poor they had to use a barn as a maternity ward, and it’s been turned into the most nauseating festival of sheer crass consumption in the annual cycle. I’ll be attending Holy Week services at a small Episcopal church an easy walk from my place — it’s the kind of church that makes a point of everyone being welcome irrespective of beliefs, so I don’t feel out of place — and I’ll be interested to watch my reaction to a version of Easter that isn’t just about tooth decay.
Nephite, I’m still watching it with an open mind, and trying to evade the astonishing amount of spin doctoring on all sides.
Kimberly, congratulations! I hope it’s the first of many.
Mister N, the change I saw was the same thing the commenter described, down to the fine details, but I saw it happening earlier, in the early 1980s. Good-bye John-Boy Walton, hello Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous! I wonder if it hit different regions and strata of society at different points during the 1980s.
Scotlyn, thank you and delighted to hear it. Blessings on the lambs!
Siliconguy, yep. The huge high-speed pileup as data center power demands slam into increasingly expensive and scarce energy resources is likely to be one for the record books.
Karunateresa, thanks for this! I’ve corrected the post.
Chuaquin, I hope my fiction gets some attention from publishers in other languages someday! As for the oil move by the Trump administration, there’s a lot of very complicated maneuvering going on around oil prices and fossil fuels generally right now. It’s also been clear for a long time that Europe is far more invested in fighting Russia than the US is. It would not surprise me if twenty years from now, Russia and the US were pitted against the EU and China…
Agnes, glad to hear that you’re less tired! Interesting that the custom survived in Spain; it used to be standard all over Europe five hundred years ago.
BeardTree, the decline of a civilization isn’t a moral decline, although it often involves the replacement of some kinds of wickedness with others. Nonetheless it’s a real thing.
Logo Dau, it seems very arbitrary to me to identify sacrifice as the sole measure of belief. You may not know, for that matter, that I’ve also written at length — an entire book, for starters — about the disintegration of the secular religion of progress in our time. The rise of retro tech, such as the return of vinyl records, and the emergence of nostalgia driven by a growing recognition that progress has failed, are among the trends I’ve discussed. As for the woke ideology, I don’t see it as an independent variable so much as the last and most extreme attempt by certain factions in the bureaucratic-managerial class to increase their own access to wealth and influence; that’s doomed it to collapse as the elite replacement cycle now under way dissolves the power of the bureaucratic class.
Dennis, interesting. So Hollywood is finally starting to notice that only making movies that appeal to liberal, middle-aged, upper middle class women isn’t a smart strategy.
Polecat, given the sky-high suicide rates in the transgender community, I sense some projection there…
Milkyway, thanks for this.
Tim, no prob:
Stephen, there are important differences between Yeats’s view of reincarnation and the one that I’ve absorbed from the spiritual traditions I work with.
Degringolade, yep. A lot of what’s heated our culture to the scalding point just now is a no-holds-barred struggle over who gets to keep some of what used to be the American way of life and who gets chucked all the way into a new and unwelcome reality.
Clarke, thank you! Ariel’s stories are in fact inspired in part by Dion Fortune’s fiction; she showed that it’s quite possible to do good lively novels using real magic in place of Bertie Scrubb-esque fake magic.
Tim, delighted to hear it. The OE course did me a world of good and I’m glad you’re having the same experience. As for goals, yes, sometimes you don’t achieve them, but the lessons you learn in striving for them are yours to keep, and so are the capacities of mental focus and will that come from the experience. As for when to hang up the towel, when you have another goal that’s even more enticing (and maybe more accessible as well).
(BTW, for new readers, this isn’t the same as the Modern Order of Essenes tradition Milkyway posted about. The Essene name hasn’t been trademarked for, oh, about two thousand years…)
Degringolade, I’ll check with the publisher.
Robert, ha! That’s an interesting application of Kant’s categorical imperative.
Patricia M, hmm! That’s a good point as well as a blast from the past. I knew people who were deeply invested in being Slans…
@ Anonymous #1: talk about history repeating itself and the subject of last week’s post about Detournement: Back in the day when wars in the Mideast were at their height, there was a song parody going around TTO a pop song “Barbara Ann,” which went “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran, -ran-ran….”
Well, Route 128 is one of the reasons you wouldn’t want to go to Boston. I became a bit obsessed with its history and uncovering the layers of the land there, from what it was to the snarl, sprawl, and host of suburban fungoid growth it became. Alongside the potential for what could have been had practices, ideas and visions been followed…
Thanks for the code!
JMG,
The last gasp of the religion of progress is in hyperdrive among the tech-bros.
My oldest son’s career has progressed from doing video production and editing for TV news in NYC to his newest venture based here in Oregon. He and his two partners make splashy ” release” videos for tech startups.
He finds himself at the core of what is happening right now in silicon valley. From what he tells me, and from his videos I have seen it is all about the confluence of AI and robotics. His two latest customers have gone in to the deep end on robots for the home. One makes robots that looks like a floor lamp and who’s main purpose seems to fold clothes. The other makes all the gizmos’ that one would put in to a robot, and also makes their own humanoid robot.
The big debate among these tech bros is if it is better to have humanoid robots in the home or robots that look like ordinary appliances. My son says many of these companies have humanoid robots walking around the halls ( they don’t seem to do much) and he says they are in fact unsettling and creepy. But they have no debate if these things are worthwhile, just what they should look like.
In the morning I devote thirty minutes to energetic cleansing,
charging, and then about eleven minutes of focus-meditation, choosing the Krishna-mantra as point of focus. The devotional service of krishna made an impression on me, while my own catholic church is an empty shell, and that old fashioned, weird gloomy german that took the place of the old rites always had something repulsive to me.
But, I am bad at being member of any club in anyways. So consequentially I am not.
When I focus on the repetitions of the mantra, it is a daily battle. Everyday thoughts, worries, ruminations, poking doubtes demanding an answer, they all keep intruding.
I sit on my sofa upright, much like contemplation, with my hands on my knees, a cloth bag on my knees so I dont sweat my pants.
I have not yet come to do the spiritual alchemy exercises in an orderly fashion. I did the journaling once, but it did not feel efficient.
However, when intrusive, negative emotional thoughts or mostly memories arrive throughout the day, I breath in, imagine ” a different stance”, breathe out through my mouth and imagine these situations puffing up in a cloud. It mostly works, at least for that time being.
My subconscious anchor is Marcus Aurelius where he said, when angers about the fools, he thinks, is a world without them possible? No, then why anger.
Also, about shame and other feelings, I have anchored the explanations of the spiritual alchemy itself.
My conscious dissolution of these emotional inner reactions however is mostly non-verbal, despite the anchors in the background being verbal decisions to see things from a different angle now.
I wondered about the power of language; JMG recently mentioned the malformation of the brain in development when humans learn no language, there are sad examples of course.
Therefore I wonder, if additionally it is a good idea to make these events with accompanying feelings I process into a story to myself, completed with explanations on why from here, I will deal with things differently.
There are many interesting practices including meridian meditation, as Stephen T Chang presents in his Taoist books (“internal exercises”,”the Tao of sexology”).
My energy and time being limited, I have to choose.
What I tried out, not yet integrated as a daily practice but found enormously essential, is the sexual energy exercises, where you pull up your anus inside contracting it, breathing in, and let loose breathing out again (or hold for longer contracted, also).
A very basic health exercise for man and woman.
I combined this with pulling up the energy to the middle of my forehead, although Chang scowls combining of practices, however, I was more or less shown that way from another side. Also very powerfull, pulling energy up to your forehead with your anus, and let it wash down again.
Additionally, when doing focussed mantra meditation, I always see and feel stuck emotions and thoughts in my heart space, I see them like dark vortices.
The second religiosity seems to have arrived at my church. Largest-ever confirmation class, plus large ash wednesday service, plus somewhat more people showing up at friday service over the past few weeks. Still early days yet, and this could be a flash in the pan, but overall some very positive and interesting things going on.
For those of you who like your sounds on the psychic side of things, I’ve started doing a little freelance work writing the promo materials for new albums. One label I’ve worked with is Psychic Sounds, and its owner has a new release out as Corum with Web of Midnight.
For those of you who like a bit of etheric energy to go with your orgone accumulator, he recorded part of the album at the Organon lab of Wilhelm Reich in Rangely, Maine.
You can find Web of Midnight and my liner notes here:
https://psychicsounds.bandcamp.com/album/web-of-midnight
Stay psychic.
@Patricia Mayhews, I remember a related? satirical song from the anti-Iraq war protests. The answer to absolutely every situation posed in the song was ‘bomb Iraq’.
This year, for two and a half weeks, I more or less fasted according to ramadan. Only that I started drinking water at 4:45pm, for practical reasons. So a little short of sunset. As I would get up at 4am often, to drink water and do sports. I drank water in the morning, in the evening I drank water again and ate.
Eating only once a day.
One day, I went on my bicycle for two hours, and walked up and downhill in the forest for two hours. Weird, without water, however, after some time, you stop feeling it.
Spring was mild these days, around 15 degrees Celsius in the sun during day, sometimes more on a southern slope with a lot of sun exposure.
The first weeks of ramadan I was ill, merely not eating during day time.
But not drinking water or anything else also facilitates not eating.
To be honest, I do not take these traditions entirely seriously, as they come from where the length of days doesn’t vary like here, and the absurd discussions and intra-faith debates about fasting times of muslims in the polar circle countries attest to that.
On X I ran across something interesting about the progress pride flag.
Apparently is was an Op by the The Chaos Magicians on 4-chan inservice to Kek (praise him), the flag was designed to break up the whole movement and even the swastika part was intentional.
Wish I had remembered to save the post, as I can’t find it take it all with a grain of salt.
Hi John,
I’m closely monitoring actual progress with the US withdrawing physically from Europe and the Middle East. So far, its only been quite limited moves out of eastern Europe.
The current conflict in Iran would suggest that if anything the US will get more involved in the Middle East although there are mixed signals out there.
https://harici.com.tr/en/us-signals-potential-middle-east-base-closure-in-reported-iran-backchannel-talks/
“Under the proposed terms, Iran would be barred from pursuing a missile programme for five years, halt uranium enrichment, and shut down nuclear facilities at Natanz, Isfahan and Fordo that were targeted in US strikes in 2025.
In return, the US would provide guarantees against a renewed conflict and agree to close its principal regional base, where roughly 50,000 troops are stationed.
The report does not specify the location of the base or bases in question. Given that the largest US installation in Qatar hosts around 10,000 personnel, the implication is that any withdrawal could extend to multiple facilities across the region.”
What are your thoughts?
JMG,
Exactly. Even more to the point, the movie’s main lesson is that, with a few exceptions, people are not all good or all bad. That’s a lesson that Hollywood itself could certainly learn, as for the last decade or so, it’s extremely to figure out who the bad guys and good guys were. Straight white man? Bad! Gay black lady? Good!
The only exceptions were sequels to old movies. I believe this is one of the main reasons why sequels have dominated for the last decade or so, as original movies all adopted political messaging that appealed to upper class wealthy liberal white women only.
I feel the biggest twist in Hoppers was that the white male mayor was not the villain despite being setup as the villain in the start of the story, and the plucky minority female activist learns to work together with him instead of acting like a nutjob.
Crazy to think that something like that could become so shocking, but I hope it indicates that wokeness is starting to lose its grip on Hollywood.
JMG- congrats on the new novel, count me as a second person who would be interested in an ebook edition.
I also want to thank you for advice about massage helping one through grief. I’ve been getting monthly massages in the year since my mom died, and they have been immensely helpful.
Your prognosis in “Twilight’s Last Gleaming” seems to have been eerily prescient. Perhaps at some time in the future you could devote an essay to the precipitous decline in US prestige and credibility, as well as the looming US and global depression.
A joyful spring to all in the commentariat. It’s great to read all of your commentary, and see what’s going on in your world. I always learn something new.
#4 Northwind. I agree with you. I too am befuddled. I’m trying to follow JMG’s advice to you in #33. It helps. Walking helps. Drifting helps. Nobody wants our time anyway.
#8 Teresa Peschel. Yes. Atomization is the point. Elites feel safer that way.
#11 Kimberly Steele Congratulations. Well deserved.
#13 Scotlyn. Blessings to you as well. My ancestors were from County Donegal. Occasionally I hear it call to me. Quietly, because it’s a long way away.
#21 Dennis Thank you for the movie review. I will go down to the river and ask the beavers for forgiveness.
#30 Robert Exactly! The off button is an underrealized resource by some people. And self awareness and honesty is not always the same as selfishness.
#33 JMG Your fiction is among my favorites. (Not to be a total synchophant.) It seems to me that the US of A is heading into a classic asymmetrical warfare situation in Iran. There is no way they can attempt to subdue Iran without sending in our mercenaries, errrr, all volunteer army and contractors. Airpower has NEVER won a war, but it has unified populace in resistance. Plus it’s made a few people very rich selling armaments.
I think nuclear war is unlikely, although anything is possible with humans. The FEAR of nuclear war? KA-CHING!
I’m probably not going to monitor this post since I am going to spend the next 5 days attending the local music fest, most likely for the last time. I wrote about here:
https://johnpauloneil.substack.com/p/treefort-days-are-here-again
Thank you for reading this, everyone.
On Iran, I shared with some friends earlier today that the only real difference between this and previous American wars in my lifetime (and I was born in 1983) is that the public is used a lengthy propaganda campaign in the runup to the war. We also appreciate a nice big lie just prior to the initiation of hostilities. This time we got none of that– as when he kidnapped Maduro in Venezuela without wasting time ginning up a protest movement and pretending that it was all caused by a “spontaneous uprising of the people,” he just went ahead and did it.
I actually think that’s one of the things people are most upset about. I’ve seen numerous commentators lamenting that past presidents at least lied to us in the runup to the war, as though that were a good thing.
I’ve been trying to figure out what this is about, and I think it comes back to a point you made a decade ago now. Trump, in his public demeanor, is like a parody of how the world often sees Americans– big, loud, dumb, aggressive, domineering bullies who take what they want. Few of us like to see ourselves that way, so we like being tricked into thinking that we’re good people with bad rulers, or naive dogooders who make terrible mistakes (like lying about weapons of mass destruction), or noble freedom fighters trying to make the world safe for democracy. Trump is like a dark mirror, saying to America, “This is exactly what you are,” in between bites of his big mac.
I think that even people who are “anti-war” on principle appreciate the propaganda campaign. They– or we, since I’m included in this group– one some level *like* being the Jeremiahs, the feeling that we’re smarter and more moral than those who “fall for the lies.” We like the feeling of “opposing” something we’re powerless to stop (and from which we often benefit.) Others enjoy falling for the narrative and then gaining social credibility later by pulling a public Mea culpa. Still others love the propaganda campaign for the same reason that high schoolers love a good pep-rally.
I say all this as someone who is genuinely horrified by this war, which, after all, opened with the assassination of foreign leaders under the cover of negotiation and the murder of nearly 200 children. Again, though, it’s not like these are radical departures from our recent military history, as anyone remotely familiar with that history can confirm.
I’m reminded very much of Berne’s Games People Play. It seems that “War on the News” is a game Americans very much like to play, and that it has a clearly assigned structure and roles. Again, I find this whole thing sickening– but I wonder how much of the hysteria is due to Trump’s failure or refusal to play the game the way we’re used to.
@Logo Dau , JMG–
My take is slightly different, in that we are dealing with two aspects of the same god. Just as hetarai and hopeful mothers sacrificed to Aphrodite, but very different aspects of Venus, there are aspects of the great god Progress that have to deal with technological progress, and aspects that deal with social progress. Personally I think of them as Progressia Techne and Progressia Societas but I’m aware that’s butchering ancient languages so I don’t suggest you follow suit.
What I do suggest is you pay attention to how equality (or “equity” these days) is sold– it is sold as the inevitable march of progress. If you’re against it, you’re on the wrong side of history. My personal belief is that the followers of the great god Progress face a fork in the road when they become aware that Progressia Techne cannot delivering hot and cold running miracles as promised. Option one is what most of us here have chosen: pure apostasy. Walk away from Progress as a false god and get on with life. Option two is to double down on Progress, but an aspect of the great god that hadn’t (yet) been discredited: Progressia Societas.
There are honestly people out there– I have met some– who seem to believe that as soon as we get the right quotas of women/minorities/etc into STEM, that Progressiva Techne will come back based on the sacrifices delivered unto Progressiva Societas. (Yes, these are some of the people you’d call “woke”.) It’s all the Great God Progress, so why not?
That’s why acolytes of Progressiva Societas have been so shrill for this entire century, even at the peak of their power: deep down, they fear their god is dead. Of course they don’t think in terms of gods and whatnot, but they’re using the mental circuitry evolution has equipped us with for worship, I’m sure of that.
Theresa and Siliconguy- my husband’s family has “beach property” just outside of the state park of Lake McConaghy. That lake is the long, skinny reservoir in the maps of the many acres of wildfire damage. For years, when we have gone to ride in Aunt Dar’s boat, I have thought how unsustainable it is. I have watched the stairsteps every summer- it used to be that you could pay a guy on a tractor to launch your boat at the same place you filled the gas tank. Three guys, three tractors, launching motorboats up until noon, parking the trailers, then fetching them again at 6 in the evening. Just call the office with your cell, tell them it’s Dar’s boat. The economics of that service wasn’t sustainable, sooo, it hasn’t been sustained. The past couple of years we haven’t gone up, Aunt Dar has died, many fewer people are spending 3 hours on the road from the Denver area to spend the weekend going further into debt.
I’ve always known that the system was based in debt- when my kid commented that one of the neighbors with a nice boat was “richer than us” I gently explained that they might not be richer, they just spent more money. We were able to collapse early.
The wildfire area looks like the moon- the soil there is very sandy, the Nebraska Sandhills are essentially frozen dunes. I think it is a mix of ranch land and public land. I’m not sure what the future holds for Lake Mac.
JMG & Patricia …your talk of Slans inspired my latest collage: This is when Slans! was on the cover of Boomer Magazine:
https://imgur.com/a/Nev0o7y
About the current unpleasantness in the Middle East: I truly think an opportunity was lost here. When, as has been reported, Netanyahoo made the threat of using nuclear weapons if the USA didn’t get on board, I wish American officials would have said, you do that and here are some of the consequences:
Congress will rescind dual citizenship, effective immediately, a measure which will be wildly popular and probably stave off the expected Republican bloodbath in the midterms.
There will be some high profile firings of those known to be more loyal to Israel than to the USA.
If that doesn’t get your attention, we will stop shipping weapons to you AND your cat’s paws in Ukraine.
Oh, and all Epstein records will be published in full and immediately, with names named. Arrests will follow.
Mind, I think the apparatchiks of neither major party are capable of the kind of pro-American foreign policy, armed neutrality, which I would like to see.
JMG,
It looks like two trends in the chart of decline are going to impact your old hometown of Ashland in the near future. Southern Oregon State University is the weak sister of the state higher ed system and had to be bailed out in the legislature last month. I doubt they will make it more than another year or two.
The Oregon Shakespearian festival ( a mainstay of the summer tourist season in Ashland) will be hitting up against a new woke trend now starting in the Bard’s home town in the UK. Apparently his work represents white culture at its worse and and must be cleansed in favor of more “diverse story telling options”. Kind of illustrates the liberal residents of Ashland being hung from their own petard.
I figured folks here would like this one from The Onion. If only it was true.
‘NY Times’ Columnists Hold Roundtable To Determine What’s Wrong With Them
https://theonion.com/ny-times-columnists-hold-roundtable-to-determine-whats-wrong-with-them/
Btw, I recommend signing up for their daily email, it is always a great way to have a break in the day with sonething silly. Im talking about The Onion not NYT but it can be hard to tell some days. 😉
JMG,
I’ve been reading about the series of UAP sightings in Nuremberg in 1561 of which had been depicted in woodcuts and news notices of the time. The really curious thing is that observers of the phenomenon reported that the objects swarming in the sky, the various orbs and rectangles, seemed to be engaged in *combat* featuring actual shoot downs.
This reminded me of some modern UAP sightings in which observers report that the sky objects seemingly are in combat with one another. I’m also reminded of the warfare between the Greek and Roman gods in mythological literature and in the Vedic scriptures, and also the “war in heaven” in the Bible.
What do you suppose is going on here? I would think that many believe the higher planes are totally absent of warfare. If Swedenborg was correct, there was a Book Of Revs-like “purge” of the upper planes in the mid 18th century, but an ongoing combat between forces on the etheric plane, if that’s really what is occurring, is a different matter. To me it would indicate that the upper planes are much more dangerously kinetic and slippery-footed than many would think.
Thanks.
Polecat #22,
I would say that in your metaphor Luke represents those people who would dare speak out against trans right now and receive the full brunt of the hate, and Vader is the silent majority currently on the sidelines watching this, and then he finally decides to toss the hateful Emperor overboard.
Patricia M, ha! Yes, I remember it from quite a while ago.
Justin, so noted. I have no objection to fungoid archeology, I just don’t want to have to go there again. 😉
Clay, I doubt it’s the last gasp, just the current gasp. I expect Tomorrowland fantasies to become essential coping mechanisms for many people as decline picks up speed. Yeah, we no longer have reliable electricity or streets you can drive on, but there’ll be robots in our homes any day now!
Curt, if it works for you, by all means.
Pygmycory, many thanks for the data point. Please do keep me posted!
Justin, hmm. Corum, eh? Does he wear a scarlet robe?
James, if you ever see that, please post a link. The question in my mind is whether it’s the flag, or the claim that 4chan invented it, that’s the psyop…
Forecasting, and Trump’s already floated a trial balloon or two about expecting Europe to take over from the US in the Persian Gulf. We’ll see, but it wouldn’t surprise me if this is another stage in the ongoing retreat of the US from its global empire.
Dennis, wind is definitely changing…
Katsmama, thank you — and condolences for your loss. I’ll ask the publisher.
AA, er, none of our naval vessels have been sunk and the US military has performed rather better than I expected. Nor is a depression certain yet. When you jump to conclusions, please remember, you have to swim all the way back…
John, well, we’ll see, but I don’t think the point of this war is to win. I think the point of this war is to cause Iran enough damage that other potential regional threats will do the math and back off: as the Chinese proverb puts it, killing the chicken to scare the monkey.
Steve, ha! Yeah, that makes sense. It interests me that many of the people raging about this war either didn’t utter a peep when Obama was vaporizing wedding parties with drone strikes, or actively cheered him on.
Tyler, that’s a valid point. My experience with people who talk about equality is that most of them have zero interest in equality. What they want is privilege and revenge, and talk about equality is simply the polite way to talk about that. Still, I’ve seen enough social-progress rhetoric that you may well be right.
Justin, ha! Funny.
Mary, the American Jewish community is too large and too politically organized for that to happen. Any president who tried that would have his party destroyed in the next half dozen elections. That’s why Israel generally gets what it wants from the US; until countervailing voting blocs get equally massive and organized, that will continue.
Clay, one of the reasons Sara and I left Ashland is that it was very clear to us just how unsustainable it was. Lacking the tourist trade and government largesse, it has a little less economic potential than Cave Junction and would have around the same population.
Michael, funny. Thank you.
Will, if all the other planes are peaceful, that would mean the material plane is a total anomaly. It’s far more likely that the etheric plane, which is so close to our plane, is similar to it in other ways, such as having conflict. If Jacques Vallee is right and UAPs are a manifestation of the same reality that was experienced as faeries and goblins in past centuries, well, legend has it that faeries and goblins fight wars, you know. Equally, if the “war in heaven” business from the Bible and other mythological texts should be taken seriously, conflict is less common on the highest planes but it still happens sometimes.
Wow! As if the plebs haven’t been subjected to enough to certain voices shouting fire in an ever crowded theater, we now have one flaming Alan Dershowitz claiming that Kent, Tucker, Fuentes, and Owens are .. you guessed it – NEONAZIS! Totally Shambolic, in mho..
Honestly, I wish that all these flabby neoCON$ .. and their adjacent supporters – including those poser ‘influencers’ online and off on say, RUMBLE, Fox, and such, would rush to that little shield on the edge of the Eastern Mediterranean, pick up a rifle .. and go for it! rather than spout ad-hominems at the rest of us.
Infrastructure and beach towns and resort areas.
OC is remarkable. It’s like the entire U.S. writ small. Billions of dollars spent that don’t do much of anything other than extract dollars from tourists able to spend them to visit the beach. That used to be cheap!
My girlfriend who used to own a beach cottage (at least 10 miles inland) said OC floods now every time there are heavy rains. I remember reading in one of OC’s newspapers (there are several and all supported by tourist $$ and advert revenue) that when a hurricane arrived a few years back, the storm drains all flooded. It turned out that they hadn’t been cleaned since Hurricane Gloria! Twenty some years of sand building up because the city didn’t keep up with the maintenance.
It’s the most amazing waste of resources I’ve ever seen.
Bill and I live in Hershey, also a resort town. We get amenities that we wouldn’t get in a typical town of 27,000 people but we also see the regular tidal waves of visitors. We and Hershey learned that tourism is NOT sustainable. The Covid shutdowns wiped out many local businesses and the township stopped doing local things and signed up with the county for police, taxes, and so forth. The quality of the services declined.
And all the while, when I attend a Board of Supervisors meeting, I hear complaints about “I want xxx but I don’t want to pay for it. Why can’t the tourists pay for it?” But when the tourists pay for something and then they leave, the town’s budget is left high and dry.
If the tourists didn’t show up in OC on schedule, the entire area would turn back into ruins built on top of a sand bar. Millions of taxpayer $$ are spent every year to beat back the tides.
As it is, eventually OC will turn back into ramshackle fishing shacks because we can’t afford to keep it in business.
“There are honestly people out there– I have met some– who seem to believe that as soon as we get the right quotas of women/minorities/etc into STEM, that Progressiva Techne will come back ”
That brings back memories..
“Stockton Rush, the late CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, expressed a desire to avoid hiring “50-year-old white guys” with military or deep-sea diving experience to design and captain his submersibles, stating he wanted his team to be “inspirational” rather than experienced. ”
Physics was unimpressed with the inspiration.
The key point is the OLD. The saying about their are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old bold pilots.
My monthly round up of the most nourishing long form content links is out again.
https://open.substack.com/pub/recombinationnation/p/the-long-forum-march-2026?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
Includes analysis of the closing era of mass literacy, the end of mass bureaucracy, physical economy analysis of the war in Iran and its consequences, evidence human evolution sped up 10kya, a glimpse into the fragile US munitions industry, evidence of writing pushed back 40kya, how an AI generated podcast topped the charts,
And a plug to my own interview with James Howard Kunstler, and his appearance on my podcast, along with environmental journalist Fred Pearce and data crunching actuary turned physical economist Gail Tverberg.
Are there still plans afoot for an “Adocentyn Convention” in Providence this summer? If yes, is this website by Mr. Van Erp the right place to sign up?
https://peter-van-erp.dreamwidth.org/267.html
I left a note there recently and haven’t heard anything back yet, possibly because summer is still a few months away. But if I am signing up in the wrong place, I’d rather learn that now than later. 😃
Thank you for the help! And I look forward to any chance to meet other Ecosophians in person one day.
Michael_20, new to Dreamwidth
OK – “House of Crows” pre-ordered and will ship by April 7th. Three cheers! And thanks!
Trump as living out the stereotype of Americans (as Oscar Wilde said, “the only culture in the world that went from barbarism to decadence with no civilization in between”) made me laugh – and isn’t Trump playing that one for all it’s worth? Bless his little heart.
It’s quite a relief to find out, thanks to a family-wide session down at California’s MIND Institute, that one is not a Slan at all, but only someone whose sole superpower is a strong facility with words. Would-be Slans should look up their Executive Functions on such a battery of tests sometime and get some of the conceit knocked out of them.
JMG, I’m really, really glad you found a place you were comfortable with to go to Easter Service. We were holding Episcopalian services here in The Village, but when the priests holding it aged out and stopped offering Mass, I found it as dry as dust and stopped going.
In the Gainesville Sun today: a full-page ad for a “No Kings” march on March 28th. And on the campus shuttle bus, a couple of well-meaning people from Tower Villas (East Campus and chock-full of liberals) with T-shirts like “Immigrants are good for America,” and the like. In the comic strips, “Non Sequitur” shows two doors with windows: A Primary Care facility with sign saying “Closed for no good reason” and the next one a window labeled “Alt-Care,” with a shaman in a feathered headdress and a skull rattle. My take: there’s plenty of people who’d prefer the shaman.
Regarding our step downward: Gilad Atzmon in “The Wandering Who?” (2011) writes, “democracy today, especially in the English speaking world is a political system that specializes in positioning inadequate, unqualified and dubious types in leadership positions.” I haven’t read his book: I’m only reading from a short segment that was quoted in a book by someone else. But “inadequate, unqualified and dubious types” certainly rings true, “now more than ever” as Nixon might have said.
Jim Harrison’s name came up recently. A big biography of Harrison was published last year (and tomorrow, the 26th will be the 10th anniversary of his death). I’ve read the early chapters, the final chapters and some of what is in the middle. The biggest surprise is that he stayed married to the same woman for 55 years. She predeceased him by a couple of months, and his chain smoking may have hastened her death from emphysema. Harrison is a case of my being a bit sorry I learned so much about him. The more I read, the less admiration I feel. Other examples of the same would be Bruce Chatwin, Steve Weber and that sad sack jazz trumpet player, er, er, what was his name?
Northwind Grandma apologizes for feeling befuddled. Aren’t we all? Our feckless leader appears very befuddled indeed. Why should we be any different?
I will have to ask him, but I think it depends on what part of the mutiverse he happens to be in.
Clay #36, Ray Bradbury’s story There Will Come Soft Rains comes to mind. Where a robotic house lives on with no inhabitants.
Northwind Grandma # 4:
A possible answer to your question about last 3 months, it could be in the (very) short form: Acts have consequences (partly wanted, another part not wanted).
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Clay D # 7:
Your comment has made me to remember last Sunday there was a demonstration in my town streets denouncing lack of reparations and maintenance within local public structures. And yes, I’ve seen a pedestrian bridge over our main river with its paint falling apart and some rusty parts, and a park in my town outskirts full of weeds. Usual explanation of this ugly urban landscapes are neoliberal politics according local left, or vandalism according others; but I also think nowadays major and the last town hall local governments built too many structures to afford then their reparation and care.
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Teresa P. # 8:
Maybe our nowadays pop culture is too self centered in a Narcissist way, due partly by the Postmodern philosophy excesses and social media. I think Byung-Chul Han could explain it to you better than me, in his books.
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Kimberly S. # 11:
According your depiction, your new book seems interesting, methink.
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Ian D. # 31:
I think Trump and Netanyahu geopolitical “wisedom” led them to underrate Iranian regime resiliency. Stronger air strikes can weaken Iran, but it’s not very probable that tactic make the wished regime change happens. In addition to this, Trump could need to send more planes and another weapons and soldiers from another areas of the world (exposing them to be less protected). On the other hand, to unblock Hormuz, it should be necessary an amphibious landing protected by the whole NATO fleet to control Irani side of the Strait (good luck with Iran missiles and drones).
I bet Trump would like to declare USA has won the war and then withdraw its troops, but Netanyahu thinks another thing (“Israel always wins and it must win forever”). I won’t depict Trump as a mere Zionist puppet (maybe he wanted to break the BRICS or at least to weaken them), but he has followed the Israeli narrative near literally, so war won’t end tomorrow. We’ll see where war escalation can stop (if it eventually stops: maybe a wishful thinking).
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(To be continued)
The legal equivalent of stuffing a loaded uzi down your pants, selecting full-auto, and pulling the trigger.
Meta and YouTube Found Negligent in Landmark Social Media Addiction Case.
“At trial, Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram chief Adam Mosseri testified that “harms to children, such as sexual exploitation and detriments to mental health, were inevitable on the company’s platforms due to their vast user bases,” The Guardian reported. Internal messages and documents, as well as testimony from child safety experts within and outside the company, showed that Meta repeatedly ignored warnings and failed to fix platforms to protect kids, New Mexico’s AG successfully argued.”
One has to wonder if Zuckerberg really believes that Leviticus 25:45 and 46 are still in effect.
If anyone doesn’t know what an uzi might be, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzi
@Dennis “That’s a lesson that Hollywood itself could certainly learn, as for the last decade or so, it’s extremely to figure out who the bad guys and good guys were. Straight white man? Bad! Gay black lady? Good!”
As an side on this, I do love it in Chinese action films that as soon as the White British/American guys turns up, usually in the government of their respective countries, you know EXACTLY who the villain is going to be. I think just because it is just so blatant that you can just hope in for the silly ride knowing where it is all heading.
As for Hollywood, I do find it so strange that some films slip through which are actually trying something different, they have a lot of success, and then they just go back to more sequels. I will continue with my habit of not watching those.
#49 TylerA
“There are honestly people out there– I have met some– who seem to believe that as soon as we get the right quotas of women/minorities/etc into STEM, that Progressiva Techne will come back based on the sacrifices delivered unto Progressiva Societas.”
I’ve seen these beliefs too but it’s always seemed like a threadbare excuse. Western societies have sacrificed any semblance of technological progress for their vision of social progress, and many of the high priests of social progress, the critical theorists, decry all fields of empirical study as evil. There’s no way to reconcile the one with the other when they reach such extremes.
#48 Steve T
“I think that even people who are “anti-war” on principle appreciate the propaganda campaign.”
The reason there was no propaganda campaign is that there’s simply no way to sell this war to the majority of Americans. Hillary Clinton was criticized for never campaigning in Nebraska, but her statistical models likely showed that appearing there would have only driven her numbers down, such was her lack of appeal. The same calculus led to the decision to forego war propaganda.
#33 JMG
“The rise of retro tech, such as the return of vinyl records, and the emergence of nostalgia driven by a growing recognition that progress has failed, are among the trends I’ve discussed.”
Where I would disagree is in the assertion that this is merely a recent phenomenon rather than something that’s been ongoing for many decades. If anything there was more disdain of “progress” in the 20th century, with the hippie movement, authors like Ray Bradbury, and the acerbic critiques of television that are much scarcer now. Nearly all mainstream cultural priors held by people in the West today are rooted in media produced with the ultimate intent of eroding Western societies; this was not the case 60 years ago. “Eternal progress” is something crafted as a crude replacement of the spiritual and philosophical traditions of the West and its uptake has always been dubious outside of tech company press conferences and the like.
“it seems very arbitrary to me to identify sacrifice as the sole measure of belief. ”
It’s not the sole indicator but certainly the strongest. Speaking of the current war, that’s a place you can see this principle at work.
People can speculate all day as to whys and wherefores of geopolitics, but the Iran conflict shows beyond any shadow of a doubt that Israel controls the United States and dictates its foreign policy. The US has pulled its fleets away from the Pacific, withdrawn THAAD batteries from South Korea and abandoned any attempt to shield Gulf Arab states and even its own bases from Iranian missiles in favor of Israel. The US empire is sacrificing all of its allies and its dollar hegemony to protect a barren strip of land in the Levant that is supposedly its client state.
Another example: Trump stopped most meaningful immigration enforcement after protests in Minneapolis even as polls show that a majority in the US want all illegal immigrants deported. Supposedly he was scared it would hurt his image. Then he embarked on the Iran war, whose approval rating was 25% at most, and he shows no signs of stopping as his poll numbers nosedive. Sacrifice proves fealty.
@ Logo Dau #20
Since you ask… “What, then, are Western countries sacrificing for the sake of? Progress?”
I will venture to answer “children”.
And, no, I am not talking about any of the kinds of things hinted at in the Epstein scandal. I am talking about our society’s practice, this past century, or more, of mandating long lists of experimental vaccines, ultimately admitted by their manufacturers to be “unavoidably unsafe”. Every child injured or killed by the effects of a mandated, and “unavoidably unsafe”, vaccine, during the past 150 or so years, has been (in my humble opinion), a child sacrificed to the idea that bringing about the complete eradification of infectious disease (progress for the many), was worth some injuries and deaths (sacrifices of the few) along the way.
And in all of the years that I have advocated for a pro-choice, non-mandated approach to this matter, I have continually foundered upon the rock of true religious belief in Progress. As everyone knows, believes and affirms, the Benefits (to the many) of Vaccination far outweigh the Costs (to the few).
That is to say, I think that Western countries HAVE proven the depth of this belief by their willingness for the sacrifice to continue.
Hi John Michael,
Maybe it is just me, but when your President says: “America First”, my opinion is that he literally means exactly what he says. Fuel prices down here are completely nuts and I spotted diesel yesterday for AU$3.08 / Litre locally, which is US$8.20 / Gallon. Have to laugh, early on the media were claiming that we were OK on an oil front because our supplies came from Asian refineries (there are however two refineries remaining in this country), and not the Middle East. The lack of comprehension of such subjects is gobsmacking.
Anywhoo, your lot have repeatedly asked our lot to shoulder more of the costs of projecting military might, and I’m 100% with you, this whole mess is a very constructive lesson for all involved. The AUKUS nuclear submarine arrangement will go ahead I reckon, mostly because we’re paying for an additional production line based in your country, so it’s consistent with the stated goals, of err, US jobs.
I doubt that we’ll run out of oil supplies here, mostly because the Asian refineries supplying down under operate in countries which are heavily dependent on our massive exports of minerals, coal and LNG. They don’t have much choice about the matter. But will we run short, absolutely. The local culture here tends to be a ‘rationing on price’ model so it’ll get messy.
On that note, I do wonder if the movement of people around this planet will slowly wind down? The goobermint here tends to import more people so as to paper over realities, and there is a school of thought which suggests that we’re already in a per capita recession / depression and have been for quite a while. The thing is though, as fuel costs go up, costs for everything will soar as this is already under way. Presumably at some point, the case to move down under for folks, tends to make less and less sense. Dunno. What do you reckon about all that?
Cheers
Chris
@ Degringolade: Have you checked your public library? My library uses a service called “Hoopla.” It furnishes books in electronic version, readable on my Win 11 laptop. The first three Arial Morovec novles are available that way. For the author’s royalties, I assume this is similar to what it would be if they had the novels available as physical books.
I would add to my list of artists whom I began to dislike the more I learned about them, the singer/songwriter/model/addict Nico. I watched the documentary “Nico/Icon” years ago. The only part I’m glad I saw was the stunning John Cale performance of one of her songs, “Frozen Warnings,” which concludes the documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_sNGnEjvyA&list=RDl_sNGnEjvyA&start_radio=1
Hi Everyone
The best explanation I have found regarding the war is close to JMG’s theory, except it isn’t really being driven by the US administration, but by certain moneyed interests who are the real power players.
They are now undertaking their shift from the US, to the Middle East, or as it will now more increasingly be called, West Asia.
For that to happen, there needs to be regional stability, which means US out and all the resistance architecture of Iran and it’s proxies, versus Israel and it’s military resistance to them, needs to be neutralised.
The MIC is getting it’s last big war, before it retreats to it’s own sphere of influence – as per JMG- but unfortunately for Europe, that includes them as well, in the form of budget sapping military purchases. It will also probably mean that much of the Kinetic action will end up being turned on US itself, which does seem to fit the pattern of history unfortunately.
This is the basic framework, there’s a lot more to it and I suggest a deep dive into two of the progenitors of this thesis. I guarantee you will find it extremely interesting and enlightening.
https://xcancel.com/EvanWritesOnX/with_replies
A first part from his pinned tweet:
What people thought America could be – a beacon of democracy – was the last thing it became. In reality, it’s a corporate machine that has given rise to the Transnational Private Sector (TPS).
The TPS is a coalition of corporate giants, led by the Financial-Industrial Complex (FIC) with firms like JPMorgan, Goldman, and BlackRock, alongside the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC), Consumer-Industrial Complex (CIC), and Techno-Industrial Complex (TIC).
This collective force operates beyond borders, transcends nationality, and prioritizes profit over public welfare.
When Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s CEO, warned in October 2024 that wars in Ukraine and the Middle East could destabilize the global economy, he wasn’t just forecasting. He was asserting the TPS’s dominance over policy.
To understand this power, you have to examine the game theory driving the TPS’s clash with nations.
This concept that I have developed deliberately sets aside the idea of good, evil, right, or wrong. Geopolitical dynamics are examined through the lens of incentives, power, and measurable outcomes, not moral judgments. The focus is the strategic interplay of actors, stripped of ethical narratives.
The other person is Simon Dixon, who also does a lot of explainer videos.
You don’t have to agree with his take on bitcoin, I’reading and listening to him to understand this current crisis and where it leads.
https://xcancel.com/SimonDixonTwitt/with_replies
From one of his latest posts:
The GCC, Iran, and BRICS were always playing the 5D chess.
They negotiated with the financial-industrial complex to expel the military-industrial complex’s forever-war model from the Middle East, and the FIC agreed to shrink the US into a regional power.
A three-way exit narrative will follow after the final act, where Trump gets his Hollywood ending to take home.
Multipolarity has arrived.
Trump is the press secretary.
He works for the FIC.
💰 Follow The Money
Regards, Helen in Oz
@Logo Dau and TylerA,
I’ve seen people insisting that the women and minorities now in STEM are the reason that progress is on the fritz.
Seems to me that progress is and will continue to be on the fritz regardless of the gender and race of the people doing the work, due to law of diminishing returns and energy/resource depletion.
JMG # 33:
Well, geopolitical alliances change from time to time, they aren’t forever, so I wouldn’t discard your hypothesis. Which could drive into madness and despair to our European True Believers in “Atlanticism”. By the way, I think there’s an evident “solution” for fuels high prices and eventual shortages in EU: Let’s buy Russian oil again…Of course, Brussels won’t do that, due to its last years self-poisoning narrative (“Russia is ruled by evily evil Putin but Ukraine-helped by EU&NATO must and will win the war”).
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Curt # 41:
I’m a bit puzzled by your comment: So you aren’t a Muslim, but you’ve tried to fast according Ramadan…
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John # 47:
I agree. Iran’s doing a typical assimetrical war. Its government knows they cannot win a war against the couple Israel&USA (in the sense of defeating them explicitly), but they can damage their Arab kingdom vassals and to some extent, the own “holy” Israel territory. Iran missiles and drones can’t reach the US, but they can hit its Persian Gulf bases.
Of course, air strikes never have won wars, only a full ground invasion can do that (look at the Nazis end: Soviet tanks in Berlin).
I also think escalation can go until it stops before nuke bombs temptation. Israel elites can say in a bombastic way they’ve got nukes and Iran not (to threat Tehran). But in the hypothetical case we could see a nuclear mushroom over Tehran, indeed the nuke taboo would be broken. So nobody can assure during the following hours it didn’t fall a nuke over, for example, Kiev…or Tel Aviv. Iran hasn’t got nukes, but some of its “friends” have a lot of them. And nobody really wants WW3.
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Steve T. # 48:
In addition to your comment, another difference with Irak war(s) and another US wars as global Hegemon, is the direct attack to oil facilities, first against Iran by the Western axis, and then (in logical revenge) against Arab Gulf countries by Iran. Bush Sr. and Jr. avoided carefully to destroy oil wells and refineries in Irak (economics ruled).
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Mary B. # 52:
I think Trump government could have been blackmailed by Netanyahu govt to join Israel in the current war, as a work hypothesis. Epstein, nuke threat, and/or so on…
However, I also think Israel evident main interest is to destroy Iran and/or to change its rulers. Trump goals could be hitting one of the BRICS countries, making money again with fracking (oil high prices) and/or defeating a high valued geopolitical piece (by Russia and China). So Trump and Netanyahu can share, at least in part, their goals in this “business”. Trump isn’t a mere Zionist puppet methinks.
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JMG # 57:
I don’t doubt Trump global goal during his current mandate is probably to withdraw USA global hegemony toward the Western Hemisphere. However, I’m not sure that Israeli lobby wants to loose its main support to survive within Middle East in the long term. Maybe the Zionist influence’s too tight yet…We’ll see.
Polecat, I wish,
Teresa, thanks for this. I’m not sure if you recall my Archdruid Report essay on Ocean City:
https://archdruidmirror.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-patience-of-sea.html
Shane, thanks for this.
Michael20, as far as I know, yes, it’s still on the schedule, and yes, Peter’s website is the place to go.
Patricia M, so am I. A couple of weeks ago, one of the longtime members mentioned that when the current priest (who is about to retire) first came there, the longtime member explained to her that the best way to describe the church was the Island of Misfit Toys — so, yeah, it seems like a good fit for me. 😉
Phutatorius, that’s true of every system of government. The one advantage of democracy is that removing a politician involves fewer casualties than in most other systems.
Justin, check the Tower of Voilodion Ghagnasdiak first!
Siliconguy, somebody clearly annoyed the wrong people. Silicon Valley has been getting away with crap like that since there was a Silicon Valley.
Logo Dau, authors disdainfully sniping from the fringes are one thing. Widespread adoption of older technologies in place of newer and more heavily marketed ones — vinyl records were a $1 billion a year business in the US last year, and growing rapidly — is something else again. As for your claims about the Middle East, here again, your analysis seems very simplistic to me. Still, I’ve learned from long experience that it’s a waste of time trying to discuss that particular bête noire with those who have strong feelings in either direction.
Chris, the shift under way in US foreign policy is all about ditching empire in favor of a US-centric system, similar to India’s relative neutrality (which is the policy we used to have before we got into the empire business) combined with a Putinesque fixation on regaining control of our near abroad. As for movement, the entire financial superstructure of the Western world depends on growth, and since every continent but Africa has already slid over into sub-replacement fertility (and Africa’s dropping fast), I expect to see governments frantically trying to maintain immigration at all costs to prop up the illusion of growth.
Helen, that thesis doesn’t contradict mine. The interests of the current US government are one factor in the mix, the interests of transnational capital are another, and both feed into the current set of events. Perhaps the worst habit in modern political analysis is the insistence that there can only be one motivating group in the world.
Chuaquin, at this point it’s by no means certain that Russia would sell oil and gas to Europe any more, and if they did, they’d charge several times the pre-Ukraine War price. For the EU, though, going to Russia hat in hand and asking to buy oil and gas would require giving up their fantasies of renewed European world dominion, and I think they’d sooner cut their own throats with a dull saw than do that. This fantasy…
…runs very deep in Brussels these days, and for good reason: the alternative is for Europe to turn into the impoverished backwater it was six centuries ago.
@ John ONeill # 47
Many Blessings to you. I have just sent out a whisper of blessing, on the local winds, to the shades of your ancestors also… 🙂
@Justin Patrick Moore #51:
https://imgur.com/a/Nev0o7y
Laughing my head off! You should print that as a poster.
If the war goes poorly for the United States, very likely Americans will blame Israel and Trump for starting the war, and then that will be the end of the “special relationship” between America and Israel.
Israel’s future is looking a lot like Cuba or North Korea since the end of the cold war, an isolated hermit country with no friends on the international stage and reviled for its Zionist ideology and war crimes.
“I don’t think the point of this war is to win. I think the point of this war is to cause Iran enough damage that other potential regional threats will do the math and back off: as the Chinese proverb puts it, killing the chicken to scare the monkey.”
That rather speaks to how Iran appears to see this war. Not sure which of its attackers it sees as the chicken and which the monkey, though… 😉
After the EU bureaucracy and its national governments have started to understand we’re in economical trouble (or an “oil shock”) due to current Middle East war, things have begun to move here. For example, some days ago Spanish govt showed in front of the MSM its plan to cope with this “special situation”. It’s interesting part of its measures are to reduce some taxes for citizens and business/industries, especially fuel taxes (maybe our govt is hoping this mess ends soon), for a while. Another measures are bluntly driven IMHO for a govt hurried up by its need to accelerate “Energetical and Ecological Transition”(good luck with those measures, which could be very good…10 or 20 years ago: they arrive too late, methink).
“People can speculate all day as to whys and wherefores of geopolitics, but the Iran conflict shows beyond any shadow of a doubt that Israel controls the United States and dictates its foreign policy.”
Nah, you’re also forgetting the huge amount of Christian Zionists in the United States who want this war because it’s supposedly a sign of the coming apocalypse / rapture and Jesus Christ will come back and save them all and send them to heaven. Zionism itself (the founding ideology of Israel) was originally a Protestant ideology from the 1600s that only made its way to the Jews around the 1840s.
Re: conflict in higher planes
Ultimately it comes down to incentives, doesn’t it? The material plane and etheric plane provide well-defined territory to fight over and win, and advantages to be gained from winning, like natural resources or whatever the etheric analogue is. Whereas in the astral plane if you and some other group disagree strongly, you can probably just go your own ways into your own pocket realms until you cool down. Then in the mental and up, most of the cause for conflict in the lower planes just don’t apply to begin with.
“I think Trump government could have been blackmailed by Netanyahu govt to join Israel in the current war, as a work hypothesis. Epstein, nuke threat, and/or so on…”
Trump’s government does not need blackmailing. It’s already filled with Zionists and pro-Israeli Jews who support Netanyahu and Israel’s actions. Trump himself married off his daughter Ivanka to Zionist Jew Jared Kushner, so he has a personal reason to support Israel in this battle, in a similar way that somebody like Noam Chomsky or Bernie Sanders supports Israel.
Hey JMG,
Yes, you’re right there isn’t just one player in this, hence their use of game theory, which predisposes more than one actor.
I just gave a quick overview, there are a lot more players, including Countries/States and Resistance groups within them, for example, as well as Transnational Capital.
I haven’t named all of them obviously. The battle of the Elites is well under way.
Many layers, many movers and shakers.
Helen
@ JMG. Would you say that a lot of the reason why some folks seem to get their back up when you talk about various things is that you and them are looking at very different time frames? Many are looking through the lens of today, next week and maybe a few months into the future, you are talking on the scale of years, decades and centuries. Things that seem vitally important today (usually through a lot of MSM manipulation) are almost nothing on the larger scale that wins the war. I know there is more to it that this, but it is probably a large driving force.
@Chris #72 Interesting times a foot at the moment in the halls of power. Below is a quote I thought I would never see out of the mob at the Canberra lightening rod. For those who don’t know, look up an image of the Canberra parliament.
“All of this underlines a very simple reality — the stable, predictable world of ever-expanding free trade is gone” – Prime Minister Anthony Albanese
So long as that isn’t just talk, they may finally have a slight inclination to do something that isn’t the worst case scenario. I might be too optimistic in that.
There are people who supported Trump in 2024 because they believed Trump is the accelerationist candidate who will start a war in the Middle East that will backfire on the United States and cause the United States to pull out of the Middle East.
The US Postal Service wants to impose fuel surcharges to its packages due to rising fuel costs from the war:
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/25/us-postal-fuel-surcharge-package-deliveries-iran-oil.html
I wonder if it hit different regions and strata of society at different points during the 1980s.
The commentor was actually yours truly. At least in Wisconsin, the eighties up until the second half of 1990, with some warning-signs as soon as 1989, seemed as though it still had some real heart and soul left in it despite the “Reaganization” of politics, society, and the economy. But in the wake of the recession of the early nineties (which began the downsizing craze in the world of work) and the First Gulf War (which made the political left even more marginalized than it was previously thanks to its opposition to that war), forget it. I watched the society I knew as a lad turn into one big old sour-ball. Vulnerability and sincerity were punished, and ironic detachment and performative coolness were rewarded. And it kind of stayed that way ever since.
First, congratulations JMG on another publication. I’ve lost count but you seem to be getting closer to the 100 book mark, if you haven’t passed it already. Look out Isaac Asimov.
Second, last year Thrown Sandwiches posted a link to a fascinating article reviewing the actual logistics and battle tactics for post apocalyptic Mad Max vehicles. I will repost it here: https://acoup.blog/2025/05/23/collections-the-logistics-of-road-war-in-the-wasteland/.
For folks interested in the history and development of the actual technicals in the Great Toyota War and throughout the Middle East and Africa, I can recommend this book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/technicals-non-standard-tactical-vehicles-from-the-great-toyota-war-to-modern-special-forces-leigh-neville/1c782c77fb3bf027?ean=9781472822512&next=t.
Now if you all aren’t interested in the full color illustration of a Fedayeen Saddam militant shooting a Russian made PK medium machine gun from a turret mounted in the back of a stock Nissan pickup truck while wearing a Darth Vader-inspired uniform, well, you are entitled to your own opinions.
Here’s what really intrigued me: the book starts with the evolution of the technical in places like 1980s Lebanon and 1990s Somalia but as it progresses the examples feature more and more NATO members buying and outfitting their own technicals. Army Rangers and Navy SEALS apparently build and utilize technicals all the time. The book was published in 2018 and there were a number of examples of Western special forces units buying 500 pickups at a time for deployment to the Middle East as technicals.
So while we are all watching $35,000 Iranian drones versus $4M American Patriot missiles in all the news media, that’s not the whole story. Everyone on both sides has figured out that swarms of cheap, lethal war machines can be very effective, and certainly more cost effective, than overpriced high-tech military systems.
I find a lot of these articles about the ending of mass literacy assuming that the end of mass literacy will arise because of the smartphone and the internet. However, the energy and resources required to produce the smartphone and maintain the internet won’t be around in a few decades, while the printing press can still operate in pre-industrial conditions. So I’m kind of skeptical that we will see the end of mass literacy.
@JMG ” I expect to see governments frantically trying to maintain immigration at all costs to prop up the illusion of growth.”
I think what many are not anticipating is what happens if other countries stop allowing emigration? Most nations with high immigration basically do the economist thing of assuming a limitless supply of people to bring in. India and Africa may be happy to let people leave now, but if they start slowing or stopping all emigration due to the loss of man power/brain drain or just as a leverage against other nations, things may shift quicker than anticipated. I suspect China will be the first to apply the breaks on this due to their aging population, they need the young there now.
@JMG “Widespread adoption of older technologies in place of newer and more heavily marketed ones — vinyl records were a $1 billion a year business in the US last year, and growing rapidly”
But haven’t you heard that Vinyl records are bad for the environment!?! Yes, this is sarcasm, however the article below is not. Welcome to crazy town where melting ice caps with server farms is considered cleaner than discs that last over a hundred years!
https://imagine5.com/articles/is-our-love-of-vinyl-hurting-the-planet-and-can-billie-eilish-fix-it/
At this page is the full list of all of the non-faith-specific 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 (printable version here, current to 3/13). 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.
* * *
This week I would like to bring special attention to the following prayer requests, selected from the fuller list.
May Bob W of Lake County, Ohio’s treatment for cancer go well so that he may heal and recover as quickly as possible.
May Open Space be filled with the strength he needs to heal quickly from his current bout of Chicken Pox; may his will remain strong, that he does not scratch; may he be healed completely, and suffer no scarring in its wake.
