I’m in the process of moving this blog to a new server. Most of the transfer process has gone very well, but in the process the open post I launched on Wednesday seems to have gone missing. While my new hosting company scrambles around seeing if it can be retrieved, I’m relaunching this to allow continued conversation.
So this week’s (second) Ecosophian offering is (again!) 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.
With that said (again), have at it!
Watchfinger, re the visible light octave: Thank you. I thought that particular coincidence might amuse some a little bit, as it did me. That’s all it is, of course. It’s sort of like how the respective sizes and distances of the sun and moon make them take up the same amount of our sky. (Or, more properly, that we as a species happen to be living in the era where that is true.) It’s cool for sure, but meaningful? Not really.
Michael Gray, re Europa: Ha ha, yeah. Since you put it that way, it does seem to be so impractical as to not be worth worrying about at all. But yeah, if we were to try to implement that harebrained scheme, microbial stowaways on the space vehicle would certainly be a potential cause of harm to Europan life.
Brendhelm, re tones and meditation: I disagree about that interval being dissonant. I just checked that out on my guitar by bending back and forth between a major third and a fourth, while picking that on the D and the root on the A. There’s nothing in that range that sounded especially dissonant to my ear. It’s certainly no tritone. Maybe “dissonant” means something different to you than it does to me.
Mawkernewek, re the xkcd: That was hilarious, as Randall Munroe’s work often is. Do you like his “What If?” I sure do! Thanks for reminding me about xkcd – I probably have a solid six months of it to catch up on.
Welcome back!
Since my comment has disappeared (if it ever appeared), let me respond again to the first comment on the original post: the post you were looking for about the cycle of political vs. religious periods in the US was “The Twilight of the Neopagan Era” from The Well of Galabes blog:
https://ecosophia.net/blogs-and-essays/the-well-of-galabes/the-twilight-of-the-neopagan-era/
@JMG: one note: for a moment while things were still getting set up, my browser complained about this site have a self-signed certificate, and when I inspected it, the country was listed as Bulgaria, with a locality of Sofia. It was also signed for example.com rather than ecosophia.net, with http://www.test-ca.com as an alternate domain.
I have no idea if this indicates where your new hosting company is located or if it’s just a stock certificate that was used for some reason while the site was being set up. It’s not showing a standard Let’s Encrypt! certificate. Just thought this was curious and worth mentioning.
In the Robert Anton Wilson universe, isn’t April 23rd a pretty dire day?
I thought things were acting a bit weird last night. But what was not weird after all
“Particle thought to break physics followed rules all along, research reveals”
https://phys.org/news/2026-04-particle-thought-physics-reveals.html
“More than half a century of measurements of a fundamental property of the muon—the more massive, short-lived cousin of the electron—did not line up with theoretical predictions, raising hopes that new physics might be behind the unexplained inconsistency.
…
The team’s findings, which took over 10 years to calculate, bring theory and experiment into agreement to within half a standard deviation, with a level of precision that would have been unthinkable just a decade ago, Fodor said. The result strengthens confidence in the Standard Model to 11 decimal places, dramatically narrowing the space where new physics could be hiding.
“People ask me how it feels to make this discovery and, to be honest, I feel somewhat sad,” Fodor said.
“When we started to calculate this quantity, we thought we were going to have a good and trustworthy calculation for a new fifth force. Instead, we found there is no fifth force. We did find a very precise proof of not just the Standard Model, but also of quantum field theory, which is the foundation on which the Standard Model was built.”
A career in Particle physics doesn’t seem to much of a future.
Greetings all!
I am pleased to see the transfer is going on smoothly. (Thank God!)
Given the exceptional nature of this commentariat, I would like to know what readers think of the on-going oil and gas shale boom in the US. Are there any good and recent studies around and how long do people around here think this boom may last.
Thanks!
JMG, for a while, Ecosophia was unavailable, an error message “Blog not found” appeared. Then it returned, but without the open post. I thought by me: “That must be the increasing internet volatiliy that JMG predicted a while ago.” Obviously I still had my notes about some Ecosophia posts. Good, that the blog is back.
Slithy, thanks for this. I think it was just a sample — my hosting company is located in the midwest US. (Though I admit Sofia looks like a very pleasant city.)
Phutatorius, I’ve never been able to keep the chronology of the trilogy straight. I just sit back and enjoy the hallucinations.
Siliconguy, it’s a real issue. There are quite a few scholarly fields these days that have basically been shut down because there’s no more original work to be done. The closing of physics has got to be particularly upsetting to true believers in Tomorrowland, too, because that means most of their wet dreams — superluminal space travel, notably — have just had the door shut on them forever.
Karim, I’ll have to look into the latest numbers. One important thing is that the recent overthrow of the Venezuelan government has a major payoff for the fracking industry. Fracking mostly produces very light hydrocarbons; to make most petroleum products, you need a mix of light and heavy — and the Venezuelan tar sands produce the very heavy hydrocarbons. Pay attention to petroleum and a lot of current geopolitics makes immense sense.
Booklover, yeah, there were the usual temporary glitches while the transfer took place. Most of it’s up and running again at this point, so no complaints.
[If comments submitted prior to the re-hosting glitch cannot be recovered, I’ll offer mine for reposting:]
News item: The US Dept. of Justice is charging the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) with fraud. It appears the SPLC has been funding multiple right wing hate groups, e.g. the KKK. The funding was over $3 million.
Evidently, there hasn’t been enough White racism for the SPLC to fight, so they have to sponsor it. In addition to soliciting the public for donations, they have also been funded by George Soros’ foundations. The Charlottesville ‘Unite The Right’ rally in 2017 was covertly funded by the SPLC for $270k, and Joe Biden claimed the event motivated his 2020 presidential run. Presumably this was also behind Democratic rhetoric claiming that White supremacy was the biggest domestic threat the US faced. The SPLC even defamed Charlie Kirk not long before his assassination.
The SPLC is around 50 years old. I wonder when they began funding their ‘opponents’?
I sure am happy to see a least one woke straw man taken down. Dare I get my hopes up for more?
—Lunar Apprentice
Greetings Mr. Greer. I’ve been hearing about the increasing launches of rockets bearing satellites by both SpaceX and, to a lesser extent, Blue Origin. I remember a while back you brought up the Kessler Effect, where man-made stuff in lower orbit starts banging into other man-made stuff which explodes and creates a bunch more potential missiles traveling around up there at 17,000 miles per hour, thereby increasing the risk of future collisions, etc.
Given our increasing reliance on these satellites, which control everything from GPS to communications to missile guidance systems, are we getting close to a time when the cost-benefit analysis of these constant launches goes into the negative? I guess there is enough redundancy for now that even if an important satellite goes down, there are others to fill in. But at some point does the whole thing become unworkable, or is there enough “depth” in that lower orbit space to keep this going far into the future? Thanks!
JMG
I don’t know if you saw my other post before so I’ll repost. Concerning the theory that Paul the Apostle is Simon Magus. It’s an old theory so there’s a lot of information on it. If you want a good modern take on the theory from a reputable scholar I would recommend the book The Amazing Colossal Apostle by Robert Price.
Also side question on Simon Magus. I came across some references online to him being connected to a figure within Druidry called Mog Ruith. Unfortunately sources on that are scarce and the ones I do find lean heavily into UFO/alien conspiracies. Apparently Simon or Mog had a flying saucer. Have you ever come across this connection/lore?
Silicon Guy @ 4
My very glib knowledge of particle physics has lead me to a conclusion: the universe is deliberately messing with us. (That is the sanitized version for this family-friendly site.) It seems like every time something gets actually measured in particle physics, the measurement disproves a theory. THe same thing happened with plasma physics when I was an undergrad.
Re-do of yesterday:
Siliconguy 31
> “Learn to code” is suddenly dead.
GrislySpawn Gully = Silicon Valley
You have my sympathies.
Oh man, are you ever ripe for a career change, or what? Get the hell out of GrislySpawn Gully. Seriously. Grisly SpawnGully is a brutal place. There, my husband Jethro got laid off more times than we could count.
Jethro and I abandoned GrislySpawn Gully in 2020 during COVID. First rented in Sunnybale 5 years. Then bought house Gilroy 1997. In 2020 sold house; moved to Wisconsin. Have not regretted moving out of Caligornia [Caligula’s Place] one teensy bit.
I decompressed for two years, quite literally. It took two years to recover my health and balance. Calitornia did not let us go quietly. Only when “not there” was I able to perceive how psychologically/spiritually damaging/toxic the West Coast is.