May Bob Ralston (aka Rasty Bob), who is in hospice care in Buckeye AZ, and who just lost his wife Leslie Fish, be blessed and find relief from his pain and discomfort; may Bob’s heart remain strong.
May Princess Cutekitten, who has made no comments on any of the Ecosophia blogs for a year now, and hasn’t responded to attempts at contact, be blessed wherever she is and in whatever form she may exist.
May Cathy N. of St. Marys, Ohio heal and recover from injuries caused by a fall.
May Dustin, a relative of Brenainn, be healed of a recently discovered heart condition.
May 1Wanderers’s partner Cathy, whose cancer has returned, be given the physical and mental strength to fight it, and tolerate the treatment, and may she enjoy a full and permanent recovery.
May Jule from Iserlohn, Germany, who is experiencing complications in her pregnancy due to an influenza infection, recover and have a pleasant pregnancy and birth.
May Larry Mulford, who has entered hospice after a year battling with pancreatic cancer, pass in the smoothest possible manner, and may his wife be enveloped in our love.
May Marko have the strength to seize the opportunities.
May Pierre’s young daughter, Athena, be healed from her fatigue and its root causes in ways that are easy, natural, and as holistic as possible.
May 5 year old Max be blessed and protected during his parents’ contentious divorce; may events work out in a manner most conducive to Max’s healthy development over the long term.
May Lydia G. of Geauga County, Ohio heal and recover from prolonged health issues.
May both Monika and the child she is pregnant with both be blessed with good health and a safe delivery.
May Mary’s sister have her auto-immune conditions sent into remission, may her eyes remain healthy, and may she heal in body, mind, and spirit.
May Trubujah’s best friend Pat’s teenage daughter Devin, who has a mysterious condition which doctors are so far baffled by necessitating that she remain in a wheelchair, be healed of her condition; may the underlying cause come to light so that treatment may begin.
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 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.
* * *
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.
Anybody else think that Iran is like Tanzania in Twilight’s Last Gleaming and that Trump is like that president in Twilight’s Last Gleaming that declared war against Tanzania over oil supplies only for America to suffer a humiliating defeat in the ensuing war?
John,
I’ve had a hard time making heads or tails of the war personally. I’m just preparing for inflation to continue accelerating. I bike to work and almost everywhere, so the rising gas prices are less of a concern for me.
Also, tomorrow I am having my first meeting with my local masonic lodge. I’m hoping to one day become a freemason. It’ll take some months of acquainting myself with the lodge members, especially since I don’t know any masons personally. I’m hoping that I can learn valuable skills and make lasting friendships.
JMG @77: Some cynic, I forget who and where, suggested that the best move an ambitious wanna-be politician could make was to indulge in actions so scandalous that he/she would be easy to blackmail and control. Then he/she would be a shoe-in for success.
Forecasting Intelligence @ 43, you might want to look at recent election results. The NYC mayoralty race was called for Mondami when he had 50.4% of the vote and Cuomo only 41.6. Not shabby, and he did win, but, that same night, Mickie Sherril across the river was winning her election by about 12 points, and her good friend Spanberger in Virginia was winning by 15. While Democrats have been winning steadily in the off year primaries and elections so far this year, what might be called DEI candidates are losing. Even the wildly hyped DEI candidates, one in NJ and another in IL, are losing. To my knowledge, no winning Democrat ran on anything that even sounded like an internationalist or even Atlanticist platform. Furthermore, back to NYC, only 39% of the city’s REGISTERED voters even bothered to vote. Sure, the guy won, but it was no landslide.
As for Jewish influence, AIPAC cash has become so toxic in Democratic Party primaries that the organization has resorted to funneling its’ money through innocuously titled third party foundations.
There are rumors now about the 25th amendment, as if the president’s backers are beginning to think he has outlived his usefulness to them.
I’ve enjoyed reading your first three Ariel Moravec stories. Thank you for the tip off that a new volume is coming out. The town of Adocentyn sounds like an interesting place. I really appreciated the town that didn’t let the librarian throw away more than half their books. I noticed back in the Obama administration that the shelves in the public library were rapidly becoming empty. I used to work as a library page back in the early 80’s when most of the shelves were stuffed with books. The change was jarring and unpleasant
Under the “Now What?” category, detournement seems to have occurred.
“Five Nights at Epstein’s” at the local school district.
“The game appears to be an unofficial parody of the popular horror franchise Five Nights at Freddy’s, but replaces fictional elements with references tied to Jeffrey Epstein and conspiracy-driven themes. While it mimics the original game’s survival-style mechanics, its use of real-world figures connected to serious criminal allegations has raised red flags, particularly because of its inappropriateness for minors.”
It seems to have deeply offended many parents so has achieved its primary goal.
Hi JMG,
I haven’t said lately how much I appreciate your weekly writings. I most of all look forward to the last week of each month being they are Open Posts.
> we’re definitely moving into crisis territory. May I suggest daily meditation and regular massage to keep stress levels down?
Thanks for your suggestion about meditation and massage. Been there, done that, ain’t working. I gotta come up with some other strategy. Actually, flower essences help unglue me from the ceiling. Acupuncture helps. As for vibes, there are off-the-wall vibrations going on out there —there is something in the air. I would like to tai-chi the bad vibes away: Boing.
> I don’t expect it to get better before the end of the decade.
Hmm. This flashed me an idea. (yeh I know: the burning smell.) Back in the early days of computerized genealogical research (between 2005 and 2015), when a researcher needed to find a specific piece of information but didn’t have time or money, on a genealogy message board or two, she would ask for specific help (giving relevant and complete details). Occasionally, a second party saw the message and went ahead doing sizable research to solve the problem (spending hours or days). Those second parties were called “genealogy angels.”
I have not seen an uptick in the number of people becoming bookkeepers. Assuming employers employ less people over time, that means that people will see the need to earn money on their own, thereby opening micro-businesses, as in sole proprietorships and family partnerships. One of the first things such a business needs to do is do bookkeeping. It is not like everyone and their uncle knows bookkeeping (except for farmers, who had to learn a hundred years ago). A person can either learn bookkeeping through a class or books, or hire a bookkeeper, or a mixture of both. Not only that, because there are so few freelance bookkeepers out there (it doesn’t seem to be catching on, yet), hourly rates are high. To get up to speed, what is a new sole proprietor do?
I not only will be doing the bookkeeping for my husband “Jethro’s” business, but it just occurred to me: I could become an “angel bookkeeper” for my local area. Be affordable — be available — help nearby micro-businesses get off the ground for a nominal fee for their first year. Even being able to advise a micro-business what software to use on one’s home-computer (one’s own hard disks & servers) would be a tremendous help (MoneyWorks by Cognito, New Zealand), because 95% of commercial bookkeepers are “in the cloud;” they are very rigid and very expensive. (It took me a year to bump into MoneyWorks). Who wants their secret financial records in the cloud? Only crazies.
It will take at least a year to get our own bookkeeping current; I need to re-learn more than the basics. Then I have a website to put together. After that, the idea of putting a 3-line classified ad in my local newspaper saying something like, “Knowledgeable bookkeeper willing to help in (–my town’s–) micro-businesses get off the ground. Contact me at thus-and-so.” See if anyone responds.
If I don’t forget, I will keep it in mind😉.
——
About wildfires in Nebraska: I guessed right. When looking to move out of California in 2020, I chose EAST of the Mississippi River,— and as NORTH as I could get. No Colorado. No Arkansas. No Texas.
Stay safe out there,
💨🧾💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
I was reading through encyclopedia of natural magic and tried the lavendar on the base of the skull and temples and it really calmed me down. Is the Vagus nerve related to Mercury? Is there a book that breaks down the magical correspondences of the body?
According to the local newspaper: Lancaster, Pa school “district’s deficit, discovered in January during a financial audit, includes an $8.1 million shortfall that resulted from failing to account for the salaries and benefits of 83 employees.
District administrators, who do not need the school board’s approval to make cuts, still don’t know what went wrong, although they have said they suspect faulty software.”
My brother rubs shoulders with people in the know about this situation. The “faulty software” actually means “to save money, we used AI to file our taxes and it screwed up.”
I have to admit, it is delightful watching many of my fellow Australians wake up to the fact that almost everything they take for granted as normal for our high powered standard of living is positively dripping with oil, and specifically diesel.
Something those in agriculture have never forgotten.
“As for when to hang up the towel, when you have another goal that’s even more enticing (and maybe more accessible as well).”
Imminently useful and optimistic advice! There are many things that I’d like to try if my current life arrangements can’t be sustained. And they’re all things that I believe would fit nicely inro the Long Descent.
JMG and all,
I’d be interested in hearing what you and others have to say about relocating to towns or regions that are contracting (which will soon be everywhere, so maybe the question is moot).
For me specifically, the advantage would be to purchase a home and productive land and be debt free. I wonder though if moving to a place that’s becoming poorer perhaps more quickly than others is wise. If it helps, I am in western Canada.
Anon, that’s certainly one possibility, and if that happens, Israel may survive for quite a while yet. Another is that it may succeed in its war aims…in which case the last barrier to civil war is out of the way, and down it goes quite a bit more quickly.
Scotlyn, no doubt! As I see it, though, the US is trying to get China to back off a little by punishing Iran.
Chuaquin, ha! Much too little, much too late.
Slithy, to some extent, yes, but we have some testimony for conflict all the way up in the causal plane; the Christian account of the struggle between Satan and Michael is one of many examples. At that level, though, the stakes are the whole shebang.
Helen, fair enough. Yeah, it’s a poker game with an indefinite number of players, a couple of dozen card decks of different types, and most of the lights just went out.
Michael, hmm! That’s a good point, and yeah, you may well be right.
Joseph, can you point me to some documentation for that? I’d like to cite it in an upcoming post, and “one of my commenters said” doesn’t really cut it.
Peter, I suspect it’s just an excuse to jack prices, but duly noted.
Mister N, interesting. In Washington state, that same change was hitting full force by 1983.
Samurai_47, I think this is book #87. Thanks for the links! Those sound fun.
Richard, you’re very likely right. Ebooks were supposed to doom the print book, and yet print books are still selling quite well. That said, “mass literacy” makes room for a lot of variation. My guess is that we’ll bottom out a couple of centuries from now with about 20-30% literacy, due to the collapse of educational systems.
Michael, once countries start preventing emigration, things will unravel very quickly. As for vinyl hurting the environment, well, they’re trying to claim that growing a backyard garden is bad for the environment, too. I sometimes wonder if they’re trying to see just how many crass absurdities people can be gotten to believe.
Ecoprayer, thanks for this as always.
Mark, I think you’re the fourth person to bring that up to me. Let’s see how it turns out first.
Nephite, excellent! I look forward to greeting you as a brother.
Phutatorius, that would explain a few things…
Moonwolf8, I put references to the recent library purges into several of my novels, partly because I like to use realistic details in my fantasies and partly to let people know that large-scale censorship by library administrators really is a thing.
Siliconguy, whoever designed that knew exactly how to appeal to that eternal longing of kids — the desire for a perfect way to shock their moms. Sick, but brilliant — and it also speaks to the simple fact that kids these days have a very clear awareness of some of the dangers they face.
Northwind, that sounds like an excellent plan!
Anon, I wish. I know of no such book.
Jfisher, I wonder how many of those employees actually exist, and how many are fictional employees being used to pad the salaries and benefits of executives. That latter’s tolerably common these days.
PumpkinScone, I know the feeling. It’s definitely entertaining.
Tim, it can work, but be careful. Access to resources, transportation, and the internet may become increasingly problematic in such areas as we proceed.
@ PumpkinScone #104 ” have to admit, it is delightful watching many of my fellow Australians wake up to the fact that almost everything they take for granted as normal for our high powered standard of living is positively dripping with oil, and specifically diesel.”
Just wondering how much of this you have seen yet? I mean I hear a lot of people talking about the price of fuel and their cars, but I don’t think the penny has dropped yet on the second, third, forth order effects coming down the line. Not sure where you are based but here in Melbourne it is basically still at ‘Water Cooler Talk’ level, the next few weeks might be a wake up call. Partner works in plumbing and they have been receiving a lot of notices of price increases, especially with PVC piping due to limited materials for it.
But I was in Dubbo last week and the talk from the local Farmers was much more aware of the coming issues.
I’ve been following the Iran war quite closely and been trading Brent oil futures.
All the oil analysts I see on Twitter are extremely worried. Qatar’s LNG production is damaged and will take 3-5 years to recover, oil production itself is shut down and will take 60 days minimum to restart if there is peace. All this has immense downstream effects — fertilizers, chemical feedstocks, even bunker fuel itself. Farmers are already seeing fertilizer costs shoot up. The US Treasury is manipulating the price of WTI crude by engaging in “swaps” with the reserves; Trump keeps announcing that there are negotiations and a ceasefire, while he’s still sending thousands of troops by airlift and waiting for the Marines to arrive this weekend, and Iran continues bombing Israel. I’ve been making a bit of money just buying Brent (delivery in Europe, less manipulated by the US) every time Trump has some announcement that sends it down. I shorted some tech stocks too.
A big step down the slope of peak oil I guess. Some of the analysts I read say the impact of a prolonged closure of Hormuz will be worse than the 1973 OPEC embargo. The US is less reliant on imports now compared to then, but you will still face at a minimum, massive inflation.
IMO Asian “allies” of the US are bloody idiots if they continue to trust the US after this. The US has shown that it prioritizes Israeli interests over whatever “China containment” ideas some people floated around. South Korea got punished by China heavily for hosting the THAAD system, now that whole thing has been quietly shipped off to the Middle East. Missile stocks are down, Taiwan’s weapon deals have been delayed, it’s unlikely the US will manufacture them anytime close to 2027. Some countries in the region might genuinely starve. Vietnam just signed a deal with Russia to build a nuclear power plant.
I think China is overall doing the best in the whole region. It already shifted heavily to renewables, and it has been importing Russian oil and gas throughout the period of sanctions. Even if Russia wants to export to Asia, the pipelines pass through China. They don’t have a THAAD looking into their territory, US ships and forces are also going away from APAC.
One might argue that the US has no obligation to Asians, and it can sell its own oil and gas now at higher prices. That’s true, but it means Asian countries will pull away from the US. The Philippines is already talking to China about sharing resources in the South China Sea.
You can certainly argue that this war is another sign of the US’s retreat from empire, but as far as I see, it’s an unnecessarily self-destructive way to do it. It was based on false premises (Iranians would rise up, a more subservient leader would replace Khomeini Sr etc). All the US bases in the Persian Gulf are unusable now. US planes have to fly from Diego Garcia or Romania to bomb Iran. Iranians can send 100 Shaheds, now also supplied by Russia, for every interceptor.
Can you tell me how you see the war advancing US interests? I just don’t see it. The stated reason which Rubio and even Trump himself talked about, is about covering Israel.
Let’s say the US bombs Iran back to the stone age, in the meantime, if even a few drones survive in the mountains, they will just bomb UAE and Saudi oil and gas infrastructure (Qatar already made a quiet deal with them). Middle Eastern oil and gas will be taken offline for years. The US might have enough domestic supply for essential needs, but you will face rationing and inflation. The US will likely survive, not without massive social unrest and the Republicans getting voted out.
Jfisher and JMG,
In a public entity like a school district the concept of a deficit is different than a private business where it means you lost money. For many years my wife ran an independent public sector wastewater district and went through the following process.
About a month before the end of the year she had to present a “budget” for the next year to the county commissioners. This would match expected revenue to expected expenses and if they didn’t balance show where the deficit would come from. The elected officials would then vote to approve this budget. Then at the end of that projected year actual financial statements were prepared and presented to elected officials. The difference is the deficit. And since most districts run with no surplus or savings then this deficit is unfunded and causes a problem.
In the school district in question those preparing the ” budget” were incompetent and somehow failed to account for the salaries of 83 employees in the coming year. This is becoming more common and will become even more common as public sector managers slide down the hill of lower literacy , math skills, laziness or lack of attention.
My wife was very careful with her budget and though she had several employees working the numbers she always supervised them herself, often finding mistakes, bad assumptions etc. Every year she would come in with her actuals slightly lower than the budgeted amount. This amount she socked away in a capital reserve fund to pay for repairs and maintenance on district equipment.
After she retired the person the board hired to replace her blew the budget by $40 million dollars and had to dip in to the reserve fund she built up over 14 years. This was with the same accounting and budgeting staff that she had.
Technical and Financial competence are becoming a rare commodity in the public sector, more of this will go on in to the future.
@JMG
“At that level, though, the stakes are the whole shebang.”
Oh, no question. One of my speculations — drawn from Indo-European mythology exclusively, so take it with a grain of salt — is that in the distant past there was a disagreement among the great powers about just how far out to take creation: specifically, whether to create the material, mortal world.
One group argued that it would be fruitful to make a world of beings bound by the hardest of limits. Another argued that it was a waste: the material world would be too corruptible, and its inhabitants pitiful things of no use or value given their short lives. Better to keep the power for other things.
The two sides fought, and the first group won, and became the gods of this world. The latter are remembered as the Titans, Jotnar, etc. Some of the latter have made peace with their loss and even joined the gods, but others are still bitter about it and work to thwart the gods in their work.
Mind you, this is just the idle speculation of someone who’s spent too much time thinking about fantasy worlds!
RE: Trump the accelerationist candidate
I personally haven’t seen anybody talk about accelerationism in the context of foreign policy yet. But I have seen white nationalists on Twitter talk about Trump the accelerationist candidate in 2024 that will accelerate the importation of non-whites into America and finally force a lot of people to realize there is no hope in Trump and the Republican Party for maintaining a white America and that they have to take matters into their own hands. E.g. this:
https://xcancel.com/BellBeakerChad/status/2035789312537813339#m
Speaking of crows, did you see the thousands of them circling Tel Aviv? Very ominous.
This month I want to ask the commentariat for help with a computer related topic.
I want to make the jump to Linux, but am totally intimidated by it. I haven’t done command prompt stuff since way back in 1985 or so. Remember when WordPerfect and 5 inch floppys were the screaming hot latest tech? When file names were limited to 8 characters? Yeah, all the way back then.
I’m afraid to do even a registry edit because the computer says it will explode if I try it. Thus, I’m going to need a *lot* of hand holding to do this. Everything from picking a version (Mint, I guess?) to downloading it correctly (its own partition? no idea how to do that) to making it run right (back to using command lines again?) to finding Linux versions of the programs I use most (old style Notepad, Photoshop 7, Audacity 1.3, mp3Tag)
Is there something like a Linux forum out there where total newbs can get the baby-steps instructions and help I need?
You’ve been using SolarFire as your software for your charts. Is there something you wish it did, or did better?
The fuel crisis in Australia is having a severe impact on Australia’s supply chains and leading to blue collar apprentices being forced out of work and less crops being planted in Australia’s farms:
https://archive.ph/NNvZ5
Mister N, interesting. In Washington state, that same change was hitting full force by 1993.
Based on your first reply to me, I have to ask, did you mean to say “1983” instead?
Polecat 58
> we now have one flaming Alan Dershowitz claiming that Kent, Tucker, Fuentes, and Owens are, you guessed it – NEONAZIS!
These elder statesmen of over 85 can’t help but be out of the picture within five years. Dersh-the-Hearse is 87 — how much longer can he stand up without tipping over? In the meantime, HE IS MAKES UNENDING–TROUBLE; so does Chuck Shumer and Adam Schiff. That includes the almost-comatose Mutch MacMongrel. They, and those of their age-group, are crotchety, brittle, boring, ill-treating others at will. They don’t know that bowing out gracefully would have been ten years ago. Look at whosit Pelosi the-Nosy. I don’t care to remember her first name. Schmancy Pelosi? Antsy?
💨🥴😵💫💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Mother Balance,
There is an installation guide for Linux Mint that’s pretty easy to follow and doesn’t require editing registries or the use of the command prompt line:
https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html
Just a few thoughts on the war.
First, in public policy school, they teach you that dictatorships work by having one guy at the top who distributes money to a bunch of cronies who prop up the entire system. Thus, if you take out the guy at the top and replace him with a person friendly to you, who you bribe, you can turn that enemy into an ally. It’s part of the “realist” school of thought that dominates academia. That approach seems to have worked in Venezuela, and I assume that the Trump administration hoped a similar scenario would play out in Iran. Of course, Iran’s a theocracy, and taking out the leader doesn’t work in a theocracy.
Second, both militaries are really impressing me. The United States targeting has been spot on, and the ability to assassinate multiple levels of leadership in such a short time with a mix of intelligent and precision guided missiles is scary. Defensively, the interceptors are working better than I had anticipated. Iran, on the other hand, certainly knows how to play its rather limited hand. It knows its only point of leverage is shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, its done a great job of blowing up alternatives to the Strait, and it has been able to get Donald Trump to back down from some of his threats by threatening to blow up the very soft targets (desalination plants) of U.S. allies in the area.
Third, whoever is running Iran now is probably enjoying this war and getting to execute their “make the U.S. come to us” plan. I remember reading about how happy World War II made George Patton, and I got that vibe once the Iranian president apologized to Iran’s neighbors for bombing them and whoever is really running the show shut him down quick and made it known to all that the bombing would continue.
Fourth, I don’t have a good way to end it. From my point of view, what Iran should do is keep on blocking the Strait, keep selectively bombing oil refineries and pipelines of U.S. allies that bypass the use of the Strait, and wait for the U.S. consumers to get sick of the high gas prices. That would force the U.S. to come to the negotiating table, put boots on the ground, or use nukes (which I don’t think we would ever do for obvious reasons). As for what the U.S. should do, take and hold Kharg Island which would force Iran to come to the negotiating table. That’s easier said than done, however, particularly the holding part, and risks blowing up Kharg’s island’s refining capacity, something neither side wants.
Fifth, if we do come up with some sort of accommodation with Iran that effectively brings them into our fold, that would really hurt China and give us a lot of leverage if they ever do attack Taiwan. So, for the U.S., this is a high risk, high return type deal.
Interesting times we live in.
I agree with the people saying that Israel controls the USA and we aren’t acting in our own self-interest in waging this war.
Unfortunately, Iran’s conditions for peace would be so humiliating that the current administration cannot accept them and expect to remain in power. They are:
Guarantees to prevent the recurrence of war
Closure of US military bases in the region
Payment of compensation to the Islamic Republic
An end to wars across all regional fronts
Establishing a new legal framework for the Strait of Hormuz
Prosecution and extradition of media figures deemed hostile to Iran
(source: Almayadeen English, 3/22/26)
So the USA has to fight on to have the chance to save achieve an objective the White House can frame as a “win” to the public.
@ Mother Balance RE : Linux.
I have been using Linux systems since the late 90’s, I would recommend Linux Mint for most people. It is the closest to Windows in usability and it hasn’t been clogged down with rubbish. There are lots of people who want Linux to be like custom cars with kind of gadgets and whatnot, 99% of people don’t need that.
You will download the ISO from the website and either burn it to a DVD or use a disc image writer to a USB to boot from. An ISO to USB writer can be found via a web search, throw in the term ‘open source’ to ensure it isn’t something you have to pay for or has stupid conditions attached. Using ‘open source’ on any software search term is usually a good way of finding stuff that won’t try to screw you.
Write the image to the USB/Disc and restart the system.
You will then boot the system via USB. To do this, you generally start the computer and start hitting the F9/F10/F11 or F12 key until the boot menu comes up. I generally just bash all of them until something happens.
You can then select ‘Boot into live image’ and this will load up a base system. It is a good time to figure out what works and what doesn’t on your system. Nowadays there is a very good chance that everything will work out of the box but mileage will vary.
If you wish to install it, just double click the install icon on the desktop. This will then guide you through the installation step. This includes making the partitions. If you want to use just Linux, just select ‘total install’ or something similarly named, other wise it will ask you what size partition you want and it will do the rest.
As for the software. For notepad, Mint comes with Pluma which is just as good as Notepad before all the Microslop junk got added on.
For Photoshop I recommend Krita or GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program). Krita is the easier of the two and most similar to Photoshop, or at least as I remember it from 20 years ago.
Audacity is available on Linux, I believe it started there, so that is easy. For mp3tag, I am not sure but there would be alternatives available.
All these can be installed via the ‘Software Manager’ which is in the start menu on the left side. You open that, type in the program name or general search terms and just click install. It will do the rest.
Note that through out all of this, you will not need to use the command line. While I am familiar with it, I have not had to fall back to the command line out of necessity for over a decade now. Luckily a lot of geeks realized that one day average folks would need to use these things have put in the hard work of making sure you don’t need to fall back on that unless you really have too.
As for a forum to ask questions, to be blunt, the vast majority of Linux forums are filled with elitist jackasses. But if you can get past that, you should be able to find solutions to any issues that may arise.
This guide looks to be pretty good if a little wordy. https://itsfoss.com/install-linux-mint/
Hi Everyone,
I have started a Substack post and put up my first article this evening. If you would like to read it, it is called, One Druid’s Institute and it is about rural living, fugality and Druidry.
Maxine
Chris at Fernglade #72: “Have to laugh, early on the media were claiming that we were OK on an oil front because our supplies came from Asian refineries (there are however two refineries remaining in this country), and not the Middle East. The lack of comprehension of such subjects is gobsmacking.”
Take it for what it is worth, but I don’t believe this indicates lack of comprehension–it is intended messaging to prevent people from panicking.
The media (and political structure as a whole) is a very interesting beast–if there is nothin worth worrying about (e.g. seasonal flu), the news stories will blow it out of proportion and try to make you think we are nearing Armageddon. If something is really worth worrying about, though, they will claim “nothing to worry about”. I don’t know why truth is such a foreign concept and I can’t for the life of me understand why people pay so much in terms of money, time, and emotion to listen to these things, but taking the opposite approach from their tone has been about the best realization I ever had…
“I think the point of this war is to cause Iran enough damage that other potential regional threats will do the math and back off: as the Chinese proverb puts it, killing the chicken to scare the monkey.”
I don’t think that fits, or rather, it too easily fits every single instance of American aggression and so it doesn’t explain any one particular instance of it. If the point were simply to showcase US ability to deal heavy damage and have that function as an implicit threat against others, the Houthis/Ansar Allah are right there on the other side of the block. They’re an easier enemy to tackle than Iran, and war against them would incur far less costs in every respect. Actually, the Trump administration did already attack them, but if memory serves the attacks weren’t notably heavier than those of the Biden administration a year prior, even though this would have been the perfect place to put “killing the chicken to scare the monkey” into practice.
The question that needs answering is: Why Iran? And on that grounds, the likelier goal of the war was an outcome similar to Venezuela. The buildup around Iran began after the latest protests in the country, and cited said protests as justification. Said protests may have led the administration to believe that the Iranian government was on its last legs and that it wouldn’t take much more to either topple its government or cow it into submission, thus eliminating its biggest regional rival. I would also say that the opening gambit of killing Iran’s leadership during negotiations only makes sense if you expect a brief and decisive conflict leading to quick capitulation, otherwise you’ve torched your diplomatic credibility for nothing. Add in Israeli and lobbyist pressure towards war and I don’t think a more cogent explanation can be found.
Some years ago an addict in recovery explained our spiritual self in a way that made a lot of sense to me. He said we are like a drop of water that falls and flows down the river and into the sea, there to merge with the great mass of spirit, which in turn evaporates and condenses into new drops of water.
However, on Ecosophia the spirit is treated as a discrete entity that goes through many cycles on the road to . . . well, I’m not quite sure what.
So my question is, given these two incompatible versions, can it be that we are given the option of retaining our personal spirit, or alternatively of dissolving our personal spirit and electing to join the undifferentiated mass of spiritual stuff?
@MotherBalance #114
Here is a Linux Mint forum which might help:
https://forums.linuxmint.com/
The main site for Linux Mint is here:
https://www.linuxmint.com/
I recommend Mint, Cinnamon Edition (which I have used for almost 20 years). It is the most “Windows look-alike” of the editions.
One assurance I can give you, is that you do not absolutely have to learn command-level hieroglyphics, unless you are trying to customize your OS (as I, personally, am fond of doing!). On the rare occasions where you may have to do command-level work, there is always a lot of tips and coaching out there, if you need it.
Another comfort, is that Linux WINE (Windows Emulator) is now quite stable and useful, so you can run many of your Windows-only programs on Linux if desired. In past years, WINE wasn’t always so stable, but that has been fixed now.
I hope all of this helps.
JMG # 77:
I’m aware of the EU megalomaniac geopolitical dreams, so I guess it would never beg for oil/gas to Russia, and Brussels isn’t going to give up its support to Kiev regime until eventually it falls (due to a shameful future defeat or an opportune regime change). EU elites are slaves of their own toxic narrative, so I think: no argument here.
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It seems the first western axis goal during current Iran war has failed: regime change attempt with a decapitation strike against its high spheres. However, Israel and USA governments have followed the old story “The fox and the grapes”(by Esopus) and have decided Iranian grapes were too green. So they’ve changed their goals “simply” to achieve ideally Iran goes back to the Stone Age, or at least to weaken it enough. We’ll see.
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Anonymous # 85:
Active Israeli lobby people within Trumpian government next it doesn’t exclude an eventual blackmailing it, if Trump wasn’t eager enough to accomplish Zionist desires. The two hypothesis (blackmail and common interests) don’t have to be exclusive, but maybe “accumulative”, methink.
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Mark # 95:
I think current Middle East war isn’t the same scenario than that JMG novel (spoiler now…). In that book, USA Army suffers a shameful defeat (they end surrendering to the Africans), but in Iran war US and Israel worst case could be they ended economically exhausted if Iran resists enough thanks to China and Russia support (supplies from Central Asia, Caspian Sea and Caucasus). Which I think it’s an hypothetical but not sure war end.
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(To be continued)
Hi John,
Agree, I do see the Iran war as primarily one of degrading Iran’s capabilities to cause trouble in the region for years to come. The latest briefings from the US command suggest massive systematic damage to its conventional military capabilities, including ballistic missiles, air force, navy, submarines and most importantly the wider military-industrial base.
This has two main advantages, 1) it reduces the Iranian risk to Israel, America’s close ally in the region and 2) as you suggest it sends a signal to everyone else of the impressive capabilities of the US war machine e.g. “Don’t mess with the US!”.
Now, I see the war as two fronts, there is the conventional front where the US is doing an amazing job as per the above.
But there is also the unconventional front, where the use of cheap drones, midget submarines and other asymmetrical warfare has turned the Straights into a Iranian controlled water (and caused massive economic harm to the Gulf Kingdoms). Its hard not to deny that in this aspect of the war Iran is “winning”.
Any de-escalation/ceasefire will need to acknowledge this new reality where Iran can strike and effectively control the Straights for years to come. Also, whilst new technologies will likely emerge that will even the board, at the moment the US is burning through its expensive interceptors to destroy relatively cheap drones and missiles. That isn’t sustainable.
The US and its wider allies will need to develop relatively cheap drone and anti-drone/missile technologies to combat that difference in cost.
One could argue that both sides are “winning” but ultimately, my conclusion that this is a “messy win” for Trump (that won’t feel like a win due to the economic hit caused by the Straights closing) feels about right. Longer term, I suspect historians might judge the war as more successful to the Americans and their allies given the massive hit it caused Iran (which might still pave the way for regime change in the future).
As for Israel, do you see a civil war coming (once the threat posed by Iran and its proxies is effectively eliminated) between the hardline religious groups who are fast growing and the secular majority?
JMG # 107:
Yes, Spanish government last measures against oil shock arrive late, too late. It’s interesting I’ve just read Antonio Turiel blog (“crashoil”, in Spanish) and our opinions are partly similar. Well, he’s very biased to warn you every day “the end of the world is near”, but I think its criticism against our govt measures is right.
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Alvin # 109:
I partly agree. If we keep believing the US global retreat narrative (like John and some commenters seem to think) we can fit current events in that context, but there are also some uncomfortable elephants in the room.
By the way, I guess you wanted to write “Khamenei” instead “Khomeini” in your comment. Khomeini died decades ago…Old Khamenei was killed weeks ago.
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Anon # 113:
I didn’t know about Tel Aviv crows hordes. I knew there are (or there were) a lot of bats during its nights. Well, crows are usually linked to bad luck, because they’re mainly scavengers, but they’re also very smart. Do you have any link to images/video?
Some commenters and online analysts have pointed the risk of uncontrolled war escalation in Middle East until an hypothetical nukes use by Israel. IMHO, it’s not a very probable end, because there are more countries with nukes, and mutual disuasion works yet.
However, there’s been much less concern about civil nuclear plants in the war zone. Israel and Iran have civil nuke plants alike. Of course, the’ve got against air strikes aerial defenses to protect them from eventual direct attacks, but protection against missiles is never 100%.
International Law forbids direct attacks against nuke plants for evident reasons. However, respect for International Laws today is near 0 (thanks Trump and another leaders).
It could be said that nobody would be reckless and crazy enough to blown up a nuclear reactor, which would lead to a radiactive hell. Of course, it would hurt the enemy, but also “innocent” neighbour countries, and even the own aggressive country (radioactive clouds fly far…).
It’s true, but a desperate government could be tempted to do it.
By the way, a direct hit against Iran could be harmful for it, but this country is at least 2 times bigger than Spain. Its population would suffer, but less than in the correlative case (radiactive cloud from an Israeli plant). Israel is a small country, so whatever radiation event could be worse than in a big country case, methink.
It’s interesting that after a 4 years war between Russia and Ukraine, none of the two sides have attacked directly its enemy nuke plants at will (in spite of their propaganda claims). Indeed, Putin has ordered until today to attack every Ukrainian power plant…unless the nuke ones. He’s not crazy nor fool. He hasn’t bomb them thanks to his goodness (ahem), but because he knows the hypothetical radioactive cloud from a destroyed Ukrainian plant would reach soon Russian territory in that case.
By now it seems Israel and Iran are avoiding direct hits against nuke plants cores, but I’m afraid it’s a matter of time (and bad luck, or desperation) that geopolitics and radiation get linked some day in near future. I wish to be wrong, but…
By the way, according some news (propaganda or reality?) an Iranian missile hit a building near main reactor(s) in Dimona, in Israel. On the other hand, one of the Israeli attacks targets is the Iranian nuclear program, so…cross fingers, please.
Regarding the war in the Middle East, Iran completely surprised me with its propaganda skills. I‘ve seen two AI-generated, but very watchable videos in the style of the Lego movie which tell the story of the war. Both feature Satan and Bibi using the Epstein files to force Trump’s hand, one is more serious, focusing on the school bombing, the other is a music video to a very genuine sounding black American gangster rap diss track against Trump (certainly also AI). What got my attention is that the English speaking audience is celebrating it, with the comment sections being almost entirely in agreement, sometimes exuberantly so. I‘ve heard about funny memes the Iranians are posting, but haven’t seen any.
I‘ll keep an eye on the matter.
Northwind: I have had the same anxiety for “April” and listening to psychic channels, they all are anxious too and it’s widespread. Note, this is AFTER the war, like hazy anxiety slowly gathering, since January sure, but even as the war is stable, the anxiety was continuing to gather. My personal opinion is the economic fallout, or rather the inevitable and 25-year-delayed economic crisis they’ve printed to delay this long, but I have no way to know.
It’s the only thing that would get peoples’ attention and make them change, so sadly, that makes it a “Good” thing.
Peschel: The total destruction of culture such that everyone is “Bowling Alone” is highly engineered from the highest level and billions are spent to insure this is the case. You can look from the Beta tests on Native Americans to destroy culture, through social programs, such that 120 years or more, the result is inevitably the same, but faster. That means they know exactly what will happen and all cultures will resist and need to be man-handled, forcing their destruction on them. Roughly speaking, a shattered culture is a defenseless one, which makes them easier to extract and control. Colonialism 101. So “The Government” wishes to extract and control, have no counterweight in a healthy, well-regulated People backed by a strong, loyal family. This took a long time but is going quite well. For example: Biden investigating anyone Catholic and shutting all churches or other “societies” (clubs) during Covid, keeping liquor Stores, casinos, and WalMart open. For more information, they’ve published books and white papers on this for 100 years discussion how and why, and their signed writings would fill a small library. Start with Bernays.
What I can deduce from the war is that I’m not being told what’s really causing it. For example, previous comment Logo Dau, says Trump is very concerned with his popularity so stopped deportation, but then started a war far more unpopular. –Those are opposites.– Not picking on him or the statement, but to propose two opposites in the same sentence is more or less daily with every observer right now. Trump is a puppet who controls nothing, but also is responsible and controls everything. He is in the Epstein files, which is why he’s the only President that released them. The war was for the NeoCons, although NeoCons like Bolton are against it. It was for Israel although Israel is being bombed to dust by it. It’s to secure the straits except the U.S. isn’t securing them and doesn’t need the oil. It’s for Empire except, beyond openly saying he’s against Empire 10 years, he’s laboriously withdrawing all Empire assets (eg Asia). Etc.
My conclusion from this and actual inside information after 25 years of intensive work, is the problem is, *there are so many lies even the base assumptions about reality (eg, What is “Iran”. What is “Congress”,) etc themselves are complete lies.* And we can’t think straight until those are unpacked and made true. That is: the world makes PERFECT sense and everyone is behaving completely logically and intelligently, *they’re just lying about it.* And have to. During a war “The Truth is so valuable she must be escorted by a bodyguard of lies” I guess Churchill said.
I can’t express that to you since by definition it’s both more astonishingly complicated than a year’s lectures could explain, and, Obviously since it’s being protected with lies, my conclusions may also be wrong and certainly are somewhere. But the war makes perfect sense and is no mistake or game badly played.
Start with the assumption they got there by playing the game very, very well, and see what different conclusions about the state of the chessboard appear for you.
@ Joseph # 88
“There are people who supported Trump in 2024 because they believed Trump is the accelerationist candidate who will start a war in the Middle East that will backfire on the United States and cause the United States to pull out of the Middle East.”
That sounds about as logical as starting a fire in your neighbour’s house in the hope the fire department will turn up in a timely enough fashion to prevent it causing damage to your own house.
Mention of the Uzi upthread reminds me of an incident during my national service.
We were on the shooting range, seated on the ground as the instructor stood in front of us demonstrating the Uzi. It’s a cheap and nasty automatic weapon that’s only effective at short range because it’s so inaccurate.
The instructor went through the various parts of the weapon, explained how to assemble and disassemble it, slapped in a magazine, and prepared to fire at a target. At that moment a sparrow flew in and settled on the ground about 30 yards away.
There was a tense silence. Would he or wouldn’t he?
Yep, he would. He changed his aim and fired a long burst at the sparrow. The bullets raised a cloud of dust as they spattered all around the bird. As the dust settled you could see the ground pockmarked with holes in a circular pattern with the sparrow in the middle.
Unconcerned, the sparrow took off in a short hop and landed about 20 yards further on and carried on looking for insects or whatever.
The instructor, clearly rattled by this insult to his marksmanship, took long and careful aim at the new position and fired off the rest of the magazine.
This time, as the dust settled around it, the sparrow took off and flew away, never to be seen again.
@ JMG– Yes, I noticed that. And I remember very well how most of the anti-war voices of the early 2000s when completely silent once management of the global war machine was taken over by an affable young black man. At the time, though, I didn’t understand what I was seeing– I was part of the radical Left still, and we expected mainstream Democrats to be sellouts. That those Democrats included nearly everyone in our own extended social circles who happened to be over the age of 30, often including our own parents, occurred to no one, and neither did the obvious implication. Even now, I’ve seen several confused left-wing commentators asking “Where are the anti-war protests??” I take their naivete as a sign of their sincerity, because it suggests that no one has informed them that the “anti-war protests” were really just pep-rallies in advance of the elections in 2004, ’06, and ’08.
@ Logo Dau #70 – Yes, but the usual custom under such circumstances is to either maneuver the enemy into firing the first shot or to simply lie and claim they did. I find it at least noteworthy both that this was not done and that I’ve heard anti-war commentators openly lamenting the fact that Trump didn’t even have the decency to come up with a compelling lie before going to war.
Hi Michael Gray,
Hmm. Thanks for mentioning the Albo quote, and it seems like an odd thing to say after his lot just penned a free trade agreement with the EU. If I may opine, our system doesn’t tend to produce great leaders, we instead produce a sort of ‘last man standing’ politician, and perhaps they can be thought of as the ‘Steven Bradbury’ of politics? It certainly appears to be a thankless job to me.
Hey, what’s this about ‘water cooler’ talk only? Maybe for you. 🙂 How’s that penne pasta pre-made meal possible now, I ask you? I’m up in the bush not too far out of Melbourne, as you know, and things are getting strange. Earlier this afternoon I spotted diesel for sale locally at AU$3.20 a litre, which blew my mind, and unleaded was AU$2.45 a litre. The daily ever increasing prices is like watching inflation occur in real time. And I’d heard that about the plastic pipes, which I was onto early. 😉 Hmm. Man, truthfully, I’m only just keeping slightly ahead of this tidal wave.
It wasn’t all that long ago when a mob in Melbourne used to produce vinyl, whilst another produced polyethylene – a remarkably useful material.
Dunno, but my best guess at this stage is that petrol, or diesel, will be rationed after the Easter holidays. I’d like to be wrong.
How are you doing anyway?
Cheers
Chris
Hi John Michael,
I’m with you in regards to the reorientation of politics in your country and the ructions that it is causing worldwide. The facts sort of fit that world view and messaging. And it’s far better than being sunk.
We’ve discussed in the past that the ‘land of stuff’ began off loading their US treasury reserves almost a decade ago, and that and the deficit spending and exporting of US inflation began a long painful ball rolling, but did you know that – and I agree that the tar sands were an objective – Venezuela had I believe the second highest debt to GDP ratio behind that of Japan? They allowed themselves to get economically weak, and so were swallowed. And also, I hear talk of Iran this and that, but Tehran, a city of almost fifteen million people had almost run out of water? It’s hard to manufacture high tech stuff like drones, without water. And also, it’s worth mentioning the hyper-inflation which was prevalent there. If I may suggest, there is little difference between a five million bank note and a ten million bank note.
The ancient grand master of strategy said that opponents backed into a corner, were dangerous and should be dealt with carefully on that basis. None of us will ever know what that regime there was planning, but when faced with multiple internal crises, my gut feeling suggests that some mobs believe that facing a common enemy is preferable to becoming the enemy which can blamed for a whole bunch of internal dramas. In essence, they too were at a weak, but dangerous pivot point. None of the crises they faced could be resolved easily without massive change.
Cheers
Chris
Phutatorius, “and that sad sack jazz trumpet player, er, er, what was his name?”
Chet Baker?
Last year I helped with a project researching Buddhist influenced meditation groups in Britain. I was surprised to learn that some of these esoteric groups have survived from the Victorian era, and that the influence of Theosophy is all pervasive.
A notable feature of these groups is that they remain undefined and unaffiliated with any particular Buddhist tradition. They’ve basically made things up as they went along, and they’ve added elements from Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Western occultism. The results are quite extraordinary, in particular the fusion of Anglicanism and Zen which has helped to rekindle British Christian monasticism.
I also learnt that there were a number of garden shed ‘temples’ in the nineteen fifties where the leaders had names like ‘Roshi Dennis’. Despite having only a handful of books on Buddhism, and no direct connection with the Asian traditions, they became highly accomplished. In contemporary Western Buddhism we’ve somehow lost this very bold and open hearted approach.
My question is about the specific elements of Theosophy that have been absorbed into Western Buddhism? The quest for Shambhala is one example. I suspect that the roles are rather different, in that a Theosophist is really a Victorian gentleman-adventurer and an occult investigator, whereas traditional Buddhist roles are nearly always ascetic.
“As I see it, though, the US is trying to get China to back off a little by punishing Iran.” Well, yes, but obviously China and Iran have their own perspectives on the matter.
And, as far as I can see, the nation of Iran (including, but not limited to its ruling regime) is, and has been, pursuing policies which are not a million miles away from policies you often speak about here.
Firstly, separate yourself from the mass. In the context of countries, this means stepping away from the global political and economic order. (Although in Iran’s case, this has partly been forced through the imposition of sanctions, it has also been by choice, as they have responded to their isolation from the global economic order by developing strong, locally grown, widely distributed industries and technologies, assisted by the strong cultural, religious and deep historical story they are telling themselves about who they are).
Secondly, as a society, as you advocate, they appear to have devoted far more energy to building what they love, than to destroying what they hate.
Thirdly, their willingness to make it costly for others to attack what they love and have devoted themselves to building, in order to persuade them to back off and reconsider doing so again, is a price they are clearly willing to pay in exchange for retaining that independence.
From my point of view, as a person more interested in the adventures of the independent actors of this world, than in the ventures of those still caught in the throes of the global political and economic order, I will follow the doings of independent actors, such as Iran (but they are by no means the only such actors) with great interest. Lessons may well be learned.
It has been a morning of organized chaos. It reminded me of a recent MS-NOW (MSNBC) discussion on Kathy Somebody – Hu, Nun? anyway, every commentator screamed to the high heavens of how TRUMP IS CHAOS!. AND THEY DO NOT LIKE IT ONE BIT. Nope not one bit.
Then the redistricting campaign ads for Virginia came on shouting MAGA HAS GONE TOO FAR. TRUMP IS CHAOS. We must stop him (them) by voting for all Democratic districts to replace the Republican ones. Well what they said was “to insure free elections.” (Orwell anyone?) (And May the Gods bless their little pointy heads.)
I guess the message given by the professional managerial class is arrrrrrgggghhhh Chaos! As the Governor of Maryland remarked, “Trump doesn’t ask, he does.” I suppose the PMC want to be asked for permission.
Personally, I think that the chaos is needed. There has been too much order. Chaos needs to break the order. The war in Iran is an exercise in that. I think that the real fear of Trump is that he makes the PMC feel very vulnerable.
JMG
I’m curious, there’s somewhat of a running joke in financial circles that chart analysis (the kind you see with the red and green bars called “candles”) is “astrology for men” because they’re basically trying to predict the future. What’s been interesting to me is some of the really good chart analysts are starting to unironically question reality because of it because several major economic disruptions (Covid, tarriffs, wars, etc.) all happened when the charts were expecting them to.
So I’m curious if you’ve ever come across this “chart divination” and what are your thoughts? I see it as similar to the tarot as divination in that you can basically make the cards say whatever you want and so there are a lot of frauds, but there is also a minority of them who are being genuine.
Dear Mr. Druid. I am just wondering what you or your readers are thinking about the Iran war?
I am finding the information space is a disaster right now as it is all propaganda all the time. However what I have noticed is the following:
-the pro Russia sites tend to be pro Iran – see Daniel Davis or Larry Johnson. They do tend to use click bait headlines that can reduce their credibility. I like Alex and Alex but they refuse to criticize Russia or China – it was a long time for them to acknowledge India has made a mess of this.
-the 30% of the population that supports Trump are happy to believe everything Trump says is part of a grand plan, “are you tired of winning yet?” They keep trotting out how the Iranian Navy is gone, but refuse to acknowledge this is a ground war. Note I am assuming missiles are artillery are ground based.
-Some normally astute commentators like James Kunstler, Alex Krainer and Tom Luongo have lost the plot, seeing 9 dimensional chess. It is possible for third or forth order effects to be support your point of view but these are not necessarily planned. Good luck as opposed to good management.
-I find the Naked Capitalism approach of Trump et al are making it up as they go to be the best analysis at this time, as this settles into a war of attrition and the economic impacts are starting to be felt
Michael Gray 87
> @Chris #72 Interesting times a foot at the moment in the halls of power.
I first misread this as “hills of power.”
“Hills” has a nice ring to it. In due time, halls become hills. Particularly now — no one has money to pay for halls’ infrastructure anymore.
The Halls-to-Hills movement.
Hills: the new elites.
Have you listened to your hill today?
💨🏔️💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
A timely article for Mother Balance.
https://www.howtogeek.com/desktop-environents-that-solve-problems-gnome-will-not/
From my own recent tinkerings I found Gnome to be my least favorite desktop.
There are plenty of YouTube videos on installing Linux and the main versions have good instructions.
The questions you need to answer before starting are, do you want a clean install or a dual boot with windows (or MacOS) on another partition? Or you can have a dual boot with each OS on its own drive.
The next question is what video card do you have. Old Nvidia cards are not well supported, AMD and Intel built in graphics are supported and work well. How much memory do you have? If you have 8 GB or more you are good, 4 limits you a bit but is still workable but don’t expect Plasma to run well. Then WiFi cards, which one if any? Broadcom WiFi can be very problematic as I found all too well. Mint and Zorin did work after installing the drivers which required a wired connection to get started. Fedora required a wired connection to start and a cryptic command line Incantation but it is running now. Debian and Lubuntu both failed despite my best efforts, so they are wired only.
The entire Ubuntu family is about to be updated the end of April so it might be worth waiting if you want one of them. Fedora 43 is the current version and is pretty new. Mint will be updating around September.
If you like late Windows 10 try Zorin. If you liked Windows 7 try Mint Cinnamon if the PC has 8 GB of memory and was made in 2014 or later. If it’s not up to that try Mint MATE. I have that on a 2009 Core 2 Duo with 4GB and it works fine, though speedy it’s not.
You can try all of them with a live USB stick, just get one that is USB 3 or the experiment will be really slow. It will still work. The Linux image will be running of the USB stick and will not alter your hard drive but you can try out the desktop and the basic software suite. Mint, Fedora, Zorin, and Ubuntu all have their own app stores as well. An over abundance of choice is the usual problem.
Richard @ 93, I think any revival of literacy and other intellectual skills will depend on the willingness of various communities to support the education of their young. I do think that schools will look very different than they do now. It is my personal opinion that the traditional American high school has long been obsolete. If those who believe that what I feeel is what is real suffer losses and cause grievous harm to others from that stubbornness (We can create our own reality.), there might be a backlash in favor of instruction based on reason as part of a young person’s upbringing.
Are we going through a paradigm shift in the US?
I noticed more and more panic on the Democratic side at evidence in the redistricting campaign. It seems to be a tree tops effort to have the districts become all Democratic. In fact, it is presented as standing against MAGA and Trump. At first, everyone thought it was a done deal in voting, since the Democrats creamed the Republicans in the governor’s election. Then something strange happened – grassroots. Now, the Democrats are pouring more money into this and are sending at least to me – panicked e-mails about dark money flooding Virginia.
On the other side, the grassroots have spawned more and more people going door to door, sending post cards and making yard signs against redistricting. The rural areas are in revolt and even in urban blue areas, there is a push against the whole thing. They have also got the attention of Steven Bannon who asked his War Room Posse to help out.
My observation is that the local Democrats got too greedy too fast, and regarded themselves a sure thing. Besides redistricting, they want constitutional amendments for gun control, abortion on demand, same-sex marriage, and felons to be citizens on release of prison. Various Conservative outlets have noted that the gun control measures are so extreme as to make the Second Amendment, an asterisk. In other words, they want to cement all of their policies at once. It seems to be a panic and not a victory march.
—
I know I phrased this as a Democratic vrs Republican change. But it seemed to be a handy example of what seems to be going on. The former group of professional managerial class want to enshrine their hegemony anyway they can. Meanwhile, the new group which seems to be MAGA populist types – people who make a lot of chaos and destroy given rules. Is the chaos the new paradigm? What is after the MAGA – are they only a transition?
@cChuaquin – I am more and more convinced that Trump does not have any ideas. He does and says whatever his handlers whisper in his ear, like Grima Wormtongue.
Right now, you have the Christofascist lunatic Hegseth, the cognitively-damaged and completely out-of-his-depth Trump, the pro-oligarch, (and/or pro-Putin) Trump whisperers, the criminal Netenyahu and the vicious Iranian theocracy in play. With Russia providing intelligence to Iran (which Trump hand-waved away, mysteriously). And it seems Iran is not going to do what Trump would expect (which I believe is projection) , i.e. pay homage to Trump and back down. And Israel/US are reportedly running out of expensive anti-drone munitions. Which starts to make this a bit existential for Israel. I couldn’t imagine a more dangerous mix, frankly.
If the US sends ground forces into Iran, it will get really bloody, really fast. It’s a country built for defence, geographically, and has had plenty of time to prepare. Plus, it has a large, standing army. And is led by a religious maniac whose family the US just slaughtered.
The only possible way out of this is talking. Yes, Trump will have to eat humble pie. Thus, I think he’ll keep going hard.
@jmg and all — went to Atlanta for spring break.
I heard about 4 hour delays at airports but when I went thru security yesterday it was really quick. I wonder if this is an “op” to make us fearful, or it just finally petered out (I did see lots of uniformed ICE agents at the airport).
(I wound up being 2 hours early for my flight — but I had stuff to read so all was fine).
David Ellis @ 122, I think maybe Miles Davis was meant.
I would like to hear a reason, besides it makes me feel good and annoys my enemies, why chaos is A Good Thing. ICE agents in airports was supposed to irritate the libs; instead it is likely to cause airlines to lose money.
“I think current Middle East war isn’t the same scenario than that JMG novel (spoiler now…). In that book, USA Army suffers a shameful defeat (they end surrendering to the Africans), but in Iran war US and Israel worst case could be they ended economically exhausted if Iran resists enough thanks to China and Russia support (supplies from Central Asia, Caspian Sea and Caucasus). Which I think it’s an hypothetical but not sure war end.”
Trump can send American troops in to invade Iran, who then suffer shameful defeats and surrender to the Iranians. Trump has been announcing on Truth Social that he wants to take over Kharg Island, which is part of Iran, so it is very much in the realm of possibility.
There’s an article published in American Affairs last year about just how decrepit and filled with fraud America’s military is right now:
https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2025/02/americas-national-security-wonderland/
Meanwhile the Israelis believe that Trump will not pull back from the war and will not deescalate:
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-891234
Paul @ 149, Your analysis is one reason why I am beginning to think our president will not long be in his office and possibly is not long for this world. A politician can publicly insult campaign backers. That is understood as smokescreen for public consumption. What the politician must not ever do is cause the backers to lose money. During the presidential campaign, Trump had clearly slowed down a bit, but he appeared healthy and compos mentis. The precipitate decline we have seen lately did not appear until last summer, I think, and came on fairly quickly. Can that sort of thing be induced in some way? Hmm.
That possible scenario does make some sense of Mike Johnson’s intransigence in the House. I suspect the Speaker thinks he can himself become the president without having to win an election. With the elected president visibly failing in health, the VP notoriously unpopular, as in widely disliked and detested, who knows what might happen? If promises of that sort have been made to Johnson, the planned upheaval would have to happen before the midterms, when Johnson will surely lose his razor thin majority.
“Are we going through a paradigm shift in the US?”