I HAVE regretted spending ten years too long in GrislySpawn Gully. There are so many MUCH BETTER PLACES in the USA. GrislySpawn Gully = too many people who don’t give a sh_t; who are on-the-make; gimme gimme gimme. We could find no contracter affordable (they wanted 3X) to maintain our house, such as house-painter and fencer.
After 30-odd years in GrislySpawn Gully (and another earlier five years in Los Angeles County), this upstate-New-York-Stater had gotten way too much high temperatures and way too much sun for my sanity. One CAN get too much heat and sun. Upon moving, I went for cold and winter, and frankly, southern Wisconsin is a 6ºF/4ºC too warm for me. I am Nordic throughout. But Wisconsin was the closest in lower-cost-of-living and coldness we could afford.
Look for a career / types of jobs that will do well in the Long Descent. Other people reading here have asked what kinds of jobs to look for. Here are some.
Working with one’s hand. Getting dirty. Getting muscles. As a rule, West Coast and East Coast states disparage working class workers, whereas Midwestern states applaud them. Some Midwestern states have no-charge apprenticeship programs. Unless one is Mexican, there is no future in Calibornia. If move, consider a state that has people of your ancestors’ ethnicity, or with whom you blend in regarding looks. It matters. Whose tribe do you belong to? Also, micro-business needs to be far and away from Washing-gun DC; no Fedarales allowed. The Midwest is a good place to hide.
arborist / tree climber
blacksmith
butcher
carpenter (furniture maker; cabinet maker; framer; many categories)
ceramicist
cook (baker; many categories)
dental hygienist
drywaller
electrician
electric motor repair
farmer
fence installer
gardener
glassblower
HVAC technician
industrial maintenance / millwright
jeweler
leather(wo)man
locksmith
logger / lumber(wo)man
machinist
mechanic (many categories)
nurse
plumber
private detective
roofer
shoemaker / cobbler
tailor / seamstress / dressmaker
whitesmith/tinsmith
woodworker
On the cheap, do some traveling around, or do some reading, different regions of the USA. Go to states you never imagined setting foot in, like Wyoming. Don’t bother with ruined-Minnesota — that state is a goner. Get to know the working class of/in different USA regions/states. Be Studs Terkel. Journal.
Doldrums —> fun and fortune.
‼️Good luck on your journey‼️
💨💥💪🏼🥵💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Hi John,
Two articles,
https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2026/04/22/germany-unveils-strategy-for-becoming-europes-strongest-military-by-2039/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
And…
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/04/22/vwfr-a22.html?pk_campaign=wsws-newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws-daily-newsletter
Reflect growing moves by the Germans to rebuild their military capabilities.
Being realistic this is a 10 year project but the 2039 projection is fascinating and weirdly aligns with one of your scenarios of a renewed European war breaking out in 2039.
The transient disappearance of this Ecosophia open post highlights appreciation for you and this community.
Thank You!
David Wilcock, a UFO disclosure grifter, has just died by suicide. He had claimed to be working personally with Obama to bring down the Illuminati, that he was in contact with high-level government officials, and that mass arrests were coming to take down the cabal and usher in a Golden Age. He also claimed that masses of people would literally ascend out of their bodies in 2012 and all “evil” would be eradicated. It’s so funny when these grifters steal the Rapture off Christians and claim it as their own idea. The myth of the coming Golden Age (heaven?) is deeply hardwired into many people too. Unnamed insiders he claimed to know, supposedly gave him information that could never be independently verified. His hoaxes were always explained away by spiritual bypassing or “conspiracy bypassing”, normalizing the mental illness, personality disorders, and spiritual narcissism or grandiosity. His fans explain his psychological issues away by claiming he was “targeted” by energy weapons, that his decline was “manufactured,” or that he was a threat to the cabal and therefore was “taken out,” “suicided,” or driven mad by outside forces.
Apparently he was deeply in debt and he shot himself in front of the cops that he had called out. Even then the conspiracists are out there saying they don’t believe he’s dead or it was murder. I suppose this is another nail in the coffin for New Age gurus?
1) I’d like to apologize for asking this once more, but sadly I never saw your response (if there was one) before the glitch in shifting from one server to another lost the old open post. Did you hear about the claimed capabilities of Mythos for breaking software, and would a discussion of the implications of this (should the claims being made about it prove to be true) be acceptable, or is that too close to the banned topic?
2) On a different note: we had a discussion about technology and its impact on false information last week I’d like to keep going. On reflection I’ve realized that you’re probably right about the big picture issues with false information being nothing new, but also that my opinion is informed by a specific area where these new technologies are already causing serious problems. I used to work in information security, and so I got to see first hand how easy it is to bypass pretty much any security measures using what is now relatively common technology. It’s now trivial to, for example, use caller ID spoofing to fake someone’s phone number, use voice alteration tools to mimic their voice, and trust passwords and the like are at best impractical, and probably impossible to implement securely.
This can be used to drain a bank account, bypass security measures at companies, or any of a large number of nefarious purposes; and absent strict controls on using these kinds of tools, it will wreak all kinds of havoc on pretty much every institution and allow for a lot of mischief that will hurt ordinary people. How many parents, for example, would think twice if they got a phone call from a child who sounds exactly like their kid, claimed to be in trouble, and need money urgently?
I think I jumped the gun a bit and overgeneralized, but I do firmly believe that from an information security perspective, the kind of tools developed over the last few decades are both quite new, and extremely dangerous. The combination of easy surveillance and easy deceptions is not normal, and is a very dangerous state of affairs.
Here’s a quote by someone who moved from WordPress to another site:
“WordPress has been my host for the last five years and I’ve been very happy with the ease of use and affordability of the site. But as is so often the case with evolving tech platforms WordPress recently “upgraded and improved my user experience.” What was once a simple intuitive process that allowed me to indulge in a pleasant pastime has become an exercise in frustration as I struggle to navigate the new format. I don’t like having my cheese moved. So WordPress improved themselves out of a solid customer.”
https://granolashotgun.wordpress.com/2020/10/16/they-moved-my-cheese/
Hello Mr. Greer, what do you make of the multitude of oil refineries and power plants blowing up around the world not including those instances from Ukraine and Russia? On Twitter someone mentioned that the oil shortages are straining the infrastructure so that there are more malfunctions, this sounds like a good explanation to me, but it’s not completely satisfying. And I personally don’t think a shadowy cabal is blowing them up.
P.S. I’m not sure what information you can see at your end, but I’ve been here before, I simply made a new email and alias for all my misadventures on the web.
“One important thing is that the recent overthrow of the Venezuelan government has a major payoff for the [American] fracking industry. Fracking mostly produces very light hydrocarbons; to make most petroleum products, you need a mix of light and heavy — and the Venezuelan tar sands produce the very heavy hydrocarbons. Pay attention to [American] petroleum [monopolisation] and a lot of current geopolitics makes immense sense.”
This does make sense if you add one more strand to the weave.
Because it appears that the imperialist “Project for a New American Century” has never gone away. Those who identify with the American imperialist goal of unchallengeable unipolar dominance, and who therefore abhor the development of a more multipolar world, are clearly still working at denying energy, economic and/or political sufficiency to perceived rivals.
Meanwhile the project (small “p”) to benefit ordinary Americans by divorcing their American nation from the American Military Industrial Empire may be set back some.
I’ve had some trouble when I’ve tried to write another previous comment here, but I’m going to write this one now, hoping it can be published (I’m crossing my fingers).
I wrote in the first April Open Post about how I grew during the ‘80s in a catholic school (so, after Vatican II reforms); and I’ve liked some church songs but disliked another ones.
By the way, I’d like to point again that it’s common within Conservative and Traditional Catholics to blame Vatican II (music included) for the secularization and religious decline during last decades. Well, I think it seems a half truth, at least in Spain recent history context. There’s an elephant in the room: “friendship” between the Catholic Church and Franco’s regime (indeed a dictatorship), whose main political effect was the State confesionality during some decades, and “National-Catholic” official ideology. When democracy arrived here, it was matter of time (in an historical sense) that spanish people would identify Catholicism with a far right wing nutties attitude, so being a modern society would mean secularization in everything. It seems catholic bishops and conservative/traditional believers don’t like to remember this “small” problem. So you guess I don’t like very much the usual pack Catholicism/Right Wing politics. However, I can also see the “Progressive” Catholics (and Christians in general) sometimes have foolish attitudes. For example, some years ago a “modern” theologist (maybe German? I don’t remember his name) wrote a book trying to explain the Holy Trinity according Freudian Psychoanalisis “science” (ahem). It seems he was so obsessed to look like very modern than he didn’t noticed psychoanalisis was debunked a long time ago as fake science…and Trinity is by its “nature”, a mystery.
@ Lunar Apprentice # 8
My, my! Why am I not surprised?
Hmmm… the temptation to pay to create what you exist to oppose, once it stops being much of a thing must be pretty strong, I guess.
And even though governments fund their own cherished opposition movements all the time, this is the first time I’ve heard of an NGO doing it….
Still, I cannot say I am even a little bit surprised.
Lunar, no surprises there. It’s a classic example of the Shirky Principle, the rule that institutions will always act to preserve and amplify whatever problem justifies their existence.
Mark, we’ll see. That said, it seems very likely to me that at some point, a full-scale Kessler crisis will launch, and yeah, then every person and industry that depends on low earth orbit satellites will be in a world of hurt.
Anon, thanks for this — I’ll look into it. As for Mog Ruith, he’s an interesting cat. The version I’ve read is that he was said to be a student of Simon Magus, who seduced Mog Ruith’s daughter Tlachtga, a powerful druidess in her own right; she had three sons by Simon. With Simon’s help, Mog Ruith built a flying machine called Roth Rámach, “the oared wheel,” which was said to blind whoever looked at it, deafen whoever heard it, and kill whoever was struck by it. His wife was the Cailleach, the winter goddess.
Forecasting, I wonder where they think they’re going to get the soldiers for this army of theirs. If they intend to recruit Muslim immigrants to fight for them, well, all I can say is that I wonder if they’ve ever heard of a pair of brothers named Hengist and Horsa…
Lazy, you’re most welcome and thank you.
Bridge, yes, I heard about that. The conspiracy claim I’ve heard in UFO forums is that he didn’t kill himself, he was assassinated by the same evil forces that are picking off space scientists to keep disclosure at bay. As for the twilight of New Age gurus, I wish — the demand for appealing nonsense is still robust, and that being the case, there will continue to be an ample supply.
William, granted. False information is one thing, but in a society that does everything online and tends to be embarrassingly credulous when it comes to online content, these new gimmicks are likely to cause a great deal of trouble. The point I’d make is that there are already significant trends away from the internet, and this will shift them into overdrive. I’ve read that some intelligence agencies are already going to typewriters and filing cabinets in place of computers, since it’s so easy to harvest data from the latter; the more riddled with fraud and impersonation the internet becomes, the more firms and individuals will simply back away from the internet altogether.
Lunchbox, my blog uses WordPress software but it’s not hosted by WordPress, and both my old hosting company and the new one have been very good about deleting unwanted functions — most recently an intrusive “Let AI help you write!” popup, which has been extirpated with fire and sword.
Ornifex, the Iranians would be idiots not to blow up as many refineries as they can — their one hope right now is to cause enough economic damage to the global economy that the US backs down.
Scotlyn, that’s normal behavior for every regional and global power, and for very good reason. In a world of limited resources, hogging as much as possible for you and your friends, and denying as much as possible to your enemies, is a basic requirement of national survival.
Chuaquin, this is an open post, so you’ve got more wiggle room here.
@JMG, re: Venezuela,
What’s really interesting about that is that it shows that at least some of Trump’s administration have decided that overthrowing Venezuela would be easier than getting a pipeline built on their own territory! Canada’s tar-sands have no shortage of very heavy oil and the biggest bottleneck is getting it to the Gulf for refining is the lack of infrastructure– specifically the Keystone XL pipeline.
Building that would have also helped integrate Canada (or at the very least Alberta) deeper into the American economic orbit, too, which by this point we Canucks are pretty keen to leave. Alas, it seems the company behind the project gave up after Biden withdrew permission (again) so perhaps that’s why the Trump admin has been all carrot, no stick with Canada this time. Maybe depletion is hitting faster than I expected and they figure there’s no point as the pipeline won’t be done in time, while tankers from Venezuela were there for the taking.
What I find most interesting right now is the divergence between oil futures and the physical price of oil. BTI might be around 105$, but to actually get your mitts on a barrel, it’s gonna cost a lot more. There’s probably always been a premium on physical goods, but not double the price! Obviously the powers that be are playing the market like a fiddle, but I can’t help but wonder how long that game can keep going… and what happens when the music stops. I doubt it’ll be nice for anybody.
Just to riff on last week’s sub-thread on music and spiritual experience, I would just like to add a wee anecdote.
It seems that during our ecosophian visit to the White Spring in Glastonbury last June, my husband was mightily impressed by the monastic-style choir singing he could hear within the cavern. Being a fairly down to earth fellow, not generally impressed by most religious claims, he was actually surprised to discover there had been no choir and no singing, or at least none that any of the rest of us could detect. An experience of spiritual music? Who knows, eh? 🙂
Regarding personal liability for business owners:
Unfortunately, I doubt we would have started our business if this were the case. Not because we want to stick someone with unpaid debts (in fact, we capitalized our LLC exclusively with savings), but because there’s so much frivolous litigation, and courts often award insane damages for dubious reasons. It just isn’t worth trying to start a public-facing business to make a modest income if you might lose your home, land, and life savings because of someone else’s careless operation of machinery or claim that your vegetables gave them food poisoning or whatever. Or honestly even if your vegetables did give them food poisoning, which is always a risk no matter how careful you are. I don’t deny there are real problems with corporations leaving others holding the bag, but I can’t see how this wouldn’t crush small business owners, or drive them to dealing almost exclusively with lenocrats (selling calves to the auction barn for CAFOs instead of selling healthy food directly to families, for instance). Perhaps if there were protections carved out for one’s home and vital assets, or limits of some sort on damages, I think such legislation could be a good thing.
I am reposting my question for anyone in the commentariat who cares to answer.
This is perhaps the most intelligent group I am aware of on the internet. I am really interested to hear where people go to get their news – what are your favorite sites, news sources, bloggers etc. If you do respond please mention my name so I can find your comment.
Thank you to those who answered yesterday – I have noted your suggestions.
@4 Siliconguy
There will still be a need for the time being to train new generations in that established body of knowledge.
To hog them for yourself… and/or to deny them to others. Both strategies work if your purpose is as much to stay at the top of the heap, as it is to grab the resources themselves.
If resource depletion is a bear that never hibernates, you do not have to run faster than the bear, you just have to run faster than the others who are also running from the bear, and if possible, trip other runners up and send them sprawling.
If anyone has any recommendations for children’s books about American Indians, I would appreciate them. We have been reading Little House on the Prairie with my three year old and enjoying it very much, but my daughter is asking about the Indians, whose portrayal in that book isn’t exactly in line with modern mores, so we’d like to balance it out a bit. However, I don’t want a woke morality tale either, if that’s not putting too fine a point on it. Just some real history and culture (any tribe, though the book mentions Osage) that a child of three might actually enjoy, ideally with interesting pictures. Thank you!
One two punch;
“Meta told employees on Thursday that it will cut about 10% of its workforce, or roughly 8,000 jobs, with layoffs effective May 20, according to multiple reports. Meta will also close about 6,000 open roles it had intended to fill.”
All Conceivable Wealth to the AI Servers!
Same thing here;
“Microsoft plans to offer voluntary buyouts for the first time. According to CNBC, “about 7% of U.S. employees are eligible,” with the program being “available to U.S. workers at the senior director level and below whose years of employment and age add up to 70 or higher.” Further details will be provided on May 7.”
7% of 228,000 employees is about 16,000.
As for last night I also got a message about a certificate issue when I tried to check in here.
Re: sources of news, in Nick Cave’s most recent Red Hand Files he makes the pertinent comment, “I find that going about my business in relative silence, with attentiveness to the things around me, and free from the relentless opinions of others, is good for the soul.”
Dear JMG. I have come across a book called The Druidic Order of the Pendragon by Colin Robertson. It talks about how the author Was left the papers of a Druid order that died out after WWII. Now if you believe this story and not that he made it all up, it is all fascinating. The information is very familiar yet Alien to the AODA. I wonder if this could be a source of the AODA? Also I wonder what one could do to find books back in the time of Doctor Juliet Ashley’s time of the AOAD to read to see were we came from?
Hello all!
Just a quick announcement for those interested in the “Adocentyn in Providence” event this summer, Peter the honored host has posted an update in his blog https://peter-van-erp.dreamwidth.org/267.html. It includes a sign-up link as well as a tentative schedule.