Yes we are. The Democrats are becoming irrelevant, like the Whigs in the 1850s. The Republican Party is splitting in to multiple factions all which hate each other, like the Democrats in the 1850s.
#130 Siliconguy-
Oh… wow. Just reading your very nice answer gave me the heebie jeebies.
How do I figure out what graphic card I have? How do I figure out what Wifi card I have? I think I have 8gb memory (I’m on a laptop) but I’m not sure, where do I check that- I know I’ve seen it somewhere when I check after every update to make sure they didn’t on the sly turn my camera/microphone/keylogger back on. I don’t think I want a clean install because if something goes really horribly wrong, I won’t have any way to get back on the internet to ask for help.
My internet connection is a remote mesh to the neighbor’s Starlink, so no wired connection available. The laptop is from 2020 and is Core i5. I’m on Windows 11 and hate it, wasn’t fond of 10 either. I really liked Windows 7, boy was I unhappy when that laptop died. Heck, I really liked XP.
And what is a live usb stick? I have lots of usb sticks of various sizes and ages. I don’t trust them anymore since the most recent stick I bought I put my whole audiobook collection on it, and the very next time I plugged it into the computer the stick failed- totally dead- and I lost my whole audiobook collection. I also have a 1 tera SSD thing I use to back up my whole computer every couple of months.
See what I mean about baby steps and hand holding? Heck, not even baby steps- this baby is still crawling. That’s why I asked about newb-friendly Linux forums… if such a beast even exists.
Have to share with the commentariat. Saw this in FB. Someone is publishing a deck called Haunting Affirmations. One of the cards reads:
“Good news: your body is a temple. Great news: it’s a temple to a horrifying tentacled elder god.”
Alvin, that doesn’t surprise me at all. We were going to hit such a downstep anyway as the Permian shale peaked, but throwing in a war to stir things up is certainly one way to accelerate things. As for advancing US interests, every war is a gamble. If the Iranian regime was as shaky as the Trump administration thought, replacing the mullahocracy with a more friendly government would have been an immense coup. As it is, it’s become a matter of figuring out an offramp that won’t harm US interests too badly.
Clay, so noted.
Slithy, it would certainly make a fine fantasy novel.
Anon, oog.
MonkeyChain, I wish it wasn’t so complex. All I want is a program that can generate clean charts in PDF or JPG formats, in Placidus houses and with the specific planets I use, for whatever place, time, and date I enter. If it can also point me to lunations and transits, that’s lagniappe. SolarFire, even in the very old edition I use, is absurdly overpowered for my needs.
Anon, thanks for the data point!
Mister N, yes, and I’ve corrected it. Yesterday was a long day…
Dennis, all this seems quite plausible to me.
Maxine, thanks for this.
Valenzuela, I see no reason to disagree. Decapitating a country is as effective as decapitating a chicken, and will scare a monkey just as efficiently.
Martin, that’s apparently the case. Quite a few traditions distinguish between the kind of mysticism that dissolves the self in the Divine and the kind that brings the self into close relation with the Divine without dissolution.
Chuaquin, my take is that since regime change has failed, Trump is trying to find some formula under which he can declare a victory and get out.
Forecasting, that seems reasonable. As for Israel, the first struggle I see is between secular and religious Israelis, followed (once the religious side wins, as it will) by fighting among the different religious factions. It’s an interesting fact that most Jewish states in that particular bit of territory have gone under due either to civil conflict or to overreliance on a foreign ally that turned out to be less reliable than expected…
Eike, fascinating. Thanks for the heads up.
Martin, that sounds about right. The guys I know who are into guns generally despise Uzis, and say that you could put on a blindfold before shooting one with only a small loss in accuracy!
Steve, I suspect we’ll see a lot fewer protests generally now that the Trump administration is going after the funding sources that paid for all those protesters.
Chris, that’s a good point. One fascinating detail is that the Persian Gulf countries right now, including Iran, are getting hammered by freak rainstorms, which might have some effect on those water shortages…
Tengu, fascinating. The thing to keep in mind is that Theosophy absorbed a very great deal from Buddhism in the first place — the idea of meditation as a central spiritual practice, the primacy of compassion, the ideal of the bodhisattva path, and much more — so such groups were better than half Buddhist to start with. Asceticism was very common in Theosophy back in the day, with vegetarianism and celibacy among the common practices; the gentlemen-adventurers generally went into other Victorian occult groups such as the Golden Dawn and the more occult end of Masonry. As for Roshi Dennis and his peers, well, if they put in the necessary hours of daily meditation, charitable action, and study of the sutras, they had as much chance to achieve enlightenment as anybody in a monastery in Asia!
Scotlyn, of course. It wasn’t Iran who started the war, however, and that’s what I was addressing.
Neptunesdolphins, he really does embody the Changer right now, doesn’t he? And those who dread change are thus inevitably going to be horrified by him.
Anon, I haven’t studied it in detail but I have no doubt that it works. Since the people who are doing it get very definite, lucrative benefits when they’re right and equally definite, painful losses when they’re wrong, they have every incentive to fumble their way to heuristic methods that generate more hits than misses. That’s how astrology came into being in the first place, after all: successful astrologers got rewarded by kings, while those who failed too often got their heads chopped off. It’s impressive what people can come up with when faced with good strong incentives like that!
A1, I think Trump’s handlers and the Israelis both believed that the Iranian regime was much more fragile than it has turned out to be, and thought that a decapitation strike would result in a popular uprising and the end of the mullahocracy. They gambled on that, and lost. Now the Israelis are simply trying to weaken Iran as much as possible, while Trump is looking for an offramp that will let him claim victory and get out. Since the US gets next to no oil from the Persian Gulf, he’s also hoping to unload some of the costs of defending the Gulf states onto Europe. We’ll see how it plays out.
Neptunesdolphins, I think the elite replacement cycle is picking up speed, and the bureaucratic-managerial elite that used to run both parties and still runs the Democrats is panicking as their power base collapses out from under them. Desperate attempts to get their remaining goals cemented into law are likely results. My guess is they’ll fail.
Jerry, thanks for the data points.
Anon, and yet they’re performing moderately well in the Iran war right now. As for Israel, no surprises there — they certainly want that to happen, and for good geostrategic reasons.
Rita, ha! I’d be good with that. 😉
Clay Dennis 7
> The mentality is that there is no shortage of ability to pay from the citizens, just a shortage of clever ways to extract it from them.
Thank you for this. Someone needs to say this out loud.
I pay property taxes which help fund local schools. The local high school just hired three new employees, in (firstly) the cockamamie “mental health”😵💫(psychological) category, and (secondly), they have the spendies💰. The high school’s budget is $ tens of millions, and they have the gall to gripe they can’t get by on that. WTF?
No hint of cutting expenses. No hint that property-taxed residents do not have bottomless pockets of cash, if not buckets🪣of cash. School districts can’t “make do” and “tighten their belts.” In fact, they don’t know what “making do” and “tightening one’s belt” mean, because they have never had to.
I await* the three-room schoolhouse. Expenses: build a building; has floor, roof, windows, two doors, steps, bell. 1-Main room. Pot-bellied wood-burning stove. Blackboard. Maps. Desks. Chairs. Coat racks. 1-Bathroom. Cleaning supplies. 3-Library. Books. 4-School yard.
Students clean bathroom daily🧼on schedule. Students cut the wood🪵and maintain the stove🔥on schedule. These have parental-approval.
Pay a teacher not dirt cheap but one that brings good health. House, clothe, transport a teacher.
No sports🏈🏀⚾️⚽️📣-shit. No socialist free lunches🥪. No school buses🚌.
Students’ families pay for paper, supplies, and books🗒️📓📚. Volunteer teachers’ aides are students.
Children were better educated when they went to one-room schoolhouses one- to two-hundred year ago. Kids left 8th grade able to read, write, and do arithmetic, which cannot be said for now. So why the $ tens of million spendies? I am definitely not getting my money’s worth. School districts fritter away money on non-necessities like sports-crap.
Yeah, it does feel like “a future of junk fees.” What twits.
* I will be dead (73 now); nonetheless, it is a reasonable and worthwhile goal.
I am so old, I remember one-room schoolhouse buildings, intact, standing, furnished. In the 1960s, my family went on Sunday drives visiting regional upstate New York schoolhouses. They were awesome structures. Visit one this summer.
💨🏫🏠💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
“Anon, and yet they’re performing moderately well in the Iran war right now.”
I don’t see how the American military retreating from American military bases in Iraq, the Gulf Arab states, and Saudi Arabia towards Israel and Jordan, carriers like the Ford and the Lincoln becoming inoperative by Iranian drones, and America taking THAAD missiles from East Asia and Ukraine to redeploy in the Middle East because the American military ran out of them in the Middle East, is “performing moderately well” in the Iran War for the American military.
By contrast, in the Iraq war, after 20 days American troops has already entered Baghdad.
Despite the claims of trump and the western media, there are several technological and supply issues that are now coming to a head for the USA/Israel forces. These are things I predicted given the situation on hand before the war started.
The USA has lost all of its forward ground radars which makes interception of Iranian missiles and drones much more difficult, but if this is not enough it appears that the stock of interceptors used by the USA/Israel are almost entirely depleted. This allows Iran to make much more accurate and significant strikes with both drones and missiles and also allows regional partners like Hesbollah to be much. more effective with their simpler missiles.
Most of the US bombardment of Iran so far has been carried out by planes carrying standoff weapons ( air launched cruise missiles) and sea launched cruise missiles. The stocks of both of these are now running very low. In addition with the destruction of us bases in the region , when a us destroyer shoots off its complement of tomahawk missiles it must sail to the Mediterranean or the Pacific to have more loaded. In addition US aircraft carriers are not doing well, either from internal sabotage or un disclosed Iranian attacks.
The Iraqi militias have now joined with the government of Iraq to run out the last of the US forces in the region. This has allowed these forces to employ small mobile Iranian and Russian anti-aircraft systems and be able to shoot down aerial refueling tankers greatly complicating the long missions to attack Iran.
With standoff munition running low us/israeli aircraft must now use glide bombs or ordinary bombs which necessitate flying over Iran and has lead to the recent increase in shootdowns of f15’s f18’s and f35’s.
By all accounts Iran still has huge supplies of missiles and drones and and a powerful supply line from Russia and China for missiles and parts for homegrown missiles.
These circumstances will greatly effect the progress of the war, but it is still unknown how it will turn out.
I think the best choice of action here for everybody is to read what the American and Israeli media is saying about the war in the Middle East, then to read what the Iranian, Lebanese, and Yemenite media is saying about the war in the Middle East (yes they have English language media in Iran and Lebanon), and then to read what a neutral party like Thai or Malaysian media is saying about the war (yes they also have English language media in those countries too), before coming to conclusions about the war.
Anonymous # 116:
Thanks for your information about Australia. Here the Spanish Parlament has approved the government anticrisis plan as a Law, with a short majority (as it’s been usual last years). General impression about this plan within ecologists and energy experts is (like I’ve pointed before), according non partisan views, this plan has been written in a hurry, its measures are good and necessary, but they aren’t enough to solve in the long term the economic/energetic problem (or maybe predicament).
I have to share a funny and perhaps illuminating (at least for those of us in the US) little anecdote about just how out of touch the various elements of society are.
I live alongside a moderately busy rural road a few miles from the little town I live outside of. The town has become a premier retirement location, due to our lack of income tax and nice climate. Over the decades everything has been chopped up into progressively smaller parcels for boomers to build their “mausoleums” as my wife terms it. We get a fair number of neighbors who walk down the road regularly. One of them is a friendly old guy who is a retired teacher. He has stopped and chatted a handful of times, mostly to ask about what were doing, which is a whole lot of subsistence level farming activities in the midst of a sea of peoples fancy retirement homes (or second homes). I’ve just been honest that I see us at the limits to growth and things destabilizing and I’m just not much interested in material wealth and I see the character of the world changing.
A while ago he saw me out walking with the wife and stopped to chat. He was asking me what I thought about losing my job and what we were doing to make it and I explained to him that we were “collapsing now to avoid the rush”. We kept chatting and I told him that I thought that it was no longer really possible to keep up and the only answer was to stop trying maintain an unmaintainable lifestyle. I gave him some concrete examples about the rising cost of food, the unaffordability of medical care, dental care, vet services, the increasing burden of administrative costs, and the failure of the school system (keep in mind these are all directly applicable local examples, not some theoretical opinings).
His response definitely stopped me for a moment, “so, when will people start to be effected by these things?”
HV
Per JMG: “Valenzuela, I see no reason to disagree. Decapitating a country is as effective as decapitating a chicken, and will scare a monkey just as efficiently.”
What about decapitating a shogoth? I think Iran is more like a shogoth than a chicken.
On Linux: I have the USB stick. My Dell laptop running Win10 has 8Gb of physical memory. I have a couple of books about Linux Mint on the way.
Mother Balance: you type “system” in the search box to get the details on your computer. But from the questions you are asking, it sounds like Windows is right for you. I recommend getting a book. Books are good. I put tape over the camera.
@JMG #57,
Oh, I didn’t mean to imply it was an either/or sort of quibble. I very much see it as both/and– the woke mob can be tossing you into the volcano both because they want to appease the beast within and because they specifically want to see you fry!
@Logo Dau #70,
Well, if you’re going to assume people’s worldviews need to be logical and self-consistent, I can’t help you there. You’re right to observe the contradiction, but that’s just how some people are. “Six impossible things before breakfast” and all that.
@pygmycory #75,
Heavens yes! Progress-worshipers on the right would sacrifice the careers of everybody who isn’t a white man to Progressiva Techne if they could. It’s rather a mirror image. No amount of human sacrifice is going to change the resource constraints, though, absolutely.
I think we can all agree a true meritocracy would be able to get the most out of whatever resources we have left, rather than choosing people based on demographic criteria as we do now. It’s not going to happen, but it would be preferable.
@Northwind #4. I’ve become very reluctant to follow the news of the world anymore. It depresses me to no end. It seems like large expanses of civilization are in rubble especially the Middle East from Gaza eastward thru Afghanistan and of course there’s Ukraine. Nature has become my drug of choice. It seems all I can do is to spend long days hiking thru remote forests and mountains, pretending and deluding myself with the belief that the serenity i experience is all that exists.
Saw this today along with the admonition: “build your firewall now.”
https://imgur.com/a/WkUJn07
The SOP works good.
If I recall correctly our host said meditation such as the rosary helps our consciousness to separate from our faculties, thinking, emotions, instincts and become the conscious observer.
Helpful to me were the explanations of Verena Koenig about traumatization and the nervous system, how often we have an imprint from childhood that makes sense from an evolutionary perspective but not in terms of successfully navigating modern life, and most importantly, the intellectual mind cannot trump over deep seated instincts, so when you get nervous, anxious in an unfitting situation, do not try and fight it, rather let it go inside in a controlled fashion.
Meditative practices have helped me enourmously combined with this information to keep my calm, in public, via others, where otherwise I might be unrestful, when its better to be calm.
I wonder: why do emotions get “stuck” in the first place at all? Evolution as such isn’t “wrong”, yet so many of us obviously need to take control consciously of our emotions and inner urges, if we want to succeed for higher goals. Or is it just that, the higher development of the soul, when more instinct driven lifes have been experienced sufficiently, and now it is time to walk different ways.
There are other things I learned from this forum and a spiritual view of life and the world: you cannot convince nor change the world, and whatever you say or demonstrate, there will always be those who will put nothing to the test and follow their predefined pathways, partly successfully in evolutionary terms, sometimes into the abbyss.
If we look at the PMC of the west in this year.
Accordingly, the real benefit of putting things out there, like JMG, is that it shall reach those for whom it is helpful, and if most others won’t understand, it may well stay hidden to a wider public.
1. I always thought of dissolving into the One/God/Unity as a form of spiritual suicide
2. JMG, it surprised me to see you say that there was conflict on the etheric plane, but that makes sense. As I understand it, the human dwellers of the etheric plane all have mental bodies and have an etheric body as their densest body. I suppose you could still have war on the etheric plane, but only the etheric body would die. Presumably it takes some sort of work and resources to generate a new etheric body, so it’s not like the conflict would be a ridiculous war video game where you respawn seconds after you die (which would make said conflict/war almost meaningless)
Jiang Xueqin ist the new rising star of predictions and world history it seems, in high esteem raising a lot of attention lately due to his correct assessments of Trumps election and the Iran war.
Truly a Joseph Tainter on his own, apparently extremly well read in the classics of history, humble and serious when you watch him.
Of course reading his transcripts suffices, as I usually do with youtube videos, I have little nerve and patience for video as an information transmitting format.
He predicts Iran as a rising power.
These past years as I mentioned before my thinking for the EU was too apocalyptic, be it because resource flows were not cut entirely as announced but rerouted indirectly, be it because the industry of Europe dies a rather slow death, since contracts and production cycles may span years.
Yes, things have gone downhill, and visibly so.
But not in the pace I’d imagined, since at least at the beginning of this year, the middle class Europeans fly to Thailand for cheap vacations still.
And that would be my marker for downturn; as long as the well to do are in their saddle, the system is not collapsing yet.
This year’s events, I think the bulk of consequences has not arrived yet at all, make for an acceleration for sure.
Analysts are good at finding the relevant news and better than I am. Maybe they access paid subscription news or databases, I think Gail Tverberg has such access to EIA data.
Israel not only has a gas field in the levant, although currently shut down(?), it also supplies Syria and Egypt with LNG and its own gas, thus has a vital position in the levant, with coercive potential for demanding compliance from the neighbours.
Last year a metal worker told me, an Austrian company constructing grid transformers where he works has contracts for fifteen years worldwide, the electricity comes from hydro-electric while coal isn’t necessary as “the raw materials for smelting come from China anyways”.
The EU or rather Britain and Norway still DO supply a lot of oil and gas, around a fifth, however, the other deliveries are unclear, the LNG ships have no apparently left fro Asia.
Gas storage is really low in Europe, six percent in the Netherlands, but the EU has often surprised me with its resilience.
The strategic reserves are open and evaporate without any cuts in oil or gas use, so obviously a self defeating strategy, analysts say that’ll work until end of May.
Will we see widespread consequences this year?
While Volkswagen and Porsche seem to go bust finally, and hundreds of thousands of industrial jobs are lost in Germany, it seems Germany mass produces drones and rockets, and tanks.
Some analysts say its outdated weaponry, but others say extensive damage was done to Russia.
Putin allegedly has determined that no oil or gas whatsoever shall be delivered to Europe anymore (ex Hungary maybe), while Kaja Kallas and Beate Meinl-Reisinger (Austrian Kaja Kallas) now say we should “talk to Russia”, after they more or less demanded genocide to the Russian people.
I don’t know what to think. Consequences there will be – but will it be a slow grind, with office clerks still jetting to Rio and Malta for christmas holidays this year, or something more visible, this year?
@Chuaqin
Yes, I chimed in for Ramadan, as a test of willpower, mental strength. It wasn’t that bad, but as I said, I did 90% and the time of year and weather played well with it.
To do without is most probably a good discipline henceforth.
regarding antiwar protests… I was pretty involved in the protests against the Iraq war in Canada. They were very large, and I suspect they played a role in keeping Canada from getting involved in that war. I figure protests may help in edge cases, to deal with foreign pressure. Canada was under a lot of pressure from the USA to join, and didn’t do so.
That said, there’s been negligeable antiwar protests this time – it seems to be pro and antiwar Iranians in Toronto protesting at each other, mostly. Nothing I know of locally.
The left’s antiwar tendencies seem to have wandered off and died in a corner and no one noticed – unless you threaten Palestine. That actually gets a strong anti-Israel response.
Though since Canada doesn’t have bodies coming home in bags the way they did in the Afghanistan war, that’s probably a large part of why. Yet. Apparently a group of Canadian soldiers working with the USA in the Middle-East on something not the Iran war came under fire in this war with Iran early on. And we may or may not be helping out with the Strait of Hormuz now the USA and Iran have messed that up for everyone else in the world.
JMG, how do you think pacifist communities will fare in the slow collapse? my gut reaction was they would do well since a lot of them have not become too complex and so have a head start on the adaptation of simplifying, however i feel like in the interim between industrial society and agro society, Salvage and conquest will be more adaptive and will shove peaceful communities out of the way. Looking at today we are also seeing very defensive communities do well like Iran and ukraine( sure they may inevitably fall but it would have been faster otherwise), and pacifist communities in Africa do quite poorly as there are many genocides happening in the rural areas of african countries as of late. Even if we look at industrial west Europe and Japan are comparatively unarmed compared to America and this is having consequences on their ability to steal oil in the way that America is from Venezuela and attempting to from Iran. In my understanding of history the trend im seeing is that pacifist communities do well at first as they dont subvert energy toward arming and so they can quickly reach their population potential, however they seem fragile to even very small communities that use violence to gain territory. They seem to only do well either temporarily or during the deep collapse where conquest has bad EROI. this would track with other ecosystems where it takes a surplus of resources to evolve predatory or parasitic species.
Hi John- Astrologically, what accounts for the current events in the Middle East? How long can we expect the current situation to last and how do you think it might go?
JMG
I have a bit of an odd question to ask. I’ve been working on a theory regarding how society’s suppress both women and spirituality/occultism and how it relates to the way religion develops as society matures and declines. So the question is what is your take on castration cults? They popped up towards the end of Rome and several early Christians including some of the saints castrated themselves for Jesus. And the Christians weren’t the only ones either.
My current working theory is that as society becomes secular, women (who are generally more inclined towards spirituality) are forced out of their traditionally spiritual roles and are forced to basically act and think more like men. After a few generations of this, as women become more integrated into male roles, the exclusively male traits (see toxic masculinity) are demonized and the image of the “ideal man” becomes the woman acting like a man, thus a castrated man.
But that’s entirely speculative on my part. I’m not sure what causes this phenomena.
The EU might do something really stupid in Hungary if Viktor Orban gets elected in the Hungarian elections in April 12: they might start a Hungarian Euromaiden to try to get Viktor Orban replaced with a more pro-Ukraine ruler.
Someone read your book! Hypersonic missile in a shipping container. Only $99,000. And did you see that there was a fire in the Ford aircraft carrier?
https://kdwalmsley.substack.com/p/on-sale-now-china-is-mass-producing
This evening (local time), there was a demonstration against Iran war in my town, with its usual people (mainly local far leftists). Beyond my doubts about how useful are nowadays these demonstrations (to write it softly), I can say there was more people than I thought, according my view as an outside viewer. However, there was a lot less people than in the antiwar protests when Bush Jr. ordered Irak invasion decades ago. Well, it was a windy and cold evening, but I can guess it’s possible the great demonstrations era have ended, thanks to the general addiction to social media and videogames (especially within the youngest), which has killed real social life everywhere (and of course, big scale organized political protests). In addition to this, I can also point war began more than 3 weeks ago, so far left has been a bit slow to decide starting protests here. Maybe the traditionalist and islamist nature of current Iran regime has made to decide promoting protests sooner…though Trump&Netanyahu are also very hated by radicals.
Hello Mr. Greer & co.,
As a middle-aged educator, I often wonder about the near-, medium-, and long-term trajectory of education in America. My working guess is that universities will get hit the hardest, with only a fraction of today’s universities left by mid-century.
I see community colleges following a similar trajectory to universities, although some might fair better since they are run on much tighter budgets and tend to be more geared for what local employers need.
I see high schools also downsizing, although they might forestall this partially if they expand (or re-introduce, as the case may be) work-relevant classes. Despite this, I suspect that by mid-century there will be fewer jobs that will require a high school diploma. Drops in international trade, immigration, and fertility rates (among other things) will likely translate into higher demand for labor. I also wonder if there might be the return of “night schools” for adults that are hosted in high schools.
I suspect elementary and middle schools might hold out the longest, again relatively speaking, particularly elementary schools. Most of my parents’ generation, growing up in 1940’s and 1950’s Mexico, were dirt poor but still went to school up to 6th grade. It was deemed worthwhile by the parents, and it was government subsidized anyway.
Thank you!
@ Mother Balance #157
First off, I’d second the recommendation of going with Linux Mint. I’ve been using it for a decade plus at this point and found it mostly good and hassle-free. As mentioned it’s meant to be Windows-like to make for an easy transition. I suspect Photoshop will be your main problem with the transition, since there’s still no way to make that run on Linux as far as I know. Most other programs either have open-source alternatives or can be run through WINE (basically a program that lets you run Windows programs seamlessly). Up to and including most modern video games these days, which is quite impressive, even if I know most commenters here aren’t into them.
Anyway, I’ll try to clear up some of those details you mentioned. Hopefully this doesn’t come across as patronizing, but since you said you wanted the baby steps version: first, if you have a laptop, you’ve probably got an integrated graphics card, ie. it’s built into the central processor itself. As compared to desktop graphics cards, which are sizeable big blocks you plug into a dedicated slot. Since you have a fairly recent laptop, I don’t think this is anything you need to worry about. I can’t say much about Wifi, since I don’t use it myself.
A “live USB” is simply any old USB stick with a copy of the Linux operating system you want to install copied to it. (Note that you have to copy the ISO file with a dedicated program, you can’t simply copy/paste it onto the USB stick.) One neat thing about Linux is that you can plug such a USB stick into any computer and boot into the OS to test it without having to commit to an install, and without touching any of the existing data or OS on the machine. This also means I’d recommend doing a full install, rather than keeping the Windows part of the system around. That’s simpler and easier, and if you somehow do mess something up, you can boot from the live USB again and use the internet that way, since the test OS you boot into includes a web browser.
When it comes to newbie-friendly forums, the official Ubuntu and Mint forums are probably good bets. If you can stomach using Reddit there’s also a number of Linux subreddits there, including https://old.reddit.com/r/linux4noobs/ and r/linuxquestions.
Hope you can find something useful there, and best of luck ditching MS!
JMG, at #77 you included again the map of a circumpolar European “empire” and wrote: “this fantasy runs deep in Brussels these days.” You don’t give a source for this map. Does it come from somebody associated in any way with the EU, or from an adversary who imputes such plans to it? I ask because I have never seen such a map or heard of such a plan outside your blog…
JMG,
As you have said, the very religious portion of Israels population is growing and in conflict with the secular portion of the population. The jews have a problem that muslims do not ,with respect to religion and war. While devot muslims are usually eager to fight for their countries while very religious jews ( orthodox etc.) are not. This has lead the IDF ( at least according to a speech by one of its leaders) to have a growing problem with recruitment. Can an increasingly embattled and increasingly religious country find a way to deal with this conflict?
I’d forgotten about “The Patience of the Sea.”
Looking over the balcony now (our VRBO is a full-frontal view of the ocean) the waves are pounding the beach.
Eventually, all of OC will be underwater.
What’s so remarkable about this is that while so many people caterwaul about climate change, they still spend billions on beachfront property!
“Trump can send American troops in to invade Iran, who then suffer shameful defeats and surrender to the Iranians. Trump has been announcing on Truth Social that he wants to take over Kharg Island, which is part of Iran, so it is very much in the realm of possibility.”
There’s no way that Trump will be able to launch an invasion of any part of Iran up to and including Kharg Island, simply because the American military is now nowhere near Iran. Its carriers are sitting in Diego Garcia and in Cyprus being repaired, Iran has shut down the Strait of Hormuz and mined the entire strait, American troops have been kicked out of Iraq by Iraqi resistance forces and America abandoned its bases in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arabian states for Israel and Jordan to protect American forces from being destroyed by Iranian drones and missiles. Trump’s just bluffing on social media, everybody knows that Trump is bluffing in social media, the Iranians are going to continue to call Trump’s bluff and Trump has no choice but to continue the retreat out of the Middle East and take the loss.
Patrick H. # 121:
Wow! Iranian conditions to have a peace treaty are very hard for the western axis…
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Valenzuela # 125:
It’s possible the real USA&Israel plan was first the “silver bullet” (selective high spheres killing) to achieve a fast regime change in Tehran after an aerial blitzkrieg. However, I think the western axis could have made a virtue from need, so it has changed its goals to the second rate target: “to lead Iran toward the stone age”(with an undetermined victory day according Trump and Netanyahu will). However, in spite of that victory claim, if then Irani regime is ruling even an impoverished and devastated country, it seems the western axis (beyond its own propaganda) wouldn’t achieve a real strategic victory, methink.
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Scotlyn # 141:
I partly agree, though we mustn’t forget Iran belongs to the BRICS economical alliance. Although it isn’t a mere Russian/Chinese puppet, it’s under their geopolitical influence (so, for good and bad things, Iran’s not alone).
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A1 # 144:
It’s interesting to me your paragraph in which you point Trump believers…err…supporters in USA tend to think Trump is applying now a plan and everything is OK with Middle East war. I hope to not upset Catholics with my comparation, but it seems a heck of Trump supporters believe his leader is infallible like the Pope in Rome (though the Pope is never wrong only in faith dogma topics). Or like another historical leaders who weren’t never wrong (they weren’t very democratical methink). Maybe a confirmation bias?
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(To be continued)
Paul # 149:
Your point of view about Iran war is IMHO an interesting hypothesis between another. I see (and I think you van see it too) there’s a lot of propaganda from the two sides, though I guess we’re more influenced by “our” western propaganda. So we should to think our ideas about Middle East mess like work hypothesis and not like thick truths yet. I tend to discard Trumpian plan infallibility “a priori”, but also anti-American propaganda (which points as safe bet future American-Israeli defeat).
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Anonymous # 154:
Of course, Israel elites and a lot of its citizens learn since their childhood that “Israel always win (or should win) and every Arabs are cowards”. And USA will support them forever, too…
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Mark # 152:
I bet Trump wouldn’t be fool enough to begin a blood bath sending ground troops to invade directly Iran, even with Israeli pression. He’s got military experts (though they seem to have failed in the decapitation strike). I hope not being wrong. On the other hand, he could order to conquer that Persian Gulf island to pretend USA has won the war, who knows…However, Iranians could go on launching missiles/drones from the Iran shores they could control yet, so it would be a mediocre “victory”.
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JMG # 159:
Maybe Trump is thinking how to pretend he’s won the war (I’m thinking in an hypothetical successful invasion over certain Iranian island), but if he doesn’t manage to stop Iran drones harassing ships in Hormuz, his Spectacle could seem a bit fake for quite American people. In addition to this, Trump should make believe Israeli elites they’ve won too (good luck with that).
Hey JMG
I recently came across this experiment performed by the University of Sydney, in which they managed to generate hydrogen by suspending gallium particles in water and exposing it all to light, which produces a chemical reaction in which oxygen bonds to the gallium and releases hydrogen. So far the process is only 12.9% efficient, but theoretically it could be improved. I am as sceptical as you are about using hydrogen as a fuel source, but I think that this new method of making it it fascinating due to its simplicity and novelty nonetheless.
https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2026/02/10/scientists-use-sunlight-and-liquid-metal-to-produce-clean-hydrog.html
Tim PW 106
> about relocating to towns or regions; western Canada
First, if you are born and bred in Canada, I would stay there. Canada has lots of choice.
However…
Second, in the 1840s, one of my ancestors “James” migrated from County Norfolk, England, to Montreal, Quebec, Canada, actually first to land just south of Montreal, before one gets to the New York State border. He was a farmer and mechanic, quite skilled. He didn’t much like Canada because he spent most of his life between Montreal and New York State (NYS), a very busy travel corridor then and now. That thin strip of land encompassed two canals, Lachine and Champlain, Lake Champlain, and points south on the Hudson River. He bought a farm (dairy) bordering Lake Champlain on the NYS side in the Town of Peru. Between the lake, canals, farm, and mariner mechanic skills, he and family had lots of paying jobs to choose from, and the family did very well — a true working-class family. He and wife raised thirteen children to adulthood, healthy and long-lived. Twelve of those kids married and had kids, and on down. James, wife and kids, ALL lived on a canal boat; can you imagine? It must have been a fairly L-O-N-G boat.
James taught his sons mechanic skills, where they ended up able to fix just about anything. They built whole houses: one an electrician, one plumber, one dry-waller, one framer, one roofer, one floorer, and so on. He and his six sons learned all about canal boats, and the mechanics of them. Lake Champlain has unique canal boats, being they have motors AND sails. Regular canal boats don’t have sails. Lake Champlain is a natural lake, not a reservoir. His wife taught the girls homemaking skills of cook and seamstress. If they could have done so on a canal boat (one can’t), she would have taught them how to make soap and candles.
So if you are okay with moving to NYS, this is a region to consider.
I chose not to live in NYS because of its relatively high taxes, and the fact that New York City has sucked the life out of NYS since the early 1800s. I grew up in the Albany area.
There are lots of canals all over the Eastern seaboard, not just NYS. Some have been well maintained. Beware of polluted areas though. But I would investigate northern ones.
JMG, I think you wrote (more than once), something to the effect of “buy a farm near a canal and you are in an advantageous position” {my embellishment}. Good farmland actually bordering a canal, you are in heaven.
There is a book, Life on a Canal Boat: Journals of Theodore Bartley. Very interesting. It is entirely possible that my James and this guy Bartley knew OF each other, being on Lake Champlain at the same time, doing canaling.
As a kid, I was enamored of locks. I loved visiting them along the Mohawk River. Wetlands around locks are fascinating too, lots of wildlife🦫🦆. Locks are special places, just short of luminous and magickal.
Canals have a lot written about them. There are also canaling museums to go to. So says JMG: if canals could talk, they would say, “I’ll be back.”
Good luck.
💨⛵️🚤👨🏼🌾🐄💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
In the previous JMG post, I wrote I had seen an infography made by some International Energy Agency experts, in which they recommended citizens and governments alike (in non oil exporters countries) to cope with oil shock. One of their recommended measures was to limit air travel. Well, I think ironically it wouldn’t be necessary to limit air travel by citizens with a responsible will nor by govts orders…If Iran war lasts time enough, economical damage due to oil high prices (and even real scarcity), within oil/gas importer countries, could lead to self-limit people travel by plane. If/when there are less money available for tourism due to everyday economics crisis (international tourism is not a basic human right nor need methink), air travel could suffer a strong passengers loss. Maybe bad news for European touristic “superpowers” like France, Italy and Spain. In our case, the economical shock could be even worse than those two another countries: I think Spain depend more of foreign tourists money in proportion to its whole economy than Italy and France.
We’ll see this summer.
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Someone in the previous John post wrote that (according some statistical studies), Antisemitism had grown within young Black and Hispanic people. Well, there could be some hypothetical causes to explain this phenomenon (which shouldn’t be exclusive but maybe complementary). I can guess one of them. You’ve seen Netanyahu looks like an European guy in his aspect (indeed, he’s a white man). Like the rest of Askhenazi Jews who usually are most part of Israel elite. On the other hand, muslim people has usually a darker skin than European guys. I bet if you’re Black or Hispanic young people (who usually have a darker skin more or less), you can tend to be more friendly to “tanned” muslims than to Jews (whose elites can be identified as white people). In addition to this, the more smart Palestinian propaganda shows Israel like the last western colonialist case, so we can do the math (of course, there must be another causes of growing non white Antisemitism, but I won’t depict them because I don’t know by sure how many could be, in addition to the Gaza thing).
JMG, I forgot.
Fifteen months ago, I bought the film “Network” DVD, 1976-ish. I just let the DVD sit on a shelf a long while. Jethro and I watched it last week🍿. Definitely a good movie. Timely. I recommend it, big-time.
Its memorable saying, two versions:
‼️I’m mad as hell and not going to take it/this anymore‼️
Now I gotta watch the “Dr. Strangelove” movie, which is also sitting on the shelf.
💨📽️🎬💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Hi John Michael,
Yup, all of the participants in the unfolding geopolitical dramas (us lot down here included) are up against the ropes, although the official line never really mentions such dirty little secrets. The entire mess looks like a scramble to secure the last of the easy to get, good stuff. It’s instructive for example, that Kharg Island has been threatened, but not obliterated.
I’d not heard of the return of the rains in that part of the world. Ah, not good. And they do say that for every degree Celsius of energy held in the atmosphere, the moisture content increases by 7%. We had a very dry January and early February, but March has been remarkably wet. It’s that jungle planet thing you mentioned a while back.
We’re enjoying an Antarctic blast this morning. It’s feral out there, cold, already wet and drizzly. Hardly good growing conditions. Hey, the lack of urea fertiliser is a massive problem which few are discussing, and down here we’re heading into the winter wheat planting time. That’ll be a problem next year when yields decline. Oh well.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Main Street Cynic,
Yup, the old adage about “Don’t believe anything, until it’s officially denied” proves to be true, yet again. 🙂
Hi Northwind,
A good point, and the astute person keeps an open ear to hear what the hills have to say. Never know what you might learn. There was that 5.9 earthquake a few years ago, and the land sure did sound and act grumpy.
Cheers
Chris
Nothing like living in ‘interesting times’, eh?
Like many others in the chat, I have been closely watching developments in West Asia over the past four weeks. Since I do not pay any attention to what the “lamestream news”, I have no idea what they are blathering about but I check out a wide variety of sources, including a few which are Arabic-language based. I’m not sure if most people are aware that Iraq has joined forced with Iran and its 250k strong military is being quite active in expelling NATO forces from their land – and a sizeable number is presently heading to the Kuwait border. Also, Hezbollah has been fighting like demons lately – and seem to be having joint assaults with Iran on Tel Aviv. Meanwhile, Ansar Allah (i.e., the Houthis of Yemen) are itching to join the fray but are waiting for Iran to give them the ‘green light’. I do hope that the Yanks don’t try to do something foolish like take over some of the Iranian islands in the Gulf: the Iranis have likely prepared for decades for something like this. I understand that they are good chess players. And the guys now in charge in Iran were the guys who fought Iraq for 8 years, using their bayonets when they ran out of ammo but never retreating. I am not aware of any culture that is as steeped in martyrdom as Iran – their national hero is Imam Hussain who preferred fighting to certain death over pledging allegiance to a tyrant.
Speaking of Tel Aviv, there has been a video going around the past couple of days showing a gigantic murder of crows flying over the city. For those who pay attention to omens, this ain’t a good sign! According to Vedic astrology, the crow is the vehicle of Saturn, and it represents ‘karmic cleansing’. Kinda sounds like an apt description of the entire region right now. Ouch!
Speaking of Vedic astrology, I decided to do a deep dive into what’s been going on in the heavens in March and April of this year. The main events of March were: (1) conjunction of Mars and Rahu (north node of the Moon) on March 12, which is called Angaraka yoga in Sanskrit (think of warlike Mars with the amplifier cranked up to ’11’); (2) Mercury being hemmed between Mars and Rahu between March 16 – April 1 (making one’s decision-making abilities highly flawed or disfunctional) and (3) Mercury stationing directly over Rahu on March 20 (ay-ay-ay!). In case it looks like the belligerents in the current conflict have “lost their minds” by playing escalation games, the heavens would agree!
Looking to April, we have (1) the conjunction of Mars and Moon on April 15, quickly followed by (2) conjunction of Mars and Saturn on April 19 and (3) conjunction of Mercury and Saturn on April 20! Of these three events, the Mars-Saturn combo is particularly baleful, according to Vedic astrology: it is called the “Yama yoga” which literally means “death-facing” and is a portent of intense struggle. And it happens within 4 degrees of Iran’s natal Sun (which is a signifier of government).
I guess we’ll all have to see how this all shakes out and let’s all hope and pray that Mr. Nuke does not decide to come out to play. For those who are interested in such stuff, I have really gone down this mundane Vedic astrology rabbit hole in my latest post at: https://mystical-mountain-9.dreamwidth.org
JMG, I believe you recently mentioned on MM that back in the Renaissance mundane geomancy was a thing. Well, it just so happens that I have been doing precisely that for the past few years – just annual charts for a handful of countries. Then for much of last year I did monthly charts for several nations. And then a couple months ago I said to myself, “What the Hell – nobody seems to be doing this stuff on Youtube; let me just ‘put it out there’ and give it a whirl!” So now I have a channel up and running – Geomancy Earth Astrology – and have been putting some April readings up. Within a few days I will be venturing into unknown territory by posting April mundane geomancy readings for nations undergoing chaos right now such as Iran and Israel. It’ll certainly be a learning experience for me. Maybe I can inspire some others out there to give mundane geomancy a try. The more the merrier!
Robert, the context was comparing their performance to the US military as I portrayed it in Twilight’s Last Gleaming. The US and Israel have established and maintained air dominance over Iranian airspace and eliminated a very large fraction of Iran’s strategic assets; the US failed to do either of those against the Chinese-backed Tanzanian forces in my novel.
Clay, of course. Those are among the reasons why Trump is looking for an offramp at this point.
Mary, this strikes me as good advice.
HippieViking, how typical. Of course by “people” he meant “people of the privileged classes, like me”…
Phutatorius, maybe so, but that wasn’t the way the US envisaged it, thus the decapitation strike.
Justin, oof! That’s harsh, but accurate:
Luke, human souls are far from the only inhabitants of the etheric plane, you know.
Pygmycory, thanks for the data points.
Alex, for the peaceful communities to thrive, they must be very, very poor. Monasteries spread all over medieval Europe and did very well back when monks took their vows of poverty seriously; once gold and silver started piling up in monasteries, the raids began.
John, I haven’t had the spare time to do charts for Middle Eastern countries. Somebody else will have to pick that up — which is of course why I wrote my book on mundane astrology.
Anon, castration cults come into fashion when the population of a civilization is in overshoot and economic contraction sets in. I see that, and also the spread of same-sex attraction, as two of many effects of a genetic “off switch” designed to decrease reproduction when a society is overcrowded and beginning to decline.
Anon, that wouldn’t surprise me at all.
Eric, pity more people didn’t read it on this side of the oceans…
Ennobled, all that seems entirely reasonable to me.
Aldarion, you might go looking for all the maps showing how Russia’s to be cut up into weak successor states, which were all the rage in the Davos set not long ago. The image that I post? I found that a couple of years ago in an internet image search.
Clay, that’s one of the many things Israel has in common with the Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem, which also hosted very large numbers of people (monks and nuns) who did not fight and received large government handouts, and made the struggle to keep things going harder than it has to be.
Teresa, that’s one of the reasons I’m quite sure they don’t really believe in sea level rise.
J.L.Mc12, do you happen to know the energy cost needed to mine, refine, and form gallium?
Northwind, enjoy!
Chris, it broke 80°F here today — not a normal temperature for March. Jungle planet, here we come!
Ron, delighted to hear about your mundane geomancy project. I hope it gets you a huge audience.
Hey JMG
Not really, no. But I think it’s a common byproduct of mining, as mercury is. So I think there’s a lot around at the moment.
Forecasting Intelligence 129
Speaking from the vantage of a child of a mariner whose dream job was navigating oil barges (oil tankers) for a major oil company in the 1960s (first mate, studying for captainship when dropped dead of heart attack age 40) through Chesapeake Bay to as far as Lake Superior, I would not want to be a captain of an oil barge negotiating its way through the Strait of Hormuz the next few years. The Strait of Hormuz, now, sounds like a suicide mission for any man who thrives on risk akin to climbing Mount Everest in the winter alone.
Are there such men? Would they command a salary of a few $million for just one trip?
Too bad one can’t ship oil via airplane. Slish slosh boom💥.
💨🛢️💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
#122 Michael Gray
I just saw your answer, thank you. I read it three times and I think I get the gist.
My laptop doesn’t have a dvd in it, so I guess I need the disc image writer. I’ll have to do some reading on those, having never used one before. So first download and install that. Then find a place to get Linux Mint from; got any suggestions for where? Then get the ISO (what does ISO mean?) and download that. Use the image writer to put the Linux into the USB. How big of a USB do I need for it?
Figure out which F key gives me the boot menu. Select boot from live image and Linux will load. Start playing around with it. I need Pluma, Krita, Audacity for Linux. I think mp3tag started out Linux too.
So the big scary part is downloading a disc image writer and ISO. My computer generally claims that downloads will make it explode, and that makes me very hesitant to click on one. I always wonder what’s hitching a ride into my system on the back of a seemingly innocent download.
~~~
#127 Michael Martin
Thank you for the forum suggestion. That’s the second time I’ve heard the word Cinnamon, so that’s the one I’ll try.
I never heard of WINE before; that’s good to know. I’ll keep that idea for a backup in case Krita is too hard for me to learn after 20-ish years of using only Photoshop 7.
Howdy,
As I may have mentioned here before, I’ve been doing a deep-dive on ethics over the last year and some change. I started with Tree of Woe’s “Physiocratic Moral Philosophy Reading List,” which can be found here: https://treeofwoe.substack.com/p/recommended-reading-part-i-moral
I’ve made my way through the primary reading listed there, with a couple of additions of my own, but I’m branching out more now. Over the last couple days, I read Schopenhauer’s On the Basis of Morality (I figured I’d ease my way into Schopenhauer before tackling The World as Will and Reperesentation, and also, I’ve been trying to stay focused on ethics rather than straying into metaphysics or theology). His vicious attack on Kant (with some carve outs of profound respect), and even harsher attacks on those who came after, read as fairly plausible to me, and he has some good insights I think will be useful in evaluating other approaches to ethics (for example: the idea that any “imperative” formulation of ethics likely has a theological basis behind it, whether acknowledged or not, and that when it comes to Justice, wrong/harm is the “positive” element, and right/help the negative). Also, it’s genuinely funny (which was not so much appreciated by the Danish Royal Society, which rejected the essay for being not metaphysical enough and too mean to eminent contemporary philosophers).
I haven’t fully thought through my own take on his work and how to fit it into other views on ethics yet, but something struck me, on which I’d appreciate your opinion (and that of the commentariat, of course): in this work, Schopenhauer identifies as the “truly moral” only those actions which are motivated by compassion, and not at all by self-interest. He makes much of this being “incontrovertible,” but it struck me as begging the question: on what grounds do you assert that self-interest is non-virtuous? Once you accept that premise, his framework makes plenty of sense, but in claiming that premise, he seemed to have more in common with 20th century emotivists than I might like to see (as evidence that compassion is the core of virtue, he justifies it by “everyone just knows they feel that way”). In a brief appendix to this work, Schopenhauer goes on to explain his essentially Buddhist viewpoint, which makes more sense of his take, but seems to bring him right back into the “theological” standpoint he excoriates in others.
I suppose, to get to an actual question, I’m wondering how much weight you put on Schopenhauer’s ethical reasoning, given how much esteem you have for his magnum opus? I know that you’ve said for ethics, you mostly favor a Stoic-leaning virtue ethics, but if you have any insight on how that does (or doesn’t) interact with the occult philosophy metaphysics of the traditions you follow, that’d be much appreciated as well.
(As a brief aside, it’s at least amusing to me that most serious philosophers of ethics, before the post-Nietzsche materialists, end up at basically the same guidance for behavior, even if coming from very different premises.)
Cheers,
Jeff
@Jeff Russell #199
> Schopenhauer goes on to explain his essentially Buddhist viewpoint, which makes more sense of his take, but seems to bring him right back into the “theological” standpoint he excoriates in others.
Remember that Buddhism got sold to the West as a godless, rationalistic, almost secular religion. This was intentional: it played on the sympathies of the increasingly unbelieving elite class in the West, who thus treated them more like civilized nations to be exploited by gentler means, rather than primitive savages who could be freely exterminated if they got uppity.
> As a brief aside, it’s at least amusing to me that most serious philosophers of ethics, before the post-Nietzsche materialists, end up at basically the same guidance for behavior, even if coming from very different premises.
If you mean modern ethical philosophers, Alasdair MacIntyre talks about this in After Virtue and A Short History of Ethics: essentially, Enlightenment philosophers stuck to medieval Christian ethics out of social inertia, and tailored their philosophies to come to the preordained conclusions.
If you mean more broadly (for example, similarities between Christian and Hindu ethics), partly that’s because ethics is a response to how the world works — if you break someone’s leg, then regardless of your ethical beliefs it’ll be a while before they can work again, if ever — and partly because what we normally think of as “ethics” is essentially the ethics of the Indo-European diaspora, and probably go back to a time when a sheep was called something like “howis.”
@192 Chris
@195 JMG
The other day, it reached the high 80s F/low 30s C in my area (Middle Tennessee), and that shouldn’t have happened until May. However, the winter was unusually cold.
Boy! If you thought Disney’s ‘The Corprolite’ .. aka Star Wars – “the Acolyte” was bad enough … well, Paramount just canceled Star Trek Academy, after two dreadful seasons. WOKE IS DEAD-LONG DIE WOKE! ‘Bout Time! Makes one want to throw a shaken Bud Lite at the Big Screen.
If anyone wants a summary of how things are evolving in this oil crisis, they can read No. 1 at substack.com:
https://no01.substack.com/p/march-22-26-invisible-wounds
Summary of the link:
“These invisible wounds aren’t just economic. They’re not just structural. They’re the slow accumulation of things that don’t make the front page. Funerals. Empty petrol stations. Unfertilised fields. Gas trains that take half a decade to rebuild. A payment architecture hardening into permanence while diplomats argue about preconditions.
The ceasefire, if it comes, will be televised.
The recovery won’t be.”
I should add that the fertilizer crisis is severe due to sulfur production and gas production; fuel rationing is already in place in some countries. I should also mention that Europe has probably committed suicide; good luck, they’re going to need it.
Dear Mr. Greer, et all – I’m surprised no one in the media has mentioned a 1997 film, “Wag the Dog.” It’s about a US president, caught up in a sex scandal, right before an election. And how he engineers a fake war, to divert attention from his peccadillos.
https://w.wiki/KPZp
I never saw it, but, was aware of the film. As I remember, there was a lot of chatter, at the time. Lew
#166 Phutatorius
Thank you- I now know that I do indeed have 8gb memory.
My camera has a little sliding door on it to block it. But I’ve caught them turning my microphone back on three times now. And the keylogger was turned back on once.
~~~
#181 BorealBear
Thank you, thank you! I was feeling pretty stupid because even after Phutatorius told me where to look, I couldn’t find anything for a graphics card. Duh.
The last time I had an actual desktop with a tower was back in 1998. I remember the slots inside, I had to install a thingie once when we switched from modem to broadband… ethernet adapter? That was pretty scary, I was so proud when it worked.
Thank you for explaining about the ISO file. Now I’m picturing the disc image writer kinda like the the little program you need to unpack a zip file- you can’t do anything with a zip file, you have to unpack it first. So the image writer makes that file into something the computer can actually use from the usb. Got it.
I’m actually starting to get a little excited about trying this. That’s hecka better than scared.
I read recently that the real reason Cesar Chavez was unpersoned was because California conservatives were latching on to interviews where he explained his anti-immigration stance. I have not verified this myself. I’m just passing this along.
He was a labor organizer, though, so it does make sense for him to have had such views. I guess it was starting to get kinda awkward for liberals to champion such a guy, so they had to do something about it.
#143 Anonymous
The most sophisticated form of “chart divination” is called the Elliott Wave method. This book describes it:
https://www.scribd.com/document/543148857/Lesson-1-10
In summary, there are consistent patterns in financial charts that correspond with the Elliott Wave pattern described in this book, and these patterns also tend to align with Fibonacci ratios. The good chart analysis computer programs offer tools to trace Fibonacci ratios over candle charts. The main thing to be aware of when doing this is that in real life, charts aren’t always shaped as perfectly as the examples in the book. You can think of the chart like a spring that naturally “wants” to be in a certain shape but can be bent and compressed by larger forces you may not be able to detect.
#75 pygmycory
The problem isn’t so much “women and minorities in STEM” as an institutional culture that makes productive work its last priority and vocally despises the demographics who pioneered the fields. A different arrangement would not require more resources than exist now; Iran has made advances in hypersonic missiles that the US has not despite the US’s massive edge in resources. Iran makes sure that all its young people with engineering aptitude are put where they can make a difference while the US teaches them a neoreligion of eternal atonement for the sins of their ancestors. Another reason kids are passing up these fields is that current Western societies reward people who do YouTube, OnlyFans or fraud schemes thousands of times more than people who work in STEM.
#77 JMG
“Widespread adoption of older technologies in place of newer and more heavily marketed ones — vinyl records were a $1 billion a year business in the US last year, and growing rapidly — is something else again.”
Retro tech of one sort or another has been in demand for a long time. Black and white film photography has been extremely popular all through the advent of color film and then digital cameras. Muscle cars from the 60s and 70s have been collectors’ items ever since. Musicians have for many decades kept lists of pieces of audio gear no longer produced that remain the best in their class. Generally, people who develop a bit of knowledge about technology quickly learn that it’s anything but a linear shift from worse to better over time. “Enshaleification” may be a recent term but the concept is far older.
One more thing, you wrote: “Even now, as vinyl records are resurgent, a vast number of people still put up with flat, tinny sound from phone speakers when a very modest investment would give them the chance to enjoy music much more. Why? Because they’ve been conned by the myth of progress.”
Those who are aware of vinyl and choose phone speakers mainly do so because of the extreme convenience and low price of streaming apps compared to purchasing a piece of physical media, especially as people are now more overworked and underpaid than ever. Everyone I’ve ever discussed audio tech with knows that phone-type speakers are bottom of the barrel regardless of how new they are.
Hi JMG,
I posted this late in last month’s open post but I did it at the 11th hour and I don’t think it made it through. I hope you don’t mind me posting it again.
I saw a mention of weird westerns/occult westerns in the comments (in last month’s open post) and I’ve been working on just such a side project.
I won’t get bore you with specifics but I want to ask, do you happen to know of any books on the higher planes and their structure as formulated by 19th century mystics?
I heard somewhere that Andrew Jackson Davis wrote a lot about this and I came across a theosophical text about the astral, C. W. Leadbeater’s ‘The Astral Plane’.
The ideas I’m playing with are the notion that science and mysticism were moving in similar tracks in the 19th century; you have people like William Crookes and Alfred Wallace looking into spiritualism while revolutionizing physics and biology. All this somehow sits nicely with the notion of the American frontier. The Higher Planes as a frontier past the frontier if that makes any sense.
It was exciting to see other people thinking about the same period from an esoteric perspective as a good place to set interesting stories.
JZ
It seems to me that Trump, Putin, and Xi all know that collapse is happening & all nations have to localize, and give up far away investments, and that Europe will be taken over by the Middle East. But, they are all scared of being the weakest and getting a raw deal. Trump will likely get North and South America for influence, including Cuba. Putin will get Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Xi will get all of Asia including Taiwan. I think they all agree on these things. But Canada, Greenland, and Japan are all disputed, and the Middle East (which will control Western Europe) and India are wildcards that everyone is scared of. And all of them have stranded assets far away they know they will lose. The fear of AI and/or not enough energy is scaring all of them. This is a scramble for the crumbs as we all scuttle into our little caves. The outcome will be good for Mother Nature and future generations, but it won’t be any fun for us to get there.