Ah yes, server migrations. Works perfectpy everytine except when it doesnt.
Two related links for all things Druidic.
Treetops glowing during storms captured on film for first time – https://www.psu.edu/news/earth-and-mineral-sciences/story/treetops-glowing-during-storms-captured-film-first-time
Nature uses electricity is many ways we are only now codifying with science.
Shocking Study: Does Lightning Make Mushrooms Multiply? – https://weather.com/home-garden/video/shocking-study-does-lightning-make-mushrooms-multiply
If you dont want to read it the answer is YES!
This was something out of Japanese folk lore, now a few centuries later and the science is catching up. As some have speculated, could something like this be a mechanism for crown shyness?
Now let’s talk about the “Pseudoscience” of copper grounding pipes in gardening. 😉 give it another hundred years and the science will catch up.
Phutatorius (#3):
23 is certainly one of THOSE numbers in “Illuminatus!” 5 being the other.
I would try to keep the number 5 to a minimum in your life, except that it might then spill over into balance and order, and eventually into potential and completion.
Cheers.
An observation, and lament, for Earth Day 2026. Said “Day”, established in 1970, was always a bit airy-fairy in its intent, practice, meaning, and purpose, but as the years have gone on it’s become even more scattered. When I would cheerily ride my bicycle to Earth Day events in the early 1970s, there were clear targets: air and water pollution, “planned obsolescence” junk in stores and car-lots, unregulated/unlisted dangerous chemicals in foods, and so forth. Well, the sometimes-orange air in the LA Basin that I would see when I occasionally drove there over the Grapevine in the 1970s is now a distant memory; the Cuyahoga River catching on fire 🔥 no longer is a potential event; Ford Pintos and Chevy Vegas (the latter in particular) no longer litter the roadsides, and though food could be better, we’re no longer in the “Better Living Through Chemistry” era. Shaking my head; can’t believe a major corporation had that as their motto.
Anyway, saw a notice of an “Earth Day Celebration” at our local crossroads-of-protest, and while on a shopping errand to two local grocery stores swung by to take a gander. The folks hosting said ‘Celebration’ are the same questionable types (Indivisible; 50501) who do “No Kings!” gatherings, so my expectations were low, but they managed to be so demented that even my low expectations looked in hindsight to be starry-eyed.
Picture a sparse gathering of perhaps 25-30 people on the corners, with old ladies holding up signs showing the cliched ‘blue earth with face’ and generic words like “Save Our Planet” standing next to scowling old guys with Canadian & Ukraine flags flying next to “Dictatorship!” banners. Talked briefly to the scowling guy, who was giving out creepy demonic vibes (asked him where he was moving as he obviously didn’t favor the USA) and then moved along the curb to a more-genial guy holding a sign with a wind-generator photo and the text “Offshore Wind”. “Ah, I bet you’re glad they cancelled that lease for the offshore-windfarm off our coast (Central Calif.); man, that thing would’ve been a giant sealife strainer with all the angled mooring cables”, but NO, this guy was actually FOR said offshore-wind whale-killers. Whaaa? Dude, this is Earth Day, do more with less, save the whales! Shrug. Not having it. Then he mentioned the icecaps are melting AND there’s a huge problem with the AMOC grinding to a halt (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, of which the Gulf Stream is a portion). Wait, I said, AMOC transfers heat north to the Arctic and keeps northern Europe from being much colder than it is 🧊 ; you can’t melt the Arctic icecap by halting one of the main things that make it melt! Huh, he must’ve watched too many movies; any “Day After Tomorrow” fans out there? 🤮
The nice lady next to him had a variation on the Planet Earth sign with, on one side, some sort of anti-Trump slogan in angry red. “Well, Trump is giving away all our National Parks and National Forest lands”, she opined.
“Did you guys ride your bikes here?”, I asked. Confrontative, yeah, but by this point as a life-long environmentalist and nature lover I was pissed. “Well, no, but I have an electric car…” said one. I pointed to the bike I was astride and said “This cost $1500 and weighs 70 pounds; how many more orders of magnitude of resources went into your $50,000 4500-lb. electric car?” Grrrr.
So is Earth Day now the province of confused, well-off, and mostly geriatic TDS sufferers?
Shrug. I rode my electric bike back home and unloaded our groceries. Happy Earth Day?
I thought maybe you were hacked!
I searched Bluesky for your name, thinking maybe you had an account there and would make an announcement. You did not, but I did learn that apparently you are an “eco-fascisr”! I’m not sure what that is but it sounds cool. 🙂
One thing I’ve been musing over is the role of infinity in mathematics. As it stands, modern conventional mathematics rests on ZFC set theory, which was developed in part to justify Georg Cantor’s arguments that some infinite sets are larger than others (the most famous results being that there are exactly as many rational numbers as integers, but more real numbers than either).
However, for a couple of centuries now there have been a handful of notable mathematicans who criticized ZFC, Cantor, and the construction of the real numbers. Leopold Kronecker famously declared “God made the integers; all else is the work of man,” and other mathematicians have gone further, questioning whether the notion of an infinite set is actually tenable at all.
At first glance you’d ask “Well, if you’re right, why does conventional math work?” to which one counterargument would be: “Are you sure it does?” After all, conventional mathematicians have to bite the bullet and accept several paradoxes of infinity. But more importantly, the parts of conventional mathematics that have practical applications can almost always be reconstructed using approximate methods that avoid actual infinities.
Teresa, you asked about books that show rich or otherwise privileged people despairing because of their position. In case you hadn’t seen my response before it got eaten: The first book I though of is Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain. Mann is so ironic that the despair only becomes apparent at the very end. Also Machado Assis’ Posthumous Memories of Bras Cubas.
Hi (again) John,
Where we left off, I had asked you if you thought Jesus had any esoteric teachings. You said you did not know, but recommended the book Jesus the Magician.
I’ve read that book and I found it very intriguing. The reason I asked you the question is because previously you have stated that you have gnostic inclinations, and you have written very well on the topic of gnosticism. I was curious whether you think that gnostic teachings have any lineage back to Jesus, or if the gnostics put those teachings in his mouth later.
Personally I strongly doubt that the creative demiurge cosmology of the gnostics has any link to the ‘historical Jesus,’ but I am open to the idea that Jesus had mystical teachings reserved for his inner circle.
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.
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This week I would like to bring special attention to the following prayer requests, selected from the fuller list.
May
Lisa C be blessed and healed for a complete recovery from breast cancer.
May 6 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 Luke Dodson’s beloved uncle-in-law David C be blessed and make a peaceful transition to his next destination.
May a safe and happy home environment be enjoyed by Laurelmirror, her daughter, and her mother, as well as protection from evil influences. May their family situation be resolved in such a way that Laurelmirror’s mother will get a chance to recover physically and mentally from the stresses it has caused; may mother be blessed and invigorated.
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 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.
John – Just finished reading your 2015 novel TWILIGHT’S LAST GLEAMING. Given the current conflict with Iran, I find the book very plausible, not to mention well written. Obviously, current details diverge from the novel, but once again US troops are being sent into a region fraught with potential disasters unseen through our notions of arrogant superiority. Any thoughts on your work, 10 years + since you first created it, or where you see the US on the timeline of IMPERIAL IMPLOSION?
@Dylan, in case you hadn’t seen my response to your question about market economy and capitalism:
Many books have been written about “Why Europe Won” from the 16th to 20th centuries (and not China or India). One school of thought stressed European market economies. I think it was Kenneth Pomeranz who pointed out that the economy of the most advanced regions of China in the 18th century (near the Yangtse delta) was far more market-oriented than in any part of Europe including Britain. It actually worked according to the “laws” postulated by European economists: countless small farmers, small middlemen and small consumers figuring out the price equilibrium between supply and demand. It turns out that near equilibrium, nobody gets rich and nobody dominates their market.
What we call capitalism is very different. It already started out with the royal monopolies the East and West India companies had, and the protection for legal persons like corporations has enabled companies to grow and grow until they reach near monopolies: Standard Oil, IG Farben etc. Copyright and other intellectual property laws also help! At that point companies begin to really make their owners rich.
Thank the gods you’re back! When the Open Post went missing, I kept wondering what I’d done wrong to lose it, because on my computer, the “on” button, a less than half-height button as the entire top row is, sits right next to the “Delete” one! What a relief, and I do hope you get the entire old post back. I hope they do find the entire post and bring it back; I know what can happen during moves and changes and such. Best wishes for a smooth transition.