It is becoming clear to me that one of my adult children is a true narcissist, who exhibits all the behaviors this implies. It seems to me there is some spiritual/hidden component to this. Do you have any explanation of what causes the “dark triad” of personality disorders (narcissism/sociopathy/psychopathy) in a person? Conventional psychology is not very helpful in this regard. Also, any coping strategies for dealing with such a person that is going to remain in your life? I realize this is definitely a predicament rather than a problem that can be solved.
J.L.Mc12, then it might be workable, at least on a modest scale.
Jeff, the amusing thing about Schopenhauer’s hard dichotomy between morality and self-interest is that it comes straight out of Lutheran moral theology, and also appears in Kant. I consider that approach to morality to be radically false. Nietzsche was correct in pointing out that nearly all moral philosophy consists of using bad logic to prop up traditional beliefs, though his attempt to create an alternative morality flopped pretty badly — he was using bad logic to prop up an alternative to traditional beliefs! My view is that morality is simply the set of rules that human societies have evolved over the millennia to make it possible for people to live together in relative peace. That’s all it is, but it deserves respect on that basis, since — in the classic Burkean argument — none of us are smart enough to replace it wholesale, and the best we can do is discuss how to modify details that don’t work well. I prefer virtue ethics because it makes no metaphysical claims; the virtue ethicist simply says, “these are the human qualities that lead to excellence in individual and collective existence, as proven by experience.” As for occultism, it can’t and shouldn’t claim to define all of life; it’s simply a set of teachings and practices that enable us to deal with the subtle dimensions of existence and mind, and so occupies its own sphere, as does science, religion, politics, the arts, and morality, among others.
Patrick, we also had a very cold winter. Over the last two months it’s swung hard back and forth — in the 70s one day, snow on the ground the next. Whee!
Polecat, the radical leftist ideology that got labeled “woke” was never more than the viewpoint of a small if influential minority in America and a few other countries; as I recall, only about 8% of adults in the US support woke causes such as unrestricted illegal migration, or gender redefinition based solely on self-identification. Hollywood sacrificed itself on the altar of wokedom out of a conviction that all they had to do was proclaim the alleged truth and the masses would bleat loudly and follow. It didn’t work, and now sheer economic reality is forcing a change in course.
Zarcayce, thanks for this. To my mind, the big question is which parts of the world get thrown to the wolves in the coming scramble for resources. Europe is likely to do very badly…
Lew, an excellent point! I recall it mostly because so many people talked about it in relation to Bill Clinton’s sexual scandals. No question, it has relevance now, too.
Ennobled, that makes perfect sense. Thank you.
Logo Dau, the fact remains that vinyl records stopped being produced for quite a few years, and are now staging a major comeback. The same thing has happened with quite a few technologies. My late wife worked for many years as a bookkeeper for a camera supply house that sold mostly to professionals, and so I got to hear about the collapse of the film industry once digital cameras came on the market, followed by a period when only hobbyists used film — and then, more recently, film began to find its way back into more general use. At this point, it’s quite possible to talk about the crapification of products and services, and have people nod and agree — as I noted earlier in this discussion, the myth of progress that dominated 19th and 20th century Western culture is collapsing around us, making it possible for such discussions to happen, but it wasn’t that long ago that suggesting that “progress” made things worse got shrill and furious denunciations from quite a range of people. I wrote about that back in 2015:
https://archdruidmirror.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-heresy-of-technological-choice.html
John, Andrew Jackson Davis is a great source, as his books were hugely influential all through American occult circles in the 19th century. His The Great Harmonia is probably the most complete work on his system. Theosophical literature is very well stocked with books on the same subject — I recommend William Quan Judge’s The Ocean of Theosophy and Geoff Barborka’s The Divine Plan as good places to start. The only other volume I can think of that was as influential was Thomas Burgoyne’s The Light of Egypt — you want vol. 1, which was written by Burgoyne, not volume 2, which was channeled long after his death. Two fictional works should also be on your reading list, as everybody read them: John Uri Lloyd’s Etidorhpa and “Phylos the Tibetan”‘s A Dweller on Two Planets. Have fun!
Pat, excellent. Yes, that seems very likely indeed at this point.
Gladitsspring, please accept my condolences! That’s hard to live through. Severe character disorders like that are, according to occult tradition, always rooted in previous lives. In general, what happens is that someone systematically rejects some awareness they know to be true, for one reason or another, and then is born for a life or several lives without the capacity for that awareness, until raw pain finally punches through the wall of denial. The occult traditions don’t offer coping mechanisms; my response to the person in my family who had comparable personality issues was to cut all ties and never look back, but I understand that may not be an option for you.
“Equally, if the “war in heaven” business from the Bible and other mythological texts should be taken seriously, conflict is less common on the highest planes but it still happens sometimes.”
Also as recorded by Historians at the time key moments like the fall of the Temple in 70AD when the Divine Glory departed the Temple:
“Prodigies had indeed occurred, but to avert them either by victims or by vows is held unlawful by a people which, though prone to superstition, is opposed to all propitiatory rites. Contending hosts were seen meeting in the skies, arms flashed, and suddenly the temple was illumined with fire from the clouds. Of a sudden the doors of the shrine opened and a superhuman voice cried: “The gods are departing”: at the same moment the mighty stir of their going was heard. Few interpreted these omens as fearful; the majority firmly believed that their ancient priestly writings contained the prophecy that this was the very time when the East should grow strong and that men starting from Judea should possess the world.”
https://cojs.org/tacitus-_historiae_v-_10-14-_the_roman_earthworks_at_jerusalem/
Moreover, the eastern gate of the inner court of the temple, which was of brass, and vastly heavy, and had been with difficult shut by twenty men, and rest upon a basis armed with iron, and had bolts fastened very deep into the firm floor, which was then made of one entire stone, was seen to be opened of its own accord about the sixth hour of the night. Now, those that kept watch in the temple came here upon running to the curtain of the temple, and told him of it: who then came up thither, and not without great difficulty, was able to shut the gate again. This also appeared to the vulgar to be a very happy prodigy, as if God did there by open to them the gate of happiness. But the men of learning understood it, that the security of their holy house was dissolved of its own accord, and that the gate was opened for the advantage of their enemies. So these publicly declared, that this signal foreshadowed the desolation that was coming upon them.
Besides these a few days after the feast on the 21st day of the month Artemisius (Jyar), a certain prodigious and incredible phenomenon appeared; I supposed the account of it would seem to be a fable, were it not related to those who saw it, and were not the events that followed it of so considerable a nature as to deserve such signals; for, before sun setting, chariots and troops of soldiers in their armour were seen running about among the clouds, and surrounding of cities. Moreover at that feast which we call Pentecost, as the priests were going by night into the inner court of the temple, as their custom was, to perform their sacred ministrations, they said that, in the first place, they felt a quaking, and heard a great noise, and after that they heard a sound as of a great multitude, saying, ‘Let us remove hence’.
https://ap.org.au/2024/09/16/signs-and-the-temples-destruction/
What I like about eudaimonistic virtue ethics is it answers what we might call the Hard Problem of Ethics: Why care about being good at all? Other systems of ethics generally start from the assumption that you care about right and wrong and then reason their way to predefined conclusions.
Eudaimonism as Aristotle laid it out starts from “Why do we do anything?”, concludes that the goal is to be happy and live well, and proceeds from there to discuss the various ideas people have had about how to attain that goal, while introducing some of his own. You’re never asked to care about abstract ideals for their own sake — he actually raises this idea and rejects it because in that case goodness would have nothing to do with us.
Re: narcissists and psychopaths
> In general, what happens is that someone systematically rejects some awareness they know to be true, for one reason or another, and then is born for a life or several lives without the capacity for that awareness, until raw pain finally punches through the wall of denial.
I can see how this might happen: a life or more spent cultivating the gentler virtues might eventually be followed by one meant to teach the harder virtues, but if the soul remains dogmatically fixed in the idea that virtue means being walked on, it might well over-correct and conclude it’s better to be vicious, and need a life or two to correct that over-correction.
@ Mother #198
“I just saw your answer, thank you. I read it three times and I think I get the gist.”
It can be like that. Seems like reading hieroglyphics at first but once you are there it is not so bad.
> So first download and install that. Then find a place to get Linux Mint from; got any suggestions for where? Then get the ISO (what does ISO mean?) and download that. Use the image writer to put the Linux into the USB. How big of a USB do I need for it?
The best place to download it is from the official website here – https://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=326
It is funny, I had never thought about the meaning of ISO. It comes from the organization that made the original CD specifications. So ISO means – International Standards Organization, us nerds were never great with names and marketing. Essentially it is a single file that can contain the entire information of a CD/DVD or USB, thus you need a program to convert it back into the original files.
With Mint the USB only needs to be about 4GB, it would be hard to come across any that small nowadays.
Otherwise it looks like you are all over the rest of this. Being the first time you have done this, just make sure to back up anything that might be vital, just on the off chance it goes a little sideways. But it always good to back things up, you never know what could happen.
Old back up advice. 3 – 2 – 1. Three Back ups. Two mediums (DVD/Hard drive/Online if you must), One off site, just in case the house burns down. 🙂
@ Northwind #145 “I first misread this as “hills of power.” “Hills” has a nice ring to it. In due time, halls become hills. Particularly now — no one has money to pay for halls’ infrastructure anymore. The Halls-to-Hills movement.”
I am going to mention this place here twice in one week! Look up a picture of the Canberra Parliament. The design has a literal grassy hill over it. There is a strip of grass that goes right over the main parliament hall, and until 2016 this was open for the public to walk over. The symbolism was very deliberate, it was to say that the people are above those in government. That if you are in parliament, you can look up knowing that the people are over your desires.
They ended up closing this off as it was seen as a ‘security risk’. If that isn’t a striking symbol of how things are changing, I don’t know what is.
It is a shame, I was there last week and the one thing I would have loved to do would be to take a stroll over the top of the den of sin.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-15/hundreds-to-roll-down-parliament-house-lawn-before-ban-kicks-in/8123108
Lets turn all halls of power into hills of peace. That sounds a little too hippy dippy, but one can dream. 😉
Following California’s lead, dozens of jurisdictions around the world are now fast-tracking bills to mandate “age verification” of various sorts in computer operating systems, which seems to me to be a pretty transparent effort to crush the free software/open source movement, and especially the deliberately “user-unfriendly” Unix-likes like Arch Linux, Gentoo, BSD, etc. used by people who do not wish to resist Silicon Valley’s total surveillance system. The intention seems to be that you will use a computer under the Apple/Microsoft/Google triopoly, or not at all, and that you will not use an old computer (even things like FreeDOS would be targeted as it’s an operating system designed for computers too primitive to access the internet) under any circumstances. Am I going to become a criminal just because I want to control what software runs on my PC and how it is configured? This one is “bipartisan” too, encompassing the whole spectrum of ruling class politics from the most woolly-headed progressives to Thieloid “Gay Space Fascists”, so there is no one to turn to to try to stop it. Many of the laws are so poorly written they would apply to servers and the like as well as consumer machines or even embedded systems with no user interface, but I expect as the Long Descent progresses laws that make sense or are enforced consistently will be one of the things to go, in favor of authorities just doing whatever they like with the flimsiest justification, and eventually no justification at all…
As for vinyl records, keep in mind that vinyl records of any decent quality require virgin vinyl, a material that is going to be awfully hard to come by without crude oil. If recorded music is available at all after the Long Descent, the format would probably resemble pre-WWII 78s more than LPs.
Mother Balance: I’ve been following the conversation about Linux . I first started with Linux in 1994, all the way back to the 8 char filename era and almost to the 5 1/4″ disk era that you talked about, which I remember well. I didn’t really feel that I could put myself in the mindset of a person who was completely new to Linux, so I didn’t answer your original comment. But now that you’ve got a few responses that I’ve seen, I have a couple things to add.
I follow a writer on Quora who says that he doesn’t switch to Linux because none of the Photoshop alternatives for Linux have some necessary features that Photoshop has. I don’t know the details about that; I’d ask him, but he’s massively popular on that platform and isn’t likely to grant me his attention (which I don’t want anyway). I have no reason to disbelieve him (about that) however.
Next, wine isn’t magic. I have a 30 year old game that I run with wine sometimes, and I’ve had to accept that sometimes it’s going to crash my computer, which seems to be able to withstand anything else. Although wine is pretty good for an emulator, it’s going to always be hit or miss whether it runs any given Windows program or not. Those that it does run, it won’t necessarily run perfectly.
What I’m getting at it is, that I would recommend installing Linux as an alternative on a dual boot system to try it out, rather than committing to it totally and wiping out your Windows partition. That way, if you find that there’s something you need that Linux just can’t do, you’ll still have that capability. I don’t know how it goes if you want to put Windows back onto a computer in 2026. I’ve evicted Windows from several computers but I’ve only ever put it back once, and I did that in a way that I don’t think I can guide a newbie through, and it was a solid 15 years ago anyway. I couldn’t guarantee that what I did would work now.
Also, I’m sure you would do this anyway, but I’d feel remiss if I didn’t say: Please be sure to back up any data on your Windows partition that you generated yourself and can’r be replaced if it’s lost, before making *any* changes to your disk with a Linux installer.
I’ve found that Googling most questions about Linux yields an answer in the form of a forum discussion about it that’s already taken place, without the need to engage with the jackdonkeys one of your other respondents mentioned, which are definitely a thing.
JMG: “Anon, castration cults come into fashion when the population of a civilization is in overshoot and economic contraction sets in. I see that, and also the spread of same-sex attraction, as two of many effects of a genetic “off switch” designed to decrease reproduction when a society is overcrowded and beginning to decline.”
I’ll add that to what you said about transhumanism in response to my question a couple (few?) weeks ago about how transgenderism became such a big thing. I think both ideas account for the thing quite well and work in (grim) synergy with each other. We are certainly in overshoot and transgenderism seems to fit the description of “castration cult”. So I guess “full meal deal” trans women are the eunuch priests of the religion of progress.
I wonder if that may be a reason that I unconsciously had for breaking with the orthodoxy of transgenderism, in addition to the reasons I was aware of. I have no ability to believe in the religion of progress anymore. The Archdruid Report blew that away forever, and good. Thank you for that. I always prefer to know the truth, even if it’s hard to take.
It looks like the Iran war has already yielded one big change: The end of the petro-dollar. It’s finished even now. The gulf states’ oil production, except for Iran, is shut down, so no dollars are coming in. Iran doesn’t sell in dollars. Neither does Russia. The Gulf States still need to pay their bills, so they have to spend their savings and liquidate their US Treasuries. Once the war is over, why would the oil states go back? Iran demands that gulf oil be traded in Chinese Yuan to permit tankers to transit the Strait of Hormuz as a condition of any peace settlement. They also demand the removal of all US bases in the region, which are already evacuated; the service members are now “working remotely” from nearby hotels and offices.
Once the petro-dollar gets over its Wile-E-Coyote moment of hanging in the air before gravity kicks in, the world will shake off its blinkers, and the dollar will lose 80% or so of its value (as you, JMG, have forecast on several occasions). When that goes, US hegemony follows.
I recall sometime back you (JMG) had seen in Trump the archetype of the “changer”. It looks like you really called it.
The only question left is how far the PTB are willing to go to preserve the petro-dollar; Israel is just a stalking horse, cat’s paw and side-show. The scramble to dispatch a patchwork of ground forces, with more in the pipeline, is not a good sign.
—Lunar Apprentice
Justin #169 and JMG #195:
I’ll add in this experiment too, which found that an alarmingly large amount of people would prefer to inflict pain on themselves than be in (not necessarily particularly deep) thought about anything.
https://www.science.org/content/article/people-would-rather-be-electrically-shocked-left-alone-their-thoughts
Robert # 161:
Indeed, US Navy hasn’t lost any ship because every ships it has sent to the war area are now far from the Persian Gulf (aircraft carriers too), because of fear to Iranian missiles and drones.(Ahem)
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Clay D. # 162:
Depleted weapons and military toys stocks can be replaced by new ones (to war industries rejoicing), but unfortunately, nowadays too many weapons and planes and radars are too complex in their technology to be made in a hurry. So do the math.
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Curt # 170:
Someone said a long time ago, “it’s necessary to have ideas, but not to be held by ideas”. I think it’s the same with emotions and feelings. They’re part of human life, but you can’t be possessed by them. Maybe a first step for not being a emotions slave is to be aware of them. Then meditation can help, too.
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Pygmycory # 173:
Maybe antiwar protests in Canada against Irak invasion worked, but I think they didn’t really worked here.
In addition to my previous comment about massive protests demonstrations here, I’d say today far left can be too confused and divided by nowadays complex world situations, beyond usual good/bad people schemes. For example, there hasn’t been a real antiwar protest against Ukrainian war. I guess the left is in a inner “civil war”: some leftists are against Putin (a Conservative Christian), some others against Kiev regime (who has banned leftist parties in Ukraine), and a third faction seems to be neutral (according what I’ve seen in my country).
Hi John,
Been recently playing with one of the better AIs, Gemini, on limits to growth related trends and scenarios (referencing your catabolic theories for example).
What is find quite hilarious is the AI basically agrees with my long standing basecase of simplifying lifestyle costs and moving away from careers without a long term future.
It even gave me some good local companies that can develop me a harvesting rainwater system!
The bottom line is it independently confirmed my own long standing view that the financial services industry which I work in is in big trouble after 2030 as we shift from growth to contraction.
The logic being that paper/financial based assets lag the real world hit by 3 years or so (which makes sense). So after around 2033 or so expect a big contraction in financial services as it pivots to wealth preservation for the ultra rich.
There will still be a core industry in that until the 2040s but certainly not the growth machine of the last few decades, and particularly from the 1980s (think the equivalent size of the 1970s).
Regarding Israel i consider Bibi as a master strategist, the last of the Great Leaders in Israeli post war history.
Bibi has a special understanding and deep relationship with the American elite and frankly no one else could have persuaded Trump to bomb Iran.
The strategic destruction of Iranian strategic assets and capabilities, which is on going, and the degradation of Hezbollah and other proxies has certainly avoided the nightmare scenario that Iran was developing pre 2023.
Armed encirclement by jihadi groups dedicated to destroying Israel. Ultimately Hamas jumped the gun too early and probably saved Israel.
Israel has profound long term challenges which you have rightly articulated before and remain the case, but the massive weakening of the Iranian axis of resistance has probably given Israel an extension to its existence, certainly over the next 10 to 15 years or so.
Long term, new threats will arise unless the Muslim world reconciles to Israel which looks unlikely.
I would be worried about Egypt and Turkey longer term but Iran was no doubt the pressing short to medium term danger to Israel existence.
Alex # 174:
I’m not JMG, but I think pacifism works in some contexts, but not in anothers. For example, Gandhi managed India independence apparently according peaceful protests. However, when he was a young lawyer in South Africa, it’s said he was surrounded in a street by some angry white men. He didn’t fight, but he was defended by a white woman who had an umbrella (ahem).
In addition to this story, Buddhism appeared as a peaceful religion, but it was greatly favored by an Indian king (Ashoka, methink), who had fondness for Buddha teachings. And a king has an army, didn’t you know it?
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Anonymous # 177:
If an electoral fraud isn’t commited in Hungary, yes, it’s possible Orban would be reelected. So EU could attempt a “color revolution” against him, or a lawfare coup d’état (bribed/threatened highest Hungarian judges anulating elections). These two possible dirty tricks by EU/NATO to prevent Orban new government would be very reckless and stupid, methink. Orban far right many supporters in Hungary could then to counterattack, so sociopolitical unrest there could have unpleasant consequences beyond Hungary…
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Robert 185:
I’ve thought the Kharg island amphibious landing by US Army as a work hypoyhesis, but not soon. Trump hasn’t sent a massive army to the area, and I think that modest invasion would need more time…maybe in some months?
That military operation would need a heck of marines and ground troops, covered by near all American and NATO navies to protect soldiers from Iranian drones and missiles. I don’t know wether Trump can wait until the island conquest or he’ll declare an apparent “victory” before that under whatever subterfuge he could think (he’s good in showing his own Spectacle, so I tend to think he could do it too).
Just read (Washington Post, March 27, p. B16), “Drugs in Irrigation raise contamination concerns”. It seems that treated wastewater still contains traces of pharmaceuticals, which get concentrated into the tissues of green leafy vegetables when it’s used for irrigation. The research involved psychoactive drugs.
What could possibly go wrong?
I suppose it must be true that it is the “mass” that takes whole people to war… and that stepping away from the “mass” can only be done one person at a time.
I would like to highlight one courageous individual, Daniel Klein, who has stepped away from the Zionist “mass” in which he was reared, by gradually coming to see, know, and accept the humanity of the Palestinians who, as a settler in the West Bank, he had lived alongside, and never before “seen”.
He has a substack, and tells his story here: https://dzyk.substack.com/p/my-freedom-from-zionism
An extract:
“When I finally forged connections with Palestinians, they shattered every lie I’d been told.
I encountered love. Deep, resilient, unbroken love. Humanity that hasn’t been extinguished despite everything done to destroy it. Compassion that should have been burned away by now but somehow remains. A desire for dignity, coexistence, and life.
I grew up surrounded by Palestinians every day and never truly met one. Not fully. Not as a human. Not in a way that required me to see, to listen, to sit with the reality of their experience. The system is built to prevent that encounter. Because if we truly saw them, the whole thing would crumble.
The Palestinians I met called for justice, not domination. For mercy, not supremacy. For coexistence, not erasure. They just want to be seen as human. They want to live. They want their children to grow up free. They want what we all want.
Along the way I realized Zionism wasn’t the answer to my trauma. It kept me locked in survival mode, addicted to fear as a way of life. If I believed I was always about to be destroyed, I’d justify anything to survive.
This isn’t an accident. It’s the design.”
@JMG re: Virtue ethics: C.S. Lewis offered a list of those things widely considered virtuous across the cultures and ages. IIRC, he called it something like “the Universal Tao.” Over many moves, I’ve lost the book in which this appeared, but it impressed me.
Hey JMG
Out of curiosity, what use would you think hydrogen will realistically have through the “long descent “? I can only imagine it being used for chemical manufacturing, or lighting and welding.
Friday’s lighter fare and amuse bouche is a side excursion on the Lincoln Highway with Columbus, Ohio’s progressive electronica outfit Church of Hed:
https://justinpatrickmoore.substack.com/p/church-of-hed-father-road
In this version, all roads lead from NYC and San Fran back into the heart of it all, the plains states and the great midwest.
In addition to my last comment about pacifism in the future, I’ll also write violence sometimes may be necessary and it works, but it isn’t a “silver bullet” to achieve political goals. A near historical example here: since the past century second half, for more or less fifty years, some Basque far left secessionists have been trying political independence from
Spain government (dictatorship and then democracy) using open terrorism. After near 1,000 deaths: Nowadays Basque country still belongs to Spain, and Basque nationalist left is despised and hated yet, (in spite they’ve apparently have renounced terrorist way), even by quite Basque people. So…
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Northwind Grandma # 189:
You’ve written about one of your ancestors living near to a canal. Well, my country Mediterranean climate isn’t very good to build canals for boats, but at least we’ve got two long canals in Spain which near a century ago were fit for boats pulled by mules (for coal, potatoes and another heavy supplies). They were outdated due to modern trucks, but I think in the Long Descent canal navigation could work again by evident reasons. Oh, and they could be repaired with human and animal power after mechanization would be more difficult in the future…
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(To be continued)
One thing i find funny is that the hard dichotomy between morality and self interest is not a Buddhist thought. Sure if you do merit making practices with good intentions its better, but if you say give to the poor because you want to make sure your next life is better then that is also a good thing. Its not as good as doing it because you feel its the right thing to do, but its better then not doing it at all.
I found the Christian idea that if you don’t have good motives then don’t even bother to be off putting. That kind of morality didn’t make me more generous, it just made me throw up my hands and go ‘guess i’m not doing it then.’
The Buddhist idea of doing it for imperfect reasons is much more reasonable to me.
Northwind Grandma # 191:
Two great movies,IMHO, I watched them a long time ago and I like them. Oh, and in Kubricks movie about nuclear war, it’s very interesting Peter Sellers acts in some different characters!
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Chris # 192:
I bet Kharg island could be strongly fortified and full of AD facilities in recent past (Iranians may have had decades to build them in time). So an amphibious invasion (after heavy aeronaval bombings) could eventually occupy that island but at what human cost for attackers? Nobody said it would be easy in near future.
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JMG # 195:
Of course, aerial western axis supremacy in Iran sky is evident, but it seems some Iranian missiles and drones go on flying toward their targets without much trouble; and I bet China and Russia are replacing, at least in part, Iran destroyed AD. Iran surely lost its air force weeks ago, but like in the Ukraine case, air domination doesn’t give you (Russia/USA&Israel) a fast victory.
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Slithy Toves # 200:
It was a source of half-wry amusement when I noticed the Buddhism sold by European people or westernized Buddhists (with their “philosophical agnosticism”) didn’t match with real East Asians worship to many gods (so they’re polytheist). Western Buddhists attempts to conciliate real polytheism with their rough rationalism (“gods in true Buddhism are really metaphores…”), made me smile.
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Lew # 204:
I watched “Wag the Dog”, and though I thought it wasn’t a master piece, I like its smart blend of cynism and criticism against the mediatic-militar complex.
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Pat # 209:
I’m a bit skeptic about your idea of EU future dominion over Middle East. I think Europe could be more interested in a shameful neocolonialism in Africa over its former colonies (if Russia and China let it, which I doubt), at least in North African countries. Middle East (if Iran falls or weakens too much) could be in the future a geopolitical game between two roosters: Israel and Turkey (in its neo-Otoman mode).
I would love to know how members of the commentariat who voted for Trump are feeling. Did he disappoint you, are you surprised by how it’s turning out, or are you pleased with your choice so far? Thank you
JMG:
Neptunesdolphins, I think the elite replacement cycle is picking up speed, and the bureaucratic-managerial elite that used to run both parties and still runs the Democrats is panicking as their power base collapses out from under them. Desperate attempts to get their remaining goals cemented into law are likely results. My guess is they’ll fail.
AND JMG:
Polecat, the radical leftist ideology that got labeled “woke” was never more than the viewpoint of a small if influential minority in America and a few other countries; as I recall, only about 8% of adults in the US support woke causes such as unrestricted illegal migration, or gender redefinition based solely on self-identification. Hollywood sacrificed itself on the altar of wokedom out of a conviction that all they had to do was proclaim the alleged truth and the masses would bleat loudly and follow. It didn’t work, and now sheer economic reality is forcing a change in course.
——-
Neptune’s Dolphins – me
I was rewatching the Obama commercial urging people to vote yes for redistricting in Virginia. Then, the one with Gov. Spanberger came on. They are blanketing the airwaves with these commercials even on Conservative Newsmax, The First, and RAV. All rabid Conservative stations. I guess they are desperate.
What I noticed is how the two decided for the rest of us the correct and proper action to take. “I want you to what I think you should do.” There is no “we” in their persuasion of wanting us to vote a certain way. I realized that if I was a normie who was just going to work and trying to live, that I would either be confused by their urgent stress on voting yes, or put off that they are tell me what to do.
I guess the PMC class is fighting their last stand, and it shows. It has sense of urgency of “we must stop Trump” at any means. However, how many normies care? The normies that I speak to do not have any idea of what they are talking about, don’t believe that Trump can be stopped, don’t care, or like Trump. In other words, they have other fish to fry.
I do know in Fairfax County (VA), which is very rich, very blue, and chock full of out of work federal workers, there is rumbling about illegal aliens. A woman was killed at a local bus stop by one, who the local DA (very, very woke) refused to either jail or report to ICE. The police are furious. Meanwhile, the Governor and the local Congressman are either dismissing it as an ICE failure or turning it on the pro-Trump people.
Another illegal alien has been sexually attacking girls at a local high school. The parents are furious about the DA (same guy) and the very woke school board for either hiding the harm or pretending it never happened.
If the anger in this very blue, very woke, very rich place is bubbling up against the PMC, I believe they are doomed.
Mr. Greer.. most definitely! I believe that with the fall of ‘big cimema’ of the last hundred years or so now crashing and burning, and … not exclude the seemingly ubiquitous ‘hyper digital A.I. enhanced/produced independent uh ‘film’ that’s all the rage currently … societies going forward will gravitate towards more and more live entertainment, if for no other reason that the lack of adequate energy needed to create the former, inching ever closer to the Time of Elbus! “HALE MATGA” (Make All Troubadours Great Again!)
@Mother Balance,
The easiest software to write an ISO file to a USB stick is called “Balena Etcher” — and yes, thinking of the ISO as a ZIP isn’t a bad way to think about it. You can get Balena Etcher here: https://etcher.balena.io/
You may need to buy a new USB stick– I recently ran into that, where one machine absolutely would not recognize my old ones to boot from. To get to the boot menu, it may not be one of the function keys; it might be ESC or DEL as well. All the manufacturers are different an you can just search something like “2020 HP laptop boot menu key” to find yours out without a lot of annoying trial-and-error. (Replace HP with whatever brand your machine is, of course.)
As for downloading Mint, you can get that here: https://linuxmint.com/download.php
Just go with the Cinnamon edition– being the most popular the ‘how to’ videos and guides often focus on that one, and you have no reason to prefer the others.
I’ve written some comments ago that I think both Trump and Netanyahu share partly their agendas in the Iran war (maybe to weaken BRICS the first and to destroy an old time enemy the second). However, I can bet Trump would be more comfortable pretending he’s defeated Iran regime soon (he’d be relatively happy with mere Iran weakening); but Israeli elite (driven by their motto “Israel always wins” and the geopolitical threat for then coming from Iran), cannot and doesn’t want stop soon this war. So they don’t share with USA government at 100% their Iran goal. Israeli govt will have a relief if/when Irani regime has fallen (in real world, when?).
On the other hand, we can’t forget Israel has another second war, in addition to the main one against Iran. I’m speaking about its another old enemy, the Iran backed “terrorist army” called Hezbollah. Israeli army has tried to destroy literally this Lebanese militia, several times in the past (since more than 30 years ago); but it seems Tel Aviv hasn’t been able until today to annihilate 100% its North enemy. In spite of periodical “razzias” against Lebanon Hezbollah sanctuaries, Israel says it has won (having killing a lot of Lebanese “terrorist”, maybe a part of them innocent civilians, ahem); but after not much time, Hezbollah returns and begins to launch missiles again toward Northern Israel. Tel Aviv claims its Iron Dome works perfectly stopping every missile (cough), but eventually it attacks again by surprise South Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah. It seems this vicious circle between Israel and the militia goes on today. IMHO, the mere Iran financed militia survival until today, and its periodical attacks against Israel, IMHO mean Israel hasn’t won really against Hezbollah, in a strategical sense (it hasn’t achieved its full destruction goal yet). Zionist can say Israel has always defeated Hezbollah, pointing the hundreds or thousand Lebanese it’s killed (victory according deaths score?); but only full Hezbollah erasure from the map could let Israel North border in a real not disturbed peace. Of course “Israel always win”, trying to repeat its mythical past victories, like the 6 Days War (or at least, it pretends to have won).
In a discrete second place, Tel Aviv is fighting again nowadays to seek and destroy “terrorists”, but will be this time the last war against them? I’m a bit skeptic about it. Maybe a future regime change in Tehran soon could cut Hezbollah funding, but Israel’s fighting two wars at the same time, and maybe Trump’s eager to declare victory.
In addition to these “little” problems for a full and fast Israeli victory in Middle East, a more desperate Iran regime, due to harder attacks from western axis, could lead it to order Houthis to harass western ships from Yemen coast (they could close Red Sea from/toward Suez, so do the math). Houthis seem know how to wait orders, but maybe they’re eager to fight their two black beasts (USA and Israel).
I have been watching CPAC – the Conservative PAC. They are fire eaters who are screaming about Islamic invasions and how as Christians they have to stop it. In other words, they are all in full throttle in their fear of being destroyed by those Islamic hordes. Of course, everyone must be deported, and Trump is the only thing stopping the woke mob is also on display. Along with Democrats cheat with illegal aliens, etc.
My sense is that the MAGA people are also running scared along with the PMC folks. Everyone sees themselves as being under siege. I wonder if the long collapse is lurking in their subconscious in that the world they want cannot be.
Both groups want a world of their imagining – both shiny and bright. They do disagree on what is the shiny and bright. But I think deep down, they both realize that shiny and bright cannot be. At least the current ideas of shiny and bright.
@JMG (#211, replying to Jeff Russell):
Well said!
I completely agree that “morality is simply the set of rules that human societies have evolved over the millennia to make it possible for people to live together in relative peace.”
From this it follows that societies which have evolved in different ways will have differing sets of rules (differing moralities), each serving its own society well, but not wholly compatible with the rules (moralities) of other societies. In other words, no one set or rules, no universal morality, will ever work equally well for all societies.
The current push to devise a single moral system for all humanity is simply the result of different current societies rubbing shoulders with one another far more closely than they ever did in the distant past, and thus seeming to share a path of evolution as they act somewhat–but only somewhat!–like a single society for a few centuries.
And all this also has to do with the facx that different societies speak different languages. Just ass any two languages always differ from one another in their grammatical structures and lexical inventories, so their societies’ world-views–which depend heavily on grammatical structures and lexical inventories–will necessarily diverge from one another. And different societies will solve the common problem of how to “live together in relative peace” in different ways. Because of this, IMHO no universal morality is even theoretically possible.
Leaving us, as you point out, merely with virtues, that is, “the human qualities that lead to excellence in individual and collective existence, as proven by experience.”
Hi John, this is my first question here, and a bit of a two-parter, so I’m sorry if you’re tired of fielding questions about these topics. I usually just read the articles without delving into the comment section.
I recall you describing trump in an interview as transitioning from the symbolic orange trickster figure, described in your book the King in Orange, to a more golden figure. I believe you also stated that whoever won the 2024 election was going to run into serious trouble or at least difficulties when you do your astrological readings ahead of the election. Unfortunately I don’t remember your exact wording.
I’d be curious to get an update how this has developed. I’m also curious whether you think the current Iran crisis might be the military catastrophe that you suggested might cause the final unraveling of American Empire in Decline and Fall.
Just one more thing:
From the Washington Examiner:
No Kings organizers predict historic turnout in nationwide protests Saturday:
More than 3,000 “No Kings” protests are set to unfold across the nation on Saturday in what organizers say could become one of the largest coordinated days of political demonstration in U.S. history.
The mobilization marks the third nationwide action led by Indivisible and allied groups following earlier waves that drew millions into the streets to protest President Donald Trump and his policies.
—-
What I have uncovered is that Indivisible that sponsors these protests are funded in part through third parties.
George Soros’ Open Society Foundations awarded a $3 million grant in 2023 to Indivisible, the primary organization behind the “No Kings” protests.
Home of the Brave, a political group, announced it was spending $1 million to advertise the No Kings protests, including in local and national newspapers Founded by George Conway (co-founder of The Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump PAC)
Billionaire Christy Walton (Walmart heiress) was identified as a major financial backer
In 2017, Indivisible received a $350,000 grant from Tides Advocacy, a group affiliated with the Tides Network
The Tides Foundation provides infrastructure and fiscal sponsorship for progressive organizations
—–
From Decoded: The Real Story Behind the No Kings
https://legalexplained.substack.com/p/decoded-the-real-story-behind-no
—
Sen. Ted Cruz claimed that the “No Kings” demonstrations were “part of Antifa,” a loose antifascist coalition that Trump recently designated as a terrorist organization. Multiple Republican figures, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, called the protests “Hate America rallies”. Conservative outlets claimed CPUSA “sponsored” the protests
The Actual Facts: ⚠️
According to a comprehensive fact-check, the CPUSA (Communist Party USA) is not recorded as having claimed responsibility for or organizing the “No Kings” protest. News and event summaries identify groups such as UUP and Indivisible as organizers, but CPUSA is not listed as an organizer in mainstream reporting
What Actually Happened:
The Communist Party USA was listed as one of many endorsers/supporters of certain local No Kings events (particularly in New York City)
Endorsing ≠ Organizing. Being listed as a supporter is different from being a primary organizer
Joe Sims, co-chair of the Communist Party, responded directly to Cruz in a video message, saying: “Neither you, nor Donald Trump, nor Stephen Miller, nor Kash Patel, nor Pam Bondi—none of you are going to prevent us or anyone else from going to the No Kings Day demonstrations… You know good and well that we [the CPUSA] are not ‘hosting’ that demonstration”
—–
The Decoded conclusion: We’re presented with a false choice: Pro-Trump vs. Anti-Trump, Conservative vs. Progressive, Republican vs. Democrat. But follow the money long enough, and you’ll discover something troubling: the same wealthy interests and foundations fund movements on BOTH sides of the political divide.
—–
I happened to agree with the Decoded people. I feel that we all are being used.
I also read that most of the people who participate are Baby Boomers, who remember how protests help to end the Vietnam war. That was from Point Magazine, which is geared to Gen. Y and Millennials.
Further to my last, where I cited a passage written by Daniel Klein, who worked his way out of the Zionism that he calls an idolatry. https://dzyk.substack.com/p/my-freedom-from-zionism
In a further passage, he shows that, having seen the humanity of Palestinians, he was able to find the full and whole human inside himself. What he calls the “honest look”, is not an easy one.
“Torah is not a deed to land.
“When I finally looked into it honestly, I saw all parts of myself reflected back. My own capacity for harm. Amalek, the eternal enemy we were taught to fear and eradicate, is not a people. It’s the part of myself I refused to face. The hatred and the capacity for cruelty that lives in every human heart. When I projected it outward, when I saw evil only in others, I avoided the mirror. I used Torah as a weapon instead of letting it show me who I was.
“For years I saw threats everywhere, enemies on all sides, danger that justified anything. When I finally turned inward, I found that the enemy I feared was a reflection of what I carried. The violence I saw outside was the violence I hadn’t faced within.
“That’s the war we’re called to fight. Not against Palestinians. Against the very parts of ourselves that create this situation.
“To return to my humanity, I had to let go of the belief that ancestral claims justify domination. A three-thousand-year-old story cannot erase the rights and lives of people who have lived on this land for generations. We walk on borrowed ground. No one owns land by divine right.”
Explaining computers is beginner friendly toytube channel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nplI2lvKu94
That one is step by step on installing Zorin.
This one is installing Mint.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qZI6i21jB4
If you have a 2020 laptop with 8 GB of memory you are good to go. But make sure your data is backed up off the laptop. Things can go wrong.
Which video and WiFi adapters you have you have will be listed in whatever windows calls system information.
The best spot to get the iso files is the Zorin or Mint sites. Just type in mint Linux or Zorin Linux into the search bar in the browser and off you go. If you have no wired connection of your own you might need a friend who does have one should you need to download a driver or that really big first update.
After the install is done and you reboot the PC will decide it needs to be updated. This is normal. My Fedora testbed calmly informed me 1072 packages needed updating. Just tell it to go ahead and get a cup of tea. When it’s done it will want to reboot which will take longer than usual.
@Slithy Toves #200 re: Ethics
Remember that Buddhism got sold to the West as a godless, rationalistic, almost secular religion.
I’m not familiar enough with Schopenhauer’s exposure to eastern religions to know whether he took it that way or not, but he did read deeply of the actual religious texts of Buddhism and Hinduism, so I’d suspect he didn’t see it as “godless” (though he did quite explicitly emphasize the pantheistic elements).
<emIf you mean modern ethical philosophers, Alasdair MacIntyre talks about this in After Virtue and A Short History of Ethics: essentially, Enlightenment philosophers stuck to medieval Christian ethics out of social inertia, and tailored their philosophies to come to the preordained conclusions.
Those weren’t who I had in mind, I was thinking of those older philosophers MacIntyre talks about – mostly the classical and Medieval/Renaissance Christian ones. The particular example that always amuses me is how viciously the Stoics and Epicureans denounced each other’s metaphysical bases for ethics, and then ended up with almost exactly the same recommendations on how to live a good life.
If you mean more broadly (for example, similarities between Christian and Hindu ethics), partly that’s because ethics is a response to how the world works — if you break someone’s leg, then regardless of your ethical beliefs it’ll be a while before they can work again, if ever — and partly because what we normally think of as “ethics” is essentially the ethics of the Indo-European diaspora, and probably go back to a time when a sheep was called something like “howis.”
Fair enough, and agreed that much of ethics is derived from what the world and people are like, which is fairly consistent. I’ve been confining my exploration to the Western philosophical tradition, because that’s quite big and thorny enough as is, and after all, is the tradition I come from. I’m also interested in the IE roots of a lot of aspects of religion, culture, and society, and have given it a bit of thought with regard to ethics, but that’s challenging, as you have to pull in the comparative method to draw any conclusions about what conceptions in IE times might have been, and other than the Greeks and Romans, most of our written sources bearing on ethics are post-Christian. I suppose maybe I will have to dig into Indian material after all if I want to do much with that.
Cheers,
Jeff
Question for the commentariat at large.
Does anyone know of a reputable place to acquire a raw ruby? I need one for a ten year anniversary gift I’m planning for the wife but, apparently, synthetic rubies are a thing. I’d like to avoid that and acquire a real uncut ruby but trying to source such a thing is throwing me for a loop. Any suggestions?
Thanks,
HV
Patrick @ 121 you posted above that the Iranian nogotiating position consists of the following:
Guarantees to prevent the recurrence of war
Closure of US military bases in the region
Payment of compensation to the Islamic Republic
An end to wars across all regional fronts
Establishing a new legal framework for the Strait of Hormuz
Prosecution and extradition of media figures deemed hostile to Iran
(source: Almayadeen English, 3/22/26)
Number 1, the guarantees is not possible, not least because both Trump and Netanyahoo do whatever they want and dare anyone to stop them.
“End to all wars, etc.” We are back at League of Nations sentiments, and I doubt the Senate will ratify this time either.
New legal framework for Strait of Hormuz. That sounds to me the heart of the proposal and what the Iranians truly want. That could be possible if they can work out an agreement with Saudi Arabia.
The last demand would be a violation of our First Amendment.
Compensation, that would depend on what kind. Iranians might want us out of their neighborhood, but their elite classes still expect to travel to the USA, buy property here, place their scions in our well paid PMC agencies and so on. Most of those privileges would not be acceptable to any but a small minority of the American public–you might take a look at members of which ethnic group are losing elections here recently–so the fairly neutral word ‘compensation’ is being used.
American bases closing will happen regardless of what the Iranians or anyone else wants.
The Iranians are not dumb. I believe they do understand, as many do not, that American withdrawal from the far side of the globe will also mean no more easy immigration into the USA.
JMG, I do take your point about the well organized pro-Israel lobby. I don’t necessarily object to the alliance itself. After all, Israel welcomes Christian pilgrims at Easter and Christmas. Israel permits the excavation and study of Christian archeological sites, that would be the same kind of sites which are bulldozed by the KSA. I do think Isreal should not get whatever it wants for free.
@Pat #209,
You are right on the money.
“collapse is happening & all nations have to localize, and give up far away investments… scared of being the weakest and getting a raw deal”. Wow! It’s almost a quote from Putin’s speech on Thursday at the annual meeting of Russian big industry shots in Moscow.
“Mar 9, 2026 — AAA Alabama is projecting record-breaking travel numbers for March, with an estimated 171 million travelers expected to take to the skies.”
https://www.waff.com/2026/03/09/spring-break-travel-costs-rise-record-numbers-expected-hit-road-skies/
I could rephrase that as 171 million travelers are unconcerned with climate change and have discretionary money (or at least good credit.)
On a more ground-based topic, or actually underground our system has well problems and piping problems. Some of the piping dates to 1952. So the water board is finally going to start doing something about a new well and piping replacement. Fortunately they have reserve fund to at least get started. I was on the water board for years and could get them to move. I’m not sure what prompted them to finally do something.
Neptunesdolphins @ 241 ..
Tis the same ‘ol uniparty of behind- the-scenes movers-n-shakers, thumping that big stick on one ant nest .. to encourage it into attacking it’s neighbors. Party affiliations be damned! These protests in question are allll OMBADDD! .. nothing more. Pathetic really. Full disclosure: I voted for the Orange de Julius 3 times .. however, this war on Israel’s behalf is NOT what I voted for. In that regard, Trump f**ked up BIGGLY .. so now we all have to pay the piper. That saying going around now, that “No matter which president you vote for, You Get John McCain!” seems rather apt, no? This of course is totally lost to these No Kings larpers..
HIppieViking @ 245, sapphires are mined in Montana. They are available online and do seem to come in various colors besides blue. I take it you are not looking for the top of the line expensive brilliants one would find at a jewelry store.
neptunesdolphins @ 241: “I also read that most of the people who participate are Baby Boomers”. You might remind yourself that these are people who do vote.
J. K. Rowling and her effects on publishing. She is powerful.
You may not have seen this and it’s still kind of informal.
An AO3 fanfiction piece of Harry Potter fanfiction focused on The Marauders (James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew) is having the serial numbers scraped off and republished for a 7 figure book deal.
This is via bookbrunchnews: The book is an adaptation of All The Young Dudes by ‘MsKingBean89’, a Harry Potter fanfic about the Marauders’ time at Hogwarts, featuring a love story between Sirius Black and Remus Lupin. The story, which is 526,969 words long, has a devoted online following, with almost twenty million hits on fanwork website Archive Of Our Own. Rumours were flying this week about the novel, and the figure of £2.5m has been bandied around – one rumour said that the auction had reached that amount, while another said that a £2.5m pre-empt had been rejected.
Back to me.
This particular Marauders fanfiction is titled “All the Young Dudes.” Marauders fanfiction is FAR more popular than Dramione!
The Marauders are four teenage boys (bullies according to canon). Three die heroically. The four boy dies more ambiguously after betraying his friends.
It’s hard to say now if “Wolf Boy” (the proposed title) will generate the hate and disruption that Julie Soto got for “Rose in Chains.”
J.K. won’t earn a nickel except through the knock-on effects as she is once more propelled into the public eye.
Re: gallium, it’s been in the news lately.
https://www.ti.com/technologies/gallium-nitride.html
Gallium arsenide solar panels (do not eat) work at different wavelengths than silicon so make a good target for a 2 layer PV cell. NASA and others use them in space as they are radiation resistant as well.
The main source is as a byproduct of aluminum from bauxite ore. There are no gallium mines.
J.L.Mc12 #188
Article in Nature gives a bit more detail https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-68664-1
The first stage of the process produces hydrogen and gallium oxyhydroxide. Gallium oxyhydroxide needs to be reduced back to gallium to restart the process.
They say that “the gallium oxyhydroxide that is produced can be electrochemically reduced, allowing metal regeneration, thereby enabling circular hydrogen production”. Meaning that you need electricity to complete the cycle. And that electricity has to come from somewhere.
I suppose you can use solar panels to produce electricity for the second stage but then wouldn’t you be better off just producing hydrogen directly via electrolysis?
@Seeking the Pure Land
re: “the Christian idea that if you don’t have good motives then don’t even bother” I think of that more as, if you get the internal stuff right, the outer actions will follow easily. If you get the inner stuff wrong, your actions may still have value in this world, but there’s a danger that they will get twisted and not give you the results you were looking for, or only part of the results you could have gotten.
For example, giving money to someone who needs it because you want other people to think you are kind. The person in need is still helped, and this is good, and other people may well think you are kind to do so. But God isn’t particularly impressed because you already got your payment from other people’s attitudes towards you, and if you embarrassed the person you helped in order that more people might know about your good act and be impressed, the person you helped might not be as grateful as you’d hoped either.
So I see it more as a ‘fix yourself and the rest will follow’, plus ‘if you do a good thing for the wrong reasons you will get only part of the benefits you could have gotten.’
That said fixing yourself is easier said than done, and sometimes the best one can do is to do the right thing because it is the right thing, even if one doesn’t completely feel it. Choosing not to descend to the same level as the person who wronged you even if you are really angry still has a lot of value, for example.
@Patricia Mayhews,
I suspect it might have been ‘Mere Chrisianity’. I’ve been reading that one recently, and I do remember there being such a list.
@Gladitsspring , that would be a painful long term relation .
I think dark triad trait personalities have frequent ill intents. Like John Michael says it is usually best to stay at a distance.
Alternatively, in my spiritual tradition we say ‘ put the bad guy to remove the weeds in the garden, and put mother Theresa in charge of the house ‘ . That is to say it is best to remove power from those who have such traits, insofar as it is possible and to give them low-responsibility wholesome tasks. It is entirely up to them to grow their consciousness if they choose to.
Best wishes
@Chuaquin,
I’m increasingly finding myself disgusted with both sides of a lot of current wars, which doesn’t really lend itself to protesting. I mean what sign would I carry ‘stop fighting, both you idiots!’?
I find myself wishing we could lock the leadership and wild elements of both sides in an alternate dimension where they can fight all they want and leave the rest of us to get on with our lives, without a lot of dead innocents and smashed up infrastructure. Sadly, that isn’t an option.
I suspect that as decline continues and accelerates, fighting a war will mean stepping down the staircase of descent, and winning will still only mean losing less. Broken infrastructure won’t be replaced as well as before, and people… you can’t really replace a human like you can a bridge, but even if you could you’re often going to be looking at reduced populations post-war that never go back to prewar levels.
The only way to win that game is not to play, but others get a say in whether a war starts, not just you. It’s a mess, and no mistake.
In the case of the Iran war, not playing still won’t keep you safe from the economic fallout, either.
Michael #215
“Old back up advice. 3 – 2 – 1. Three Back ups. Two mediums (DVD/Hard drive/Online if you must), One off site, just in case the house burns down.”
I had to laugh at this. Normally I’m so good about having three copies- one on the computer and two on different usb sticks. And the very first time I violated that habit, I lost my entire audiobook collection because I only had it on the one usb, and deleted them off the computer. Then that brand new usb died.
~~~
Cynthia Christie #218
“he doesn’t switch to Linux because none of the Photoshop alternatives for Linux have some necessary features that Photoshop has… I would recommend installing Linux as an alternative on a dual boot system to try it out, rather than committing to it totally and wiping out your Windows partition. That way, if you find that there’s something you need that Linux just can’t do, you’ll still have that capability.”
Thank you for this. I’m not an expert or advanced level user on Photoshop, but what I do with it is important to me. So I think you’re right that until I’m sure the Linux alternatives can do what I need, I should keep that capability available.
Another commenter mentioned that the most recent version of Wine is much more stable. But it’s good to know what sort of issues can arise with it.
~~~
TylerA #236
Thank you so much for the Balena Etcher recommendation, avoiding too-many-choices paralysis is very helpful.
~~~
Siliconguy #243
Oh man I had to search for the wifi adapter. But I finally found this: Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX201 160MHz.
Is that it? And I’m not clear on why I needed this info.
And thanks for the warning about a huge first update. Things like that freak me out if I don’t know to expect it. So now I won’t freak out.
Michael G. # 216:
Architecture and its twin science/art named Urbanism show a long time message to everybody who see them and live in or around buildings and streets. There’s been Spectacle since first towns were built, but beyond raw propaganda sometimes you can find mixed some wisdom. A Parlament built over a hill shows an evident message: national sovereignity is over the rest of powers. So the architect(s) who ordered to built that building deserves an applause.
———————————
Cynthia # 218:
Transhumanism and Transgenderism are correlative and complementary. I agree. The two ideologies disguised like science are based in the current Narcissist cult to the almighty Ego (Self), which is a wrong and distorted interpretation of Liberalism (in the European sense). This rampaging individualism, without the old virtues balance, can be also looked in modern consumerism and another ugly tendences today.
——————————
Lunar # 219:
Yes, the petrodollar thing is an elephant in the room during current Middle East war(s). Let’s wait what happens next. Since some years ago, dollar proportion within the whole money used globally to trade oil and another commodities seems to have been dwindled very slowly. And now what will happen?
I think there’s another elephant in the room. When Iran closed Hormuz in revenge for the aerial punishment it has been receiving until now, I thought it was a desperate (near suicidal) decision. Even I guessed Trump and “friends” had provoked Iran regime to do it for strangling China oil supplies. Today, we can look how Irani control over Hormuz allows them to open it for “friendly” oil tankers (of course, Chinese ones included) and to close for enemies (western countries). It wasn’t a stupid measure. China helps Iran probably in the military thing, and in exchange Gulf oil
goes on flowing toward China (in addition to the Russian oil). So the hypothetical of China being strangled by lack of oil seems contrafactual now.
———————————-
Forecasting # 223:
Your view seems too me too optimistic into the western axis, so I wonder if your sources of information are only the Israelis…I think the Israeli elite goal is a regime change in Iran, not a mere Iran weakening (a 2nd rate goal methink). So Iran isn’t defeated yet, in the strategical sense. By the way, if Hezbollah isn’t destroyed forever and even a part of it survives to launch missiles to Israel, it seems it will be a fake victory for Netanyahu and his political heirs; and Iron Dome maybe isn’t so perfect stopping Iranian weapons…
——————————-
Scotlyn # 226:
You’ve made to discover a new worth to read person: David Klein. Thanks…
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Neptune…# 238:
I think the True Believers in Trumpism seems too similar to a religious cult in which their leader never is wrong. They play a mirror game with the woke cult which has been hijacking Democrat party last years (indeed, wokesters ideology isn’t never under self criticism neither).
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(To be continued)
Patricia Mathews #227: “re: Virtue ethics: C.S. Lewis offered a list of those things widely considered virtuous across the cultures and ages. IIRC, he called it something like “the Universal Tao.” Over many moves, I’ve lost the book in which this appeared, but it impressed me.”
I think you’re referring to “The Abolition of Man” (well worth reading). From Wikipedia: “An appendix to The Abolition of Man lists a number of basic values seen by Lewis as parts of the Tao, supported by quotations from different cultures. The dystopian ideas in The Abolition of Man are fleshed out in Lewis’s science-fiction novel, That Hideous Strength, as Lewis himself makes clear in the preface of the story.”