Meanwhile, reading the latest Ariel Moravec mystery, I found myself speculating on the dates and the characters, because in that, “1984” is “40 years ago,” so we’re definitely in the last days of 2024. I’ve long ago figured out that Ariel is about the age of my youngest grandson, but her mother has “Generation X” written all over her. I should know; my daughters are that – but a far saner and less destructive version, though the oldest is just as bossy. (Hmmm…. could part of her tendency rage at her for hours be connected to menopause? Going by my daughter’s temper a few years ago as opposed to what it is now, that’s quite possible.
BTW, in reading any novel, I tend to fill in plot holes by treating it as the real world, rather than “The author dropped the ball,” except for obvious typos etc.
I also find myself wondering why she is so obsessed with the Only Two Alternatives of starving in the attic, and a corporate career. That strikes me as the sign of some massive trauma in the past, either experienced directly, or in the tales told by whoever raised her. Her capacity for self-deception is….. she is NOT really sane. Taking away Ariel’s little treasures on the grounds of “You don’t need that anymore” …. that is just plain abusive, as if her total (but understandable) blanking on her role in Daniel’s death. I hope she gets some sort of help soon, but I doubt it.
And anyone capable of delivering prolonged rants is a verbal abuser plain and simple. I know. I was married to one who could carry it on for days on end. I know. And he was not strong; he was weak.
Britney’s loud and public mockery of her in high school is quite understandable; it was her protection against “sister of a weirdo” cooties. Once out of high school, she no longer needs that shield, and can finally be decent to Ariel.
Well, enough of my obsessions and welcome back.
I have been making my own tea, using not the typical Camellia sinensis but from the leaves of an ornamental Camellia x williamsii. I have done this before a couple of times and it worked out alright. https://pandragonathome.blogspot.com/2009/11/making-black-tea-from-your-camellia.html
Tyler, if the US were to send special forces into Canada to kidnap Mark Carney and replace him with some pro-American politician, that would be much more likely to become a big international crisis than the same move toward Venezuela. Lacking some such move, Canada is a geopolitical enemy allied with the EU — and the current US administration is trying to make us less dependent on our enemies, not more so.
Scotlyn, I remember that. The Irish have a reputation for hearing music where others don’t — I recall a story Sara told me many years ago about how Turlough O’Carolan wrote his famous harp tune “Sheebeg, Sheemore.”
Jennifer, fair enough.
Scotlyn, the bear metaphor is a good one. As the global economy falls apart into regional economies, regions that can secure resource supplies will stay afloat while others sink. I expect to see that become the core strategic concern of most industrial nations as we proceed.
Siliconguy, yep. The age of techbros is over, and the time of the blue collar worker is come.
KAN, good. Obvious to some of us, but it’s great that more people are realizing it.
Cedric, I’m familiar with the book, and — well, he made it up. There are elements in the initiation ritual that show that he was basing it on speculations that Celtic historian Ann Ross made about Lindow Man, a mummified ancient Celt whose corpse was discovered in a bog in 1984. As for Dr. Ashley, if you can find anything written by AODA members in her time, please let me know — nothing has turned up yet. It took years for us to prove that she even existed.
Michael, thanks for both of these!
Bryan, alas, that’s exactly what it is. I mourn the hopeful, thoughtful Earth Days of my youth.
Zak, “eco-fascist” is a label used by the privileged to assail anyone who points out that if they really want to save the earth, they ought to, you know, decrease their own ecological footprint. They get really mad when you suggest that.
Slithy, that makes sense to me. I appreciate the authors in the sacred geometry field who’ve pointed out that zero and infinity are both completely imaginary, and negative numbers even more so — they were invented solely as a convenience for usurers who wanted to calculate debt. Their claim is that a sane number line doesn’t run -∞…-3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3…∞ (what on earth is “negative infinity,” anyway?) but 0…1/4, 1/3, 1/2, 1, 2, 3, 4…∞ with 0 and ∞ as imaginary endpoints. But that’s a rant for a different day.
Nephite, it’s quite possible that the historical Gnostics preserved actual teachings of Jesus, but that doesn’t actually matter that much to me or to most modern Gnostics. What matters is the quest for gnosis itself — personal experience of spiritual realities — and historical questions of who taught what aren’t especially relevant to that quest.
Ecoprayer, many thanks for this.
Jeff, TLG was simply a description of one hypothetical way that the US could be dragged down by its failing empire. What made my fictional President Jameson Weed’s policies so disastrous is that he couldn’t think of any response to failure other than doubling down. I freely admit that Trump has made some bad decisions, but that’s not one of his flaws; the acronym TACO (“Trump always chickens out”) is a sneering tribute to the fact that he knows how to cut his losses. Since he’s actually a moderate — there are many people in the populist movement who are pushing for policies far more extreme than he’s agreed to — the question is solely whether it’s possible to hew a middle line between the extremes of radical populist nationalism on the one hand and corporate-bureaucratic kleptocracy (i.e., the Democratic party line) on the other. We’ll just have to see.
Patricia M, the whole process has gone more smoothly than I expected, to be frank; there are still a few minor kluges to take care of, and then I’m good for the long term. As for Carmen Moravec-Jones, Ariel’s mother, we’re going to learn a lot more about her a few books further on, when Ariel and her grandfather will be going to Summerfield to investigate a family tragedy. The “you have to get a corporate job!” business is something I’ve heard tolerably often from women who got one of those and are miserable in it, and are trying to convince themselves that their choice wasn’t as bad as it actually was. As for the rest, there are two shadows over the family. One of them you know about — the shadow of Daniel’s death, which is still a terrible emotional burden for Carmen among others. The other you don’t. All in due time!
Mawkernewek, interesting — thanks for this.
Cynthia Christie #1… my microtonal explorations are based on dividing octaves into however many equal steps, and then looking at how well the resulting intervals correspond to whatever just tuned intervals. I construct a table of the correspondences:
https://app.box.com/s/tfpeqd0f0c6dkewjcuvtyyd1jbjmuqw9
This is for the division of the octave into 53 equal parts, which hits a lot of important intervals quite precisely.
The relevant part of the table.. the [ … > business gives the powers of primes 2, 3, 5, 7…
17: 0.172030103612023; [-2 0 1 0 0 0 0 >
18: 2.92569214121365; [-6 4 0 0 0 0 0 >
19: 0.674819970478066; [0 -2 0 1 0 0 0 >
20: 2.13569379253709; [0 -3 1 1 0 0 0 >
21: 2.06777938008991; [-4 1 0 1 0 0 0 >
22: 0.0891877741643121; [-2 1 0 0 0 0 0 >
17 steps of 53edo corresponds to 5:4, a just major third. 18 is 81:64, a Pythagorean major third. Then comes 9:7, 35:27, 21:16, and finally 4:3, a perfect fourth. Consonant vs dissonant, darned if I know!
Is there some standardized (or preferred) way for commenters on this blog to contact each other privately?
Sorry if my question has been asked a hundred times, but I either haven’t seen or can’t remember the answer.
John,
“What matters is the quest for gnosis itself — personal experience of spiritual realities — and historical questions of who taught what aren’t especially relevant to that quest. ”
Agreed. As you said, the spirit of Gnosis is direct, firsthand experience. I would like to make clear that I am interested about whether Jesus taught gnosis solely out of historical curiosity, not because I am trying to validate or invalidate certain ideas because of their historical lineage. To do that would fossilize gnosis into another dogmatic religion.
Since the Druid Order of the Pendragon was mentioned: are merely the rituals and teachings invented or has the Druidic Order of the Pendragon never existed? I, too, have the book that Cedric mentioned; I thought it was an interesting look at a sui generis Druid order.
I was aware about the hits in the Middle East. What I had in mind were these:
India, power plant explosion
https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/india/boiler-explosion-vedanta-power-plant-chhattisgarh-b2957879.html
India, refinery fire
https://www.bernama.com/en/news.php/?id=2547717
Australia, refinery fire
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/apr/16/geelongs-refinery-fire-may-be-out-but-questions-over-what-it-means-for-our-fuel-crisis-are-still-raging
Mexico, refinery fire
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/fire-breaks-out-pemexs-dos-bocas-refinery-second-since-march-2026-04-10/
Romania, power plant fire
https://www.romania-insider.com/cet-vest-fire-hot-water-bucharest-april-2026
Texas, oil rig fire
https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/public-safety/2026/04/21/549647/nacogdoches-explosion-etoile-oil-gas-fire-evacuation/
I’m asking whether this happens all the time and this is just a case of recency bias where we’re more aware of these types of infrastructure damage because of the war in Iran or it could be something else.