My favorite quotation from the book (from memory, so may not be exact): “We laugh at Honor, and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
I knew that the Shia and Sunni branches had some differences, but after reading the things the Shia branch are based on all I could say is, “Whoa!” Shia is the dominant form of Islam in Iran and Iraq. It reminded me of Catholicism when it was headed up by blood thirsty popes that proclaimed crusades not only against Islam, but the Cathars in France, Waldensians, and the remaining pagan nations in and near the present Baltic States and celebrated the Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre and said killing Elizabeth 1 would be no sin. What a perfectly bad storm in the Middle East looking at the parties involved. I could also share about in history when Buddhism and Taoism went into similar dark places, as our hosts says “Humans are gonna Human”
Read about Shia Islam here-
https://substack.com/home/post/p-192030540?source=queue
Hi John Michael,
That’s pretty warm, and would be an exceptionally warm day for our September, not record breaking, but right up there. What we tend to get in those conditions is an early bloom of the trees, particularly apricot and almond, and then there’ll be a late frost, and you’ll lose most of the crop. Fickle plants, for a fickle climate. You just have to keep trying different things, and plant a diversity of trees if you want reliable fruit crops. The late harvest here was smashed up a few weeks ago by an epic hail storm, but we at least got all of the mid season harvest, so that’s something. The old timers used to have a saying about not putting all of one’s eggs into a single basket, and I’ve heard people saying that such things don’t matter, but I reckon sometimes they do.
Did you notice that rig count is down in your country? All of this current ruckus was going to happen sooner or later. I get the impression that our goobermint down here are busy trying to work out how to get something, without paying for it, but that is a common problem across the globe. Things may stabilise, but they won’t return to what only once was. How’s all these current events figuring into your catabolic collapse theory?
Cheers
Chris
Hi Chuaquin,
From a strategic point of view, everybody involved in the mess wants Kharg Island functioning and intact. The Iranian regime was on the point of economic collapse before this mess, and I’d suggest not to over estimate their abilities. Can they be a problem still, absolutely. Clearly though, the war has benefits for both participants, and costs for the rest of the globe.
Cheers
Chris
Jeff R. # 244:
I don’t doubt Schopenhauer read real eastern religions texts, but I bet he didn’t read them in their original languages, but translated into German and/or another European language. So maybe the Italian saying “tradittore, traittore”(I hope to have written it well: “translator, traitor”), could be taken into consideration. Not to explain 100% Schopenhauer personal view on Buddhism and Hinduism, but to find one of the causes which led him to his godless view of Eastern spirituality.
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Returning to the current war(s), it could be said Russo-Ukrainian has shown the end of big tanks battles. The West has been playing again and again the WW2 narrative from 1945 until 2022 (even Putin was childishly identified with Hitler), but missiles and drones have made more and more difficult battles between huge numbers of tanks. Of course, tanks are going to run and shoot in battlefields during some decades, but their role in ground war seems less important than in the post WW2 narrative. Drones have made near impossible another part of WW2 narrative: the blitzkrieg (look at the Ukraine front lines these last years).
On the other hand, US Navy high spheres have been cautious enough to keep aircraft carriers far away the Persian Gulf, to avoid missiles/drones risk. However, this measure has shown to the smart viewer how today carriers aren’t the most decisive and powerful ships in naval warfare. If they are unable to approach to their enemy (in spite of their protection
fleet around them), they’ve implicitly lost his main role in sea war, beyond their iconic meaning. It seems in the sea the West has been going on the WW2 narrative too (aeronaval fightings forever). Of course, like in the case of tanks in ground war, carriers won’t disappear tomorrow from fleets; but I guess their role is going to be more into second level tasks, and mere prestige, than main chess pieces in real war. It’s really ironic the Chinese have hurried up during current century to have more carriers, imitating Western powers. (inferiority complex isn’t a good advicer, methink).
Hey Scotlyn,
I just started reading the comments from the bottom and wanted to thank you for sharing this passage (#242). It’s especially painful to read this if you remember the references to the “eternal enemy” some top heads made when the war started in ’23. Milkyway shared some details of her family in link to her blog further above and I, born decades after WWII could add some stories about the sadness and leaden heaviness these seemingly distant events seeded into my own life. This knowledge doesn’t come without a price, so much I can say. Generations not even born will still suffer from events they never witnessed with their own eyes and I wonder – have they who are acting today forgotten or just never known? And – painful and embarrassing as it is – I wonder about myself – what if there was a time in a distant, forgotten past when I was just like them?
Greetings,
Nachtgurke
Chauquin #232, you are right, I don’t think the EU/UK will take over the Middle East, I think the reverse—Western Europe, including the UK will become Islamist and be colonized by the the Middle East. I’m not celebrating it, I am very sad for my ancestral home of Ireland, but that seems to be the trajectory to me.
Hippieviking #245
If you search on “rock and gem shows that sell raw rubies”. You get all kinds of dates & places & vendors. Here is an example of a vendor (I don’t know anything about them—just an example):
https://www.folkmarketgems.com
I keep trying to find a good argument for the war because I only see good arguments from the anti-war side, so I thought maybe I’m just biased.
I still can’t find any.
I listened to a Jewish podcast with this Israeli “intellectual” Dan Schueftan. His argument boils down to “Iran is a barbaric death cult along with its proxies, Israel is a bastion of civilization, we (meaning Trump) should escalate until they back off.” This is just tribalism in neocon language as far as I can see. It’s a mentality that chimpanzees, or even aggressive dogs, can understand. I hit you because you might hit me. It also ignores the fact of Israeli oppression of Palestinians for many decades — in the beginning the Palestinian Christians and seculars even led the resistance.
He says Iran is extremist. Well, Israeli society has also become more extremist. They want to demolish Al Aqsa and rebuild the Third Temple so their Messiah will come again. Israeli soldiers have “Greater Israel” patches. Haredim in Jerusalem spit on the floor in front of Christian pilgrims in crowds. Settlers in the West Bank steal sheep and terrorize Palestinian shepherds. Who’s the messianic cult?
I don’t follow any Abrahamic religion, but I find the Iranian leaders’ attitude to potential death, walking around in public braver and more noble than e.g. Netanyahu hiding in bunkers and not appearing in public since the attacks started.
Anyway all the above is completely subjective so it really is worth nothing in terms of an argument.
Other arguments:
5D Chess to contain China.
This just doesn’t fly at all. As I mentioned above, China might be hurt a little, but they are far more robust to changes in fossil fuel supply compared to the US “allies” in the region like South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines, even Australia. The Philippines has had an on/off relationship with the US, before all this started, Marcos Jr wanted to align more closely with the US, now they are buying Russian oil and talking to China about co-developing the South China Sea. Taiwan’s DPP wanted to buy US weapons, I mean, if you look at the US appropriating Swiss funds for the F-35 because they decided to stop Patriot funding, I don’t think the DPP has a good argument in their own parliament for this — the US is unlikely to deliver anytime soon, and they might just take the funds and run. South Korea lost its THAAD, for which it gave up a lot of business in China. The whole US “security umbrella” in Asia is breaking down, buying US weapons doesn’t mean you are a priority, Israel is first.
Iran is a nuclear threat
North Korea also has nuclear weapons, so does Pakistan. They are not using the nukes. What’s more, right before the attacks, we have corroborated evidence from the Omani foreign minister and a British observer that Iran was willing to give extensive oversight over their nuclear material — Khameini actually had a fatwa against nuclear weapons. Witkoff and Kushner either willingly sabotaged the negotiations, or the negotiations were a front all along.
To be honest, before the war, I kind of selfishly didn’t care too much about Israel. I thought okay, they did kill civilians, but maybe they really did try to avoid civilian casualties and Hamas hid among the civilians, so it’s not an easy choice to make in a war-zone. This war has completely changed my opinion, the ADL would say I’ve become “self-radicalized”. Maybe I’m selfish because it started to affect not just Gazans but people around the world including myself, but I’ve come to see that Israel is a real rogue state and its lobby is a destructive force in the world, far more so than “Chyna”. They don’t care about inflicting damage on the rest of the world if it helps them feel more secure. It doesn’t even benefit the US, because it has laid bare the image of all its “alliances”, all of them are less important than Israel.
Northwind Grandma #189
Thank you for chiming in. Any place with navigable waterways will always be prime real estate; I can’t afford that right now so it’ll have to be the hinterlands for me. Any place with agriculture on some scale will do. I believe small towns or regions that still have rail will be viable for at least a generation or two.
Some regions of Canada are seeing a crash in real estate prices. They are badly needed as I believe Canada has some of the most expensive real estate in the world at this point, and it makes zero sense given how our economy has been hollowed out.
Interesting data point related to all this: Canada saw its population decline for the first time since the 1940s, I believe. It’ll be a painful but necessary correction for us.
@Polecat 249: ““No matter which president you vote for, You Get John McCain!” seems rather apt, no? This of course is totally lost to these No Kings larpers..”
Time for another try for a third party monkeywrench yahthink? MTG, Thomas Massie, Joe Kent for the inner core? A few far left dems, just for the sake of “inclusion.” (Third parties in the USA need all the votes they can get, and can’t afford to be proud.) What would it accomplish? What harm?
Well, they have been looking for a reason to be able to raise gas prices, that $5/gallon barrier was politically difficult to cross, I think now it will be easier to stay above it when prices fall back. Prices here are higher but like 20 or 25% up, so no fun but not doubled or anything. I do remember the 1970s energy crisis, this is nothing like that for here in USA.
I’m not anxious about gas price, oil price in general, the war(s) or the President. I am cautiously optimistic that some of the graft in politics and various governmental programs if not addressed as much as I would like, at least it is getting some daylight shining on it.
Seems silly to have to waste so many resources and lives to try and get the USA de-tangled politically and economically, but maybe this is alot less lives and resources than world war III or whatever the future will hold if we dont pull back. I just hope that we can continue to disengage from the greater world theatre, we need to be out of Europe ( out of NATO) and the middle east.
It is closer to home that are on my mind. Climate change and things… systems…. just not working as well as they used to. Not just roads or civic repairs as mentioned up thread, but can we fix our homes building envelope and needed infrastructure. I hear other households complain of shoddy cooking stoves, refrigeration.
The March HEAT was decidedly not in the realm of normal. And, the weather in this particular microclimate of California I am in does have alot of variation, but within certain themes or constraints. This did not fit. It was absolute summer weather. And it felt quite off. Alot less tree frogs than last year, but still some, it is their vocal time right now, which is heartening, always nice to hear them in the spring. Oak trees trying to sprout up in the onion bed, I managed to catch 2 of the 3 in time to move into a pot, they’ll go out into a better spot soon.
Called the window store a few weeks ago to order a window exactly like one I bought last spring, from a major USA window manufacturer. I was just told that an extra 3 months should be added to the order estimate. So, 5 months to get the window, due to sourcing Doug Fir, I was just in Oregon, looked like they still had plenty in the logging area I was in. Fix your stuff while you still can…. I cant get to it fast enough, money and all that means I pace it out, only x amount of repairs can be done each dry season. THIS is what I have worry about, I know I am “late” ( due to world stair stepping down) but I cant get it done faster. which right there may be the lessen.
Women and minorities are not a problem in STEM ! It is a problem for any organization if it makes it a priority to hire based on physical attributes and not based on merit, of course. But many people get degrees in engineering, for example, of many ethnic backgrounds and genders, and these days alot of people go for that degree because of money, it became a “golden ticket” , pays enough to actually buy a house…. not everyone is as well suited to the career, but more men get the degree due to going for the golden ticket than women, and I have met plenty of men not as well suited to engineering due to that, they dont make good engineer, mediocre.
A problem with hiring based on quotas, x % will be this gender or race or what have you, over merit is that it is bad for the quota hires, they will be forever looked at by everyone else as potentially not being competent, whether they are or not ! In California we mandated, if I recall, a certain percent of people on a board must be women. I was appalled, as that of course makes it so that any woman in that position will be painted as a quota hire and not as competent and having earned it.
Back to STEM, and engineering specifically. Less women by percentage want to enter that field vs men, that used to be the case and likely still is. This does not mean that women who do want that career and are capable to get the degree are not good at it or are not suited to it ! I wouldnt think that this needed explaining. We do have analytical math brained women. And, there is still in Silicon Valley just as much if not more prejudice against this. From what I have seen and heard, this carries on mostly, not entirely, but mostly due to foreign born male engineers. USA born male engineers are far, far less likely to be prejudiced against their female peers, although it does come up here and there.
Mother Balance: You’re welcome. I wish you all the best with this project. You may find you really like Linux! I sure do. I’m not the starry-eyed evangelist about it that I was 30 years ago, but I’m sure glad it’s there.
Chuaquin: “disguised like science” — oh yes, quite so. I can’t say much about transhumanism as a whole because I’ve never been much into that. I’ve never wanted to upload my mind to a computer or live beyond the natural human lifespan or whatever else is involved with that. Transgenderism is a thing I know, however, and the “science” about that is weak at best. Even if it weren’t, the definition of “woman”, for example, ultimately is determined by what people in general think it means, not by science. And I think it damages the reputation of science to use its name to try to settle issues that lie outside its purview. If you say to people, “trans women are women, it’s science!” they’re not going to go, “Oh, well I guess I didn’t know what a woman is”, they’re going to go, “Oh, well then I guess science is [nonsense].” Also, “old virtues balance” – oh yes. What a baby we threw out with the bathwater there.
Hi Chuaquin,
Your factually incorrect. The IDF has made it clear it considers regime chang from the air something that is unachievable and disagrees with the Mossad strategy. Mossad itself under its former head considered trying to forment regime change as something that was impossible so they focused their energies on the nuclear programme mainly and mapping Iranian missile capabilities.
US and Israel has total air superiority and have significantly degraded Irans capabilities.
Plus I never said that Irans proxies would disappear just that they would no longer pose a mortal threat to Israel.
This has been achieved.
Well done Bibi.
And yes I do follow pro Iran media as well, for example X accounts and ian Welsh blog.
As for how someone can’t find a good reason to support the war, I’m staggered.
Degrading the military capabilities of a regime dedicated to the destruction of Israel and by extention a 2nd Holocaust is clearly a very logical thing to support.
Some of the commentary here has really surprised me.
Greetings all
JMG said: “eliminated a very large fraction of Iran’s strategic assets”
(1) Given the fog of war and lies being said by all sides, is it reasonable to say that?
After all, Iran rejected Trumps’ cease-fire deals? Is that not an indication that Iran can continue to resist the US/Israel aggression?
(2) Should Iran be that weakened within one month, does that imply a military collapse of Iran is to be expected with the next 2 to 3 months?
Pygmycory # 257:
I understand your point of view about current geopolitical thing (wars) to some extent. Indeed, we aren’t in a situation like WW2 with good and bad people clearly divided. Well, even the REAL WW2 (not the Narrative we’ve lived since 1945) wasn’t exactly a fighting between good and evil: USSR fought against Nazis being a ruthless dictatorship under Stalin, for example. If we go on believing the good/bad people narrative inherited from an idealized WW2, we can end under our favorite side propaganda influence. So I can share your view, and try to avoid the several competing Spectacles in current wars (but it isn’t easy to do it).
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Chris # 263:
Of course, Kharg island is very important due to its strategical and economical aspects. According a “rational selfist” view, it’s better not to destroy its facilities in a direct battle for its control. However, human being (especially under stress and rage) usually can decide irrational actions, so…
On the other hand, I’m perfectly aware Iran has real inner problems, and it spreads its own Spectacle. Western axis do the same, mixing propaganda with censorship (oh the free world…). I’m not so naïve to overvalue Iran cards in this war. If you’ve read my first comments in JMG current post, you could remember I wrote Irani regime can’t win this war (defeating US and Israel alike seems impossible due to some causes), but it can inflict much damages in western military and civilian interests in Middle East, against their vassals countries. And it hasn’t shown yet its last bullet: The Houthis wild card (which could be a third war at the same time in the area).
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Pat # 266:
I guess a declining EU, unable to defeat Russia using its proxy country (Ukraine) in the long term, during near future could turn into trying a new colonialism on North Africa, which it’s nearer than Middle East to control it. It would be especially interested in Algeria (oil and gas) and South Morocco (phosphates). Of course, China and Russia growing influence in Africa would lead them toward a trains crash against UE attempts to control Maghreb, so do the math: wars, social unrest, migrants crisis…Eventually, in the long term Muslim North Africans would hate Europeans for their neocolonial attempt and its consequences.
Europe islamization hypothesis isn’t absurd in a very long term, because massive islamic origin migration flows probably will go on in future, but I wouldn’t see as a closed prophecy. Houellebecq fast islamization in France according his novel “Submission” seemed to me not very realistic (I think he was too busy in provoking his black beast, the Muslims, than write a logical story). Indeed, birth rate is going down even in Muslim countries, and European “demographic winter” affects migrants here too. Would white Europeans be converted to Islam in long term? It may happens. Who knows?
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Alvin # 268:
I see that Israeli “thinker” ideas are near the same my country far right politicians are spreading now. It isn’t a surprise, because they share the Atlanticist and Zionist doctrine. Of course, Spectacle is made partly of propaganda, so Israel supporters usually look the straw in the other eye (Iran fanatics and blah blah blah) but they don’t see (nor they don’t want to see), what’s in their own eyes.
Of course, to be honest, Iran (and its Eurasian axis “friends”) have their own Spectacle. However, according our Western narrative, they’re evil people (dictatorships) and we’re the good people, because we live in democracy. But in real world, this Middle East war(s) has shown, IMHO, the Western axis uses without shame censorship and propaganda to win the mediatic war. A tendence with began to worsen with COVID pandemic, then when Russo-Ukrainian war started and now it’s confirmed again (a motive of concern, methink).
Maybe a sign of times…I’ve just known Malaysia government broke past week its trade deal with USA, which the two countries agreed to sign it in October.
Maybe you all knew it, maybe it went under your radar.
Official public reason to do this, according Malaysian govt, is the imports taxes thing in current Trump govt. Well, it’s true Trumpian measures to favor US economics protectionism have been a serious battle again during Trump second mandate, but I guess Malaysian high spheres are using this topic as a subterfuge to hide their real motive to break their trade deal with USA. I could say they’ve opened a can of worms to hide another can of worms being opened.
I don’t know much about Malaysia politics, but I think it was a relatively friendly country for the West.
Trade deal was broken by Malaysian govt during current Middle East war(s). Most of Malaysian people are Muslim, so do the math.
By the way, I remember there was a commenter in this JMG blog who was from Malaysia, I wonder if he/she could write his/her opinion about this political decision made by his/her country leaders. Thanks on advance.
Dear JMG,
I’d like to hear opinions you and anyone else reading has about something that insects keep doing near me.
First, thank you for having me in your virtual living room, I dropped by because I feel it is the only place this will be taken seriously. I’d like to discuss the fact insects keep coming to me in order to die.
This has been going on for a while now. I first noticed in back in 2020 when a ladybug landed in my vegetable garden. At first I was exited, but it died very shortly after, I found its corpse near one of the plants.
These episodes can sometimes have a happy ending. For example, a few months ago on the bus a hornet landed on my shoulder. After establishing that it was not planning to sting me, I made an agreement with it that it can be on me for the ride, and when we exit the bus we go our seperate ways, but it stayed on me. I arrived at my house, put it gently in a pot, and offered it water. It was there when I checked on it in the morning, but flew away a short while after. It looked sick while at my custody, it was itching its body with its legs as if it was trying to take something off of itself. I thought it was perhaps pestecide?
I decided to ask if this is a thing for anyone else, because a bee just dropped by my apartment, and after trying to open a nearby window, it camped on my floor. The only thing I could think of was to make a small puddle of water near it so it can drink, but other than that I just let it be (pun not intended).
I will appriciate any comments from JMG or anyone else who may be reading because it is starting to weird me out.
This is Four Sided Circle, the bee host. I had good news, the bee’s fine.
Following my roomate’s suggestion, I picked the bee up using a piece of paper, and put it in a tray with some sugar water. I little water to make a dry spot so it could stand but access the water.
Very shortly after it started drinking and using its legs to clean itself, and then took off. If anyone reading finds themselves in this situation, the sugar seems to be better than just tap water, probably because it provides energy.
It is easy to be drawn down a million rabbit holes trying to understand and make sense of this Iran war, and of the American (with, or without, auxiliaries – eg EU and Israel) military system. (Well, obviously this is not the only military system out there, but it happens to be the one that I feel both most implicated in, and most impacted by).
I decided I take a POSIWID (Purpose of a System Is What It Does) look at the matter. This timeline was actually an enormous help to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations
Also this article, which is not as handily laid out, but is comprehensive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_United_States
I was an American teenager living in Costa Rica in 1973 when I first became directly aware of an American foreign intervention, when the democratically elected President of Chile, Salvador Allende was “regime changed” with the “help” of the US. By the time I travelled back to the US to go to college in 1978, I had learned a great deal more about the adverse operations of different arms of US military and intelligence agencies in Central and South America. When I say “adverse” I am talking about their effects upon the interests of ordinary people in those regions. I could not (then) figure out how the ordinary Americans that I encountered in the years I lived in the US (1978 – 1982) could remain so indifferent to the fates of people in other countries who were definitely having their lives turned upside down by these actions. How would they feel about it being done to them?
Well, to make a long story short, I believe that the American “military intelligence complex” is a system, and since no part of that system has ever (not once! imagine that!) consulted me about its decisions to do this or that, the only way I can understand it is by looking at what it does. And, very consistently, what the system does is oppose, disrupt and wreck self-determination, self-sufficiency and social coherence where ever it is found. The aftermath of its operations is generally marked by weakened and seriously corrupted political leadership, by more widespread poverty and economic dependence*, and by internal social confusion and intractable internal conflict, the combination of which serves to permit some asset stripping exercise to take place. That is what this military intelligence system DOES.
What the timeline linked to above revealed to me that the American “military intelligence system” did not begin to DO this only after WWII, but, in fact had been DOing it, from its earliest days, in opposing, disrupting and wrecking the self-determination, self-sufficiency and social coherence of the various Native American nations with which it initially warred. Its habits and outlook are therefore deeply ingrained in all of the interstices of this system. (Please note these habits long pre-date the existence of the state of Israel, although the state of Israel may be a strong reflection of them).
Can it be a coincidence, then, that without any actual foreign military kinetic attacks being waged upon US soil, the magical blowback from the actions of the American “military intelligence system” abroad has actually resulted in the ways in which Americans, in their own lands, have suffered increasingly from disruption and wreckage of their own self-determination, self-sufficiency and social coherence?
This is where my POSIWID look has got me.
* this factor obviously also results in the migrations many Americans fear
@Tengu a Theosophist is really a Victorian gentleman-adventurer and an occult investigator
If I had known at age 17 that this could be an actual job description, my life would have been very different…
Theresa Peschel @ 251, Speaking of J.K. Rowling, her latest in her ongoing detective series is disappointing, You can find on the new book section at the public library. I read it so you don’t have to. Now, Rowling is a writer of popular fiction, somewhat of an H. Rider Haggard of our times; she is not Dickens or Balzac, but I have liked most of her books, considered as what they are, pleasant diversions, and I do appreciate her contributions to reviving the art of story telling in our times. However, in her most recent, IMHO, she has lost the plot. There is far too much emphasis on the relationship between the two principal characters, and not enough on the story, which, in and of itself, is not bad. The mystery is appropriately convoluted, the ending surprising as it should be, the red herrings more or less believable. The effect is somewhat like a gifted songwriter attempting a symphony.
Tim PW # 269:
You wrote Canada has some of the most expensive real estate prices in the world. Well, here in Spain real estate prices are too high too, and I’ve heard the same commonplaces as in previous real estate bubbles (prices will go up forever, there’s no bubble…). At some moment in near future, realism is going to be imposed, but I doubt wether it would be a clean landing (mere correction) or prices collapse (so in this case, a recession).
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Phutatorius # 270:
I’m not American nor a politologist, but I know USA political system has been usually a closed and strongly bipartisan one. Third party attempts have failed in the past, but I can guess in an hypothetic near future “political climate” of decline and inner disgregation within the two main US parties, a third party with smart and ruthless leaders could eventually try to success to some extent.
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Cynthia # 273:
I understand your comment commenting my comment…
I only know transhumanist ideology by some books written by Mr. Kurzweil. In the short form, my impression about this futuristic ideas is they repeat the Liberal individualist narrative, in addition to a shamefully hidden post-Christian narrative. It’s evident their claims for human individual immortality in a near future seems to follow the Faustian Christianism and individualist almighty Self (distorted and hidden under the “fig leaf” of an apparently scientific speech).
Transgenderism as a part of the woke hydra seems to me not the same, but correlative and complementary to transhumanism and another Faustian religions Ersatz.
When woke “left” shows transgender people (I’m speaking of activism) as sacred cows, they seem to believe trans are a kind of revolutionary vanguard toward an utopia or at least a more progressive world. So I think to some extent trans people are the “Saints” in their Progress belief (so Faustian too). Another woke belief is trans are always the Good People because they show we humans aren’t binary biological sex/cultural gender slaves. So individuals have the right to decide their gender according their preferences. Ego is indeed sovereign (even when a possible mind problem could explain some case of gender disphoria, cough). Scientifism isn’t as blunt as in transhumanism, but woke activists have tried to impose their agenda using fake science “reasonings”, or trying to debunk science facts when they don’t favor woke trans activism, methink.
@ Forecasting Intelligence #274
“Degrading the military capabilities of a regime dedicated to the destruction of Israel and by extention a 2nd Holocaust is clearly a very logical thing to support.”
Well A would logically follow from B IF the assumptions of B were well founded? Are they?
I refer you to the piece I linked to earlier, by Daniel Klein, who was raised to believe premise B – which you state clearly in these words “[Iran is] a regime dedicated to the destruction of Israel and by extention a 2nd Holocaust” – and who describes how he discovered that this premise was untrue. I link here to a different essay of his which is sharply topical – https://dzyk.substack.com/p/decolonizing-my-zionist-mind
How did you yourself come to believe this? How would it change your view if you discovered that the Iranian people, by and large, have intents and purposes, that are very far away indeed from “the destruction of Israel and by extention a 2nd Holocaust”? ie, what if you discovered that Iranian people were (by and large and on balance – obviously there are exceptions everywhere) more interested in protecting the nation and the people they love, than in destroying the nation and people they hate (and that is IF they do, perhaps they view them realistically as a threat to what they love)?
I did some googling and “The states with the largest Jewish populations in the U.S. are New York (approximately 1.77 million), California (about 1.19 million), and Florida (around 657,000). Other significant states include New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Illinois.”
My understanding is California, NJ, NY, and Illinois are all Democrat states. Pennsylvania is a swing state and Florida is usually a red state. I am just wondering how the Jewish/Zionist vote makes a difference in terms of who is president and who gets to the Senate and Congress. It seems to me that electoral fraud is a far more important factor and the Dems are the best at that though Republicans are trying to mitigate it. Could the Zionist vote turn California into a red state for example when California has approximately 22.9 million registered voters? I don’t see the math mathing most of the time. That’s why the Epstein blackmail operation and AIPAC money was and is needed – Jewish voters weren’t enough to keep politics in America the way Zionists wanted it.
@ Nachtgurke #265
Thank you for your response. Also this phrasing of yours is key – “knowledge doesn’t come without a price.”
I feel, just now, that I am learning a great deal from the example Mr Daniel Klein gives, and I hope to see what I can gain from following his example, because I myself am personally connected to the same story of Zionism, and also to the longer story of American military adventurism, in two ways. Firstly, my ancestors came to what is now the US, in 1640, and have been a part of its culture and society through all of the years in which these adventures took place. And secondly, my ancestors have been evangelical, born again, Christian Zionists, for as long as I can remember. And it seems that the route to forging useful connections “out there” begins with forging useful connections “in here” with who I am, both ancestrally and by upbringing, acknowledging, incorporating and releasing the shadows, and finding the place – as this young man appears to have done – where choice begins.
He says: “I had to face that, ultimately, these beliefs were mine. I was choosing to hold them. And I could choose differently.” https://dzyk.substack.com/p/decolonizing-my-zionist-mind
That is the point of the exercise he is doing, and which I hope to follow more deeply – to discover the HERE and NOW of who we (each) are – because only in the HERE and NOW do we have the choice to consciously follow a different path of our own choosing, and which is expressive of our own truth.
Forecasting # 274:
I think you think I’m factually incorrect, so if I’m wrong, you’re right. After having read your comment, I’ve got the impression you’re very sure of your ideas about current Middle East as the Truth.
If you’ve read at least some of my previous comments about Iran war, you can see I tend to use words like: maybe, guess, bet…Why?
Because I’m smart and humble enough to grasp we westerners, are under a Spectacle (fog war) within the two sides, so we shouldn’t defend hypothesis and half truths like real Truths.
I think your view of current events could be depicted as a bit arrogant, pedantic and very biased by current propaganda and censorship in “our” side. So you’ve seen my criticism as a threat against your Truth and maybe you’ve adopted the “killing bad news messengers” mood.
Unless you’re personal friend of your admired Bibi (to know without any doubt everything what really think Mossad and IDF now), I bet you are under a strong confirmation bias, due to your evident fondness for the current Israeli government. So you find what you want to find to confirm the motto “Israel always wins”.
You point Iran is being weakened by western axis bombings, but you don’t say nothing about China and Russia military help to Iran regime. Nor possible holes in the Iron Dome, nor how easily Iran regime is controlling Hormuz…
Your claim defending attacks against Iran shaking the supposed Iranian threat of a second Holocaust against poor Israelis seems IMHO a good example of rough Zionist propaganda. Iran regime has never threatened officially to commit such a thing against Israel, but even if that threat was true, I can say your view is “to see the straw in the other eye”. Israel-USA axis have suggested they’ve got nukes but Iran not, so…they are implicitly threatening Iran with their nukes.
Of course, you don’t say nothing about how good are IDF killing children in Gaza. How do you justify that ethnic cleaning?I’m afraid it’s not good for your narrative, methink.
——————————
Karim # 275:
Iran is possibly receiving a hard punishment in its civilian and military facilities (with an unknown but probably high deaths consequence within its population), due to evident western axis aerial supremacy. However, frantic Trump and Netanyahu claims about Iran near defeat are IMHO rough propaganda. China and Russia have shown explicit and/or implicitly they help and will help Iran regime with their military toys. New AD included, methink.
Western bombings haven’t prevented Iran goes on launching missiles and drones when it wants/can…
Only a True Believer in western axis propaganda can live in an alternative universe, where every western fighter and bomber returns home without being threatened by Iranian AD (ahem).
On the other hand, Hormuz Irani tight control make me to think Iran military has been punished but maybe in a lesser way the western propaganda wants to make us to believe. So we’ll see.
—————————————-
Scotlyn # 280:
I can share your point of view as a work hypothesis: very interesting.
In this month’s issue of “Fantastic Four,” the Invisible Woman quotes the Situationist principle “The purpose of a system is what it does” (without naming Situationism). This is as monumental a philosophical moment as that time Wonder Woman revealed herself to be a Utilitarian on the 1970s “Super Friends” cartoon.
I picked up the Long Descent again today. Ages well having been published in ’08!
‘any student of history knows that people tend to overestimate the solidity of the familiar and are commonly taken by surprise when the foundations of an established order crumble away from beneath them. The possibility that the global political scene could change all out of recognition in the aftermath of military catastrophe is hard to dismiss. If that happens, those of us who live in today’s United States and it’s remaining allies could be facing a very rough road indeed –written from the seven years abandoned delightful ex-golfcourse I pray either remains in this wonderful limbo or if it must becomes a park and not duplexes. Feeling decent about those odds this beautiful spring morning
Forecasting Intelligence @ 274, your commentary surprises me. If you are committed to Israel, maybe you ought to go join the IDF and fight for Israel your own self.
Us dumb Americans can tell you that anyone who moves into a dangerous neighborhood needs to get along with their neighbors. That is done by making yourself useful, minding your business and respecting their values and points of view. The project of establishing a Mittel European society in a desert which lacks the resources, primarily water, to support such an endeavor, was never going to end well. Nor is it ending well in our own southwest, but that is another story.
“…by extension another holocaust”? I am afraid that card has been played a few times too often. Not to mention, if anyone in the ME is committing crimes against humanity, that would be the Israelis themselves.
#278 Four Sided Circle: You may have started to think about or care about insects more recently, and that focused your attention so now you see them and have made re empathy with the struggles in their lives now. Or it may be a month in your location where insects are at the natural end of their life cycles. When I lived in a big city, I walked to work to pass as many fountains as possible to rescue the drowning pollinators—once I started noticing them, I was shocked at their numbers!
I was doubting wether to write about today “No Kings” American events, or not to do it (because as European, I don’t live directly USA political situation). However, finally I’ve decided to say you what I think about anti-Trump protests, according last news I’ve seen from here.
First of all, it seems Democrats are trying to erode Trumpian hegemony within US political scene again. I’m a bit skeptic about massive demonstrations as strength Spectacle everywhere nowadays, but I can recognize it: American opposition party is still able to gather a lot of people. Of course, I smell opportunism in this actual massive protest. Democrats know they must attack in streets (I hope peacefully) a President who has’t managed to join Americans (beyond his voters) against a current common enemy (well, it seems Trump hasn’t tried to do it, neither). Democrats would be stupid if they don’t move their chess pieces in the current Iran war situation.
Trump isn’t a Churchill, promising “blood, sweat and tears” to citizens. He loves ruling USA in a provocative and aggresive way (which led him again to the White House), but he isn’t a State man who wants/can join the whole country. In addition to this lack of consensus skills/will, political tension and polarization in USA (partly caused by Trumpian speeches, attitudes and behavior; partly not) don’t allow politicians to have a national deal around the current war topic. However, I think Trump doesn’t mind that lack of consensus: indeed, he rules his country only for people who voted him, though maybe is soon to guess how many Trumpian voters could rethink their political support…
Chuaquin:
About your comentaries about:
1) Radiactive clouds caused by war actions, I have read that there is a smoll radiactive cloud originated in the USS Gerald Ford , wich is afecting Greece and, in few days , Greece. ( Blog: Eladio Fernandez)
2) Terrorist atemps. In a YT of Iustitia Europa there is a warning about the high propability of a false flag, the wext week against some Holy Week celebration.
JMG said: “eliminated a very large fraction of Iran’s strategic assets”
https://www.timesofisrael.com/zamir-said-to-warn-cabinet-that-idf-will-collapse-in-on-itself-amid-manpower-shortage/
https://www.trtworld.com/article/1e7e2783c76d
With due respect, from the above, it appears that the Israeli army too is being degraded, not only the Iranian forces.
Just saying.
@JMG : you keep writing the US might want to offload the defense of the Middle East to Europe since the latter relies a lot on Middle Eastern oil. But that’s simply not true! Only 6% of EU oil imports come from the ME, which, on absolute terms, is not a lot.
As for LNG, Italy is the only big European customer of Qatar.
So why would Europe have any direct incentive to defend the Middle East?
“What the timeline linked to above revealed to me that the American “military intelligence system” did not begin to DO this only after WWII, but, in fact had been DOing it, from its earliest days, in opposing, disrupting and wrecking the self-determination, self-sufficiency and social coherence of the various Native American nations with which it initially warred. Its habits and outlook are therefore deeply ingrained in all of the interstices of this system. ”
Yep. The U.S. followed the British playbook. Attempts to stop doing that have consistently failed. Isolationism is always run down as a fringe non-viable system.
That said, Europe stepped hard on their own private parts when Trump asked for a little help in the strait and Europe as a group said no. Vance’s opinion of Europe (freeloading parasites) is widely shared outside of New England. Way to make the point guys. The U.S. is mostly self-sufficient in oil, so who is hurting from the blockade? Whether Europe has a ship that can actually get to the Mideast is an open question. Navies are expensive, Europe is broke. Navies run on oil, only Norway still has some.
Interesting times indeed.
@Forecasting Intelligence
“Degrading the military capabilities of a regime dedicated to the destruction of Israel and by extention a 2nd: Holocaust is clearly a very logical thing to support.”
Destroying the world economy and the basis of US power, and the reason why it can command global trade to help Israel defeat a regional rival sounds like a good and logical thing to support to you?
Sorry if this seems harsh, but I really don’t get how it makes sense. Oil prices are shooting up around the world. There are shortages all over Asia-Pacific: Thailand, Australia, Laos, Cambodia, the Philippines. Millions will starve if we don’t get fertilizers in the next growing season. All this is worth it so Israel is “safer”? (It’s not even like they are safer now with Iranian missiles coming in)
If Israel doesn’t care about the billions living elsewhere, why the frack should we care about Israel?
Are you Jewish, dispensationalist, or you genuinely think Israel is the US’s “strongest ally” in the region? I really want to know.
Below the town of Klosterneuburg, there are age old catacombs, but most of it has been filled up by the church in the 16. century, as documents would show.
The subterrenean paths are official:
https://www.meinbezirk.at/klosterneuburg/c-lokales/wundersame-klosterneuburger-unterwelt_a1603576
Dr. Heinrich Kusch who investigates subterrenean caves around the world claims there are artifacts down there dated via radio carbon dating about 59.000 years ago or more, some made from iron and aluminium, and theres a strong magnetic field in these subterrenean paths that keep changing, there are certain spots heating to 400 degrees celsius and cooling again, and furthermore, only a small part of all that has been dug out.
As ever so often, it is unfortunately very difficult to say how much truth is in this. People, as always, claim ufos and aliens.
Dr. Kusch himself says there are weird and unbelievable mechanisms down there.
@forecasting … Iranian or any other neighbor’s strength or continued existence cant lead to a ‘second holocaust’. The victims already perpetrated their own. The second holocaust is behind us.
…but who knows (concerning subterrenean pathways and Dr Kusch’s claims), as long as little has been under official scrutiny.
Stone age civilizations somewhat older than thought are certainly believable, as scientific standard opinion has been revised several times, Catal Huyuk being an example, but the claims to Ufos and ancient high tech are, I’d guess, more a product of the cult of progress, a make-believe, a lot of non-sequiturs there.
Here is an analysis from the beginning of the Iran war, about what kinds of shortages are a consequence of the disruptions:
https://ctindale.substack.com/p/systemic-risk-a-12-order-cascading
a lot of very specialized language, but an interesting overview none the less.
@Yavanna #260. Thanks for this! And – you can always count on the Irish – Yeats pinpointed this:
“Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honor bred, with one
Who were it proved he lies
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbors’ eyes;…”
@tankermottind
I recently became aware of this sudden and very-much-coordinated push toward passing age attestation/verification laws at the device/OS level. It’s extremely alarming, and even more alarming is the fact that the organizations who are supposed to be the biggest online privacy advocates (like EFF) are barely pushing back against this brazen government overreach; same with the dev teams who run the mainline distros. The question on whether Linux distros will keep their code privacy-safe or bend the knee to authoritarian government dictates, has also created a new divide among the FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) community. Just like with Covid poison shot madness, the woke lefty faction (who controls most of the big distros) is trying to stifle all discussion of these laws on their forums, discords, and subreddits, whereas those in the community who actually take a principled stand on preserving privacy and independence are quickly being branded as “radicals” or conspiracy theorists, or evil fascist right-wingers, or what not, and promptly banned from those place if they dare bring this issue up in conversation. Hilarious to see people suddenly throw all their old principles in the dumpster, the name of political tribalism. It’s sad that much of the FOSS community succumbed to the same woke political entryism that has afflicted so many other areas of public life.
I’ve noticed that anything those WEF creeps put into a policy paper tends to eventually end up being etched into the brains of anyone plugged into to the woke egregore.
On further investigation, I found that the recent age verification push was 100% astroturfed by Meta (i.e. Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook/Instagram); they created a decentralized network of “child safety” NGOs and PACs that they funneled $2 billion into. Basically they bribed tech illiterate politicians (from both parties) from multiple states into ramming though this insane legislation (likely written by Meta’s lawyers). These bills are so poorly written that anything that can be construed as an operating system (including a 30 year old game console) is now suddenly mandated to have age checks somehow installed on each and every device. All for the purpose of shifting legal liability of errant usage by minors away form online platforms (like Zuck’s crappy social media platforms) and onto every single bleepin’ computing device in existence. If enough states stupidly pass these laws, it’s going to create the ultimate cluserfrack of a legal mess to sort out (maybe chaos is the goal?). And of course lot of people are rightfully concerned that this will eventually scope-creep into every computer being forced to be ID-checked in order to use the internet.
Of course this has been sold to the public as….you guessed it…. “protecting the children.” This whole rotten mess reeks of a collision between cognitive collapse, managerial authoritarianism, and runaway government corruption.
I recognize I may be in a fringe group, and few may care about the things I care about. But I still hope someone might find it revealing and useful. I like the “Law of One”. There are parts that appear a little Janky at first, but I have fully consumed the Koolaid now. But the key thing Ra say that I think about and maybe extend beyond what is said, has to do with his ideas of service to self (STS) vs service to others (STO). Briefly, I have concluded that STS, is required for evolution; STO will not descend, and at the nadir, STO is required to ascend into spirit, and complete the current evolution of the 12 total evolutions. As it is said in The Cosmic Doctrine (TCD), a Ray goes out negatively and returns positively. It seems that we can muddle up through Malkuth and Yesod, but further evolution requires polarity either STS, or STO. STS ascends up the Qliphoth side of the tree, to get stuck in the Daath, the prisoner’s cell, because he can’t resolve his paradox. STS cannot value STO, and therefore, can’t unify his soul at that level. Ra says he switches polarity. I think TCD may be correct in how this is done in discussing the Law of Seven Deaths, but I wonder how that is done. I picture standing on the edge of the Daath Sephiroth, looking at the counterclockwise swirl, then pivoting over the edge and standing on the other side, now seeing the clockwise swirl.
@Nachtgurke #265,
Things like these experiences during the World Wars are seeds indeed. My impression is also that stuff grows from them in various ways in people’s life, and this includes the lives of people who have only been born a long time after these wars. And in a lot of cases, while the plants and fruits which grow from these seeds are rather obvious, the seeds themselves are hidden within the soil – people don’t even notice how and where it all started, or what caused it, or in what it is rooted.
Such wars are existential experiences with powerful, long-lasting effects over generations.
Milkyway
Acoup professor did a post about the situation in Iran:
https://acoup.blog/2026/03/25/miscellanea-the-war-in-iran/
He is an honest-and-for-real professor of military history and military strategy. I’ve learned a lot lot lot about these subjects from him. And he makes some of it interesting to younger folks by tying it into popular video games and movies, comparing how it works there to how it actually works in the real world.
Ennobled little day 180
Dear Ennobled,
You hit a nerve.
Around 2015 (62), in Northern California, I had an insight into my scholastic INability (or DISability), bringing me to the conclusion that, to my chagrin, I had never learned how to write a competent essay. Not in any of my K-12 or college classes. In 2014, I tried to write essays and abysmally failed. I did not like the situation one bit. I felt ashamed that I was functionally illiterate. Argh!
How did I handle this revelation? My first thought was maybe the local high school could help. I made inquiries. The replies ranged from shocked to suspicious. I gather ‘shocked’ (“why would any sane adult want to do THAT? You must be mentally ill“) to ‘suspicious’ (“what are you, a pedophile trying to get access to teenage girls?”). Nope, nothin’, nada, blank stares.
Evidently ‘adults’ (K-12 defines that as 19 or over) are not allowed remedial training to compensate for the lack of a proper high school education fifty-odd years ago. The fact that I was “19 or older” disqualified me — talk about discrimination. I looked at local community extension: nothin’. I looked at online courses; those existed but were very expensive, like $1,000 for a 13-week course from an organization I never heard of, then and since. Nothing at the local community college. I am sure there was a course at Stanford University or California State colleges, but why should I have to go to that extreme?
I got the message: I was a nobody. I could rot in hell. I was the learner-from-nowhere.
Here was a person exceedingly interested in learning how to write better English, and there were no teachers to be found. Public education forcibly aged me out, even though I was “a member of the public”, paying for it. Nobody said, “Gosh, we have an old hag here who wants to learn English. Maybe we can see if we can help.”
Oh, by the way, one can get a free English education if “English is a second language.” Lots of free stuff there, but nothing for natural-born English speakers who heritage goes back to 1630 Connecticut and 1635 Rhode Island. To get attention, one has to be some kind of foreign. I wasn’t the right “market.”
I looked to buy books on how to write essays; those existed. But why should I be forced to learn in isolation? I looked for support groups, like elders who wanted to supplement their educations. Nothin’. I ended up buying a slew of paper books at the great South American river, and learned DIY. Over the next couple years, I slogged along feeling VERY ALONE. Learning how to write a decent essay ain’t easy — it was, and is really rough. I never was more than a “C” writer, so maybe I reached a B–.
Had I nosed my way into a high school English class where students were learning how to write essays, where I sat in the back, stayed silent, and took notes, I would have been escorted out of the school as a pervert (I mean, really, grandma as a threat?) and maybe arrested.
Returning to the point. Our public educational institutions segregate by age. That is not right. I protest•eth. I feel that high schools should be open to all learners, regardless of age. Learners come in all shapes, sizes, and looks.
And K-12, stop the stupid, worthless sports programs. No wonder kids graduate not knowing how to read, write, and ’rithmetic. (in the 1960s, my high school had terrific football, basketball, baseball, &tc. programs –paid for by taxpayers–, but they missed teaching competent English to at least one kid. Hmm.)
Thank you for listening.
💨📓🏚️💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
age 73
Ron M 194
> Mercury hemmed between Mars and Rahu between March 16 – April 1 (making one’s decision-making abilities highly flawed or disfunctional)
Aha, so that’s the reason why yesterday (bookkeeping) every time I “thought” that a decrease cash goes on the right side (“credit”) (which is correct), I entered the proposed post, then when I reviewed the entry, I had put the number on the LEFT side (”debit“). I did this inadvertently several times. I even said, “a – decrease – in – cash – is – on – the – right – side,” and supposedly put the number on the right side.
This whole thing was weird. Like, what is going on between my brain and hand in those two seconds? Did I have a blackout?
One of the cardinal rules of double-entry bookkeeping is that an increase of cash goes on the left side; a decrease of cash goes on the right. Someone, or something, must have guided my mis-typing.
Woe is me, an incompetent bookkeeper. Not my fault. What ninny would want me as their bookkeeper? Crap. I am a goner.
But I have the universe to blame. It wasn’t me. What a relief!
💨🧾⚡️💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
“Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX201 160MHz.”
That’s it. The key point is it’s not a Broadcom so is more likely to work right away. Broadcom and Nvidia both make things harder than they should be to “protect” their Intellectual Property.
On the Mid-east, despite the warning from the Ukrainian war the U.S. military and Israel have been caught off-guard by the drone war. Using an F-35 with a million dollar missile to shoot down a thousand dollar drone is a losing fight. There might be 96 missiles on board a Burke class destroyer, but reloading requires a trip to Diego Garcia or the Mediterranean, and both of those are in range of Iranian missiles.
By the way the Ukrainians have a new batch of drones that are ranging unimpeded from the Baltic to the southern Urals. Supposedly they are of British design.
On the gallium thing;
“I suppose you can use solar panels to produce electricity for the second stage but then wouldn’t you be better off just producing hydrogen directly via electrolysis?”
Yes. I don’t know what they think they are doing. If they want a small amount of chemically pure oxygen at a remote location with no electricity they could use hydrogen peroxide and a catalyst.
I suppose you know Yemen Houthis have begun, some hours ago before my current comment now, their own war against their favorite black beasts (of course, following Tehran orders, methink).
Indeed, last days Houthis seemed even eager to start getting cocky against Israel and USA.
So war(s) escalation keeps growing, in spite western axis claims (“we’ve won, or at least we’ll win soon”). Iran uses its last wild card (or maybe it isn’t the last one, if it has a hidden unthinkable card). To some extent, I was a bit puzzled Tehran hadn’t decided to do it yet.
According some MSM here, Houthies have celebrated in their way this third war in Middle East (in addition to Iran and Lebanon) launching a missile against the Iron Dome. Well, I think it’s more a propagandistic attack than a real effective tactic. On the other hand Houthis have threatened ships which sails in the Read Sea in front of Yemen coast. I think Houthis aren’t bluffers when they’ve promised to do that. They’ve got enough missiles and drones to accomplish soon their threats.
They could to difficult or even to block ships routes from/to Suez, so this isn’t a joke.
Of course, USA&Israel can begin to attack Yemen to prevent Red Sea South extreme is blocked by Houthis. Good luck with that…Houthis live mainly in Yemen mountain areas, where it should be a heck of easy places to hide men and weapons.
In addition to this, western axis probably is going to send war ships and fighters to this another new conflict area. So they would have to divert a part of their military power toward Red Sea, at least until they manage to send new fresh ships and men there.
Mother Balance 114
> Photoshop
As a Photoshop afficianado who has not been able to wean myself off of, I tried Affinity Photo. I acquired it prior to Canva’s purchase and its changeover to “free subscription.” It appears their software runs on Linux using Wine. (I am a Macintosh person, so know zilch about Linux or Wine).
All three Affinity products a free subscription, all-in-one. Worth a gander.
Adobo Photoshop vs Affinity Photo.
Adobo Illustrator vs Affinity Designer.
InDesign vs Affinity Publisher.
I rate the three a “B.” I am spoiled having gotten to know Photoshop very-well over twenty years, and Illustrator a bit more than somewhat. There are things Illustrator does that I have found no substitute for.
Good luck with your transition. I don’t envy you.
💨👩🏽💻💿✇ 👾💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
I read this article about a teenage girl with perfect memory: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a70866475/teenager-hyperthymesia-memory-condition/ and the interesting thing is that she apparently can “remember forward” in the same manner, i.e. use precognition. According to brain scans, there are more neural connections in certain parts of the brain that correlate with hyperthymesia, and we also know about neuroplasticity, i.e. the brain is malleable, depending on how it’s being used.
So I wonder if memory training could get a normal person to that level? And would that make them also able to use precognition?
About those wars in heaven: have I understood this correctly, that after my death, I will not get my well-earned respite in the afterlife, but will have to deal with the same kind of crap that is happening down here? All the way up to the causal plane?? Why bother evolving, then, if it’s just the same same everywhere?
@ 254 pygmycory
I’m not the best writer, but i’ll do my best. I think what you said kind of proves my point. Granted I was being a little hyperbolic, but it sounds like the christian god doesn’t reward lets say charitable behavior done with less then pure motives. Basically there is no incentive to behave charitably for a selfish person, more likely a detriment because if i remember my bible lessons correctly, doing charitable works for impure motives is more likely to get you smote. This kind of thing will make a selfish person basically either not bother or convince themselves that they are in fact doing it for pure reasons.
To me it sounds very much like perfect or not at all.
Bridge # 285:
Wow! An interesting hypothesis to explain some USA politics bizarre situations (or not very bizarre) in last times (and maybe older times). I think electoral fraud accusations would be a “bomb”, of course if they’d have possible hard evidences in their favor.
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Scotlyn # 286:
I can only say after having read your comment, it’s never too late to change our ideas.
——————————
Mary B. # 290:
Indeed, Netanyahu and his current government, in an ideal world, should be judged under the accusation of being suspects of war crimes (well, real world is different). Ethnic cleaning is a step under direct genocide, methink.
—————————-
Anselmo # 293:
I tend to be cautious to believe without reserves actual news (fog war), but if 1) is true, and Greek government is brave enough, it could complain bitterly to USA due to this “small problem”.
About 2), everything could be possible during these times. By the way, diplomatic relationships between Spain and certain small country in Middle East have lived better times…
“Si non é vero, é ben trovato”.
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Karim # 294:
Maybe IDF is reaching its limits fighting two wars at the same time (well, three counting Houthis “business”). Israel hasn’t unlimited troops (hard fact hidden by its evident hi tech many war toys). Iran war began near a month ago, and Israel narrative has been repeating again and again its “6 days war” fast victory, during its last wars, until now (at least as propaganda). Israel needs to win blitzkrieg wars because maybe it hasn’t a really massive army for a longer war. This time something could be different in real world. So I’m skeptic about Israeli being able to fight a too long war (and having a clear victory beyond their propaganda machine).
———————
(To be continued)
Ahem. Before we proceed, a heads up. There have been a number of posts about Israel here, and as always happens when that topic surfaces, tempers start fraying at once. Please review the courtesy policy and avoid personal insults; if it gets out of hand, I will delete any comment referencing Israel for the remainder of this week. ‘Nuf said!
Info, that’s a real phenomenon, and weirdly enough it happened around the same time that the Greek oracles stopped giving accurate predictions. In occult terms, visions and voices like that are on the astral plane, but they can echo events on planes higher up.
Slithy, exactly. The two effective answers to “why be good?” are the theological — “be good or a god will smite you” — and the eudaimonic — “being good is the best way to be happy and live well.” It may be that there are others, but those are the only two I know of that aren’t handwaving based on circular logic.
Tankermottind, thanks for this. I assumed all along that it was just another gimmick to force people to pay more for computer services; it’s good to have that confirmed. As for vinyl, as things proceed, coming up with some new feedstock for records will be a significant issue, and I think it’s quite possible that alternatives can be found.
Cynthia, thanks for this. Some transgender people who’ve talked to me about their experience have described how the idea of becoming a woman and getting surgery seized them, as though it was an outside force. It’s eerily reminiscent of classical accounts of the castration cult of Cybele two millennia ago.
Lunar, yep. It’s not impossible that this is at least partly deliberate, since a crash in the value of the dollar would make American manufacturing for export profitable again, and also open a window of opportunity for defaulting on our national debt, which has to happen anyway.
Carlos, this does not surprise me in the least!
Forecasting, you do know that LLMs are programmed to flatter their users by agreeing with them, don’t you? Any strategic prediction generated by a LLM should be treated with extreme suspicion for that reason alone. (Not to mention that what you’re getting in an LLM is basically the collected wisdom of the data set that was used to train it, e.g., Reddit…)
Lathechuck, it’s the old delusion that there’s a place called “away” that stuff can go to. Au contraire, one of the basic laws of the universe is that if you piss your bed often enough you’re going to end up sleeping in a wet spot.
Patricia, that was in The Abolition of Man. It had its flaws but he made a good point.
J.L.Mc12, chemical manufacturing, lighting, and welding are useful things to have. It’ll be at most a boutique resource for specific uses, but some of those may turn out to be important.
Justin, thanks for this.
Pure Land, granted! That’s why it’s so funny to watch Schopenhauer trying not to channel his Lutheran upbringing, and failing.
Chuaquin, I never said it did. Again, the contrast was specifically with the war I imagined in my novel.
Neptunesdolphins, fascinating! I’m not surprised, but it’s interesting to see their “Do what we tell you, dammit!” coming out so clearly.
Polecat, bingo. I see LLM-generated films as a transitional stage between Hollywood and the collapse of cinema altogether.
Neptunesdolphins, excellent! Yes, exactly. Did you read about the moment as CPAC where people cheered the idea of impeaching Trump? They don’t think he’s going far enough to get them the shiny bright future they think they deserve. I wonder what’s going to happen if the Democrats ever grasp that Trump is a moderate, holding back conservative forces far more extreme than he is…
Robert, thank you. I’m not sure why so many people have trouble with this — it seems so obvious to me.
Colton, so far none of the events since the 2024 election has surprised me greatly. I was a little startled that Trump chose Iran as his hill to die on, and I’m still watching to see whether he succeeds in declaring a victory and getting out in time to salvage the rest of his term, but so far things are moving along a straightforward trajectory.
Neptunesdolphins, Boomers are also the main beneficiaries of the managerial state, so it’s not surprising that they would rally around it.
Teresa, no surprises there. Now that literature has filled most of its creative space, fanfic and other rehashes are the cutting edge. (And I say this as the author of an 11-volume Lovecraft rehash…)
Chris, yeah, rig count is dropping because we’ve drained most of the frackable reserves. As for catabolic collapse, resource depletion never sleeps…
Alvin, you’ve already been offered several good reasons and ignored them. That being the case, I don’t see any reason to play the game. It’s a standard internet rhetorical game, by the way: “Show me,” where one player demands to be shown X and then dismisses every attempt to show X as inadequate.
Karim, I said “strategic assets,” not “military assets.” Iran retains a very large stock of tactical assets well suited to a ground war, and so no, I don’t expect them to collapse.
Four Sided, insects have very short lifespans and a lot of them die every day. It’s possible that some of them are seeking you out because your energy feels peaceful to them. I’m glad that the bee was okay!
Ambrose, hmm! Interesting.
AliceEm, thank you!
Karim, nothing I wrote denied that…
Quos Ego, to maintain some shreds of geopolitical relevance. If the US backs out of the Middle East and Europe doesn’t replace it, the West has just taken a huge step toward becoming regionally important at most.
Curt, interesting. I’d like to see those carbon dates confirmed, though.
Ben, if it works for you, by all means!
Athaia, memory training can work that way if you orient yourself toward it. As for why bother evolving, no, it’s not the same on all planes. The mere fact that conflict exists on other planes doesn’t mean that everything’s identical all the way up! If you really have earned a respite, btw, you’ll get one. If you don’t get one, that shows that you haven’t earned it.
Siliconguy # 296:
European “No” to Trumpian suggestions to serve as naval cannon fodder in Middle East could be caused by their war navies pitiful state (maybe UK has nowadays a stronger navy to some extent, and it seems Falklands war times are gone). I also think EU/European NATO countries are afraid to send their navies to ME, letting unprotected Baltic Sea and Black Sea: it’s a not impossible hypothesis Putin would decide to attack or pretend to attack in the Ukrainian front or beyond, in that case.
In addition to this, economics wars between EU and USA don’t help to help too much the western axis in ME, methink.
——————————-
Curt # 298:
Interesting: old catacombs, apparently made by human beings…during Paleolithic. Maybe “primitive” mankind wasn’t so primitive as we usually think.
@Seeking the Pure Land
Doing the right thing for impure motives won’t get you smote, and you’ll still get all this world’s benefits. You just lose out on the other benefits you would have gotten from God if the deed had been done for the right reasons. So you don’t lose anything by doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, as opposed to not doing it at all.
Gladitssprint 210
> one of my adult children is a true narcissist, who exhibits all the behaviors this implies.
IMHO, you don’t have to feel obligated to anyone who hurts you, particularly someone who hurts you multiple times and won’t/can’t stop. It is immaterial that that person is a blood relative.
I had two narcissistic parents. My father died young.
My biological “mother” (“Hyacinthe”) hurt me one too many times. In my case, it got to the point of life-or-death. When I was 28, I made the hard decision to divorce her. For the twenty-five years she lived thereafter, we had only one contact, a phone call, and that was me asking her for genealogical information. My side was simple. I never speak to her again. I never ‘said’ “I will never speak to you again”; I just did it. Evidently the feeling was mutual because she never contacted me either — I was glad of it.
Hyacinthe was a person who devoured one of her two kids, and tried to me. I exited fairly early, but my older brother,— she sucked dry. He said he just could not cut the cord. He died at 62 as skin and bones,— a husk. The “Devouring Mother” archetype gives a hint of what Hyacinthe was like. I think it likely you are dealing with a child who devours a parent. Adult children can do a hell of a lot of damage.
I never understood this category of person. I don’t know how they operate the way they do. After a point, I needed to move on,— away from her, she being a person who kept injuring me and I kept letting her [injure me]. Until I said ”No!”, I was a co-dependent participant in the everlasting dramas she cooked up. I shook her off, like a bug one finds crawling on one’s body,—ick. I also felt something slimy when she was around. Bugs and slime.
It is a rough one.
💨💣💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
JMG,
It seems that the woke progressives have moved on to a new shiny thing.
In Portland the city. council has decided with all the real problems facing the city the thing that must get their attention is protections for polyamorous families.
I must have missed this trend toward the rainbow version of polygamy. I am not sure I understand the motivations unless it is a reaction to high rent. Seems like we are at some sort of tipping point.
OK, JMG, I guess I have to accept that I am just biased, because I don’t see the merit of the positive arguments at all. I will refrain from commenting about this topic here.
Mr. Greer.. Oh, and by the way, speaking of ‘theater’.. I happened to avoid the con-jest-ion brought forth by our local No OMB day protest .. which I noticed had traffic at a standstill on the street in front of County Courthouse. Quite the turnout, no doubt courtesy of those kings of chaos, Mr. N. R. Singham and G. Soros. I’m pretty sure there were folks trying to enter the grocery store parking lot across the street who were NOT pleased! .. let along others just trying to get past that bottleneck. To wave on an Obi Wan Kanobi paraphrase: “These aren’t the theatrics you’re looking for”
This post,
https://substack.com/@shanakaanslemperera/note/c-234517043
made me think of JMG’s catabolic collapse. The authour there describes “a civilisational chokeppoint”, pointing out that the (mostly) closed strait of Hormuz isn’t just about oil, but also natural gas, fertiliser and helium. The lack of fertiliser will change farmers’ crop decisions, the lack of helium may reduce silicon chip supply and the viability of rocket launches, etc. So we change how we eat, slightly, and maybe we don’t have microchips just to control automobile automatic windows (yes, seriously), and maybe we have less clutter in orbit. Not entirely bad changes.
But over time as more things like this happen, all the small changes add up. Then fifty years from now my son is telling his grandson about how that little computer they have that cost three months wages, there used to be one in everyone’s pocket, and how everything changed one day, and it all started in 2026, though really some would argue 2016, on the other hand 2001…
Carlos M. 220
> an alarmingly large amount of people would prefer to inflict pain on themselves
This reminds me of something.
Decades ago, I came across an idea coming from Tibetan Buddhism, that when one dies, one experiences (I call them) bardo zones. Tibetan Buddhism calls the bardo somethings. Bardo zones are pure chaos and pain. The goal is during the chaos of the bardo, if one is able to think of good/joy, one wins, as in, one passes the test. The vast majority fail. I mean a millionth of a millionth pass. Occasionally, a dying person thinks of joy and therefore wins.
As much as this is (I am sure) flawed, it does me good to think on it. If one is in pain (experiencing bad), because ‘chaos takes over,’ if one can think of joy, one wins. We can practice this before we die. Breathe in bad, breathe out good.
In this case, on the other hand, “an alarmingly large amount of people would prefer to inflict pain on themselves”; these are people who experience the pain of their own thoughts, and they would prefer to increase the pain on themselv [even] worse pain (emphasis mine).
I would simplify this to: breathe in bad, breathe in more bad, breathe in even more bad, breathe in extreme bad, breathe in the worst thing imaginable, &tc., sounds like these people are creating hell.
If this is the direction humanity goes, humanity IS IN BIG TROUBLE.
Nothing good can come from breathing in bad-after-bad; bad-after-bad; bad-after-bad, with no antidote.
The practice is to breathe in bad, breathe out good. That way, one makes the world a better place. But one damn well better be ready for this practice because it will change one.
💨⚫️💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Chuaquin: No argument with any of that, in particular about gender dysphoria being caused by a mind problem. In fact my belief is that’s what it is in all cases of gender dysphoria, including my own. I don’t believe anymore in some sort of dualism that means you can have a cross-sex spirit or that someone might have the brain of the opposite sex. There was a study that purported to show the latter. The idea was the different regions of male and female brains with light up on a scan in response to the same stimulus, and the trans women’s brains aligned with the female. But it turned out that all the trans women were already on estrogen, so maybe it was because of that. At best, the study is inconclusive. Anyway, kind of getting off into the weeds here. The only other thing I would add is that I think the whole promotion of trans got kicked off partly because activists rans out of things to do after they succeeded in getting gay marriage legalised throughout the western world.
JMG: It’s funny, I have a story like that too. It wasn’t about deciding to transition, that felt like just my normal (to the extent that it is) mental process. What felt like it forcefully came from somewhere else was my *name*. No sooner did I think, “I have to choose a name”, than suddenly “CYNTHIA!!” exploded in my head as if Thoth, Ra, Apollo, Ganesh, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster were surrounding me, shouting it at me in unison though astral megaphones or something. I’ve never experienced anything like it before or since. I didn’t have a thing about that name previously and I only ever knew one Cynthia, who was a nice enough woman but didn’t have any long term impact on my life. It’s very strange. My worldview doesn’t allow for it having come from anywhere but my brain, but it sure didn’t feel like that.
I don’t know anything about the gods I listed. I’m just being expressive.
Lathechuck 225
> psychoactive drugs
Gee, maybe I can use the skill I acquired while under the influence of LSD and the like:
Whee! There is nothing here except what’s in your mind‼️
💨🥳💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Re the Iran War, an interesting note:
There is such a thing in logistical circles that is known as the pyramid of costs to name one name. The upshot is that the pyramid is stacked in such a way that, materialistically speaking, the infantry grunt os the cheapest “base unit”, and then you scale up from there to armor to artillery to airplanes.
The USA (and most 1st world nations) however has become addicted to fighting using an INVERTED pyramid, where extremely costly air power is thrown in first as much as possible.
This sort of “”gasoline warfare”” of course is entirely untenable, especially due to the current situation.
Justin Patrick Moore 229
> back into the heart of it all, the plains states and the great midwest
Yep.
💨👨🏼🌾🐄🌽🗣️💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
@forecastingintelligence, I don’t claim any special knowledge about the war in Iran. The best summary I have found is by an American military history professor: https://acoup.blog/2026/03/25/miscellanea-the-war-in-iran/. I suppose you won’t like it, but if you read it to the end, you might be less surprised why few people accept the argument you are making. Btw, have you read JMG’s essay comparing Israel to the Crusader kingdoms? I say this as somebody who loves Jewish history and reads some Hebrew.
Larkwise 233
> I would love to know how members of the commentariat who voted for Trump are feeling.
I voted for Trump. Within the last few years, I switched to Republican from lifelong Democrate-ite.
This last month, Trump befuddled me. But commenters here have made me think. I feel better having read all your comments. I will be re-reading your comments again over the next week. You all have been incredible your varied opinions.
I don’t know which way is up. But it is not Trump’s fault. If it’s anyone’s fault, it is the fault of people like StepHands ColdBirch and the mainstream media (MSM)/lamestream. They are making things worse, and I look forward to them folding. As commenters here have said, there are way more players in all this than Trump. Trump doesn’t bother me at all. If Hillbilly Elegy guy runs, I will vote for him.
Republicans are for traditional values like family and honest work; givers. That is my base.
Democrate-ites are for values like homosexuality and laziness; takers.
I will be voting straight Republican, from one end to the other. Thanks for listenin’. Nuff said.
💨🧑🧑🧒🧒💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
@Northwind Grandma #307: thanks for your tale of wonky book-keeping – it gave me a good giggle! I faintly remember as a child watching on TV the comedian Flip Wilson in drag playing the character Geraldine whose favourite saying was “The Devil made me do it!” I suppose you can reprise that to cry out in protest “Hemmed Mercury made me do it!”
Keep up with your lively stories and wry observations: they are often some of my favourite parts of the commentary.
@JMG (#315, replying to me at #239):
And it seems so obvious to me as well …
Maybe it’s that nearly everyone grew up with the story that the world is made up of good guys and bad guys, and the line between the two is hard and fast, always and everywhere the same. After all, for most people, their “universe is made of stories, not of atoms” (as Muriel Rukeyser once wrote).
As for me, I hew to what the Queen of Elfland showed Thomas the Rhymer in that wise old ballad:
“O see ye not that narrow road,
So thick beset with thorns and briers?
That is the path of righteousness,
Tho after it but few enquires.
“And see not ye that braid braid road,
That lies across that lily leven?
That is the path to wickedness,
Tho some call it the road to heaven.
“And see not ye that bonny road,
That winds about the fernie brae?
That is the road to fair Elfland,
Where thou and I this night maun gae.”
Most people believe that there are only two roads, but there are really three (a ternary, not a binary). But the third winds over the “fernie brae,” and none can travel it without a guide, or even see it, who have not first gathered fern-seed at midnight on St John’s (MIdsummer’s) Eve and put some of it into their shoe.
@Athaia (#312):
Many thanks for pointing me to that article, which looks utterly fascinating! I have downloaded it now, and will be reading and rereading it over the next few days.
Hey JMG
Apart from hydrogen, another substance that I have been wondering about in regards to the “long descent” is opium. I recently read this amazing book about opium and how it was traditionally used by the Chinese up until the 20th century that is titled “Opium Culture” by Peter Lee. There is a lot of fascinating tidbits, such as how the Chinese understood and countered the negative effects of opium using traditional Chinese medical philosophy, but is its medicinal uses that seem relevant to the long descent.
Apart from its ability to treat pain, it turns out it can also help with malaria. It was traditionally used by the “Hill tribes” to treat malaria since it not only lowers body temperature, eases pain, and clears the lungs but apparently is toxic to the malaria parasite itself, according to the author. It occurs to me that in a future without most of the standard anaesthetic or analgesic drugs, that will also have much higher levels of tropical disease, a return to opium rather than opiates is likely. Do you suppose that opium cultivation will spread throughout the world in order to ensure easy access to what is likely to be the only economical pain-killer besides marijuana?
(Btw, I’m currently working on a review of this book which should be published on my Substack in April.)
Clay, maybe we can get them interested next in the plight of Martian immigrants. The mere fact that there are no immigrants from Mars shouldn’t be a hindrance — after all, doesn’t this show just how horrible a burden of entrenched extraterrestrialophobia the poor Martians have to overcome to move here? 😉
Alvin, thank you. We all have biases, of course, and it’s the ones we don’t notice that blind us most.
Polecat, I bet. All I saw here was a few elderly people on the Metro coming home from some such event. I’m pleased to say that they had homemade signs, not the commercially printed signs so common at astroturfed protests.
Expat, exactly. That’s how real historical change happens; there are inflection points and also periods of crisis, but the changes unfold over years and decades. I’m quite sure we’re passing through one of the former and quite possibly moving toward one of the latter right now.
Cynthia, hmm! Interesting. Thanks for sharing that.
JoeSchmoe, when you can borrow limitless amounts of money out of thin air, the pyramid of costs ends up looking like this:
You’re right, of course, that this is a temporary condition at best.
Robert, I’ve never believed that there are paths at all. It’s just a forest through which people wander in various directions!
J.L.Mc12, opium has been used in medicine for thousands of years and doubtless it’ll come back into use very generaly. It also used to be used quite effectively to stop severe diarrhea, which can be fatal if untreated and can be very common when water supplies are no longer pure.
@Chauquin #264 re: Schopenhauer and “Godless” Buddhism/Hinduism
From what I gathered from On The Basis of Morality and the footnotes from its English translator, it seems he most preferred a Latin translation by a Persian scholar, but had compared some other more recent translations as well, though I get no sense that Schopenhauer had any facility with Sanskrit or Pali/other South Asian Languages.
For what it’s worth, Slithy Toves mentioned that Buddhism in being transmitted to the west was often presented as basically “godless” (and I’ve certainly seen iterations of this, for example, Eric S. Raymond, a rationalist materialist, is a big fan of Zen as a set of practices compatible with a materialist worldview, as he sees it), and I was responding that I don’t think Schopenhauer was necessarily encountering Hinduism or Buddhism in this way. He seems to have taken the pantheistic leanings of those religions as very convincing, and to have been agnostic about the role of any non-human consciounesses (and to have seen what was best in Christianity as cognate with what he found in Hinduism and Buddhism as he understood them). As I think I said in an earlier comment, I haven’t read enough Schopenhauer to have strong feelings on how theistic he was, but I don’t think he was as strict materialist, and I don’t think he was overly misled by bad translations (though, admittedly, he was mistaken in some areas – for example, he made an offhand comment that Hinduism was the ancestral religion of Europeans, which is not what most modern Indo-Europeanists would say).
Cheers,
Jeff
@Robert Mathieson #239 re: Eudaimonia vs Theological Ethics
Excellent points, and I think well-said. Personally, I think there’s something to the Stoic insistence on “indifferent” things – neither right nor wrong, that are nice to have, but not intrinsic to “true morality.” You can’t rigorously define such things outside of a basically theological standpoint, but the idea that there are things that, sure, we’d rather have than not, but that don’t make you admirable (like fame, wealth, or whatever) strikes me as probably fruitful, though I haven’t thought it through as carefully as I’d like just yet.
Cheers,
Jeff
Hey JMG
True. You will be interested to know that Australia will have an advantage in that case, since it so happens that the world’s second largest source of legal opium is our large island of Tasmania. It turns out Tasmania has one of the best climates and environments for opium cultivation on Earth.
Aldarion 328: I read the article to the end. Yes.
Busy day due to good weather to work outside.
Here is an interesting article on how to optimize Google search to work for you.
https://cardcatalogforlife.substack.com/p/google-has-a-secret-reference-desk
The reference librarian comparison made me thing of the very helpful librarian and the U of Idaho who knew were everything was hidden and Katherine Hepburn in Desk Set.
JMG: Now I’m wondering if you know that means exactly the opposite of face value in Allisticese. 😉
Scotlyn, it’s interesting that you use the term “military intelligence system” while my mind kept returning the old standard “military industrial complex “ which made me attend to the “Industrial” aspect a little more closely.
That, in turn, made me wonder if the POSIWID of the industrial revolution wasn’t also kind of the same result as that of the military intelligence system you posited.
Which leads me to think that this is a longer-term karmic tit for tat problem and not just Americans experiencing raspberry blowback for our government’s actions undertaken since we had an American government and military.
A bit bigger in scope.
“Curt, interesting. I’d like to see those carbon dates confirmed, though.”
@Chuaquin
Well, upon further research he’s being called a fraud in Wikipedia on that while Kusch himself claims there’s a conspiracy against things being older than 6000 years.
As I added, his analyses then turn to UFOs and reptiloids, same as with all those youtube marketing “spritual” people on youtube.
While they seem to think of themselves as an alternative to the mainstream, they are merely alternative progress cultists.
But what still remains is the fact these soils in and around Vienna have been settled for a very long time, Vienna having catacombs you can officially visit.
Some argue these passageways under Klosterneuburg may have been for the bishop to move between the church and the monastery, “Klosterneuburg” meaning monastery-new-castle.
There’s a castle across the hill, but not in Klosterneuburg itself.
But neolithic settlements are not out of reach of course.
Hi
I see my responses on Israel generated a robust response from the anti Israel commentators here.
No surprises there. Strawman arguments have been raised so I’ll remind everyone again where I stand.
To the extent I particularly care about Israel it’s primarily as a way in which jihadi forces dedicated to the conversion of Europe, by force if required, to sharia Islam are constrained and preferably eliminated by the IDF and Mossad.
Israel does the dirty work that we would need to do, us Europeans, in their absence.
At some point, given rising demographics and the increasing islamist mindset of younger Muslim Europeans (and the continued influx of illegal young Muslims with sharia and jihadi views) i expect nasty civil wars and/or insurgencies within western European cities by 2050.
Just as bad is the creeping sharia we are starting to see in local areas with substantial Muslim minority populations.
All in all, my view is Israel existence postpones and deflects the jihadi focus on Europe so Israel continued existence and lethalty is in my selfish interest.
The No Kings movement fascinates me. As an outsider it appears to me that your president has far more power than an ordinary constitutional monarch has. I bet King Charles salivates at how much power your presidents seem to have.
JMG # 315:
Oops! If you were thinking about some of my comments about certain small country in Middle East and its political hooligans, I recognize I could approach to the red line toward open rudeness, though I think in my favor I didn’t wrote prophanities nor swear words. I mourn my too expressive adjectives may could be understood as insults.
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After last “No kings” events, I can point American left (so evidently, European left too), have their right to criticise Trump, according democratic free speech. However, following my admired Mr. Habermas, debate always must be reasonable (or at least it should tend to be reasonable). So, when I hear leftist rehashed and boring claim “Trump’s a Fascist”, it’s a motive of concern to me. Left has abused of the term Fascism to label everything they don’t like, so when everybody is a Fascist, nobody is really Fascist (empty shell term). They can accuse Trump according some of his supposed flawns, but I think accusing him of Fascism shows IMHO lack of an honest attitude and lazy minds.
Chuaquin
I hope that the servicemen of USS Gerald Ford have been not suffered radiological exposition. The film “K-19. The Widow Maker” shows a terrible poster-child of this.
To Chaquin #277
Malaysia did not break any agreement. Due to the Supreme Court decision, tariffs such as those applied by Trump were no longer in effect. So there was no reason to continue a clearly lopsided agreement. Almost ALL Malaysians agree with our government’s decision. Even minority Christians like me. Many of us were appalled when the terms of the agreement were made public.
The imposed “reciprocal” tariffs are anything but reciprocal. Malaysia’s import tariff rate is ZERO to 10% for most items from every country. So, for Trump to impose 43% tariffs on Malaysia and claim it is reciprocal is a LIE.
(Now, our esteemed host and many readers here are Trump supporters, but I have to say this clearly.)
Trump has destroyed the image of the USA among many Malaysians.
Even for someone who has lived and worked in the USA and considers himself USA-friendly, like me.
Unfortunately, it is ordinary Americans who will bear the brunt of this hostility.
First, I wish every Christian commenters in this blog (whatever name your Church has) a happy beginning of the Holy Week., today Sunday. I respect it in my way, as a fringe Christian.
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In addition to my comment about Yemen Houthis entering in the current ME mess, I remember a Spanish saying I could roughly translate like this: “There’s not a small enemy”.
—————————
Northwind Grandma # 318:
It’s sad what you’ve told us in your comment. Narcissism is a personality problem which indeed is favored by nowadays “Self religion”(a distorted and perverted individualism form), thanks to social media and consumerist culture. An overgrown Ego isn’t really a strong personality but a weak one. You can see its weakness checking what a thin skin usually have Narcissists (they’re incapable to be criticized, even in a soft way). They fear their “truths” wouldn’t be so strong as they believe them. This could be a cause of infamous woke cancel culture, among another causes; but I think to open that can of worms could be another topic…
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Clay D. # 319:
I’m not sure of it, but protection to polyamorous people can mean using public money (so taxes money from every citizens) to do it. In a democratic country, government must be neutral in front of personal and social groups preferences and interests. State politics must be guided by “general interest”, at least according my country Constitution and another laws.
I wonder if US Constitution and its legal system say something about general interest. If that principle is written, it would be a legal reason to lead public “polyamorous” partial interest (or fondness) into a Court due to his contradiction with public general interest. In addition to this, lawyers could point non polyamorous people is under an unfair discrimination (cough).
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Warburton # 322:
Interesting…My personal opinion is we aren’t witnessing the end of the world (yet), but a lot of things could happen in near future.
And yes, meanwhile Hormuz is closed, we must see what happens with oil, gas, fertilizers, helium…
In addition to Hormuz blocking by Iran army, if/when Houthis block Red Sea next days, things can get hotter. It would mean Suez would be K.O. for ships for a while. And a high proportion of global trade depends of those ships which could be blocked (they can avoid Red Sea sailing around Africa, but of course, the longer is the travel, the higher will be fuel costs…).
————————-
(To be continued, when I can…)
In addition to my last comment about woke use of public structures to fuel its culture wars agenda, I can also write neutral public interest has some legal consequences. For example, laicist or not confessional states are justified not only due to religion freedom, but also because, according neutral general interest, a secular government cannot favor one belief over the rest of them. I think public powers cannot favor a lifestyle (polyamori) over another ones, according the same reason. Especially when it’s a minoritarian choice.
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Cynthia # 324:
I understand your point of view. Every person has lived its life in its own way, partly according its free choice, partly according conditioning circumstances. I’m a straight man, for example (with everything that implies). A book was written a time ago (it was translated to Spanish), whose author claimed with some evidences that some girls who asked to transition into a “male” body, indeed wouldn’t pass a psychological/psychiatric evaluation (cough cough). Of course, woke trans zealots…err…activists, tried to cancel it in USA and another countries (so to censor dissent). It also seems trans frenzy within some (indoctrined by wokesters?) teen girls in US has happened at the same time that girls declaring themselves as lesbians in that country have dwindled during last years…Oops!
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Joe # 326:
Pyramid of cost idea, applied to military costs, has made me to think (maybe in a rough and cynical way) there could be a ratio between a death and money invested in that death. According this dollars/death idea, it seems the cheapest death would be a bullet wound shot by a infantry soldier, and it could start growing with artillery shells and maybe then drones and missiles. Well, I’m not an expert in military things, so I can only grasp a big missile can kill more people, but its cost is bigger than another weapons. If a missile is launched from an helicopter or a war plane, you must include as a cost their fuel, too.
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Aldarion # 328:
A very interesting link, methink. Thanks…
Israel as a modern version of Latin Kingdom during Middle Age crussades it’s an idea liked by Palestinian cause supporters too. In the short form, they claim Israel, like that old time kingdom, is a western colonialist proxy. Well, I think that under a thick layer of Muslim victimist propaganda, there’s some truth in this idea. Real colonialism started really during early Modern Age, with European Age of discoveries (like Columbus did for example), but it could be Faustian idea of non European people conquest was “avant la lettre” in crussaders Jerusalem kingdom, in a primitive way.
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(To be continued)
@Forecastingintelligence
Iran is a six thousand year old civilisation. The only reason why the Jews exist today is because the old Persian Empire took pity on one particular tribe of fanatical nomads, and shipped them off for vocational training rather than execution.
Europeans are just pale skinned Iranian barbarians from a remote Asian peninsula.
@BeardTree
What exactly are the ‘dark places’ of Taoism and Buddhism that you mentioned?
In relation to lambing, and this threshold season of spring, I’ve been watching my husband watching his flock, helping ewes to birth when they are stuck, striving to keep newborn lambs living when the odds are not so favourable, and also, losing some. I’ve decided that he is acting as a reverse psychopomp, helping souls to come IN to this material world, under conditions where they may take one look and decide, “nuh, uh!” Sometimes, he can make the difference that persuades the wee lamb’s soul to stay, and a day later you would never know how difficult the crossing had been. Birth is a tough initiation!
Some rather nice news: I read recently that choral music is making a comeback. If anyone is interested in composing music that will last longer than our electrical age, choral music is a valid option. Choirs require groups of people to interact with a group of people, something unheard of these days except in the vaunted circuses of sportsball.
There seems to be some generational pushback to the hyper-individualism that started after WWII. I think it really started in the 1920s, with the rise of Taylorism and Scientific Management as a means to break apart community involvement. Sinclair Lewis’ novel, Babbit, was a satire of communities.
But now we are seeing young people joining communities again. Several young men I know are joining Masonry because it appears “authentic.”
“Robert, I’ve never believed that there are paths at all. It’s just a forest through which people wander in various directions!”
Thank you. That is unbelievably helpful right now.
As to why discussions of Israel get heated, I do believe that these discussions, at least for Americans, are taking place in our collective shadow, which is an emotional zapping zone. Zionism was primarily an offshoot of dispensationalist Christian ideas developed in Europe and America, and secondarily a movement that people such as Albert Einstein initially credited with “reviv[ing] among Jews the sense of community”, but which led to consequences Einstein feared when giving this speech in 1938, such as “the inner damage Judaism will sustain –from a narrow nationalism within our ranks, which we have already had to fight strongly even without a Jewish state.” In that speech, he said: “I should much rather see agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state… a Jewish state with borders, an army, a measure of temporal power no matter how modest”. All quotes from this piece: https://israeled.org/timeline/albert-einstein-praises-zionism-but-opposes-partition-of-palestine/
On the other hand, when looking at the timeline of American military actions I cited above, there were a couple of mentions of actions in Jaffa in the 1850’s and following. I followed that rabbit trail to discover a tragic story involving ancestors of the writer John Steinbeck, that begins thusly: “In the mid-nineteenth century, Johann Adolf Grosssteinbeck (1832-1913), the grandfather of John Ernst Steinbeck (1902-1968), arrived in the Holy Land. He wished to establish an agricultural settlement in which he would train the Jews of Palestine to engage in farming and thereby hasten the advent of the Christian Messiah.” Imagine that. The extent to which Zionism is a product of Christians, whose aims could be described as “accelerationist” – their aim being to hasten the advent of the Christian Messiah, (which involved using, but not necessarily doing any favours for Jewish people) has been rendered almost invisible by subsequent events.
The quote above, and the full and tragic story that unfolded is told here: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/172416
Hi JMG.
Around November 2023, I wrote a comment on this blog about what I thought would happen in the future, and one of my predictions was that the US would attack Iran “in defense” of Israel, given Israel’s spiral of paranoia after October 7th and the real and undeniable control that Israel exerts over your country’s politicians.
I have thoroughly studied all the information circulating about Israel’s influence on American politicians, and it is overwhelming. From Miriam Adelson’s $250 million donation to Trump, to the 53 standing ovations for Netanyahu, to the continuous and repeated visits of almost all congressmen and senators to Israel with the consequent visit to the Western Wall, to congressmen attending Netanyahu’s presence wearing IDF uniforms, to the continuous use of the Israeli flag by representatives of both parties, to AIPAC donations collected by “Track AIPAC” organization, to the unconditional support for the genocide in Gaza without the slightest criticism, to the unconditional support in arms and money while Trump slaps all the world leaders around without exception except Bibi Netanyahu, etc… I could go on “ad infinitum” with this list. Therefore, in my opinion, sooner or later your country was going to be pressured and would agree to attack Iran with the usual cheap & old excuse of the WMDs “à la Saddam.” that nobody believes it anymore (that Trump was criticising himself for 20 years up to now).
The US war on Iran is a gift to Russia and China, who will try to keep the US military bogged-down as long as possible, with the loss of strategic and very expensive military assets (precision radars, AWACS, THAAD interceptors, SM3, Patriot PAC3, etc.) that take many years to replace. This also will produce an ever-increasing internal opposition to the war, internal political and social crises and division inside the US, etc. In this situation, continuing to support Ukraine with enormous military and economic resources will no longer be possible, and Russia will be able to dictate its terms. And in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, there will be neither the means nor the will in American army and society to respond forcefully.
The USA is no longer an industrial powerhouse, and its financial system is a casino full of bubbles (AI, real estate, pension plans, credit cards, student debt, government debt, etc.). The IRGC’s plan is to cripple the American financial system before reaching any agreement, thus causing the GOP’s defeat in the midterm elections, a very likely impeachment of Trump, and possibly his subsequent imprisonment—something similar to the fate that may befall Netanyahu. Also this war will make the unconditional support for Israel dangerous for their careers in the future for the US politicians, the American public opinion are turning on Israel in both parties, except the Boomers, you know, for them all the wars are “good wars”.
Remember, Crassus’s invasion of Parthia didn’t go well at all.
Cheers
David
A brother of mine gave me a 2009 IMac and loaded it with Ubuntu. It works great. I don’t think it will handle a lot of heavy office work for you, JMG, but for someone who just wants a browser and email, it works perfectly.
Teresa, I didn’t see your comment about atomization of culture. I talked about management culture in an earlier comment and I think it applies here. Promoting individualism is great for consumerism and big bucks for corporations. I still remember a commercial where a woman is twirling on a dock somewhere with outstretched arms and the narrator is saying, “You can have it all!!!”.
Individualism is just one step away from narcissism, and we’re seeing a lot of that on social media. I think the younger generations see a lot of individualism as pure selfishness and want nothing to do with it.
I’ve always liked this image: https://imgur.com/a/Kv3B7s7
@Forecasting intelligence,
Thanks for explaining your view. For what it’s worth, I think it does make sense that rising Islamic fundamentalism is a significant danger for Europe, especially with European weakness on law enforcement for serious criminals.
What do you think of the view that the wars that Bibi had urged in the first place destabilized the region and caused the massive flow of refugees?
Whatever the flaws of Assad, Qaddafi, and Saddam, they were far more secular than what has replaced them.
I realized I wrote previously in quite an emotional tone. I apologize for that.
Northwind Granma # 329:
I understand your point of view, though I don’t have to share it at 100%. For example, you wrote Democrats are in favor of Homosexuality. Well, what’s bad in being a gay or lesbian person? Indeed, during my life I’ve met gay and lesbian people and in general there were good people. What I don’t like not at all is woke ideology imposed by some activists who want an identitarian and victimist view on the LGTBI topic (for example, suggesting gay or trans people are superior to hetero/cis people, like “beings of light” or secular Saints). Of course, I disagree. It’s not the same thing homosexuality than woke gay/trans/… activism: I hope you’ve understood my view.
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JLMC 12 # 333:
Opium and another drugs could be used in a smart way during the Long Descent, but I’m also afraid they’ll go on being used as addictive drugs. Indeed, drugs abuse is as old as humankind. This hard fact doesn’t mind is a good thing (slavery has been commited for centuries too, for example), but I think addictions are an unavoidable thing.
#241 I wonder if the reason why the financial backers of the US Democrats are supporting the No Kings protests and the like, because otherwise it could become a real leftist movement with goals involving redistribution of wealth and incomes and all that kind of thing. Better to gradually but surely co-opt it.
I don’t really understand American politics, and usually have not much interest in it, however I do wonder why US Democrats are going after particular causes now like cancelling Cesar Chavez (why now?) and some of the stuff other commenters have mentioned here, rather than actually pushing back against the Trump they claim to hate.
Re: the “No Kings” rallies: Mary Harrington, a writer I follow on X (@moveincircles), posted the following: “I wonder if these guys set any store, in other contexts, by the New Age manifestation dictum “the universe does not hear negatives.”
JMG, is it accurate to say that this is similar to things you’ve said about the correct way to do magic or workings: say what you want to happen (e.g., “The USA will be a free and prosperous country”) rather than what you don’t want (e.g., “No Kings”)? I’ve often thought that part of the reason Trump won twice was that he offers a positive vision (“Make America Great Again”). That’s not to say I’m a fan or that I agree with him about everything, only to point out that he’s better at marketing than his opponents are.
Jeff R. # 335:
Your ideas about most probable Schopenhauer view about oriental religions seems IMHO interesting. Although I’m not an expert in Philosophy, I think Schopenhauer wasn’t an atheist nor the typical rationalist agnostic, so maybe he was a pantheist.
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Curt # 342:
It’s a pity when a few maverick scientists or thinkers defy usual official History, often they end repeating the same Faustian patterns of their apparent intelectual enemies (cult of god Progress), even as conspiracy theorists.
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Forecasting # 343:
I see you seem to have a stubborn attitude, which I partly could admire, but partly not.
What has upset me from your comments, to some extent, is not exactly your blunt Zionist attitude and speech, but your claim of having the Truth, and your dissenters not (ahem).
In your last comment you say Israel’s helping Europe/the West to prevent it from Islamization. Oh thank you!
Well, I think it’s a strange help to get angrier world muslims against the West thanks to near genocidal Israel current elites politics. Maybe a bad joke. I think you’re wrong.
By the way, migrants birth rates (muslim countries origin too) seems to go down fastly when they’ve lived a time in European countries (at least in my country). Birth rates in Islamic countries aren’t dwindling slowly too, so Europe future islamization is a possibility, not a fate, methinks.
I encourage you to try again better your attempt to defend your view and convince the non Zionist here. Maybe you can do better next time.
(OK John, you can see there aren’t insults nor prophanities in my comment)
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Jiin # 344:
It isn’t strange POTUS has more power than a constitutional king. And more power than a Parlamentary Republic President (like Italia), because Presidents in European Parlamentary Republicas are the equivalent to Parlamentary Monarchies Kings. Well, every system has its advantages and its blind spots, methink.
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Anselmo # 346:
Thanks you for your information.
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(To be continued)
@Tengu #350
Though not as extensive as Islamic and Roman Catholic stuff examples would be the theocratic activities and sectarian persecution done by the Dalai Lama in the 1600’s, persecution and martyrdom of Catholic Christians in 1600’s in Japan, inter Buddhist sectarian divisions and persecution in medieval Japan, warrior monk activity in Japan. The Taoist example is Taoist persecution in China of Buddhism as a “foreign religion” at times from the fifth to tenth centuries C.E.
Chuaquin: Yes, transition followed by transition regret among teen girls is a thing, and not just lesbians. Actually not just girls either, but I think it’s more common among girls. “Indoctrinated by wokesters” tracks as well. It’s terrible. There is now a cohort of young women, real women, who have returned to identifying as such, who don’t pass as women because they took testosterone. It’s terrible. Heartbreaking, in fact. I had no idea about that until this year. In the trans Mastodon instance that I used to participate in, we were told that there’s no trans medicalization for children except puberty blockers, which are harmless. They could do that because we conditioned ourselves and each other to ignore non-woke information sources about trans. Well, when I started looking for a solid reason to believe that “trans women are women”, I discovered something horrible in the course of that: That both parts of that statement are lies! There IS trans medicalization for minors up to and including surgery, and puberty blockers are *not* harmless.
A couple other things that I’m not sure everyone is aware of. First, apparently there’s been some research that suggests that estrogen causes increased aggression in males. This tracks with my experience. The only time I ever got arrested for aggressive behavior was a few months into an estrogen regimen. (I acted out in a store and damaged some merchandise. I am no longer on estrogen.)
The other thing, and this is about Canada, I don’t know if it’s true elsewhere: there is a complete ban on conversion therapy. I used to be fine with that, because I thought “conversion therapy” meant “abusing the patient until they perform normativity.” It’s not just that – it’s when a medical practitioner responds to someone seeking trans care in any way other than to affirm the transness. So a therapist couldn’t have said to me, “Some people do have their gender dysphoria effectively alleviated by transition, because they pass very well as the opposite sex. You, on the other hand, are likely to get a lot of disaffirmation from random people if you do this. You’re going to get reminded that you’re a man all the time. You should go back home and think about it for a few months.” Not that I would have listened, I was pretty determined, but the fact that a practitioner would be legally liable for making this very sensible statement is terrible.
Felix C.# 347:
Oops! I think I didn’t read well local MSM news about Malaysia thing or journalists didn’t do well its job (maybe a bad translation?).
So I understand, according your comment, in the short form, every Malaysians agree with their government decision, and USA image within your country has worsened (to write it softly).
Thanks for correcting me.
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Alvin # 355:
You’ve remembered the end of secular dictatorships in Libya, Iraq or Syria, whose fall fueled to some extent Islamism in the area. I guess Mossad guys weren’t completely innocents and ignorants of those war/political events…
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I warn you my next comment could be about the Israel topic, but I promise you all (and especially to John) I’m going to write in a civilized way…if/when I’ve got time enough.
@JMG (#334), who wrote: “It’s just a forest through which people wander in various directions!.”
That works for me, too. And, to riff off a common metaphor: not just many paths to the top of one and the same only mountain, but many mountains, each with many paths to its top.
@Athaia (#312) again:
To clarify: the article I downloaded was not the summary in Popular Mechanics that you liked to, but the original study published in Neurocase.
@tengu #350: Not nomads at that point for at least 600 years. And not shipped off, but given permission to return if they so wanted (which most exiles didn’t).
If you need a new background for your screen the Hubble telescope has a new image of the Crab Nebula. Various sizes are available for downloading.
https://esahubble.org/images/heic2607a/
Background information here,
https://www.livescience.com/space/hubble-images-taken-25-years-apart-show-big-changes-in-the-iconic-crab-nebula-space-photo-of-the-week
@ TemporaryReality # 341
“A bit bigger in scope.” Oh, without a doubt. An elephant of which we can all blindly feel different parts. A forest in which we all strike off in different directions and see different things. 🙂
Still what we see and what we feel and what we learn while so doing, while a small part of a bigger story, is worth giving consideration to.
@Tengu, Oh, and Zen Buddhist support of Japanese militarism -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_at_War
I say all this with no condemnation, just observation of human weakness. I have a saying “to be human is to be hypocritical”. Certainly have lived it myself!
@ Forcasting Intelligence # 343
Thank you for thoughtful and plain speaking. I shall give this perspective some consideration.
Why not hate both?
Robert Mathiesen 331
> nearly everyone grew up with the story
Yes, everything is story. Many commenters here know that because there are several REALLY good writers here, triple reallys.
That is why I absolutely HAD to learn how to write not only an essay, but one at least “B” level. Essays are the base of life, so to speak. I can’t speak “worth shit,” but damn, I write a competent essay.
Even assembler language of zeros and ones amounts to a story; granted, unintelligible-to-humans stories but stories nonetheless.
Only a machine can make sense of assembler language, although I did know a guy in the 1970s who could read assembler language simply by looking at it. He was incredulous how no one else shared this skill.
In the 1970s (before the divorce), I bumped into a carbon-copy of a business letter my biological mother wrote, one she discarded. I wish I had kept that letter because it was the best business letter I had ever read EVER. I had no idea she was such a good writer. It was a real shame that she never realized that she had the writing skill of Agatha Christie, and could have been rich and famous. Everything is story, even business letters.
But she had one or two major mental health issues she could never get out from under. A pity.
💨👾📝🖤💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
I was at a No Kings rally. They took over the four street corners that my husband and I had to cross. They were very kind and helpful to us. My husband shakes and uses a cane. They stopped traffic for us and guided us across the street.
My husband remarked how reasonable they all were. He expected shouting slogans, etc. We took note that about three quarters were older than 60. They all showed up singly or in couples with homemade signs. They all looked up on the website where the gathering places would be. The rally lasted for two hours, then everyone took their flags and signs and went home for lunch. The remainder of people were three different family groups protesting different things.
We felt that everyone needed to get stuff off their chests, and felt good that they could. They felt they were heard by the honking cars. Satisfied, they could feel they had accomplished something.
However, no one (judging by the signs) could agree on exactly why they disliked Trump. For some, it was Iran, some it was support for Ukraine, some was ICE, some was Epstein, some simply resented Trump, and some believed he was a dictator who staged a coup. They all wanted the old America back, and said so.
ctindale has, in any case, very interesting and precise pieces on global supply chains, mining, industry, and of course the conflict in Iran:
https://ctindale.substack.com/p/decoding-trump-on-irans-electrical
“It’s that thing I keep referring to, if you’re a regular reader, the idea that our infrastructure can be immediately brought back online in any country is one of our naive beliefs.
This creates a multi-decade timeline for industrial reconstruction. The result is a transition from a centralised industrial state to a fragmented, localised survival economy.”
According to him, the US can and will indeed do heavy damage to Iran, which I myself would add as an experience from the news on Ukraine and Simplicius, does not mean Iran will cease fighting, or the US necessarily win this war, but if what tindale warns about holds true, the US and Israel may indeed turn Iran in a zone of genuine humanitarian crisis that Iraq hasn’t seen in its worst days.
The Sheiks of the Gulf, if we believe the news, have already called for total annihilation.
This may get messy, as the American might say, well unless the “international community” steps in first, if there is as such.
That wokey-pokey, Antifa adjacent, far leftist publication USA Today estimated that yesterday’s No Kings protests attracted around 8 million persons.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/03/29/no-kings-rallies-a-red-flare-for-trump/89306058007/
The best signs I saw involved ping pong balls glued to posters, captions being variations on “balls for congresspersons”, and puns on the word ‘faux’, as in No Fauxing Way. There were plenty of Justice for Renee and Alex signs, with blown up photos. One of the dumbest things this admin has done is give its’ opponents two martyrs. No reports of violent incidents, such as one would have expected USA Today to have highlighted.
Forecasting, the only strawman arguments I have seen are not coming from so-called “anti-Israel commentators”. I can’t speak about the problems in Europe, but I can say that in the USA, we pretty much don’t tolerate no-go neighborhoods. Sure, there are historic Chinatowns and other ethnic neighborhoods, but law enforcement gets access, and you don’t get to impede people on public spaces such as sidewalks.
You can refuse to answer reporter’s questions, but they get to be in the same public spaces you do.
There were a group of ME students protesting their bad grades at a Canadian private college a while back.
They were being interviewed by a very pleasant and sympathetic young reporter. Following a few questions, one of the men told the reporter–he was standing on a sidewalk, public space, and the student protesters had gathered on school grounds, space they DID NOT own–to leave because he was making our young women nervous. Unbelievable. For one thing, any young woman who can’t tolerate questions from a pleasant young reporter has no business, none, being hired, or shoehorned, into any kind of position of responsibility.
Siliconguy 339
>interesting article on how to optimize Google search to work for you.
Wow. I never knew. I just inputted:
“traditional family values america” AROUND(3) policy
and received a limited number of cogent possibilities, one of which was:
“conservative family values”
which led to:
U.S. Congressman Mike Johnson’s website
“7 Core Principles of Conservatism”
with his top three being:
1-Individual freedom;
2-Limited government;
3-Rule of Law.
Which led to:
“In 2018, Congressman Johnson drafted this short summary of the central beliefs of American to help anchor the work of the Republican Study Committee in the timeless principles that made our nation the freest, strongest, and most prosperous in human history.”
Remarkable.
I am going to learn to use this technique all the time while Google-searching. ~Northwind Grandma wants more of this.~
Marvelous.
💨👀💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
It would appear that I spoke too soon, above.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/church-holy-sepulchre-jerusalem-cardinal-pizzaballa-israel-catholic/
@ Forecasting Intelligence # 343
Once again, thank you for your thoughtful response. I have given it a careful read, and I have two responses, which I hope properly address, and take on board, what you have written.
1) The argument about jihadis and sharia law is structured as a “THEY plan/want/intend” argument, identical in form to arguments that (say) “they [WEF folks] plan/want/intend us to own nothing and eat bugs”, or that “they [Pharmaceutical Companies] plan/want/intend to keep us all sick”. I cannot speak to what these various “they’s” actually want. (Strangely enough, they never consult me about their plans… 😉 ) Obviously, many people want many things. And many of the things they want, in principle, are inimical to my own interests. But the significant question for me, and the only one that I know how to usefully answer, in the face of any such imputation of a dastardly plan to some shadowy and unknown “them” is to ask myself, and seriously answer myself, two questions: 1) What do *I* want/plan/intend? and 2) What am *I* willing to give, to give up, and to accept, in order to pursue what I want, plan, intend?
2) You see the state of Israel as a bulwark – in your case for Europe. I am unable to see any state, including the state of Israel, as a bulwark, given that a good POSIWID look at any state you can name, clearly reveals that what it DOES is, in many (and sometimes in MOST) ways inimical to the interests of the people it rules. Some more so than others, but it is particularly evident to me that Israel is far from acting as a bulwark for its own citizens. If I were to expect the state of Israel to ALSO be a bulwark for Europe, against the ascendancy of one of those shadowy “they’s” and their danger to me, I would surely be asking more than just a bit of extra “human shielding” from all of the Jewish people, both Israeli Jews and diaspora Jews, who may thereby be harmed.
I suspect we will continue to disagree, but I appreciate that you have attempted to clarify your thinking.
Be well, stay free!
@Chuaquin
“It’s a pity when a few maverick scientists or thinkers defy usual official History, often they end repeating the same Faustian patterns of their apparent intelectual enemies (cult of god Progress), even as conspiracy theorists.”
Really, when I was naive and sought for a better alternative on the countercultural fringe, I found people decrying the tyranny of our society, only to show themselves as would-be tyrants if given half a chance, their ideas unoriginal just with a slightly different flavour, their actions not only malevolent, but to a very high and surprising degree, entirely self-defeating.
Yesterday, I drove past a No Kings protest on the sidewalk while coming home from work. There were dozens at the protest, including a person in a frog suit. I think their signs were homemade. I did not remember the ages of the protestors, but since it was not far from the college, many of those protestors could be students.
@Mary Bennet
The Trump administration did not really create martyrs. Individual ICE agents feared for their lives when that woman drove at them with her car, and that guy’s loaded gun went off. Occassional incidents like that are inevitable when angry beta-Marxist protestors are out in force.
If ICE had used water cannons in subzero temperatures on protestors, as right wingers in comment sections were advocating for, then it would have been a different matter.
Scotlyn 280
> in fact had been DOing it, from its earliest days, in opposing, disrupting and wrecking the self-determination, self-sufficiency and social coherence of the various Native American nations with which it initially warred.
The syndrome goes further back in time than when affecting American Indians. It was England which (mainly in 1600s, 1700s and 1800s) financed and extracted natural resources from the “13 Colonies” of America. England paid white colonists to extract booty from the Eastern Seaboard, financing ships holding things like lumber back to homeland England. For example, the origins of Massachusetts started this way: England payed early Puritan white colonists to extract lumber and salted fish.
England had stripped its own countryside, running out of lumber (and Scotland and Ireland? dunno). There was other booty from the 13 Colonies that England paid colonists to extract: furs from mammals by trapping, hemp, tar, cotton, tobacco). In the early 1700s, England shipped from England to New York State impoverished refugee “Palatines” (largely German but other nationalities like French and Swiss) to extract lumber, hemp and tar, shipping those things back to England. (I have several of these Palatine German mainly female third- to seventh- great grandparents.) Around 1710, the Palatine German migration was the first mass-migration of ethnic Germans to America,— several thousand to New York State, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, not to mention Ireland.
By 1750, the colonists of all stripes were fed up with the English taxing them up the wazoo, and staged their own successful Revolutionary War of 1776. (When was it that England started stripping minerals from America. I can’t recall. When was that?)
To a lesser degree France, Spain, Portugal, and Holland did their share of natural resource extraction from America from 1500 to 1800.
The extraction ventures were the prerogative of northern Europeans, much of it ending up benefitting England’s royalty and aristocracy. Name any current British aristocrat and chances are 99% that natural resource extraction paid for their gigantic estates, including Cornwall by the current Kong Churlish.
After America’s Revolutionary War of 1776, England went after India and other “colonies.” It didn’t really begin to stop until the 1960s.
Maybe that is why Europe is now on a downward trajectory, because they are barred from stealing natural resources. Egads, Europeans have “to trade goods and services rather than steal them.” That means Europeans will be forced to do an honest day’s work to make a living.‼️Culture shock‼️
Not to mention that Americans are going to need to either join the (proud) working-classes in the near future, or else starve. Simple if-then-else statement.
As JMG says, collapse before circumstances force you to.
Before long, train now in any number of (gratifying) hands-on trades, like mechanic/machinist (dozens of specialties), electrician, plumber, framer, blacksmith, whitesmith, woodworker (several specialties, like furniture, framer, floorer, and logger), heating & cooling, mariner, farmer, gardener, barn-raiser, roofer, dry-waller, road-maker, shoe-er, hatter, leather-worker, barrel-maker, dressmaker, cook, bookkeeper, homemaker. Each of these takes years of training, as well as an investment in one’s own tools.
Things being what they are, if you are about 20 (± 5 years), choose a trade and find someone who will apprentice you. It’s your life, not your parents’. Even 45-year-olds need to consider such a change in occupation.
Middle-aged marketing vice-presidents, middle-managers, skyscraper engineers, airline pilots, ballet dancers, and the vast majority of college graduates are on the verge of being flotsam-and-jetsam when it comes to the emerging New World. (I wish I were younger—I would train as a dressmaker of common folk’s clothes akin to European medieval loose garments, but at 73, I’ve run out of time, and (not to worry) I’ll wait until after reincarnation).
Thanks, Scotlyn.
💨🙌🏼💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
@ Northwind Grandma,
It’s a complicated mess. Part of it is likely institutional and cultural inertia. Some of it is fear of the slippery slope, etc. I have no good answers for you.
I apologize to anyone else who might have replied to what I wrote. (I almost missed Northwind Grandma’s.) My spring break is coming to an end…
@Yavanna #359
“The universe does not hear negatives,” is not quite right: that would just make the universe stupid. What It’s getting at is real, though: thinking “not X” generally keeps you thinking about X, and saying “no X” keeps the people around you thinking about X. And what you contemplate, you imitate.
You can use a negative as part of a formula if you have some positive to sufficiently balance it. For example, if your desire really is to get rid of some particular thing — like an illness — and you can’t find any better way to word it without being too vague, the wording “I am free of X” works better than “X is gone,” or the like because the former invokes the positive feeling of being free of the thing you want gone.
In this case, contrast “No Kings” with the older American slogan, “No king but King Jesus”: the latter puts the focus on Jesus, not least because divine names tend to draw the attention quite strongly. The overall effect is that you’re not trying to simply negate the existence of kings: you’re affirming Jesus Christ’s sole claim to the title, from which it immediately follows that no one else has proper claim to it.
Here is a brief account of the polyamorous Portland City Council resolution referenced above by Clay Dennis, I have two questions.
How about protection from discrimination for we who are single and chaste by our own choice?
I would be very interested to learn who and what is behind this. I do know that there are factions that would like to make polygamy legal again.
Mawkernewek @ 358. Got it in one. Entryism is indeed raising its ugly head. $3MUS is pocket change for the likes of Soros. It gets his foot in the door. Speakers were told to highlight plight of the stranger. Audience was polite, but I am not sure they are buying. I will say again, internationalist candidates are not winning elections or primaries at any level.
PATRICK h @ 379. You can believe that if you want to. The videos I saw show different. Both killings will doubtless end up in court, so we will have to let juries decide theses ones. There is also the fact of, at the very least, criminal negligence in the tossing out into below 0 weather of an elderly, blind Hmong gentleman after it had been determined he was NOT illegally residing here. I guess he must have been rude to the ICE agents and feelingses were hurt?
Oh no, I forgot the link. https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2026/02/portland-moves-to-extend-discrimination-protections-to-polyamorous-people.html
@ Northwind Grandma #380
Thank you. I think there is a lot to everything you say here, and I appreciate it. 🙂
As to “England had stripped its own countryside”, I want to mention the book “Why we Left: Untold Stories and Songs of America’s First Immigrants” by Joanna Brooks – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16128892-why-we-left
This book is a study of ballads sung by rural and country people in the US, setting them in the context of events in Europe (primarily Britain) that precipitated their ancestor’s emigration to America. The book says that ballads are a way for working class people to tell their (our) stories. Then it unpacks a few of these ballads in an interesting way.