Came across a great quote recently by one Mary Engelbreit, an artist from St. Louis:
“Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich.”
Mr. Greer, do you believe that we inherit some of our personality traits genetically from one or both parents, e.g. high intelligence, musicality, etc. ? Or are they all accrued during our previous incarnations?
Karin:
What I have heard is that an individual fracked well only produces for several years; conventional oil wells from a major oilfield produce for considerably longer. I just looked up a recent American Association of Petroleum Geologists on the Marcellus Shale ( the largest producer) and estimates of how much remains are large but vary widely.
That said, this is mostly natural gas; diesel is how everything else works.
JMG is right about the blending. There is only a range of crude oil composition that any refinery can process. Thus, the very heavy crude has to be blended with light fracked crude to even be refined.
Cugel
@slithy and JMG
Spengler devoted a whole chapter to mathematics and how our Faustian culture pushes the abstract to levels beyond ridiculous, to infinite sets of non rational imaginary numbers that continually splice reality from a an endless, multi dimensional number line. It’s also notable that it was the Indian culture that invented the connect zero, which makes complete sense once you think about their culture.
JMG, I just finished you latest Ariel Moravec mystery, House of Crows, and enjoyed it very much! This is an excellent series. Any idea when book 5 of her adventures will be released? Many thanks for the entertaining and thoughtful read!
Good day, everyone.
I have been noticing the news is developing the nature of a fog… there are different flavors of any news story that emphasize different features of (news event) and attempt to guide you to different conclusions.
For example, “The DOJ is investigating the Southern Poverty Law Center for paying some informants”, with the implication that this is revenge for SPLC’s legal support of people that the administration wants to victimize. VS the above mentioned “SPLC is supporting the KKK” because if all the racist organizations go away, then SPLC is not needed. I’m sure there is a third and a fourth take on this investigation if I go looking.
This is NOT my only confusion with “news”! How is it that “AI is going to replace lots of workers” but also “Women aren’t having enough babies”? It would seem that higher population is useful if they have opportunities to be productive, and income to spend! …but if there are no human jobs in 20 years then all of those children of today are doomed to live in their parent’s basement.
There are many more examples, and my first-person knowledge is (by the nature of being a human) very limited.. How can I make decisions about my own survival (economic and otherwise) when a lot of people are exaggerating or lying, but I don’t know which ones?
My question has gone missing.
JMG, what do you think of feng shui? Is it worth taking seriously?
If it helps, I have part of the original April open file source code:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r7ALK8lL4BhSP9wO92gLT0o-V3Me2BpF/view?usp=sharing
I have been listening to Rory Sutherland’s podcast interviews. He has an interesting take on life and the modern world. He says that we have a quantitative bias, a preference for making decisions on the basis of calculation rather than our other faculties, such as gut feeling.
The funny thing is, this man is mostly talking about corporate marketing, not some sort of philosophy or spirituality. He is an intensely practical person. He worked at Ogilvy, one of the largest corporations in Britain. He talks about business, financial decisions, and stuff like that. But he still holds that exploration is very important, and that the world is not as predeterminable with calculation as we like to pretend. For instance, a single action on our part can influence our entire life far more than much calculated effort (for better or for worse).
Late night thought that just occurred to me.
Suppose that some genie or god or whatever appeared to you and said it would grant you the knowledge of some concretely factual thing, but that we and our research will never be able to discover.
Mine is that I would like to know how evolution will respond to the ever increasing solar output as the sun leaves the main sequence and heads toward red gianthood. Not about humans in particular, but all species. What adaptations will appear as the ability to dissipate heat outweighs other considerations to an ever increasing degree. (Due to the ever increasing degrees, ha ha.) It’s all going to be happening very gradually and in ever greater radiation, so natural selection should have lots of mutations to choose from. For example, as mobility and high-order brains become ever-less worth the cost, will there be effective adaptions to that? Might there be a species of tree in 500,000,000 years that is descended from, say, zebras? With strictly vestigial brains and hearts and bones and so on, like we have vestigial gills and nictitating membranes? Or will the animals just die off? What about after that? What will be the last population of plucky extremophiles to survive before there’s just no possible adaptation that can take any more heat. And what present-day species will those be descended from?
What a fascinating treasure trove of knowledge that would be if it were available!
Any of y’all have a thing like that?
First, to the commentariat as a whole, repeating from Open Post Mark I: does anyone have a recommendation for a good natal astrologer to delineate a birth chart? I’ve been thinking that’s a tool I should have in my metaphorical toolbox. Someone who knows a little about occultism would be ideal, since I’m probably going to be doing planetary workings down the line. Thanks in advance!
@ JMG and Bridge
Glad to see the blog back up and running, and good to hear the transition went well all things considered. I saw and appreciate both of your answers to my question on Mark I before it disappeared.
@ Northwind Grandma #12
“One CAN get too much heat and sun.”
Oh, don’t I know it, haha. I can’t imagine how people can live in places where it regularly gets to 30 and even 40C (86 and 104F). This Norwegian tends to find it uncomfortably hot once the temperature climbs into the mid-twenties.
Jennifer Kobernik #29
The Iroquois are very modern peoples and sort of always have been, being a tribe of towns and villages and not traveling wigwams or Tipis like most others. So therefore they were immediately lawyers, curators, etc. Point being, they immediately and extremely early wrote everything down in English and continue so today with heavy outreach and interaction.
Therefore it’s easy to find “Skunny Wundy” and other Mohawk/Iroquois children’s stories, legends by the passel, from people such as Bruchac. From the other side, applied Indian craft is covered in Tom Brown’s Guides to Wilderness Survival, etc. This has few or no historical Indians, but is the knowledge itself instead which can be more valuable.
I’m sure you’ll have no trouble with these leads, or can even cherry-pick hard-core scholarly stories out of Legend tomes from Arthur Parker, Seneca Curator of the Rochester Museum in c1910.
This goes other directions as well. So Indian racism against Sitting Bull, still practically on the Prairie in 1900 was so bad that a full native Indian was curator of a museum of a major Eastern Industrial city at the same time. Nor was this odd.
For more, there is a “Ganondegon” site also in Rochester, with their own Longhouse and serious museum, and one in CNY, Iroquois Indian Museum, the Cooperstown Farmer’s Museum Art art museum, and as well as being many reservations in NY, one of the largest and important is the Mohawk one, Akwesasne on the Canadian border, which puts out a newspaper in Mohawk, I believe. I am sure their storytellers are on Youtube regularly such as Perry Ground, Onondaga.
“So is Earth Day now the province of confused, well-off, and mostly geriatic TDS sufferers?”
Me: It seems the whole world is being flooded with confused, well-off, and mostly geriatric TDS sufferers. I keep bumping into them. I would like them to all die off or at least disappear. I know I would be including myself in that.
I am geriatric but not TDS. I am curious is TDS mostly endemic in people over the age of 55? Is that because he threatens everything they know. He is destroying their world, after all. So, how do the rest of us cope with the TDS folks?
Happy Friday JMG! So, is the new host Word Press? My bookmark logo for your site has a W on it now. Looks familiar but I’m not sure, President Not Sure.
For those who appreciate an ‘Idiocracy’ reference, I feel like we’re all President Not Sure, heading towards an imperial implosion.
The bad cat had a great take this week on institutional corruption and how it’s near impossible to remove from the system without collapsing it. That depressing outlook aside, the result is still the same, collapse from too much rot. Curious to what that looks like. I always thought it would start and end in the financial markets but I’m not sure, President Not Sure. What is your antenna picking up on our nation’s collective rot? Probably fodder for an entire post and then some.
There’s something to be said for the astrological charts. Zerohedge had an article yesterday about widespread US drought. Sober reading that lead to WatchDog USA, and another Dane Wigington interview about erratic weather and geo engineering. It’s obvious this subject matter is pretty fringe, but do you think the geo engineering conversation will ever move closer to center? My concern is if it does become more mainstream, it will be because the damage is too big to hide, but once again, I’m not sure.
Did some digging around the site when you announced the move. Couldn’t resist the Blogroll of Doom. This was a particularly good and funny find. Have you seen it? Very Ecosophian.
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2026/03/dream-presentation/
From the above: No human attempt at devising a closed ecological system (admitting the sun) has even come close to working—even when simply co-opting hardy and time-tested organisms that have proven interrelationships. Forget about starting from scratch if we can’t even cobble together a set of organisms complete enough to self-sustain. Only Earth has managed that incredible feat, over billion-year timescales—discarding countless mistakes along the way.