I figure my own ancestors were “boat people” from 1640, who were fleeing something real and dark, but who also created something big and real and good in a new place, that inevitably also had a real and dark Shadow – partly because of their perceived necessity to erase the native population before their dream of a City Shining on the Hill, could be properly realised.
@BeardTree #361
Gelugpa extremists did indeed take over a number of Jonang temples but there were only a few hundred deaths at the time. Likewise in the brief Taoist resistance to the introduction of Buddhism.
In Japan the temple armies were very destructive but this was in a time when warfare and destruction were very widespread. In times of chaos Shaolin Temple also fielded a small army to defend itself. By the time of the Second World War Japanese Buddhism had been made forcibly subservient to state Shinto. None of these examples are really comparable with the Abrahamic religions.
Since it’s open post: I seem to be the only big fan of Brahms who posts here. I’ve become very fond of his “A German Requiem,” especially. I prefer it to Beethoven’s 9th, which is clear heresy to many. It’s a choral work of seven movements, clocking in at over 70 minutes, depending on the performance. I can’t seem to hear it too many times (unlike Beethoven’s 9th of which I’ve grown weary). Also worth a mention is Brahms’ “Shicksalsaleid” or “Song of Destiny.” It is also a choral work, much shorter than the German Requiem. It seems to be based, indirectly, on the Orphic hymn to Mars. I think the connection is through Franz Holderlin, who was quite “into” the Orphic hymns. Holderlin also authored a novel called “Hyperion,” which can be found online in PDF format. I’ve downloaded it, but have yet to read it. But I will, quite soon. Maybe I can give a book report a month from now on the next open post. This is offered as a little relief from the more current topics about the middle east. Just in case anyone else is interested in this….
Jeff (if I may), the translation of the Upanishads Schopenhauer used, the Oupek’hat, was the first-ever European version of the text. It was published in Latin in 1801, and was responsible for the first great wave of interest in Hinduism among Europeans. There’s a good summary here:
https://download.uni-mainz.de/fb05-philosophie-schopenhauer/files/2020/03/2012_App.pdf
J.L.Mc12, Tasmania may become very rich a century from now!
Christie, er, put it down to my autism, but I wasn’t able to make any sense of your comment.
Curt, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if there were tunnels dating back a very long time. I just want to see carbon dates I can verify.
JillN, granted, but under our constitution Trump has considerably less power than a British prime minister has — our system includes checks and balances that yours doesn’t (and they were put in place precisely because yours doesn’t have them).
Chuaquin, no, I deleted a couple of offensive personal attacks over the issue of said little country. As for “debate must be reasonable,” er, on what planet? I can’t think of a single political debate on this one where that rule has been kept.
Felix, labels like “Trump supporter” are very blunt instruments. I’m well aware of the problematic features of his government and its policies, you know — and also of the problematic features of his Democratic rivals and their policies. I think that’s true of most people here.
Jon, the Scottish Rite here in DC (an organization of Freemasons that offers degrees beyond the three basic ones) had its annual initiations Friday and Saturday, and I attended. There were something like forty new initiates, more than usual, and all but a few of them were young men. I’ve heard from a lot of other Masonic jurisdictions that they’re also seeing a lot of young men coming in. That is to say, you’re right — people are heading away from the isolated consumerism of the recent past.
Scotlyn, that’s certainly an important part of it. All things considered, there’s no particular reason why Americans should be more concerned with Israel than with, say, Laos — another little, strategically placed country a long way from our borders — other than religious obsessions, on the one hand, and the political influence of the American Jewish community on the other.
DFC, and you were quite correct, of course. I didn’t think Trump would let himself be sucked into that particular folly, and I was wrong. I’m by no means sure the midterms are a sure thing for the Democrats — their popularity remains even lower than Trump’s — but a lot of political capital that might have been used more productively has been wasted.
Jon, if somebody ever gives me such a thing I’ll certainly give it a try. As for the image…
…that’s brilliant. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if that caught on, for that matter.
Mawkernewek, you know, that may be the best explanation of the current Democratic protests I’ve seen yet. It would explain why those protests so stringently avoid doing anything useful or making any constructive suggestions for change: if they’re just meant to soak up and co-opt energy from the left, that would be a clever strategy.
Yavanna, well, it’s not the universe that has to listen — it doesn’t, no matter what — but Harrington has a valid point. The subconscious mind doesn’t process negative particles. All it hears from those protests is “Kings! Kings!” The thing I find most astonishing and appalling about the Democrats these days is that they’ve moved further and further away from offering any constructive program at all — it’s all just “Orange Man Bad.” The thing that fascinates me is that this has been true since the 1980s, with predictable results; Bill Clinton, when he took office, basically copied the policies of Bush senior, and Obama did an even more precise job of copying those of Bush junior. The way things are going, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the next Democratic president copied all of Trump’s policies, since he’s the only thing the Democrats can think of these days.
Robert, exactly. And I’m far from sure that any two people ever follow the same path, even if they happen to be climbing the same mountain.
Curt, why bother to hate anybody?
Neptunesdolphins, that’s good to hear. Certainly the handful of protesters I saw yesterday looked pleasant enough.
Curt, it’s quite possible that crippling Iran’s industrial system is a core part of the goal of this operation.
@Mary Bennet
I’ve seen videos which show that Renee Good drove at the officer. And any sympathy I had for Pretti evaporated when I learned he had a loaded gun.
I hope Scott Thao wins the suit he’s planning to file against the ICE agents who wrongfully arrested him and exposed him to subzero temperatures.
Chauquin 292
Thanks for writing. I appreciate it.
>it seems Democrats are trying to erode Trumpian hegemony
Democrats are blue states as well as (my phrase) Trump-exterminators.
Republicans / red states / Trump advise and recommend a way of living called a “conservative agenda.” They have a plan,— a published plan,— a known “plank.” It is not a sneaky plank; it is upfront.
I mentioned the conservative agenda earlier; I see it having definite upsides for rank-and-file Americans:
https://mikejohnson.house.gov/7-core-principles-of-conservatism/
If one views the other side, the Democrats, they have offered no alternative way of living. No plan. Nada. Nothin’. What is their plank? —it is nowhere to be found.
I shall end here.
💨🔴🔵💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
JMG: I’m sorry, allow me to clarify: In Allisticese, the language spoken by Allistic, or non-autistic people, “interesting, thanks for sharing” seems to mean anything but that. I was just trying to have a little joke with you as someone who’s also not a natural at Allisticese. Moving forward, I’ll write more straightforwardly to you.
Happy Spring to everyone.
What does “Woke” mean? is there a real definition now? My understanding is that it was originally a statement that “I understand that this political or economic power-play has unintended bad consequences for people I know.”
“Woke” appears to have mutated into “This non-conservative person is disagreeing with me, and I am upset.”
I’m sure there is a third meaning that is what is actually being used, but I can’t help thinking that A LOT of things these days have “unintended” consequences for people who aren’t in power, and a lot of people who get upset when these various “unintended” phenomenon are pointed out.
I’m looking forward to “House of the Crows.” Time to reread the other three, I think.
Reference point: A local extension agent has informed me that local fertilizer price quotes (midatlantic, US state) expire at the end of the day.
Mr. Greer. In your response to Jon above, did you notice Little Girl Patriotic’s glance at Mr. ‘Not a Consumer’?? I can almost envision her quote bubble stating something to the effect as: “My GOD! .. What a FREAK!” Though, not as freaky as those No ‘Alternative’ blow-up dinosaurs,no ‘l-ice’ head dresses, and the various paper-mache’ administrative heads… I mean, C’mon! .. they couldn’t even get FBI Patel’s skin color right … made him look like the blackest of Nigerians. You gotta hand it to the Europeans: their protest constructions excel, by far, ANYTHING that these ‘no kings’ posers put out.
I was born in the 90s, and grew up in a fairly abusive family; I have since escaped, but I’ve long been interested in how others from similar backgrounds are coping, which has lead me to watching certain media trends that most people are not paying much attention to. I’ve recently noticed that there’s been an uptick in discussions about how kids are disowning their parents. It doesn’t surprise me that an awful lot of the coverage is negative (selfish, entitled children hurting their parents!), or that a lot of people want to make it illegal, or to enforce the already existing filial responsibility laws a lot more; but what surprised me is that it media discussions around children deciding to cut all ties with their families is getting a lot more common. Why now?
Well, my take is that it means that a lot of people (from the comfortable classes) are no longer willing to deal with the abuse their parents hurl at them. I suspect, but I cannot prove it, that this is because a lot of them are looking at their prospects and realizing that their parents simply cannot actually provide them with enough to make it worth dealing with them anymore. Mine tried to use an inheritance (probably still worth a few million dollars) to try to make me put with their abuse, and it worked longer than I’d care to admit.
The pattern in the comfortable classes is pretty well entrenched, in my experience; enough so that in my experience, the few good parents were actually ostracized by other parents and in one case, faced spurious child services calls which ended with the family moving away. My point is that among the comfortable classes, nearly every single family I know has been dysfunctional in a peculiar way, one in which the parents behave in ways that very closely match what Scotlyn (in comment 280) mentions about the way the American Military Intelligence Complex works, and how this has ended up shaping the American government:
“And, very consistently, what the system does is oppose, disrupt and wreck self-determination, self-sufficiency and social coherence where ever it is found.”
There are other similarities as well: arbitrary favoritism; constant gas-lighting, even when it is counter productive to the goals (stated and real) of the system; Munchausen syndrome by proxy; a passionate insistence that anyone who complains or even just tries to improve their life is mentally ill; a complete disregard for anyone else’s privacy, mixed with an obsession with secrets and passionate insistence on their own privacy; the passionate insistence that the only motivation is for the good of the victims; and I could go on at great length.
It is so striking that I can’t help but wonder if these are reflections of the same phenomena; I’ve also noticed, whenever I compare notes with others from similar backgrounds, that there’s a fairly weird pattern to it, whereby our parents would use exactly the same phrases. This doesn’t surprise me too much, human nature being what it is, but it does seem to suggest there is a “script” of some sort being run here: ranging in scale from a single abusive family to global governance; and if this is true, it has some very intriguing implications.
Hey JMG
Tasmania also grows green tea, its plantations are the southernmost tea plantations on Earth.
Speaking of plants, I’m almost halfway through that underrated novel by Brian Aldiss, “Hothouse”. It is set millions of years in the future, in which the Earth and the moon are tidally locked with the sun, and plants have almost completely taken over the planet, and many have evolved to be more mobile and animal-like. It’s quite good, would probably make a good comic series or anime if only it was more popular. Have you ever read it?
Lathechuck @225
Would you happen to have a reference about the drugs/drug breakdown products in wastewater, and subsequent concentration in plants?
Here’s one for the augurs:
https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/florida-deputies-save-injured-bald-eagle-from-alligator-filled-canal
A bald eagle crash-landed into someone’s yard, then ended up in a canal filled with alligators. But it was rescued and is making a recovery.
Looks like one of its wings got injured. Hard to say, but looks like it might be its right wing from the photos, but that detail wasn’t given in the article.
JMG,
Is there any difference between Masonic lodges in Canada and the US? Or maybe that’s too broad of a question. I’m thinking of joining the local lodge here in Canada; there might come a time in the not to distant future where I relocate to the US and would hope that I could join a US lodge without too much trouble.
@Robert Mathiesen (#364) I had assumed as much, because the article didn’t have much meat. I intend to read the actual study, too, as time permits. And, you’re welcome 🙂
@Chauquin #264 re: Schopenhauer’s Pantheism
As I said, I haven’t read much Schopenhauer yet (On the Basis of Morality is his first work I’ve read), but in that, he self-applied the label “pantheist,” apparently equating “the Will” with something like a Platonic “World Soul.”
So, as I said, don’t want to expound too much on what his beliefs were.
Cheers,
Jeff
@JMG #388 re: Schopenhauer’s Sources for the Upanishads
Thanks very much for the clarification!
Cheers,
Jeff
Okay, the hammer comes out. I had several more attempted comments that ignored my request to keep discussions about Israel civil, and waded in with the personal insults. No comment mentioning Israel in any way, or trying to continue the arguments started over it, will be put through for the remainder of this open post. I apologize to the couple of readers who sent in reasoned and courteous comments, but I’ve found that the best way to get people to stop yelling is to use the hammer to squash topics wholesale.
Oh, and I’ve noted down the IP addresses of those who made abusive comments. If they make a habit of it they’ll be banned from this blog. This is a space for polite, reasonable discussion, and as Elinor Ostrom pointed out — and got a Nobel prize for doing so — you can defend a commons against abuse only if there are meaningful penalties for violating boundaries.
With that said, let’s proceed.
Cynthia, thanks for clarifying. That’s not a term for neurotypical speech I’ve encountered before! As for the phrase, well, mark me down as typically autistic and thus socially awkward; when I say “Interesting!” it’s because I’m interested, and when I say “thanks for this” it’s because I enjoyed learning something.
Sylvia, like every word in every human language, “woke” is contested and polyvalent. It’s been taken up by the populist right as a convenient label as a countermove to the insistence, by many people on the left, that their distinctive ideology isn’t an ideology at all, but (for example) the supposedly simple recognition that this or that thing has unintended bad consequences for people the speaker claims to know. Since so many people on the left get angry when the term “woke” is used for their ideology, of course, that just adds to the entertainment value it has for people on the populist right. (I’m not saying that this is a good thing, just that it inevitably happens.) Myself, I use it as a convenient label for the beliefs of the extreme left in American society — the people who insist, for example, that it’s unjust to punish criminals for violent crimes against other people if the criminal’s ancestors were oppressed, or that a white man in West Virginia who’s working three part time minimum wage jobs in a desperate struggle to keep his children fed is somehow the oppressor in relation to a black woman who makes a six-figure income working for the government in a comfortable Maryland suburb, when the policies she enforces and the politicians she votes for are directly responsible for his plight. That’s a very distinctive ideology and it deserves a convenient name.
Gardener, hmm! Many thanks for the data point. Here we go…
Polecat, maybe my eyesight isn’t what it was, but it looked to me as though she was staring at him in utter amusement, as one does at a clown.
William, that’s very interesting indeed. As someone who did exactly that to one of my parents more than three decades ago, and have never regretted it, I can certainly understand those who do so! I suspect, though, that in addition to the factors you’ve addressed, there’s a financial dimension nobody’s talking about yet. Many Boomers have wildly inflated ideas about what kind of lifestyle they’re entitled to have in their declining years; those bumper stickers reading “I’m Spending My Children’s Inheritance” (and the fact that a lot of Boomers are doing so) reflect that, but some of the main asset classes that are propping up pensions right now are taking a hit — have you been watching the carnage in the private-credit market? It would not surprise me if Boomer parents are starting to exert pressure on their adult children to prop up Mom and Dad’s lifestyles at their own expense…and I can well imagine the reaction.
J.L.Mc12, I remember that novel well! I read a lot of Aldiss when I was in my twenties; I should go back and reread him, as I recall enjoying his stories a great deal.
Slithy, fascinating. I have a bit of a history with eagle omens, so I’ll look into this one.
Tim, if you belong to a lodge under a grand lodge recognized by the United Grand Lodge of England, the parent body of Masonry worldwide, you can visit and join any other UGLE-recognized lodge in the world — and yes, that includes US lodges. As far as I know, all the grand lodges in western Canada are fully recognized, so all you’d have to do is show up at a lodge down here and present your unexpired dues card and you’ll be welcomed as a brother.
North Wind Grandma 329
Your comment that Democrats “are for values like homosexuality and laziness; takers, while Republicans are for traditional values like family and honest work; givers”, sums up for me the problem in America — a ridiculous and deluded bias against one side or another, leading to further and further polarisation with possibly no chance of rapprochement.
I’m not American, but if I were a Democrat I’d find your comment beneath my contempt.
@William #395
I am not from the comfortable classes, but did manage to work my way up here.
My parents are unemployed addicts in various ways (gambling, alcohol etc). My mother, who abused me my whole life, and who proudly espouses the logic of ‘I raised you now you owe me’ came to visit recently. During her visit she shuddered at my kids, remarked that she hates children, then told me that she regrets having me and my siblings. Yet still I put up with her for some reason (albeit we speak only a couple of times a year). Maybe I pity her – her awfulness has reeked its own Karama, where everyone only puts up with her and nobody enjoys her company. I try to heal myself so completely so that her words no longer hold any power to sway my feelings, thoughts or actions – instead of needing to hurt her by cutting her off – a compassionate option.
But generation, in all its classes, really was something.
Patric H. 389, I was referring to this incident in New York State:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/nearly-blind-refugee-dies-being-174000476.html
As for what happened to Good and Pretty, I think a jury will have to decide that.
Eagle omens? Is there an occult meaning to the on going recovery of bald eagle populations? What about the return of bison to some Native American lands?
@Chuaquin & Northwind
“What I don’t like not at all is woke ideology imposed by some activists who want an identitarian and victimist view on the LGTBI topic”
There was a great discussion on here a few years back that pointed out how the LGBTI+ flag with all the new additions now looks like a military flag and that it was a forced take over of the original pride flag and associated movement. The original Pride flag represented all those folks from the beginning but it wasn’t enough unless they could have their own direct flavor direct represented/forced onto it in, frankly, the most ugly fashion possible.
The original pride flag was brilliant in its simple style and what each color represented, and I do see the original being flown much more than any of the later revisions which at least shows that many folks are reverting back to a sense of sanity in the space.
“(for example, suggesting gay or trans people are superior to hetero/cis people, like “beings of light” or secular Saints).”
This is like when it was proposed that Atheists should call themselves ‘Brights’. They ended up rebuilding religion in a different name, no surprise there. They become the thing they feared the most sort of like how the bullied become the bully to ensure they aren’t harmed again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brights_movement
And that is exactly what happened in the LGBT movement, in trying to accept it all explicitly, they become the ones that oppress.
I also cut ties with both my parents and did not regret it either! In fact, letting myself be talked into speaking with them again was a huge mistake; one which has set a number of my goals back by quite a lot. I suspect you’re right about finances, and I think I should clarify my comment. The best explanation that I have right now is that what is happening is that a huge number of abused children with privileged parents have realized there’s no inheritance coming, and are walking away. There are a few ways that this realization might have happened, but I think the most likely is that their parents have started pressuring the children for financial support and/or stared stealing from them to prop up their lifestyles.
Hey JMG
I suggest you do, I have been plowing through “Hothouse” quite fast due to how enjoyable and easygoing it is. It makes me want a future of massive and occasional predatory plant-derived creatures.
On that subject, do you suppose that plants could continue to evolve in ways that would seem fantastically unlikely to people in the present age? I doubt that “Planimals” as mobile and independent as animals are possible, but there may still be niches and potentials in plants that have yet to evolve that as yet seem impossible to us now. I’ve heard of a few plants that can slowly travel by continuously growing roots in front of them selves to drag themselves forward, such as the Egyptian “Walking onion”. Maybe more plants will develop this trait so they can find better environments if needed?
Book notes: Ocean: A History of the Atlantic before Columbus, by John Haywood, has just turned up on public library new bookshelves. I am finding it disappointing. Nothing about the geology of the ocean, and I don’t think that is too much to ask for. A recent book about the Mediterranean Sea before the classical period goes into geologic and meteorological history of the basin in some detail. Worse, despite the title, I have so far read almost nothing about the various North and South American and African peoples who lived along the Atlantic littoral. Some of them must have fished, at least. What this is really is a popular account of European exploration of the Atlantic, and, as such, it is no improvement on Samuel Elliot Morison’s magisterial volumes.
The Street, by Ann Pettry, is an American masterpiece, a brilliant and harrowing novel which ought to be far better known than it is. There were a handful of American novelists in the mid 20thC who have been all but forgotten. Pettry, McCullars, Mary Austin, are some I have read, and I think they are far better than most of what I have seen in the post WWII era. I will say that the Chicano literary movement of the 70 & 80s produced some very fine work, most of which has also been forgotten.
Lords of the Sea, by John R Hale, about the Athenian navy, is everything a virtuous popular history ought to be. Hale is himself an American archeologist who specializes in the study of underwater ships. He knows the subject, writes in an engaging style, and there is lots of interesting detail.
JMG: I invented that word just for that comment, and off it goes to the bin of never-again-used new coinages, I’m sure. Also it’s a little much for me to suggest that all neurotypical people use those words insincerely; I’m sure that’s often not true. This whole thing was born of my own insecurity; it’s not that there’s anything awkward about you. Anyway, I’m glad you liked my story about when I (someone?) chose my name. It is a little bit interesting and there’s not often much call to bring it up. Thank you! 🙂
Michael, the discussion of the vandalism of Gilbert Baker’s finely conceived Pride flag was over on my Dreamwidth account, here:
https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/135695.html
William, sorry to hear you let yourself be talked into that. Distance and silence are great healers.
J.L.Mc12, anything’s possible, but vascular plants have been pretty stable for about 420 million years now — they’ve tinkered with reproductive methods, going from spores to windblown pollen to insect fertilization, but the basic structure hasn’t changed much otherwise. If I was trying to design an exotic biosphere for a future earth, I’d either use symbiotes or I’d have an intelligent species or two tinkering with genetics.
Mary, thank you for this!
Cynthia, thank you, but I do have a fair amount of social awkwardness — fortunately these days enough people know the word “autistic” that they make allowances for me. I did find the story fascinating, btw.
@JMG
“Curt, why bother to hate anybody?”
It was a joke actually, and was supposed to be accompanyied by a meme:
https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2531726-political-compass
I tried to embed it in html and found it just didn’t appear.
Also this one befits:
https://gnet-research.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Screenshot-2023-10-30-at-10.40.06-1536×820.png
…though I’d never say that in earnest either!
“Curt, it’s quite possible that crippling Iran’s industrial system is a core part of the goal of this operation.”
– That’s what Jiang Xueqin assumes, and seems to follow the official state of king Salman of Saudi Arabia (If I recall correctly) the request for total annihilation.
Israel, it seems, wants to make its arch-enemy a failed state, probably even for ancient biblical reasons.
Eradicate competition for once and for all.
But I am confident this great culture of Persia is stronger than that.
J.L.Mc12 @396 – actually there is at least one tea plantation in New Zealand, so Tasmania may have lost that southernmost title
I spent some time not talking much with one of my parents, who was quite a clueless parent at best, but in his old age he basically apologized and I spent more time, the leopard did not entirely change his spots, but I am glad I did and he was lucky to have that support at that age.
My most troublesome one turned out to be one of my brothers, and how he acts to me most in our family have never seen, it is rather how he used to lose it with his now ex-wife. He didnt use to treat me this way until his relationship with his ex, but maybe he was just too busy and content in his earlier years to take it out on people, dreams seemed possible. I am also female, our other sibling is male and our step mother, while also female, he wouldnt dare. In years past, there would have been dad backing her up and now she lives with our other brother who would absolutely have his mothers back. I used to say I would always be there for him, but I wont. He is extremely sensitive to anything that he decides is “disrespectful ” It is like those memes or comics about this type of man, thin skinned and anything might be taken by him as disrespectful, it is such a vague word that can be applied to anything and a new thing each time.
The first time he pulled that whole thing on me, was 2009, and life was very tough in my household and his and he decided to come visit. I had a 11 year old she had a friend over, he interrupted them to regale them with something witty I suppose, and she rolled her eyes at him the way a 11 year old can and said “not another sad dog story…” and that was it. That time he silently left in such a way that we, especially my daughter, thought he was lost in the woods and she thought it was all her fault Being mean to an 11 year old. The next time I let him near me, 9 years later, my kids were all off at college, I pick him up late at night at a transit center, feed him a home cooked meal I had ready, want to stop talking and go to bed and I answered to him ” I dont want to talk about bit coin ” and got a raging maniac lashing out at me I couldnt turn out into the snow in the middle of the night. I pushed him back off onto other family directly after taking him to see our dying birth mother ( she wanted to see him) the next day. The man never took responsibility for his behavior, another 7 years go by to 2025, I had told him I absolutely will not have that in my house again. He cannot act or talk to me that way. I have family pressure to do my part, he is in country again, he seems to be doing better, other family needs a break, I give in and sign up to take him to get his drivers license which means at my house again. He knew my rules. He managed to get thru the weekend, then after a day of Drivers license and his needed shopping, he cant hold it in any longer and starts winding up, I remind him he needs to stop and he cant be in my house and talk to me like this and he doesnt stop. This time it is early enough that I could call for backup, who got to hear him in the background, and had someone come support. He was incredulous. We told him that he cant be like this and would he like a ride to a hotel, that he should go visit his other friends…. drive him to the transit station next morning, tell him I hope he has a good flight and visit with J, and I can see him starting up as I rush around the truck to the drivers side….and get in and shut the door as he is screaming that I am Dead to him, He no longer has a sister. So, I shouldnt have to deal with it again.
He is likely telling all and sundry that he had to cut off his toxic disrespectful sister. I know he is actually miserable, but I no longer can let people take things like this out on me. His life did not turn out as he would have wished, He is 63 years old, he is unhappy. It is realy too bad, people get an image of “success” and rather than learning to be content and happy in simpler ways, just hide out as an ex-pat than be seen in USA not in the lifestyle they would want to aspire to.
@William #395
Joshua Slocum of the “Disaffected” Substack is way ahead of you on that one.
Here is his Substack:
https://disaffectedpod.substack.com/
I think you will find a lot of corroborating evidence for your thesis there.
Beardtree # 361:
Nobody’s perfect. Religions can help to be better as people to some extent…or not.
By the way, it always have upset me the woke left fondness for blaming Christians and or White Europeans for every atrocities and abuses in History. Well, some shameful things have been commited by European Christians, like Inquisition and religion wars. However, wokesters shut up or even justify atrocities and prosecutions against dissident beliefs when they were/are commited by non European and/or non Christian people (cough cough). I smell hypocrisy in this attitude…
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Cynthia # 362:
Thank you for your comment informations and opinion. Well, I think the post-transition regret is the elephant in room about trans. There should be an open debate about this topic and another unpleasant realities in trans world, but woke dogmatism and censorship prevents to do it, to some extent.
It seems situation in US and maybe Canada is worse than here. According what I’ve read, maybe in America has happened a trans “hysteria epidemic” within some teen girls until today. In Spain our loved woke government has protected woke trans ideology, approving a woke friendly trans law some years ago. However, I don’t see the trans frenzy that has invaded USA. Indeed, though I live in a relatively big town, I’ve never met a trans person yet in my everyday life (but I’ve met some gay men and lesbian women here).
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Neptune…# 372:
For your information, according MSM here, “No Kings” events were apparently successful. It’s said there were in them more than 7 million of American people…I think real political strength is shown after democratic elections, but 7 million of people mustn’t be despised neither (although I tend to think Trump will despise his opponents like in another times before last one).
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Curt # 373:
After having compared different news sources, I bet Iran’s suffering a punishment in its structures by the western axis (it’s so evident), but I tend to think that damage is bigger than Irani propaganda says…but lower than Western propaganda claims.
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(Oops! Too many not read comments: To be continued)
Hi John Michael,
I’ve got some strong views on parents themselves taking an inheritance, and then not passing anything on. It’s a good metaphor for the future. When I was a child, retirees sat at home quietly going about their household affairs and helping out with the grandkids. That’s what they did. Guess expectations are different nowadays? That other bumper sticker we’ve discussed over the years is always at the back of my mind. Yup, things to be grateful for. 🙂
Yeah, I’ve read that some very big funds are limiting redemptions, and apparently have more requests for redemptions than they are slowly releasing, which can only build pressure and fear. People forget that an asset is only liquid, if it can be converted into cash – which is the stuff of redemptions. If my financial history is correct, the fall of managed funds played quite a large part in the history of the lead up to The Great Depression. It’s merely an opinion, simple general knowledge and certainly not advice, but units in a managed fund (or whatever they want to call them) are a claim upon the assets of the fund. At the end of the day, a person is holding a bit of paper. This is not actually the same thing at all as direct ownership of the assets. Man, dunno as to how you see that observation, but I’ve experienced friends getting quite heated when the subject is discussed. Whoa! Talk about a hot button subject. Boom! Still, only an ostrich enjoys having its head in the sand and bum in the air exposed for a good kicking. It’s the things that you don’t think about, which cause you to become unstuck. We all have blind-sides too. It happens.
Cheers
Chris
Curt # 378:
When I was young, I saw the same attitude and behavior you’ve commented, within local counterculture in my town, so I agree. I live in a town big enough to have an University and a small countercultural scene, so between another problems, I’ve had some contact with their members in the past; and yes, there can be authoritarian behaviors even in the most Anarchist and antisystem guys.
By the way, it’s sad to witness as part of human life, that former dissenters against main dogmas can end being dogmatic and fanatic like their enemies. A classical example: Calvinism was prosecuted by Catholic Popes, but Calvin ordered his theological dissenter Miguel Setvet was burnt in the fire (ahem), like Catholics did against Protestants.
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About Portland polyamorous protection:
This “positive discrimination” measure supporters can defend it as legal if/when show it fits general interest. In the past, I think positive discrimination has been justified for the need to protect minorities who have been prosecuted and/or haven’t the majority advantages (for example ethnical minorities). Well, this debate isn’t over, methink.
I wonder if polyamorous people is really discriminated now; indeed I think they’re usually snob woke people from middle class…I don’t see a serious general interest by State to protect this lifestyle.
However, woke ideology plays its rehashed game again: Good People (polyamori people) against Bad People (average people with their boring and conservative monogamy).
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JMG # 388:
“Debate must be reasonable” in an ideal world, but real world is what is. No argument here. However I think Mr. Habermas wrote this idea as a wishful thinking, an ideal that we shouldn’t be capable to approach to it, though in last term is an utopia. There’s a big difference between Must and Be words.
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(To be continued when I can…)
There’s been before some comments about Freemasons. I know Anglophone world Freemasonry isn’t the same as Continental European one (French style), but I can remember you Eliphas Levi managed to become a French Freemason, but he ended disappointed with his fellows, due to their open anticlericalism and irreligious attitude within French Freemasons (Spanish Freemason usually have been always anticlerical too). Levi was an occultist and a mage, but also a Christian in his own way, so his discontent can be understood, methink.
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Northwind Grandma # 390:
No argument here. Maybe I’m biased by my European point view, but I don’t like Trump attitude more than his politics. However, I also think Democrats aren’t doing it well. Depicting Trump as a Fascist-like tyrant (like some of them like to do) is a thoughtstopper to prevent Democrats try an alternative and real political program. The anti-Trump tantrums are the fig leaf to hide how few ideas they’ve got against Trumpian politics. I think that, in addition to their boring and rehashed cultural wars (woke agenda), Democrats seem not having anything interesting for average American voters. In the short term, it’s easier to be an anti-something zealot than a pro-something proposer; but in the long term, I think it’s a recipe to loose…
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Sylvia # 392:
I think “woke” term has its risk to be used as a thoughtstopper by some Conservatives/Far Right supporters to throw against usual opponents; but it seems “woke” depicts very well current hegemonic tendence in the postmodern today western left toward dogmatic attitudes and fondness to censor dissident views (cancel culture), and to support its favorite sacred cows (ahem) against its black beasts (usually Conservative/White/Christian/straight men). So do the math.
By the way, I’m a center-left white straight man, so you can guess I’m not a woke politics supporters nor a right wing supporter…
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(To be continued)
@ William # 395
“it does seem to suggest there is a “script” of some sort being run here: ranging in scale from a single abusive family to global governance; and if this is true, it has some very intriguing implications.”
Thank you for putting this in words. That there might be a single script, or pattern, that is shaping many current phenomena at many scales, is a very interesting proposition, and I’d like to think about it some more. I’d be interested in hearing an example or two of the “same phrases” that you have noticed being used by other people sharing your experience.
@ JMG – thank you for continuing to host, protect and defend this commons, which I value a very great deal!
William # 395:
I can understand your view to some extent, because you had a bad family experience during your childhood, but I grew in a fairly good family (so I had a happy childhood). So I lived a different experience. However…
It’s possible more and more young people have realized how dysfunctional are their families, so they cut relationships with their parents (and I think they’ve got that right if their view is true).
However, I wouldn’t idealize this tendence in a naïve way. It could be this tendence may be used by the “usual suspects” within Western today societies to accelerate their current tendence to Narcissist “Self religion”(for example, consumerism bias), eroding even more actual weak family relationships (my work hypothesis). So be careful.
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Jeff R. # 401:
OK, I understand your view. I think depending of the context “Pantheism” can be a more or less useful term to label a philosophy. Thanks…
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JMG # 403:
It’s a pity you had to decide to stop arguments about certain small Asian country politics in your blog, but according your reasons to do it, I agree. When you have an argument with others, and dogmatic, irrational views are written in an ugly way, the best is to stop. I take note of it.
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In addition to your comment about woke thing (I agree), I’ve witnessed wokesters are real. Indeed, I’ve seen how they’ve hijacked Spanish left speech and behavior since more or less 10 years ago, imitating their USA masters. Their victimist and identitarian “modus operandi” shows them as doctrinarian and tending to censor inner dissent…in different wokeness levels. Consequence: slowly, more and more non woke leftists people here are leaving left parties and organized groups, disgusted with nowadays situation (left vote here has been declining since some years ago, too. Do the math).
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Larkwise # 404:
I think N. Grandma comment which you criticise could be better written (to say it in a soft way, ahem). Homosexuality is an human behavior (maybe caused by biological and cultural causes) which shouldn’t be despised due to political views. If N.G. had written “Homosexualism” as part of woke ideology, I’d agree with her. But not with her generalizing scorn against gay/lesbian people, identifying them bluntly with Democrats (ahem). Indeed, some gay people can be politically Conservative.
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Michael G. # 407:
Good comment IMHO, so I agree. Your reference to LGTBI flag has me to remember an unpleasant leftist contradiction. Left (more commonly far left) praises a theorical Internationalism, so they usually despise Nationalisms: “Flags are useless”(this is the softlest opinion they have about national symbols). However, they respect one of their sacred cows flag, to ridiculous extrems (cough).
“By their art, ye shall know them. ” The Obama Presidential Center:
I’m trying to get a copyable link, but put in a search and hold your nose.
JMG: I too have a fair amount of social awkwardness so that’s a thing I can relate to. And thank you.
@Sylvia #392
Happy spring to you as well. Obviously I’m not the dictionary, but the definition of “woke” I’ve come to favor is along the lines of “an authoritarian strand of American social justice identity ideology based on academic post-modernism and critical theory”. I think all three components are important here: it’s distinctly American, and as our host has discussed before, a secular cousin of American Protestantism. That’s one reason it’s (thankfully) never been able to really take root here in North Europe, I think. It’s authoritarian, in that its adherents are fully convinced of their own rightness and purity, feel justified in denying the other side freedom of speech, and considers its arguments unworthy of engagement. And it’s specifically based in those academic theories, originally pioneered by Judith Butler, Michel Foucault and some others, as I understand it. If all those three elements are present, I think calling it “woke” is a useful shorthand.
And yes, you’re very right that it’s purely a pejorative term these days. That’s why I think the “authoritarian” part is central to the definition. Otherwise it’s just regular old liberalism of the pre-2010 flavor. There’s a certain shrill, almost hysterical note of moral crusading and neuroticism to the woke that you don’t find with regular liberal activists. On the other hand, that note seems very present in, say, American Evangelicals from the 1980s and 90s, or the Marxist-Leninists who were very active here in Norway in the 70s.
My admiration to Mr. Habermas most famous idea, the “Deliberative Democracy”, doesn’t prevent me to interpret it in a not literal sense, I’m not naïve.
In the short, Habermas proposed democracy quality level depends of its debates quality level, which he identifies as rational level. So “debate must be rational”.
I tend to think “debate should be rational”, because it’s impossible to be 100% rational in our lives. However, if we accept we can be improved ourselves making an effort, I think we can discuss topics in a more rational debate; without reaching 100% rationality (because it’s an utopia methink).
Habermas’s one of Descartes and Illustration philosophers heirs of their belief in the almighty power of Reason. Well, it seems they trusted too much in human reason. Freud discovered that, under our upper rational layer in our mind, there’s an irrational sea who can reach mind surface (for example, basic instincts and emotions rationalization, lapsus linguae and another psychic phemonena). I think Freudian Psychoanalisis was right in this idea (though not in another ones, which isn’t the main topic in my comment). More recently, Neurosciences have shown under our rational thoughts (neocortex), we’ve got a “mammal brain”(emotions and feelings), and a “reptilian” one (basic instincts).
I think this discoveries don’t debunk rarionalist view as a whole, but they compel us to relativize the reason power.
We’ve got emotions and feelings, but we can choose between to be their slaves or simply having them without being determined by them. In a similar way, a philosopher said “It’s necessary to have ideas, but not being driven by them”(maybe Ortega y Gasset?).
Old Stoics recommended not be possessed by emotions/feelings. “Passions” hadn’t to win reason within human minds.
A debate driven mainly by personal feelings is a bad idea, it usually will end in insults or something worse, because it lacks reasoning and respect.
Dogmatism and irrational belief in own moral and intellectual superiority aren’t good neither.
For example, wokesters often adopt a rough contempt attitude against their opponents, so real debate is impossible with them (I’ve witnessed it online and in real world). They’re uncapable to hear dissenting opinions, they soon jump into their favorite thoughtstoppers or directly insults.
They think its ideas are like scientific proven facts, or revealed Truths from Heaven…They never think they couldn’t be always right.
Trans activists have defended teens under 18 (and even children) have the right to decide transitioning without parental permission. When you point maybe some teens wouldn’t be mind mature enough to do that (due to their age and/or possible mental problems), or you should think it better (because transition changes are not reversible), these zealots redouble their dogmatic claims, without reasoning why dissenters are wrong. Eventually, you can be labelled as “transphobic” (thougthstopper for everybody who don’t share 100% of their ideology).
Someone can say it’s never happened a true 100% rational debate. It’s true, but irrational debates reality doesn’t mean they’re a desirable thing (slavery has existed during all History but it’s not a good thing neither).
Finally, current tension and polarization in social media and MSM has worsened debates in nowadays democracies. I’m skeptic this tendence will be reversed soon, but I wish it would happen thanks to more and more people making an effort to improve political debate (or whatever kind of debate).
No Mr. Greer, your eyesight’s fine. I was being a little hyperbolic in writing my comment.
In a previous comment I wrote about western woke left fondness for blaming Christians/Europeans/white people due to their past evil actions, but not to point the same evil actions when non Christian/European/white have commited them too.
I want to tell you a real story that shows how funny and upsetting alike can be this selective blindness.
Maybe you know some years ago, great Scorsese filmed a movie named “Silence”, a historical drama which happened in old Japan centuries ago.
It’s very interesting but not very puzzling Scorsese work was criticized in a ruthless way by most Spanish MSM cinema critics. Well, Scorsese is one of the best film directors in America (and maybe in the world). Why this hate?
The answer is easy. “Silence” wasn’t despised by critics due to his bad artistic side, nor bad actors nor a boring story (indeed, I think it was well made). No, its problem is that movie depicts a real story, in which the victims were a few Japanese Catholics (and the European priests who went to Japan), and the evil guys the Japanese government in those times (which at least apparently, was Buddhist&Shintoist), who prosecuted in a hard way Christianism there.
Cinema critics in my country tend to be most of them, woke leftists since some years ago; so you can guess when a movie shows Christian people aren’t the Bad People, and non white/non European people (Japanese feudalists) as evil/fanatical people, woke critics were soon in a tantrum.
For example, a film critic wrote (very scandalized), that Scorsese had become a “religious movies” director, so its movie was b***t (ahem).
I watched that movie recently and I liked. Indeed, Catholics shown in the movie are good, but not perfect saints; and evil Japanese have their reasons to prosecute Christians (I understand their historical reasons to do it, but I don’t justify them). “Silence” is well filmed and actors were good too, methink.
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Another topic I’m going to comment you is current Iran war (and the two another ME wars).
I’m afraid the unending hard aerial attacks against Iran could lead soon or later Tehran regime toward desperation, so eventually it would be tempted to try last and desperate measures against its enemies. What I’m thinking now about it? I wrote a lot of comments ago about what Iran could do if it’s too harassed. Guess it…I only can tell you…Do you remember the biblical story about Samson?(who ironically is a Jew hero).
Multivitamins for bees, apparently the bees used for mass pollination (which will be starting here soon) are not getting enough variety in their diet. So they benefit from supplements.
“To figure out what bees actually need, researchers analyzed tissues from pupae and adult bees. This required extremely delicate lab work, including dissecting individual nurse bees.
They identified six key sterols that dominate bee biology: 24-methylenecholesterol, campesterol, isofucosterol, β-sitosterol, cholesterol, and desmosterol.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/03/260327000518.htm
Decided to mix it up a bit and go to the other contentious topic besides politics – religion.
. As I read it the New Testament portrays the activities of three super beings that were experienced and known by early Christians . The Father, a pre and post ascension Jesus (note his post ascension appearances in Acts and other places) , and the Holy Spirit who are distinctly different from each other, also in my own personal experience, each having the taste of deity. Various approaches have been taken to understand this phenomena. A limited tritheistic polytheism like Mormonism with the Father being the top one of the three?
Modalism was one approach to preserve monotheism (One God manifesting in different modes), the philosophical judo done in classic Trinitarianism is another attempt to preserve monotheism. The Quantum physics superposition of the Trinitarian approach I like as seen in this water analogy -This is my picture of the Trinity concept, a type of quantum physics superposition. If a gallon of water was like the Trinity, all of it would be solid, all of it vapor and all of it liquid simultaneously. In that the Father, the Son and the Spirit are different in who they are , but the same in what they are -God.
In the NT there is a dance of the Holy Spirit, Jesus and the Father being revealed and acting. I also see this dance in a less obvious way in the OT. In my experience each Person has the taste of Deity, eternity, authority, love but are different in feel or personality, with the Son having the extra taste of the human Jesus of Nazareth. Yes, You could argue that what is going on is a tri polytheism of 3 deities and that the Trinity concept was philosophical judo to preserve monotheism. I like the classic Trinity understanding 3 for the price of 1 and a lot of fun. I like to dance.
There is an excellent discussion of the Trinity in The Orthodox Way by Bishop Kallistos Ware. But I am not Orthodox, a charismatic, evangelical type with perhaps a dash of Anglicanism and some strayings off the Christian reservation as indicated by my presence here,
Experientially the distinction and indeed separateness of the three divine persons never goes away even when present all at the same time which can be seen as evidence for a limited polytheism with perhaps a hierarchy among the persons with varying degrees of divinity and eternity. This is not a settled issue, but the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit abide.
Patricia Mathews @ 427 ““By their art, ye shall know them. ” Are you sure you want to go there?
Because your typical ugly as sin stripscape, as can be seen in just about any American town, wasn’t built by any wokesy activists. No, those gates to the Land of Commerce were gifted to us by the rah,rah,rah ,ain’t progress great JayCee boys in every town.
JMG
Had a surreal experience this weekend that I’m a little disturbed by and had to share.
This weekend I was invited to an event for our local evangelical mega church, while there, one of the local pastors gave an impromptu sermon about the elites worshipping demons, how witches (and also somehow the “papists” and other “lukewarm” Christians) killed Charlie Kirk and are corrupting the youth with their LGBT Agenda, and how Israel will soon bring about the second coming by building the third temple. What disturbed me was the pastor got a standing ovation by over a thousand people when he quoted the line “suffer not a witch to live.”
I fear that something truly wicked is brewing in evangelical churches…
Curt # 414:
Saudi Arab high spheres tantrums asking for annihilating Iran sounds IMHO as a possible sign of desperation and rage. Indeed, Saudis and another Arab Peninsula Monarchies have been punished by their help to western axis, with direct Irani attacks, mainly against USA bases in those countries, but against another military and civil facilities too. Petrodollar guys idea of being under USA military protection seems to have failed: Iran hits those countries targets without apparently very much problems (it seems USA main interest to protect in ME is certain country with a biblical name…). It doesn’t seem very smart to upset more Tehran because more drones and missiles can fly ove the Persian Gulf.
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Bible can be used by everybody to justify everything. It’s a wry irony that, according biblical history, Jews who were in Babylon as slaves, managed to be free again thanks to a guy named King Cyrus: a Persian leader (ahem).
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Atmospheric R. # 417:
After having read your story, I’ve remembered two phrases I like to say: “Brothers, but in spite of it, friends”, and “Friends are family you choose”.
I’m lucky because my sister is my friend too, but this situation is unfortunately not common to every families.
On the other hand, in Spain is a commonplace to refer to South/Central America and Portugal like “brother countries”. Sometimes I smell some paternalism in this expression (though we share part of our History and culture). In the Portugal case, a complex past shows we can be brothers, but not real friends (ahem). It’s a pity.
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Boreal Bear # 429:
I think woke definition you wrote in your comment is quite good. However, I don’t share it’s an only American ideology. In its origin can be seen as an USA political point of view, but it has been imitated by leftists in another European countries, to more or less extent. You’re lucky the woke doctrine hasn’t arrived strongly to North Europe countries, but I’m sure it arrived with a few local “colors” to Spain when far left adopted populist ideas some years ago, “polluting” finally the Socialist party here (socialdemocrats). Some leftist people here noticed woke doctrine was something strange to our Catholic cultural base, but they were shut up by new woke hegemony until today. I think wokeness level isn’t the same between former minister of “Equality”(the infamous Irene Montero) and President Pedro Sánchez (an ethically dubious and a tricky man, but less woke than his far left “friends” methink). But woke ideology has hijacked every left party here…
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Beardtree # 434:
An interesting topic mainly for Christians (but open to another people too, methink). My personal opinion as a fringe Christian is that I believe in Trinity like 3 related but not confused Person within 1 God; though I try not to enter in theological discussions, because I think it’s a faith mystery, so I shut up in front of its different interpretations.
By the way, St. Patrick tried to explain Irish people Trinity showing them a leaf with three parts in it (but indeed an only one leaf). On the other hand, Renaissance doctor and theologist (and astrologer) Miguel Servet wrote Christians who believed in Trinity were worshipping three gods. He defended a pure monotheism (but not equal as Jews and Muslims monotheism), between another ideas who led the Pope to declare him herethical…and to upset Protestants too. Maybe you know he ended burnt alive by Calvin in Geneve (In Swiss).
Phutatorius #387
I thought, ‘oh Brahms, I’ve got some of his stuff don’t I?’. So I dug into my classical collection and to my great surprise, I’ve only one thing- Variations on a Theme of Paganini.
I like the Brandenburg Concertos by Bach, I can leave them playing quietly in the background while I’m reading or even to fall asleep.
Oh, hey JMG-
How are things coming with needing a new host for this site?
Sam #405
“During her visit she shuddered at my kids, remarked that she hates children, then told me that she regrets having me and my siblings.”
Dude, that’s a red line. Are you going to let her damage your kids? That’s what you are risking, letting her be anywhere near them. I also put up with my abusive mother’s vitriol as an adult… until the very first time she unleashed it in front of her grandkids. That was it. End of relationship, period. I had a duty to protect my children from her. I sent her a letter to tell her I was cutting her off, and exactly why. Then I never spoke to her again for the rest of her life. It’s been 30 years and I have no regrets.
@J.L.Mc12 If you enjoyed Hothouse – as I did quite a long time ago – you might also enjoy Midworld by Alan Dean Foster, set in a similar ecosystem.
DFC # 354:
I’m sorry.
I’ve just noticed I’ve missed your comment about current Middle East war(s). I think it’s well written and you’ve got an interesting view of actual panorama.
I’d like to point you said Iran war’s a gift to China and Rusia (Eurasian axis, like I call them). Well, China maybe wants to test new weapons in Iran (hidden as help to Tehran) and check real USA strength in a hard war. Russia was also eager IMHO, to be in a simetrical (or near simetrical) war to the Ukraine one, to revenge NATO too evident support to Kiev regime. So now Moscow helps Tehran like Washington helps Kiev (against USA&Israel, against Russia).
I don’t think China dares to attack Taiwan. Beijing high spheres aren’t dumb enough to do it, at least in the short term. Maybe they choose to disturb American economy with economics “games” to try scaring/upsetting Trump; though they could wait more time to harass directly the island (if/when USA military there would be weaker).
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Anonymous # 436:
Oops! Your experience in the evangelical church seems to me sad and ominous alike. Well, “by their fruits you will know them”(I hope to have written well this biblical quote). Signs of times!
@ Chuaquin 432
I saw that movie, and its a great movie. You might be surprised to find a Buddhist watched that film and loved it. But its not a movie i’d recommend to a lot of people due to the very heavy themes of torture, martyrdom, and the dark night of the soul the main character goes through.
But anyway the criticisms i saw of the movie came from Catholics. Who disliked the film due to the theme that apostasy and avoiding martyrdom are noble acts. Ironically i thought the character’s level of compassion that would sacrifice his own religion so that the Japanese peasants wouldn’t have to suffer to be a very Buddhist act!
@Anonymous #436
As a Christian I have no interest in being around for the events before the Second Coming as described in the New Testament. It plainly says Christians are being persecuted and killed wholesale, not doing the killing. Rather live a peaceful life minding my own business and being a good neighbor (clearly taught as the way to be in the NT) and then die in my bed. So I am bemused by hopes that the return is nigh. However I do think there is evidence for some bad spiritual stuff percolating around the ten thousand or so persons at high elite levels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superclass_(book) (source for number of power elite)
As it says “what business is it of mine to judge those outside the church” 1 Corinthians 5:12 That’s God’s job not mine. “God will judge those outside” 5:13 My brother Christians please stay in your lane and mind your own business, gently participating in your communities at large and vote quietly as you think is best and respectfully exercise your rights as citizens. Jesus was called the friend of sinners so I am to be friendly with all if they will let me. Have been and are friends with witches and all sorts of types. Jesus called it A New Covenant replacing the witch killing one.
Sam (#405),
I know a few Boomers who are decent people; but it really seems to me like the Neptune in Scorpio (1956-1970) generation is quite something. It does kind of make sense that having the planet of mass phenomena in the sign of extremes would lead to a fairly extreme generation, but right now we only have a sample size of one since Neptune’s discovery, so while it seems plausible, I’d ideally like to wait a few thousand years and see if this is standard Neptune in Scorpio, or if there was something else going on.
JMG,
Well, I learned from it, so it wasn’t all bad. It’s really only one member of my family who has serious issues, and I thought I could pursue a relationship with the rest of the family. The problem is that they are all unwilling to enforce boundaries, and so my information leaked. It’s a useful reminder that sometimes walking away sometimes has to mean walking away completely.
Michael (#418),
I’ve bookmarked the link. Thank you for this.
Scotlyn (#424),
Here’s a small collection of them: https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/comments/1dxunae/its_really_eerie_how_they_all_use_the_exact_same/
I heard essentially everything mentioned in this reddit thread at some point or other, quite often word for word; and several cases where people are even noting that their abusers say multiple things in exactly the same order as well. More generally, while I haven’t looked closely at it in a few years, it used to be that if you scroll through the Raised by Narcissists subreddit, there would be quite a few eerily similar stories, and there were other posts where people collected the weird similarities.
Chuaquin (#426),
I have mixed feelings here. On the one hand, I can absolutely agree that for people with good parents and families, there is a real risk here. It would not surprise me if someone had the idea of running a psyop for this sort of thing, trying to convince children who were not abused to cut ties with their family. I’m not sure how well it would work: I’ve seen enough of them work to be fairly jaded, but I’d like to think that people who have healthy families would be able to know that.
Having said that, my experience for a “middle class” anglophone North American, the kind of background that is often assumed as the default and quite often sets what is “normal” for the Western mass consciousness at the moment, nearly everyone I knew growing up was abused. There was at least one suicide attempt a year among the kids in my grade in high school, and there were probably more I never heard about. The only family I would consider remotely functional ended up moving to a poorer neighborhood because they could not handle the stress associated with it.
This is why my guess for the uptick in discussions about filial responsibility laws and how horrible it is that children are disowning parents (and to be clear, these are still fringe discussions; but they are moving towards the mainstream) is that a very large number of people who tolerated a lot of abuse in hopes of inheritance are realizing there is no inheritance coming, and are reacting accordingly.
@ Mother Balance: thanks for noticing Brahms. The Variations on a theme of Pagannini are/is not his best. What do I consider the most accessible starting point? Probably the concertos: the two piano concertos, the famous violin concerto, and the “double concerto” which is a concerto for orchestra, violin & cello. Followed by the four symphonies. My favorite is the 1st. (I may be biased because we performed it when I was playing violin in a community orchestra.) I like all the chamber music — except for his string quartets, which nobody seems to like. The three violin sonatas were probably my “first love” with Brahms.. I’ve already talked about the German Requiem, so I won’t repeat. Brahms did well financially, between his piano performances and composing. He died at 63 or 64, apparently from liver cancer; he was a bachelor and he liked to eat and drink and smoke cigars. I have a taste for German romanticism. Can you tell?
A couple of short thoughts about current ME war(s):
A Russian oil tanker has arrived to Cuba, like maybe you know, thanks to Putin help (not very selfless) to the island. Well, I think it’s more a propagandistic tryumph for Russia than a real relief to Cuba regime, because the island needs much more oil to work. However, I bet Trump can’t be very happy after this Russian ship to Cuba (I wonder why he hasn’t ordered to stop that oil tanker).
On the other hand, Houthies seem to be relatively “quiet” by now. At least according several news I’ve read (I know I’m limited by propaganda and censorship by the two sides), Bab El Mandeb Strait keeps theorically being opened to ships which go and come to/from Suez sailing the Red Sea. Of course, this situation can change soon, when Houthies wants/can do it. It could be the calm before storm…
Seeking…# 443:
I’m puzzled after to have know (thank you) that “Silence” movie was criticized by some Catholics in your country, I guess maybe mainly by Conservatives. Well, I can understand their motives to despise it were diametrally opposed to my country woke cinema critics. It’s a wry irony a good movie (though I think it isn’t the best of Scorsese) has been despised by theorical ideological opposites alike. It seems sometimes different kind of zealots agree. Here the Spanish Catholic Bishops Conference didn’t said nothing about that movie; and I assure you they love to speak about everything which happens here, like they would represent most Spaniards…(Spoiler soon)
I think the movie main character decision to become a renegade from
Christianism, can be interpreted as a noble action, but I also think he was compelled to do it by hard circumstances. So to some extent he was an antihero, or antimartyr (I doubt if this word really exist).
I also saw Japanese feudal soldiers and aristocrats had a xenophobic bad behavior against Catholics in Japan, but I can understand them to some extent, because they were pushed not much by their Buddhist religion, but because they maybe feared after the Christian priests, then there would come European armies. I understand it but I don’t justify tortures and killing.