So that’s my basic point.
Humans only fool themselves to believe they can do any better than ecology.
Apologies to ramble and send so many disparate questions but obviously there’s a lot going on out here.
@Dylan if you are out there, please post your initial question again. I did on the missing open post quote the Dalai Lama in an initial brief response. Did you read that before it vanished?
There are a lot notes between the notes.
“Return of Strong Gods” by R.R. Reno. I have been reading this book, published in 2019. Reno, the editor of “First Things” magazine, has described how the post-war consensus was to eliminate nationalism and populism in favor of globalism and internationalism. He includes Milton Freeman on the right and Camus on the left with their contributions to weaking the collective, and strengthening the individual. It was the focus of the 20th century, which according to him started in 1914 (WWI) and is still on-going.
However, the 21 century seems to be on the near horizon with the return of Trump and nationalism. He says that the left also have their form of nationalism now in the form of TDS. However, I am wondering if what we are seeing now is the return of populism and demise of globalism.
I guess I see it as the see-sawing of two elites fighting for their place in the sun. Is nationalism and populism getting more and more traction? Is Europe the outlier? Am I off base?
I do want to add my gratitude to the fact that this blog community exists. I had a bad week with various folks fighting over the Virginia redistricting – it would seem the end of world for some people and a blowout victory for others. As for me, with a brain injury, I do not need either extreme.
I t is nice to have nuanced conversation and viewpoints from other parts of the world. It puts all the extreme in perspective.
JMG,
I just read about a recent story in the NYT lamenting all the employees of USAID that are still unemployed after the huge agency was shut down. I can’t read the full article as it is behind a paywall, but from excerpts I have read the NYT is very sad about the closing of this agency and the fact that so many $150,000 a year PMC types can not find equivalent work out in the real world. I don’t wish this type of life disruption on anyone, as losing your job creates much emotional and economic turmoil for anyone. But I think this will mark a point in history when the the hordes of university educated ” diversity” majors meet their Waterloo. There is much more of this to come and any young person planning a life and career should take notice.
It looks like this war of aggression against Iran is going to cause a global recession / depression. Or in other words a rather large step down on the ragged stairstep to a deindustrialized future. I think we can say for certain we are passed the peak of oil production, especially if the shooting war starts up again and the oil fields and refineries get hit. But this kind of explanation of what is happening is not popular with most people
As the difficulties unfold across the economy and world people are going to look for someone to blame. And i doubt that most people will look in the mirror to find the person to blame. Isreal and its supporters are the most likely target in my opinion. I listened to Robet Barnes (a layer, kind of an inside player in the Republican Party) on the Duran last night and he is suggesting going full anti-Isreal is a real viable, popular path for politicians in 2026 and 2028. The Jewish obsession with the holocaust and Nazis may have turned out to be disastrous in the “what you contemplate you imitate ” sense.
I am amused by the search for secret gnostic revelation that got lost or is hidden. The New Testament is rife with references to here and now experiential gnosis. Apparently it’s not the gnosis people are looking for – that dreary Father, Son, and Holy Spirit stuff. I could quote literally hundreds of verses. Here’s a few “ we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have gained access” “ God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit he has given us” “grow in the grace and knowledge (gnosis in the underlying Greek) of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” “so we know ( the verb form of gnosis in Greek) and rely on the love God has for us”
Probably too childlike for some, essentially Jesus as the Lamb of God and Lion of the Tribe of Judah is a grand version of the helpful totemic spirit animal of a Dakota Indian, Jesus who gives us the Holy Spirit and reveals the Father. Works for me and has been very real over the decades.
Getting to know Hu, getting to know all about Hu…
Of the deities in the Welsh SOP he is the second most oblique to me, after Celi (the hidden one after all…)
I think I need to meditate on the plough, Hu as ploughsman. I can understand that… anyway, these things take time.
Also, of interest to some, Damh the Bard has released the fourth branch of his skillful musical audio rendition of Y Mabinogi…
You can get the files all in one here to download or stream:
https://paganmusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-four-branches-of-the-mabinogi
I think the 4 CD set is available from his website and OBOD.
I’d still be down for a Robert Graves fifth wed. post some time, if anybody wanted to join me in voting for that, next opportunity. Just putting it out there as a topic idea. Vote early and often!
@JMG and Siliconguy #30,
I have a real-life story to illustrate “All Conceivable Wealth to the AI Servers!”
A few short years ago, my child, being conventional, down-to-earth, and practical, chose CS as their major and got themselves into a prestigious college. Now in their junior year, they submitted 309 summer internship applications and netted 1 offer. I quietly hope this whole thing comes crashing down before they graduate, so they will have a chance to become a great math teacher instead of a cubical serf.
Jennifer, I recommend the Birchbark series by Louise Erdrich to complement Little House on the Prairie. Erdrich is an absolutely wonderful writer, and we’re fortunate to have this series. It centers on an Ojibwe family. Like Wilder’s series, it’s chapter books. Some of the scenes are heavy (there’s a smallpox outbreak and a child dies in one of the books). “Makoons” is a lighter one in the series. They are balanced books (Erdrich is half-Ojibwe, half-German and doesn’t hate her European side.) They are definitely NOT woke books.
Other good, older books include ones in the “We Are Still Here: Native Americans Today” series, which are mostly out of print but worth acquiring secondhand. Lots of detailed profiles and photos of contemporary American Indian kids and how they live. It’s this series: https://lernerbooks.com/series/10064-we-are-still-here-native-americans-today?srsltid=AfmBOorQVEP-M5pa78vEAdwhvy6hN_c2CwPI9_mZ89LcJnvNp7L34m-v
There’s a recent standalone book with the same title as the series that is entirely separate and I can’t vouch for, but it looks dubious/woke to me.
I also strongly recommend the Bonnie Shemie books on American Indian dwellings. “Houses of Bark,” “Houses of Wood,” etc. Out of print but wonderful!
Looking for homeschooling blog lists or Waldorf suggestions on this topic will bring up more.
“Leopold Kronecker famously declared “God made the integers; all else is the work of man,””
Euler’s number (e, the base of the natural logarithm) and pi would definitely disagree.
Computer wise, Ubuntu just released their latest update of Linux with the usual collection of desktops.
Mint’s next major update has been pushed back to December as they are converting to Wayland having finally conceded Xwindows is history.
Good morning.
Glad to know why I had to update my links.
I just deleted a very long, and meandering meditation that basically asked why people who develop a sense of exceptionalism, and there have been many in history, seem to always believe that they will not follow the same path as every other previous individual people, Empires, and Civilizations? To use a visual metaphor, like Wile E. Coyote, they propel themselves up the mountain, then fail to stop at the top, finishing in a crater full of broken stone and dust. Again and again, they exceed their limits. Is it because they have pushed through so many limits on their way ‘up’ that they stop believing there are any actual limits? Can they not tell the difference? Do they not see that the qualities that propelled them are only a benefit in certain circumstances, and when those circumstances change, those qualities become liabilities?
Furthermore, why do those possessing this sense of exceptionalism seem to hold a contemptuous belief that everyone else is, in the modern parlance, a non-player character programmed to respond in a severely limited way, incapable of agency or imagination, when all of history is replete with examples to the contrary?
Is this behaviour psychic, psychological, or hard-wired in our DNA?
I’ve kind of reached the end of my meditations, but haven’t got a satisfactory answer.
JMG,
Oh, well, I was actually trying to start a conversation, not make a pronouncement, but “fair enough” is fair enough! I do think some of the more egregious (from my perspective) awards of damages by juries are probably due to a generalized anti-business sentiment because of corporations getting away with so much malfeasance, and/or because the juries assume the businesses will not actually end up paying, so the awards are more symbolic. So maybe that would improve if business owners were held more strictly liable.
But man, the number of people I talk to who view businesses as some sort of infinitely restocking vending machines for their personal benefit is not small. It’s notoriously awful in some states such as ever-maligned California, but the view seems alive and well here in Texas, too. I feel old and curmudgeonly just saying this, but more and more it feels like most people really are of the opinion that the world owes them something, and businesses are obliged to provide it for them if the government, billionaires, or whatever source of largesse is in vogue won’t do it.