Finally, beyond religious ideas and debates caused by this movie, I think “Silence” speaks about clash oh cultures, how often leads to violence, but sometimes is due to misunderstandings and lack of empathy with the others.
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William # 445:
A psyop operation to weaken even more than today “happy” families is possible, but not a sure fate. We’ll see.
I can also tell you I lived a happy childhood within my family, but nobody’s perfect. For example, my personal mental problems started to openly appear during my teens, but when I was a child I already thought I was different of the rest of children (I didn’t know why). My parents could have noticed sometimes my attitude and behavior were a little strange. But they didn’t, nor my school teachers. However, I can’t blame them for it: there were the ‘80s and it wasn’t normal to detect soon mental trouble, nor to go to a psychologist yet.
What you’ve written about being aware near everyone you knew was abused at home is really awful. When I was at school I knew a boy who was living in a dysfunctional family, and more two orphans under social services protection, but near everybody lived in good families. Maybe my country old style family model was apparently authoritarian, but it was more children friendly than in your case, I don’t know it exactly.
Mr. Greer, I’ve been a ‘plantsman’ e.i. a horticulturalist .. for about 50 yrs now; not certified, but still.. It is rather amazing how plants can take rough handling, especially when root pruning/transplantation, in any number of species. If, after having been put through such treatment, one remembers to not stress things too far, most rebound pretty well … better I would say .. than most animals, given such assaults. Besides, without terranean plant life, where would we animals be?? SOL, That’s where.
“The anti-Trump tantrums are the fig leaf to hide how few ideas they’ve got against Trumpian politics. I think that, in addition to their boring and rehashed cultural wars (woke agenda), Democrats seem not having anything interesting for average American voters.”
Ding-ding-ding-ding! We have a winner. To the extent they have a solution it’s raise taxes and more government control.
I could add gun control too. Harassing the innocent is such an effective way to control crime. (Yes that was sarcasm.) Washington State’s fall from a high trust to a low trust culture in only ten years was quite remarkable.
@William #445
> I’d ideally like to wait a few thousand years and see if this is standard Neptune in Scorpio, or if there was something else going on.
The Boomers found themselves in the wrong place at the right time. They inherited a culture whose back had been broken by the two world wars and no longer really believed in itself. So when as young’uns are wont to do, they took bold stances against the world… the world offered little resistance to them. As David Chapman put it:
“Romantic rebellion is not supposed to succeed—success isn’t romantic, it’s practical. But the mainstream was so rotten that it caved, both times, within a few years, making counterculturalists the new Establishment.”
https://meaningness.com/political-left-right-rotated
(Note the article is part of a much longer discussion under the heading “How meaning fell apart,” in the side bar. I don’t fully agree with all of Chapman’s ideas but I think he’s on to a lot of somethings, especially in this section.)
The result has been a pervasive attitude among the Boomers and those influenced by them that they are supposed to win, and that anything wrong with the world (which mostly translates to “anything that keeps them from what they want”) should fall over as soon as they apply enough pressure to it, not realizing that a great many things out there are willing to tell them “No!” much more strongly than their parents and college administrators did.
@Chuaquin 448
Right, the main character did not want to leave his faith. It was very clear that doing so was unwilling and traumatic. But it was very much a true sacrifice and imo an act of compassion.
I agree, the movie i think does make clear that the Japanese government had less of an issue with religion and more about the politics. When you read the history of both the Portuguese time in Japan as well as the Sengoku Jidai, its understandable that they really did not want to go back to those days. And as you say, that does not excuse torture and murder. The situation was very sad.
@ Chuaquin #426 “Left (more commonly far left) praises a theorical Internationalism, so they usually despise Nationalisms: “Flags are useless”(this is the softlest opinion they have about national symbols). However, they respect one of their sacred cows flag, to ridiculous extrems (cough).”
I understand the kneejerk reaction to nationalism, it has been a great tool to leverage by those seeking power, used as a strong driving force for a lot of pain in the world via divide and conquer. The most obvious being the Nazis and USSR Communists. That is a cartoonish reductions that the left have made and thus conclude that all forms of nationality are bad. As JMG says, The opposite of one bad idea is usually another bad idea.
A national identity can also be used to strengthen a nation, not through fear of others but through pride in what they have. It leads to nations that are more certain of their position and thus more open to fair engagement with others. To build up their strength rather than tear others down in the hopes of never having to use said power.
There is a weird contradiction with the left in that they are also against the flattening of culture with the almost unconditional embrace of multiculturalism but that insist that they be flattened into folks that are free to being culture so long as it is merely aesthetic. There is a little wiggle room for religion, but none for any kind of political or economic culturalism to come in. Try and square that one up.
All of this is something Tolkien was warning of in his time, the death of English culture, he might have been onto something. To flatten all hills and raise all valleys is to create hell on earth but that is what is being proposed, but not, but… they are a little confused aren’t they.
With that context there is a similar opposite kneejerk reaction in the LGBT community to stop the appearance of denying anyone of their direct representation. It is a complete over correction. There is nothing wrong with LGBT folks, and being proud that they are now free to be open about themselves without too much fear of blowback is a great thing. However, announcing every single variation of this in a way that also comes with a load of vicious blowback if you don’t whole heartedly embrace it, that is no way to progress. Thus becoming the thing they fear. Luckily it is only a very small but very vocal group of the LGBT folks that are making most of the noise, the vast majority of people really aren’t paying attention to them any more because it became so tiring. thus the return back to what was a wonderful middle ground.
One of the reasons why the original Pride flag was so effective was because it didn’t call out every little variation. It was deliberately broad and that was its strength, no need to endlessly define if the general theme is just acceptance. If you go down the path of endlessly explicitly representing everything, where does it end? There is only so much flag real-estate and we can endlessly create further distinctions. Look at the concepts of gender the more you go into it one could almost just rename it ‘personality preferences’ and with that I say there are currently 8.35 billion genders on the planet. As the Buddhists say ‘Why cling to identity?’. Thich Nhat Han said, his students saw him a father, he felt more like a mother to them, so don’t worry about it all. That is a great way to be.
Maybe it goes full circle and we end up with a flag that defines so many things that is ends up looking like a rainbow in nature. That would be funny to see.
“Yeah, I’ve read that some very big funds are limiting redemptions, and apparently have more requests for redemptions than they are slowly releasing, which can only build pressure and fear. People forget that an asset is only liquid, if it can be converted into cash – which is the stuff of redemptions. ”
Private equity and private credit are based on combining leverage (borrowing money to buy more of whatever than they actually have the cash to buy) and ill-liquidity (Florida land in the 1920s, mortgage-backed securities in the 2000s) That combination makes big bucks until the boom ends then, well, see the movie Margin Call.
You can watch the movie “The Big Short” too. There is an unofficial trilogy, The Big Short, Margin Call, Too Big to Fail (that covers the bailout) in that order.
Jeremy Irons is great in Margin Call. His character is a disciple of Satan who knows the price of every soul in the room.
JMG: “Clay, one of the reasons Sara and I left Ashland is that it was very clear to us just how unsustainable it was. Lacking the tourist trade and government largesse, it has a little less economic potential than Cave Junction and would have around the same population.”
Ha ha! Good to get your assessment of our chances here in good old Cave Junction. Our pet name for your former town is “Cash-land.”
I used to envy folks in Ashland for their much superior grocery stores with a wide selection of organic produce. Now I grow my own and it’s much better and fresher than anything I could buy. The climate is mild enough that I always have something fresh and green to eat, even if it is just kale. We have decent soil here, clean water, and clean air, when the forests are not burning. I guess I am here for the duration.
“that’s a real phenomenon, and weirdly enough it happened around the same time that the Greek oracles stopped giving accurate predictions. In occult terms, visions and voices like that are on the astral plane, but they can echo events on planes higher up.”
I believe that is because the Crucifixion and Resurrection functioned similarly to a Magickal act but done onsite supernaturally without any formal deliberate ritual. Causing a changeover of the Spiritual landscape in regards to the planes higher up as you said and attested to in the Scriptures in (Colossians 2:13-15).
Subsequently the events of 70AD ended up occurring when the Glory left the Temple as said Temple is no longer needed.
Basically the old atonement system of the OT was replaced by the NT as accompanied by those signs and this spreading movement of Christianity subsequently also coincided in the recession of the old spiritual powers.
I believe exorcists talk about how Spirits have certain legal rights to act or not to act and now this event also enabled their legal spiritual rights to be taken away. Limiting their ability to manifest themselves. In this respect while the Sacramentals are channels of grace and the miraculous occurred through them. The world is otherwise disenchanted in the process in other regards but not entirely.
But in certain cases even nowadays. I do know of people who invoked St Michael the Archangel in certain circumstances but the faeries and other spirits don’t react negatively.
Siliconguy # 450:
In addition to your comment, I can say Democrats usual political measures can be less attractive than Trumpian ones to average American voters, but the elephant in the room could be they’re hijacked by woke agenda; whose cultural wars maybe have bored (or even worse, disgusted) middle and low class American people. Indeed, it’s possible 80-90% American dislike woke ideology, methink (I haven’t real statistics, but I guess it).
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Seeking # 452:
Well, I think “Silence” main character wasn’t the hero/martyr he thought he was going to be at the beginning of that movie; but not every people can be a hero in real world (this is a hard teaching from this movie).
The most interesting scene in the movie happens when the main character (priest) has an argument with a Japanese soldier. They argue about religion, but there isn’t a real dialogue/debate. The Japanese guy doesn’t make an effort to understand what think Christians about Jesus, and the priest doesn’t want (or cannot) grasp what means Buddha for Japanese people. It’s a clash of cultures/religions based in not understanding the other views.
I also read the novel which inspired Scorsese movie, written by S. Endo. He was a Japanese writer, a Christian Existentialist. Christians in Japan are until now a very small minority.
Scorsese wanted to be a Catholic priest when he was young; then he began to doubt. He filmed a lot of years ago the controversial “Last Temptation of Christ”, who made some Christians got very angry against him. Mainly because in that film Jesus likes women (well, he was partly human too, so why not?). I watched it a time ago and I liked it in general, except a few scenes, but well, my Christianism view is idyosincrasic…
Scorsese seems to be, IMHO, a Christian man, though not very orthodoxal.
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M. Gray # 453:
I think you wrote an interesting comment.
I think Nationalism has two sides, it can be lethal or neutral (or even positive in some cases). Every ideology causes an identity. Everybody have several identities. If that identity is open, to be inclusive for everybody who wants to join it, it could be good in long term (call it a country, a sexual behavior or whatever else). However, when identity is closed, exclusive and victimist, it soon becomes what I call “Identitarism”; an usual attitude and behavior within wokesters: non integrative, but “essentialist” view.
Identitarism is also common within far right supporters (who usually show an identitarian Nationalism). Of course, Fascism is the most extremist Identitarian political ideology in the right side. USSR played the Nationalist (Russian motherland) card when Stalin tried to win WW2 against Germans (and he managed to do it). I think the left pose against flags and countries is a bit hypocrital. Indeed, for example, nowadays Spanish government (woke) needs regional nationalists votes (even secessionist ones) to keep ruling our country, so…they’re good guys.
So nowadays we find Identitarism in both political sides, though by disgrace I think far right plays better than woke left this card, so do the math.
Finally, I can say to your comment about “genders inflation” within LGTBI+ activism: no argument here.
I’m reading now an essay whose author mixes Stoic philosophy with today neurosciences and psychology to live better. I think it’s an interesting and provocative (in the good sense of this term) view. For example, he quotes Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, and then confirms their ideas with Viktor Frankl logotherapy and cognitive-conductual therapy.
However, ideas simplification and vulgarization have a price to be paid (downsides). I think often the “Neo-Stoicism” has mangled to some extent Ancient Stoics teachings.
An example of this mutilation: Often Stoicism is shown only as Ethics, without more references. Even worse, grecolatin Stoics are depicted as agnostics or even atheists to make them room in the modern irreligious Procrustus bed. This philosophical “DIY” seems IMHO dishonest.
There’s a Stoic Metaphysic according Stoic ancient philosophers, The Universe obeys in last term to a deep reason, which can be identified without a big effort with a god (not strictly religious but philosophical). By the way, this “reasonable god” looks like slightly to the Christian idea about a “divine plan” within the Cosmos (oops!).
It’s a pity our new Stoics don’t be interested this metaphysical idea due probably to their political correctness attitude.
@ William #445
Thank you very much for coming back to me, and for the links and suggestions. I am going to give this some study.
As a data point of one, I am in the Neptune in Scorpio generation. I did not grow up in the US. I did go to college there (’78-’82) and learned a certain liberal mindset, which turned out not to be very sticky once I realised I did not have the kinds of upper middle class connections that led to jobs, so I travelled until I bumbled into a life on a farm in Donegal, where I raised two sons who are approximately your own age. During the bank crisis years, which hit us pretty hard, we learned the “how” of frugality, and after discovering the writings of JMG, we learned the “why” of frugality, and I had not realised until this week the extent to which my older son had taken these lessons to heart. Because I have had a recent small windfall that I am sharing between the two of them, and he says “you know I don’t NEED it.” I gently reminded him that it can sometimes be more fun for other people to share stuff like windfalls than to hold on to them too tightly, but our experiences then have made him uncomfortable about the idea of expecting anything from anybody that he has not earned, to the extent of not wanting to accept something freely offered. Maybe over time this will come back to a more balanced centre.
Meanwhile, there is one thing that I want to say in reference to the three things that I mentioned: self-determination, self-sufficiency, and social coherence. Please note that self in the context of determination and/or sufficiency does not have to be singular. We can develop teams in which “selves” help one another to determine how we will live together, and in which “selves” help one another via our various skillsets and capacities to stand upon our own feet, together. Social coherence within such teams (these might be families, or neighbourhoods, or friendly societies or other small-scale gatherings of like-minded people) is what makes the first two possible. All of these things can be built in real time, here and now, by each of us… to an extent. But none of us can build any of this into the future if we cannot transmit the building blocks to the next generation coming after us.
In this way, the interruption of the transmission of skills, [local] knowledge, [local] languages/customs, and wisdom from older generations to younger ones is a very serious rupture, that prevents people from building self-determination and self-sufficiency into more long-term, self-sustaining forms. And this generational rupture includes even things like being sent to school to learn what is considered to be important from complete strangers.
Anyway, it is obvious that this type of rupture began BEFORE my generation began abusing its children in this apparently programmed way – with its specific attacks on coherence, sufficiency and determination. And here we are, before any war, already living in the shattered remains of broken traditions, forgotten skillsets, dimly glimpsed shards of wisdom, trying to build something worthy.
Many blessings upon your own life and decisions, if you will have them.
Late to the party, but I read with interest the discussions about the war and the many intelligent and, as far as possible, well informed takes on it.
I agree with most commenters that Trump most likely wanted to do another ‘Venezuela’ and is now stuck in a situation he didn’t prepare for. I could think of a 5-D chessy intricate strategy to leverage the fact that the US is less dependant on Gulf oil and gas than its geopolitical competitors but in that case they would have severely underestimated the second and third order effects and the lack of domestic support for another war.
Whatever the reasons, we are now stuck with this war and its consequences. One aspect that has gotten too little attention imo is the economic consequences. They are massive. It’s now planting saison and key ingredients for fertilizer cannot leave the Gulf. A large famine late 2026 is already baked in the cake and will lead to calamities like refugee crises, protests on top of people dying from hunger. No doubt there will be shortages of pharmaceutical drugs. Chips will be even more expensive as key ingredient helium is stuck in the Gulf. There is even the expectation of shortages of chicken feed. There are many commenters on the net who talk about aspects but very few talk about the sum total effect. I’m not sanguine about it.
Asia is already in a state of alarm with several countries shortening the work week and other emergency measures. I expect the EU will follow soon, but our inept leadership doesn’t want to say it out loud or is still asleep at the wheel. I fully expect some kind of sequel to the lockdown madness of 2020-2022. Our interconnected global economies are being blown up right now. They were unsustainable anyhow, but we will now see a sudden drop instead of a gradual decline. I’m sorry to be such a downer but I don’t see how this can be avoided. If somehow peace breaks out it will still be bad but every day this continues will make the consequences worse of course.
@Scotlyn #280 Thank you for sharing that. The militaristic way in which the US, supported by its allies, operates in the world will no doubt have consequences at home. In part they are already here, but when you are used to it it can escape notice. For example to my European eyes it would be hard to believe I live in the land of the free when so many are living in encampments in San Fransisco, or the when per capita kill rate of the US police is more than 50 times that of the UK (2024-2025 numbers) etc. Not that the EU is so much better, we have our own set of problems, but the harshness to other societies reverbates in harshness to our own society.
I think issues like this are unavoidable when we as humanity are not seeing the interconnectedness and in fact interbeingness of all. I don’t think this will happen anytime soon, or even at all, so we seem to be stuck with the usual rampant dehumanization of others and all the nastiness it can bring.
Chuaquin: Well, I think that if there is indeed an elite replacement cycle going on, the woke dogmatism and censorship will go away along with the outgoing elite, so there’s that. There’ll be a debate and it’ll be a short one; the new elite will be moving along on it’s own steam just fine and won’t be needing to force people to pretend that some men are women in order to show their power. Or that some women are men either, but I don’t think trans men are quite the controversial and divisive thing that we are. Non-binary and similar are bandwagoneers of course, and will abandon the bandwagon when it crashes. (How is it for you parsing metaphorical language like that? I’m referring to the English expression “to jump on the bandwagon” which means “to adhere to something just because it is popular”.)
I’m glad for your country that you’re not seeing the “frenzy” that we have here in North America. I wonder if part of the difference is that we English speakers mostly don’t have gendered nouns or adjectives. The issue of how people refer to us trans people in the third person only comes up with pronouns, whereas in Spanish it would come up with many other words, and so trying to police the language (which we shouldn’t be doing anyway) would be a more frequent and difficult thing. I know you said you’ve never met trans people in your everyday life, but, to your knowledge, how does this actually play out? I’m just guessing based on my toddler’s command of Mexican Spanish.
There’s a thing that happens once or twice a week when I go out, and this ties in with what you said earlier about the woke belief that trans are the “Good People” or a “vanguard to utopia”. What happens is that an older millenial or younger Gen X woman will look at me with this sort of satisfied smile as though I were Proof That Things Are As They Should Be. It’s funny to me because I know they wouldn’t be smiling at me if they knew what I actually think!
The demographic that seems to be most likely to treat me like I’m just any person rather than a beloved symbol of All That’s Good or a grudgingly tolerated symbol of All That’s Wrong is Gen Z, and my God do I ever love them for it! That contemptuous and diminishing “Kids These Days” that a lot of elders are fond of is not something that’s ever going to escape my lips!
This is an interesting discussion. Thank you for this!
We’ve got another star in the current political Spectacle “sky” here. His name’s Óscar Puente, current Minister of Transports within Spain government (ironically, “Puente” means “bridge”…). He’s become in a character more within the political tension an polarization circus we’re living today here. Why?
Because, according national MSM, this gentleman has quite fondness to have an argument with every hater and troll he meets online (evidently, they often are right and far right political hooligans).
Consequence: he goes down himself to the same level as his online opponents, insulting them in 100 different ways.
I think it’s bad an average person uses Internet to argue with insults, but it’s even worse the Mr. Minister do it. I guess a high rank politician is usually very busy to loose time arguing with his haters and trolls. In a philosophical sense, his attitude and his behavior aren’t wise (according Stoics view, answering provocations is loosing your short life time; self control is necessary).
It seems Mr. Puente fame as a bad tempered man could be the canary in the mine of current Spanish politics, because it isn’t alone in his bad manners style.
However, this bizarre story is more complex than I thought. According local MSM, to worsen this controverted story about a Minister who likes the “mud”, our current “Socialist” govt has thought to fight against hate speeches and lack of courtesy online, launching a plan/program named HODIO (odio=hate). It’ll be approved soon, if govt allies allow it (of course, in exchange of something in their favor).
Govt idea is to check and measure hate level within social media. A good idea, but hell is full of good intentions…
This project has its supporters and opponents, with more or less reasons to say. In the short form: according internet experts, it’s very difficult to measure with objectivity online words, it depends of their context. For example, “illiterate” can depict a person situation (so it isn’t an insult), or in a metaphorical sense, another person whose words we don’t like (yes, it’s an insult).
On the other hand, not every offensive word becomes automatically in a crime to be punished. There’s a grey zone without net borders made of rude words which aren’t difamation crimes under a Court, unless the supposedly difamated person/people understands it as an offense. In addition to this, in a democracy, Criminal Laws must defend society against the worst crimes, but bad moods doesn’t equate with crime.
Now here comes the elephant in the room: HODIO program possible crash against constitutional right to free speech (ahem). You must take into account that Spanish Left (now ruling my country) has been hijacked by woke ideology since some years ago. I guess this plan could be a legal hole to censor political opponents and to fuel cancel culture attempts. I’m afraid it would be used in an arbitrary way (“my friends don’t insult, but my enemies are insulting”). Do the math.
Returning to the strange case of the bad tempered Minister, some Conservative journalists have written in an ironical and provocative way, that first online person who should be tested by HODIO program should be the Minister of Transports, due to his unending insults. They’re right, though I repeat there are more politicians here who like aggresive and unpolite speeches and/or writings.
Finally, I wish this plan/program won’t be never approved, due to the reasons I’ve written before.
The purported effects of different voting blocks on American policy may not be well founded in the case of the US’s decision to attack Iran’s regime, its people, and its infrastructure, thus entering a war which is not currently showing signs of an easy or quick resolution.
A J Street poll finds that disapproval of the Iran war among American Jews* is at exactly the same level as disapproval of the war among the American population** generally – in both cases averaging around 60%.
* https://jstreet.org/press-releases/j-street-poll-finds-majority-of-american-jews-are-opposed-to-war-with-iran/
** https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2026/03/25/americans-broadly-disapprove-of-u-s-military-action-in-iran/
Heard that the original plan involved having the Kurds launch a ground assault into Iran at the same time, but we refused to give the Kurds guarantees (probably not to tick off Turkey) so they backed off at the last minute.
That would make a lot more sense, as you could have a Kurdish army liberate different parts of Iran (apparently about half of the population consists of minorities who dislike the regime) and it’d be hard for them to fight back provided the U.S. provide air cover.
The best laid plans of mice and men.
I think the best thing Trump can do is walk away, blame NATO for not helping out, pull the U.S. out of NATO, and let Iran do what they want with the Strait.
If the changer is embodying Trump and wants the U.S. to retreat from empire and from being the guarantor of world trade, this would be the way to do it.
People are sick of streaming. They want to listen to music on cassette. Case in point:
“Fuse Factory presents “Cassette Culture Fest” from noon to 8:00 PM on May 23 at the Columbus, Ohio Old First Presbyterian Church, with musical guests Illusion of Safety, Envenomist, Jeff Central, and Full Load of King. Jerry Kranitz, author of the Cassette Culture book will be one of the special guests, and vendors will be on hand selling cassettes and other good stuff. More details to be announced soon.” -from Soleilmoon Mailorder.
I would like to go to this, and meet Kranitz, whose book I have, but it is a four hour time commitment just for travelling. I would also like to buy some tapes from the people who are making them… May is already getting busy for me, so I don’t know, but I am glad it is happening.
Sigh. Despite my earlier announcement (comment #403), this morning’s inbox included one attempted comment trying to pick a fight about Israel and other comments that mentioned that country. All have been deleted. Any further attempts to bring up that country in comments here will be deleted for the remainder of this open post. Deal.
With that said…
Curt, gotcha. Nobody can post images but me, so that attempts to post pornographic images get deleted automatically.
Chris, you’re quite correct, though the managed funds in 1929 were investment trusts that sold shares on the stock market, so the immediate impact was to crash Wall Street. The troubles in the private-credit industry are affecting individual investors right now, but the next shoe to drop will probably be pension funds and other institutional investors, and then things will get serious. As for people who confuse holding a bit of paper with having an asset, I’ve seen the same thing many times. I think they know perfectly well that they’ve been suckered, and that’s why they get angry.
Chuaquin, it’s one of the pervasive bad habits of intellectuals in the modern Western world to think that they can tell the rest of humanity how to behave. One of these days it may just sink in that nobody is listening!
Scotlyn, you’re welcome and thank you.
Patricia M, it really is stunningly ugly:
Chuaquin, reason is only one of the tools we have for making sense of the world, and it suffers from a drastic flaw — the famous GIGO principle, aka “garbage in, garbage out.” No logical system can prove its own fundamental postulates, and so fantastic amounts of wholly rational nonsense get churned out by those who can’t or won’t ask the hard questions…
Siliconguy, well, that’s something, at least. I hope it helps.
BeardTree, I’ve been scratching my head at intervals for years wondering why so many people fuss about the supposed incomprehensibility of the Trinity. To speak of three manifestations of one god isn’t confusing at all when you remember that human beings have very finite capacities for understanding anything, much less something as far beyond us as a god. So we have three divine expressions revealed to and perceived by human beings: the Father, the god of the Old Testament, whose main feature is his transcendence; the Son, the god of the Gospels, who descends into creation both to make it (the first chapter of John is pretty explicit about this) and to transform it via the incarnation; and the Holy Spirit, the god of the rest of the New Testament, who is the guide and inspirer of Christians after the incarnation. For all we know, the same god has another, completely different set of manifestations to seraphim, dolphins, or slime molds, but those three are how that god deals with us and how we perceive those dealings. What’s complicated about that?
Anon, yeah, I’ve been hearing rumors of that for a while. There are plenty of hate-filled people in the churches who would love to have a good excuse to lynch somebody — and I’m sorry to say there have been people in the occult community who have been working overtime to give them those excuses. Things are likely to get ugly in the years ahead.
Mother B, I’ve gotten some good leads and am making inquiries. I should be able to settle on a provider over the next week or so, and then begin the migration process.
William, that’s certainly been my experience.
Polecat, oh, I know. During my first pass through college, in the early 1980s, I considered becoming a botanist specializing in forest understory plants, and only changed my plans when everyone in the field explained that there basically weren’t any jobs any more. It sucks; I find ferns, mosses, lichens, and fungi endlessly fascinating, and would have happily spent a career working out the details of their ecology in some forest ecosystem.
Slithy (if I may), good gods. Thank you; you’ve just explained the Boomers to me, better than anyone else I’ve encountered.
Seaweedy, I expect Cave Junction to do fairly well, all things considered. You’ll have to do without tourists heading for the caves, or straying to or from the coast on an unfashionable route, but the advantages you’ve sketched out are real ones.
Info, fair enough. I interpret things a little differently but then my faith isn’t yours.
@JMG
Re: Reply to Beardtree
Maybe some of the critics of Christianity exaggerate how incomprehensible the Trinity is, so they have talking points to debunk Christianity?
I agree, I enjoy the Triune God “Three for the price of one and thrice as fun” Have a blessed Easter Sunday at the Episcopal church. I had my best vision decades ago at an Episcopal service. It was Transfiguration Sunday and the Gospel reading was of the Transfiguration event. I said to myself “I wonder what the Transfiguration light was like”. The version of the liturgy they used that Sunday was the one that includes the congrgational prayer “Risen Lord be known to me in the breaking of the bread” As I said it, the prayer wasn’t merely rote words, but accompanied with that uplift and filling of the Spirit associated with prayer that receives a sure response. The bread they broke in the consecration was a round large loaf of french bread, as the priest pulled it in halves an invisible liguid light poured from the space in between the halves, time stopped and I dropped my eyes in respect of the deep holiness. I said to myself – “So it is the Body of Christ”.
Larkwise, I just wanted to sound a note of agreement with your comment #404:
“Your comment that Democrats ‘are for values like homosexuality and laziness; takers, while Republicans are for traditional values like family and honest work; givers’, sums up for me the problem in America — a ridiculous and deluded bias against one side or another, leading to further and further polarisation with possibly no chance of rapprochement.”
Speaking as a mere occasional lurker here (hence the name), I’m very troubled and at times shocked by all the contemptuous stereotyping that I see in these comments. This contempt is largely (but not exclusively) directed at people broadly on the left, liberals, democrats, anyone anti-MAGA—a wide range of people.
I’d say the dynamic is: you’re angry about and contemptuous toward certain types of people; you view them through a contemptuous stereotypical lens that makes you feel justified in your hostility; the hostile stereotype in turn amplifies your anger and contempt for them; you re-adjust your stereotype to match your growing hostility; etc. And in this way, you dehumanize them, and it feels good for you.
I see comments that paint “those people” as lacking the basic human traits embodied by “our people”: they don’t have our intellect, agency, ethical groundedness, authenticity; they don’t know what love is; they robotically follow some mindless set of rules; they bear us ill will and want to harm and oppress us; they view us stereotypically and dehumanize us (irony!), etc. NWG’s comment is an especially stark instance of this, but it’s not an outlier.
All this plays out in the ocean of rage-baiting information spaces, which seek to capture and amplify hostility in order to monetize it, and to serve various political ends. It’s an environment that purposefully nourishes hostility.
This is at the heart of the problem and it’s not good.
Patricia Mathews and Mr. Greer.. One can almost sense the heavy breathing and hate seething from behind those high, dark windows, almost as if Lucas himself designed that structure to convey such a menacing aura. Just add Imperial laser turrets! Chicago must be quite proud.
A journalist whose name I forget but whose understanding seem sound opines that Trump’s long game is to control the world’s oil supply (preferably with himself as an oil oligarch). Control the oil, you control China without having to fight China.
If it means laying waste to entire nations and destroying ancient civilizations, too bad. The benefit is worth it. This is a neocon project and neocons are not nice people. (Cue Madeleine Albright on the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children due to sanctions: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price is worth it.”)
So who’s next? Russia is obviously the main prize but is too tough a nut to crack at the moment. But maybe one can make a deal with Putin. He does seem to be somewhat flexible, shall we say.
What about Turkey? They control the Dardanelles so they can lock Black Sea oil out of the world market. They also carry important gas pipelines, and can assist in keeping the Arab oil states in line. Rumors are that Turkey is next in line for a spot of Trumpian discipline.
@JMG
I’m glad I could help!
If I may butt in on one of your conversations:
> So we have three divine expressions revealed to and perceived by human beings: the Father… the Son… and the Holy Spirit…. For all we know, the same god has another, completely different set of manifestations to seraphim, dolphins, or slime molds, but those three are how that god deals with us and how we perceive those dealings.
I’m pretty sure this would be condemned as a form of modalism.
If I may offer a bluntly cynical point of view, I think the problem is that every time someone comes up with an answer to one of the main theological questions — the Trinity, the relationship between Christ’s divine and human natures, how the atonement works, etc. — that actually makes sense, mainstream Christian theologians stomp their feet and add it to the list of heresies. At this point, I doubt they want explanations.
(For Christians reading this: please note my frustration here is with theologians, not Christ! I also have similar criticisms of what I see as hardheaded mystification in Buddhist doctrine.)
JMG
Concerning your response to Beardtree about the Christian trinity. The issue Christians have, is not what the trinity is, but rather what it is not. There is a long list of heresies which if believed (according to most of the mainline churches) takes one out of God’s grace and causes them to lose salvation. The example you gave would be modalism (one god who manifests in different forms). Modalism was condemned because God can manifest as both the Son and Holy Spirit at the same time (such as at the baptism of Jesus).
In my opinion the cause for nearly all of the problems with the trinity (as Christians today understand it) is that it was formulated in the third and fourth centuries as a compromise between the modalist factions of Smyrna and Ephesus (who believed that Jesus and Yahweh were the same being) and the proto-gnostic/Valentinian factions of Rome (who believed that Jesus was from a higher God and the Holy Spirit was Wisdom/Sophia).
I’ll leave it at that as to not encourage another flame war.
Boccaccio et al
Your comment is interesting to me. This war in West Asia has put us the world, where I thought we would be in 20 years via a much more gradual decline. Some of the energy infrastructure will take years to rebuild if ever and the shortages will ripple through the entire world economy. I expect there will even be food shortages before the end of the year due to the lack of fertilizer and diesel now at planting time.
One could write a book about the shifting geo political/geo strategic. I’m sure several are being written as we sit here.
Stephen
Re: Strange buildings etc; run a search on John Raymond henry’s sculpture “Alachua”, more commonly known (to University of Florida students et. al.) a “The French Fries.” Not hideously ugly, but amazingly ridiculous.
LOL!
And, from yesterday’s dinner table conversation, “there was a No Kings March on the road near The Village Apiary” (yes, we raise bees, and sell the honey to residents at the quarterly bazaars.) My comment: At least a lot of old ladies were out there getting in a lot more walking.
The Old and New Testaments when read closely are not friendly to a stark simple monotheism. The traditional Trinity explanation strives to preserve a monotheism that yet contains three quite distinct and different divine persons. Bishop Kallistos Ware in his book The Orthodox Way presents a lovely exposition of this. You could go for a polytheistic version but the Bible doesn’t wholly jibe with that take and doesn’t wholly jibe with the modalism approach either. This is why I don’t angrily disagree with Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Oneness Pentecostals (a modalism segment of Christianity) concerning the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – three in my experience quite tangible, distinct and knowable. Those groups present intelligent, cogent arguments for their views with supporting scripture. This fuzziness doesn’t bother me and is part of the fun though I prefer the “orthodox” understanding myself.
@471 Anonymous
I don’t know much about Gnosticism, but I know that in most versions Sophia tried to create something by Herself and fell, and that since then she’s been working to clean up the mess she created and free the Divine Sparks from their prisons of flesh.
It would be a heresy, from a Christian perspective, to identify fallible Sophia with the Holy Spirit.
Patricia Mathews #425
I saw the picture first. Why has JMG posted a picture of a military watch tower? Hmm. Perhaps it is a milspec telephone exchange? The outer wall of a maximum security prison? A USAF control tower? I know, I’ll scroll back through the comments to find the context. A presidential library I was not expecting.
@Slithy Toves (#449):
As a card-carrying member of the Silent generation, your comment on the Boomer generation makes excellent sense to me. It explains a thing about them that has long puzzled me. Somehow, they came to see the world as an existential battle between good vs. evil, justice vs. injustice, and they firmly believed that good and justice must finally be victorious over evil and injustice. You are the first who seems to me to have explained where this odd world-view came from, when you wrote:
“The Boomers found themselves in the wrong place at the right time. They inherited a culture whose back had been broken by the two world wars and no longer really believed in itself. So when as young’uns are wont to do, they took bold stances against the world… the world offered little resistance to them. ….. ‘Romantic rebellion is not supposed to succeed—success isn’t romantic, it’s practical. But the mainstream was so rotten that it caved, both times, within a few years, making counterculturalists the new Establishment.
Indeed, romantic rebels aren’t fit to win, and they are never competent to deal with the aftermath of victory when they have the misfortune to actually win. At least that’s how I’m seeing it so far. I’ll be mulling this over for quite some time.
Cynthia # 459:
I understand your comment. I also wish and hope, like you, the current wannabe totalitarism, known as woke ideology, will be soon forgotten, due to an elite replacement. However, I hope new elite doesn’t behave going toward the other side of pendulum. It’d be a pity gays, lesbians, transgender people and another minorities loved by wokesters as “secular saints” would end prosecuted again, like in worse times.
I tend to think different languages are correlative of cultures, and vice versa. So I can think like you maybe there’s a deep difference between English (which hasn’t usually genders for noun and adjectives), and Spanish (which has them). By the way, woke left here has tried to impose…err…to suggest gender elimination from nouns and adjectives “for equality”, without a big success. Its attempts have shown to be very authoritarian and ridiculous alike.
I’ve written before I’ve never met a trans person in my town during my everyday life, but I know by a friend there are a few trans people, she met once one of them.
Thanks for your comment.
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Dennis M.# 462:
Indeed, Iran and Turkey, in spite of having competed since centuries ago to control their respective influence areas (since their old names were Ottoman Empire and Persia), share a common interest to prevent an hypothetical strong Kurd country.
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JMG # 464:
Well, I admit too many scientists and thinkers tend to spend too much time in their ivory towers (for example, Universities), far from average people, even in their own countries.
************
I partly agree. Reason has its limits, like I’ve written before (about some philosophers naïve optimist rationalism). Even the apparently “thick truths” discovered by hard sciences are based in a scientific method, which sits over certain philosophies (for example, pragmatic materialism and empyricism). And eventually every thought system has its most basic ideas like beliefs (which cannot be proven). This reality doesn’t invalidate hard facts, but shows even “almighty” science has limits like philosophy, too (mud feet).
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(To be continued)
Lurker @467
I completely agree with your comment on the rightward drift on this site, and the ugliness and hatefulness of many of the comments on anything or anyone they deem “left” and their blanket sympathy for anything “right”. It has reduced both my following of and participation in the site.
Stephen
Your book “Twilight’s Last Gleaming” has been featured in some of the recent comments. In it, US carriers are sunk or de-activated by enemy fire. Well, our present situation is much more prosaic: one of the carriers (Gerald R. Ford) has been taken out of the fight by a laundry fire which burned for reportedly 30 hours (!) and will require OVER A YEAR of repairs! Details at the following story: https://www.rt.com/news/636790-us-carrier-laundry-fire/ Yikes!
The Lurker…# 467:
I think it’s an old story: the Good People (us) and Bad people (them).
It’s a pity woke ideology has (like a simmetrical mirrors game) its correlative doctrinarian True Believers in a certain Conservative attitude which flirts with Far Right Wing (in USA and Europe we’ve got more examples than you’ve written about it). In a democracy you can dissent and discuss with people who you don’t like, but I like there are limits (a democratic consensus). Stereotypes and dehumanization against political opponents aren’t good for democracies, methink.
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Martin B. # 469:
World oil control against China as one of the ME mess causes? I agree.
Word oil control as the only one cause? I disagree. Too simplist and reductionist in front of a complex situation, methink.
Another strong cause for Iran
war is to destroy (or at least to weaken) the BRICS, whose economies are every day being less and less dependent of dollarized economy.
A third cause: of course, USA elites serfdom to Zionist agenda (which only partly meets USA elites agenda).
More causes can be put in addition of these ones, if they aren’t contrafactual.
Finally, if Trump thinks about attacking Turkey, good luck with it. First, attacking a NATO member (ahem) What could be wrong? Turkish military, though not very big, has a deserved fame of being made of tough and ruthless guys. In addition of that, Turkey people tend to have strong Nationalist ideas. And a country with a heck of mountains.
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It seems, according some previous comments (including one by John) the Christian Trinity topic is appealing even to some non Christians. Well, I wrote my opinion before my current comment, so I won’t repeat it again (though as a fringe Christian, without Theology studies, my opinion is equally good/mediocre/bad as everbody view, methink).
Since first day of Russo-Ukrainian war, our MSM have been repeating the same rehashed, monotonous and boring Narrative, not letting much space to dissenting voices (to not to say no space). In the short form, EU/NATO propaganda by these MSM is: “Russia fate is to loose this war against brave and democratic Ukrainians. In the strange case our superior weapons we give to Ukraine don’t assure a western backed victory, Russian economy will collapse soon. It’s weaker than EU and USA economies, so Russia is going to be defeated soon and then bye bye Putin…”
Well, after 4 years in war, Russia hasn’t collapsed yet, and it’s been selling oil to China and India. So the unending song has needed a change made by our propagandists…err…journalists. This year its variation has been: “Russia is losing mountains of money due to being selling oil with price discount to China and India”(so its economy is going to collapse soon and…).
However, when EU Narrative/Spectacle meets more hard facts, a crash happens. Yesterday I saw with amusement another change to save the Narrative. Oops! This time, it seems it’s more difficult to customize the Narrative.
Several local MSM here had to accept the evidence: thanks to Iran war, higher oil and gas prices allow Russia to “recover” its economy…Well, indeed it’s thriving. Russophobic journalists recognize it with a not well hidden bitterness. (“Thanks, Donald—said Putin smiling”).
I’ve read these MSM similar news pleased to some extent, because the exclusive and censorship-like Narrative is in trouble.
In addition of this, the Russian oil tanker arrival to Cuba reinforces Putin at least in a symbolic and propagandistic way, so Russophobic journalists have another wry hard fact to swallow. Of course, Trump gave permission Russians to allow that ship arrived to Cuba. But, what would had happened if Trump had said “No”? Well, I think Trump isn’t stupid, so he knows USA government doesn’t want/cannot afford more provocations and escalations against Russia (too many open fronts?). We aren’t in 1962 anymore to repeat another Cold War crisis, though partly different than old Cuban crisis.
Mr. Greer, speaking of mosses, lichens, fungi .. I practice the Art of Bonsai. When transplanted my collection a while back into training pots, I used as a covering, moss/lichen that I found clinging to some derelict concrete barriers, laying along the edge of a roadside a few miles away – not hard to find in these parts. Since then, the coverings have been doing their duty, helping in keeping the potted forms from drying out, while also adding to the look of age to the gnarled lone trees. Said fungi .. these diminutive funnel-cupped shaped fruiting bodies, started poking through the above later on .. added a delightful accent to the whole scene. I’m pretty sure they were part of the ‘package’ as it were.
Re: Trinitarian Doctrine
Fr. Maximos Weimar (of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad) posted this sermon which goes into quite a lot of detail about the various heresies, and why they matter:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18BwFHf6wK/
I hope this helps everyone understand the Orthodox position better.
Chuaquin: Thank you for expressing the wish that we not be persecuted as the new elite comes in. It’s hard to know for sure what’s going to take place. I think regular gays and lesbians might get away without too much grief. There used to be the odd thing years ago where they’d try to compel a baker to make a cake for a wedding he was religiously opposed to, for example. but that’s not really fresh in anyone’s mind now I don’t think. I guess it depends on how much gays and lesbians are viewed as a fundamentally separate and different thing from trans people. Some of them are really promoting the idea of that separation, and I wish them well with that. I don’t think they need go down with our ship. As for us trans people, well… It’s hard to say how that’s going to be. It isn’t going to be good. We have a lot to answer for. Those trans people who can convincingly present as their real sex should probably do that, and forget the whole trans thing.
With respect to some of the commenters bemoaning a perceived rightward shift in the blog and its commentators , it would be good to reflect on some things.
It seems to me that one of the blog’s major themes as been studying the useful and non-useful responses to the ongoing catabolic collapse of industrial civilization. This can involve looking at economics, ecology and sociology.
What has gradually come under criticism over the last decade or so is the set of beliefs and behaviors that have become popular on the progressive left. These are things that would have been an Anathema to traditional liberals of the type that populated the US from the 1930’s untill the early 2000’s. This type of ” Garrison Keiler” liberalism was replaced with a kind of reactionary and maladapted beta marxists simulacrum of a political movement.
The policies of the movement are very maladaptive if one’s goal is to best survive ongoing catabolic collapse. One can argue intentions and goody goodness vs baddy badness for hours. But following the “Woke” path is not a formula for success. This is patently obvious when one examines a place like Portland, that adopted these ideas ” whole hog” and who’s fortunes have ” paid the price”.
I think that has collapse moves forward, bad ideas are bound to garner more and more Opprobrium and contempt, especially when many people who know better are required to submit to them knowing the inevitable outcome.
Commenters should strive to be both respectful and considerate but those who champion ideas and policies sprung from the leftward side of the spectrum should be keen on promoting that which is useful and appropriate in a changing future. And there is much to celebrate from the history of the left. From Green Wizardry to cooperatively owned bike repair shops we can learn much that is useful in our predicament. But popular Beta Marxist tropes like DEI, culture shaming and unlimited immigration will continue to attract ire.
We are not moving forward in to a glorious future of unlimited social and economic progress where the arc of history bends toward justice. We are moving toward a future that can be described in a way that my Chinese Fluid Dynamics professor, in engineering school, so eloquently stated, ” If you do not know the math you will flunk”.
@Chauquin #456 re: Neo-Stoics and Metaphysics
Very much agreed on all points. For what it’s worth, I’ve read that a lot of modern therapeutic modalities (all those that are variations of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or “CBT”) were explicitly inspired by the Stoics.
But I’ve also long lamented the Neo-Stoic insistence on its compatibility with atheism (very similar to some of the approaches to Buddhism we talked about earlier). I’m currently reading John Dillon’s The Middle Platonists, which makes very clear that the orthodox Stoic “materialism” was a very different beast from today’s materialism, and lots of folks influenced by the Stoics quite happily took up more transcendental metaphysics.
For what it’s worth, my own emerging position is that Aristotle’s eudaimon-focused ethics are useful practically, but the Stoics were onto something in dividing what happens to us into “goods,” “evils,” and “indifferent things,” with further subdivision among the indifferent as to “to be preferred” and “not to be preferred” (for example, having health and wealth is technically indifferent, but most honest people would admit being happier to have them than not, even if ultimately you should be able to be pleased by being virtuous without them). I find such a position equally compatible with believing in the Gods as not, and my practice leads me to believe in the Gods.
Cheers,
Jeff
Hey JMG and commentariat
For the last day of this open post, I thought I’d share an artist who I rather like, called Richard Svensson. He makes short films that use a combination of stop-motion puppetry and computer animation that are rather bizarre, and furthermore are often adaptions of Lovecraft’s poems and short stories, as well as those of other Cthulhu Mythos writers. On his blog, he often gives you a behind the scenes look at how he makes his videos and the puppets.
https://loneanimator.blogspot.com/
Just came across this that some people might be interested in. It is a college being run in the desert about 40 miles from the Salton sea that as the title says “No tuition, no grades, no power grid”
It is fascinating to see. There are a fair few details I do have issue with it (teaching AI artwork?!) but I will endlessly approve of people trying to do something different even if it is a little too utopian in concept. At least they are willing to call it an ‘experiment’ and that it is more like a commune. There appears to be a structure of commerce so maybe it isn’t as doomed as most communes turn into.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/29/mars-college-california-campus
@Clay Dennis #486: I don’t usually reply to comments I find distasteful, because this is not my site. Rational arguments will always be welcome. However, I agree with others that a tone of casual, unthinking belittling has become much more common on this site over the years. Nicknames and exaggerations help nobody to think more clearly, neither the commenter nor the readers. I will just pick out two I remember, though they are not particularly hateful or distasteful.. Resuming a whole block of citizens and voters as “screaming bluehairs” is a thought-stopper, just as “rednecks” would be a thought-stopper. Calling a dyed-in-the-wool central banker, multimillionaire and cultural conservative “Marx Carn…” short-circuits useful arguments.
It is my impression that people use such epithets when they feel – rightly or wrongly – that many of the readers share their prejudices.
“The result has been a pervasive attitude among the Boomers and those influenced by them that they are supposed to win,”
Speaking as a Boomer of the Generation Jones version, we had a steady diet of WWII movies where good and evil were clearly defined and good was expected to and did win. The other genre was Westerns most of which were laid out the same way. So put it down to early conditioning.
“I think the best thing Trump can do is walk away, blame NATO for not helping out, pull the U.S. out of NATO, and let Iran do what they want with the Strait.”
I agree. Trump expected Venezuela II especially given the unrest just before the bombing started. The surviving Iranians not in the revolutionary guard did not rise up. So Trump is stuck.
Or is he? As was pointed out there is a path out; Europe made it perfectly plain that when the US is in trouble they will NOT be there. What better reason is there to pull out of NATO? The Donroe Doctrine doesn’t need it.
The other side effect is going to be (or should be, $ will flow) the spotlighting of why are we doing this for the benefit of the Zionists? All they do is take, take, take. If the ADL and AIPAC lose influence it will be a good thing. The dopey evangelicals who think instigating a war will get the Temple back, the Rapture, Armageddon and Paradise without the inconvenience of actually dying are, well, dopey.
As for ” If you do not know the math you will flunk”. I had a physics professor (calculus version) who said, “I’ve never had to fail a student. They have always done a perfectly fine job of failing on their own.”
Last, Here is a video about Linux for low-end computers. The short version is anything with a 64 bit processor and 4 GB RAM is fine if you choose the desktop wisely. He has quite a variety of desktops to show which might be the best part. Linux is not one size fits all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJGf8zVt3MI
“I interpret things a little differently but then my faith isn’t yours.”
Understood. While we disagree with the causes we can agree with the practical impacts. Although I do believe we can narrow the metaphysics that can be deduced from the results we observe in the world.
The Spiritual cosmology of Christianity is aptly explained by this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Unseen-Realm-Recovering-Supernatural-Worldview/dp/1577995562
I do find that the rise of Christianity in an area does correlate according to testimony to something like a kind of spiritual antibiotic. That area is disenchanted both of the many previously benevolent presenting spirits and those clearly malignant ones who demand sacrifices and are capricious. Africans particularly benefited from the nullification of the latter malignant spirits that haunted their land.
In personal testimonies I have read/heard stories of those who previously got an ouija board to work had it suddenly fail when someone invoked Christ in their mind. Same thing with other attempts of Magick.
This pattern alongside the impact of Christianization provides the groundwork for greater secularism and atheism as overt supernatural occurrences reduce dramatically in frequency in Christianized areas. Aside from the regular sacraments and rarer miracles.
I can’t help believing that our modern Tech dependent world is ultimately the actual result of the above in addition to the Logos centered Scientific assumptions of natural regularities known as laws of nature.
Whilst thinking about how indifference is the opposite of both love and hate, the though crossed my mind that in the same way that love and hate are two sides of a coin, indifference and apathy are too. And so now I am contemplating what separates indifference from apathy, and am tending towards the idea that it is a static/dynamic difference. That is, apathy is at base a static position, whereas indifference is a dynamic position in the sense that it is a turning of the back as opposed to facing something and feeling nothing. Does anyone who has read up on the stoics know whether they addressed these ideas at all?
Clay Dennis et al
My complaint,aside from the spiteful language itself, is to equate anyone on the left with the woke extreme. I and most of my friends have always been on the left, and I don’t know anyone personally who is of the woke extreme. It would be like my equating everyone on the right with Pete Hegseth and the Christian Zionists.. Obviously there are ideas coming from the right that make more sense going forward in these times, as there are from the left.
JMG
I have a problem when you ban the F word and the S word, but allow someone to say that Republicans advocate family values and hard work and Democrats advocate homosexuality and laziness. That seems to violate the spirit of reasonable discourse more than cursing..
Stephen
One problem is that a lot of the right have spent too much of their time fixated on the left and fighting the left, and this has caused them to adopt some of the worst habits of the left, including the tone of tendency of casual, unthinking belittling that Aldarion has mentioned.
I want to weigh in here to echo what Larkwise (#404), The Lurker at the Threshold (#467) and Stephen Pearson (#479) have noted about the contempt and disgust that some commenters have been expressing here towards people who hold views they abominate. Our host has stated that comments here should always be “courteous,” never “abusive,” and should exemplify “polite discourse.”
No matter how vile and loathsome one might finds the views of another person here, that person is still your fellow human and (in the case of Americans) your fellow citizen, and as such, IMHO, is entitled to your respect — your respect not for their views, but for their absolute right to hold those views and express them courteously in public.
I think less of commenters here who have fallen into the repulsive and lazy political habit of dismissing some of your fellow humans (and citizens) in such derogatory terms as, for example, “wokesters” or “Trumpers.”
You know who you are. To quote a famous local (Rhode Island) politician, “Knock It Off” — I beg you!
@ Clay Dennis #486
“…following the “Woke” path is not a formula for success.” For sure. Also, I appreciate from other comments you have made, the degree to which you have witnessed this up close and personal, in comparison with rather successful policies pursued by your wife.
I think you make a great case for why the concerns of this blog have repeatedly analysed the failings of the “woke” path.
That said, one of the truly epic failings of the “woke” is their habit of seeing “us” as the good people and “them” as irredeemable reprobates. I appreciate people who are pointing out in this thread that THIS habit is just as bad a habit when practiced against the “woke” as when practiced by them. We are none of us “good” or “bad” in our essence, and we cannot begin to grapple with serious discussions about good or bad policies, or good or bad ideas if we believe “those” other people are irredeemably bad.
Actually, I appreciate the point of view introduced by Slithy Toves, saying that “woke” represents the unfortunate success of a romantic rebellion that was not meant to succeed, but did, because of the prior weakening of the structures every romantic pushes against.
(Interestingly, in the Meaningness blog Slithy linked to, the blogger posits that there were TWO romantic rebellions that began to push against one another, BOTH taking on the idea of the OTHER as being irredeemably bad natured PEOPLE. One was the hippy counterculture (the direct ancestor of “woke?). The other was the evangelical moral majority counterculture (the direct ancestor of “anti-woke”?)).
In any case, if EVERYBODY needs their opponents to be evilly evilness incarnated, we are all going to be too busy trying to exterminate each other (at least digitally) to do anything productive. It seems that it is too many generations ago since we had a generation of properly constituted elders, capable and willing to lead, teach and mentor the upcoming generations. And our romantic woke/antiwoke squabbles are infantile and pointless. What generation will step up and be proper “elders”?
Although nominally a Christian, I find the concept of the Holy Trinity impossible to get my head around, despite JMG’s clarification in #464. Even the famously difficult quantum theory is only a particle/wave duality. What if it was a triality, e.g. particle/wave/dark matter? Hey, maybe it is. That’s why no one understands it.
Trump’s presidential library will of course overshadow Obama’s, and everyone else’s. Heaven alone knows what they’re going to put in there apart from Air Force 1 and a couple of fighter jets. Perhaps Limited Edition “TRUMP 2028” gold sneakers.
https://www.trumplibrary.org/
The journalist I referred to in #469 was Brian Berletic. This is an extract from something he tweeted yesterday:
“I warned people the US is not going to end its war on Iran – at best it will pause like it did last year.
“Stopping its war altogether with Iran would mean stopping its pursuit of global primacy altogether which it will NEVER do unless forced.
“I warned the US would be burning the entire region to the ground to create a wider, catastrophic GLOBAL economic disaster it believes it will emerge out the other end stronger relative to China and the rest of the multipolar world – and that is what it is openly trying to do right in front of us all.”
https://x.com/BrianJBerletic/status/2038412326538494223?s=20
The heresies are way more interesting to me than the orthodoxies.
A bit late short time reader and first time commenter. I’m aware that there’s a celtic version of the LBRP in the celtic golden dawn and a lbrp derrivitive ritual called the sphere of protection but I had the inclination to use imagry surrounding the four weapons, four cities where they were forged and four druids of those cities of The Tuatha Dé Danann, though it doesnt seem to map exactly to a four ellemental scheme, there are two weapons. They would work well as substitutes for the traditional four ellemental weapons of the GD to a degree with the stone of destiny being the only one that can’t be wielded as a tool.
Inital testing using the cities for either pentegrams or squares, and Lugh, Nuada, Daghda and Danu substituting the archangels the results were a little odd, allot of dreams about the land/condition of nearby nature