Moreover, nothing is ever their fault. It’s the fault of “capitalism” or whatever. Not long ago I talked to a woman (a lovely person, actually!) who was feeling defensive about using paper plates, and she went on a rant about how all the trash in landfills is really the fault of corporations who sell paper plates and other disposables. She wouldn’t buy them if they didn’t sell them! It only takes one of those people. Last I remember, something like a third of people in the US get sued during their lifetimes, and I can only imagine the odds go way up if you have anything worth getting.
Most insurance agencies won’t even write farm liability policies for small farms anymore, because you just can’t make farming safe enough to be litigation-proof, and farm land is worth a lot of money (even if it doesn’t make a lot of money) so it attracts litigants looking for a payout. So only big farms can get liability insurance. Just like they’re the only ones who can comply with half the regulations that are specifically designed to regulate the smaller competition out of business. I imagine it’s not so bad in some other businesses, but anything involving food, machinery, manufacturing, public storefronts, etc. probably deals with the same issues.
I don’t know, maybe I am letting my personal bias color my policy views too much. We try really, really hard to produce food that’s healthier than anything you can get at the store, and healthier than 95% of what you can get at the farmer’s market, produced in a way that’s better for the earth than actually probably 100% of what you can get at the farmer’s market. We mostly run everything ourselves, but when we hire people, we try to treat them better than we would hope, much less expect, to be treated. But it still feels like we need the liability shield. The risk is not limited to businesses (we no longer let non-family hunt on our land or swim in our ponds for the same reason), but businesses do have much more exposure due to the number and variety of people they’re providing goods and services to.
Even 30 years ago when I was young, it would have been unthinkable for decent people to sue others for some of the stuff that has become common lawsuit fodder in my lifetime. I wonder what, if anything, could reverse that cultural shift?
@Aldarion #43: Interesting. Do you have a title for that Kenneth Pomeranz book? I don’t think I understand what is meant by a ‘market economy’ or ‘market-oriented economy’. I am in the process of learning what exactly distinguishes capitalism from other economic forms. Your mention of legally protected or decreed monopolies is helpful.
Along the lines of my earlier (crashed) comment, I can see how monopolies have been a curious fixation of Western culture since the middle ages, with the the Catholic Church’s prolonged attempt to enforce a monopoly on spiritual practice. Ivan Illich would say this is not an analogy to economics but a chain of direct historical causation. Islamic civilization has also been concerned with spiritual monopoly (more so than China and India, which I would characterize as spiritual hegemons rather than monopolists in their respective spheres). Yet Islamic economics have not evolved along the same lines as Western. I wonder if prohibitions around usury have played a role there, as they did in medieval Christendom? This is almost all guesswork on my part.
@BeardTree #66: I didn’t see your initial reply on the crashed post. My question, re-phrased, is as follows:
Do you think there’s an understanding of Christ’s crucifixion and atonement that meshes with the framework of karma and reincarnation as outlined by JMG?
Mydog, no, not really. If you want to put through a comment marked “not for posting” with your contact info, I can see if I can get it to the other person, but there are no guarantees.
Nephite, glad to hear it. That said, well, I wasn’t there at the time so don’t have any firsthand way of knowing.
Booklover, if the DOP exists, it was created after the publication of the book. I haven’t heard of anybody working the system, but it’s certainly possible.
Ornifex, I didn’t just mean the ones in the Middle East. The Iranians would have to be idiots not to preposition sleeper agents elsewhere in the world to carry out sabotage, assassination, etc. — and I see no reason to think that they’re idiots.
Grover, it’s an important part of the truth, but not the whole truth. There are too many people who are poor because of their own life choices, and blaming the rich for them is easy but irrelevant.
Zemi, these are in no way mutually exclusive. If your efforts in previous lifetimes lead you to have a capacity for music, odds are that you’ll be reborn in a family with the right genetics, as well as the right attitudes to get you early instruction.
PumpkinScone, exactly. As I recall, the religious concept of sunyata, the void, became an important theme in Indian philosophy around the time zero found its way into their mathematics.
Jean, it looks as though we’re going to be able to get out The Sign of the Phoenix, the fifth Ariel Moravec novel, in the autumn of this year, and get back on an available-for-the-holidays schedule after that. I’ll keep everyone posted.
Sylvia, good. Yes, all the news is being spun six ways from Sunday. It always has been — the issue now is that there are competing spins being splashed around the internet, and so we get to see the conflict. As for your question, it’s quite simple: they’re all lying. Read as many competing sources as possible, and you can sometimes grasp the reality through the fog.
Martin, it seems to work very well, in my experience. Thanks for the code — I’ll pass that on.
Rajarshi, that’s something I’ve seen in a lot of practical people. It’s those who spend all their time with abstractions that get mired in quantitative bias.
Cynthia, I’d like to know what the civilizations that will come after the impending dark age will be like!
JeffBKLYN, no, it’s a private hosting company. WordPress is just the blog software, as it’s been since I started this blog. Thanks for the bit from Tom Murphy — he’s always worth reading.
Neptunesdolphins, you’re not off base. Europe is an outlier only because its elites are better positioned to cling to power — they’re still facing a populist upsurge, they just haven’t been destabilized to the extent that some other countries have.
Clay, you can tell just how detached the Times is from most Americans by seeing them weep tears for the fall of so overprivileged an elite group.
Dobbs, I’ve been watching all this closely, as I’m sure you can imagine. It’ll be time to talk about peak oil again soon…
BeardTree, that’s one kind of gnosis. There are others, which are much less visible in the officially approved scriptures.
Justin, here’s a mandala for your meditations:
Inna, here’s hoping. The age of the techbros really is ending.
Renaissance, if you can figure that out, you’ll change human history, because knowing the cause is the first and crucial step to finding a cure.
Jennifer, so noted! Unfortunately one of the perennial features of decline and fall is that more and more people figure out ways to parasitize productive economic activity, until it no longer becomes profitable to do anything at all.
@NephiteNeophyte (#40, #49):
Irenaeus of Lyon, Hippolytus of Rome, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem and Basil of Caesarea, writing from the late 2nd century down to the late 4th century, all mention a secret tradition passed down from Jesus to some of his apostles, and thence down to their own times through successions of bishops. It seems fairly likely, from what they wrote, that this tradition involved esoteric practices more than esoteric doctrines. I could send you a synopsis I once prepared of the relevant passages from their surviving writings, if you like.
As for recent scholarly literature on the question, as you know, there is Morton Smith’s Jesus the Magician (1978), but also much of Margaret Barker’s work, including her 1993 article, “The Secret Tradition” [downloadable at http://www.margaretbarker.com/Papers/SecretTradition.pdf%5D. Smith was an avowed atheist, so he ruled out a priori the possibility that Jesus could have been anything more than a human being. Barker is a Protestant, and until recently she was a Methodist lay preacher, so her work on esoteric tradition did not arise out of her own personal religiosity, but purely out of scholarly curiosity; she is immensely learned. (Your name suggests that you might have a Mormon background; if so, you might need to know that Barker’s scholarship has been very warmly received by Mormon scholars.)
Also of considerable interest are several books by Robert Conner, who strikes me as having a large ax to grind against mainstream Christianity, but nonetheless are very well worth reading: Jesus the Sorcerer, Exorcist, Prophet of the Apocalypse (2006), Magic in the New Testament: A Survey and Appraisal of the Evidence (2010), and finally Magic in Christianity from Jesus to the Gnostics (2013). They are all published by Mandrake of Oxford, a small press that specializes in books on magic.
Conner also wrote The Secret Gospel of Mark: Morton Smith, Clement of Alexandria, and Four Decades of Academic Burlesque (2014), which is marginally relevant to your question. Smith’s publication in 1973 of a supposed fragment from a otherwise lost letter of Clement of Alexandria, quoting from a secret longer version of the Gospel of Mark containing some of Jesus’s esoteric teachings, set off an academic firestorm, since the fragment can — but need not be — read as implying that Jesus had a homosexual encounter with an unnamed young man, in the course of which he passed on esoteric teachings, and Smith himself was fairly well known to have been homosexual himself. To me, who have read virtually everything published by any scholar on the fragment, it seems clear now that the fragment Smith discovered and published is not a modern forgery (by Smith or anyone else), nor is it likely to come from a genuine letter by Clement of Alexandria, but most likely it was a forgery made a few centuries ago in the context of Greek Orthodox monastic life. (This is definitely a minority view among scholars.)
In light of federal agency uncertainty and incompetence, states appear to be stepping up.
State/volunteer level public health grew during the 2020 pandemic, with recent acceleration. These include the Peoples CDC, and multiple state/regional level vaccination recommendation schedules.
Working through the courts…. https://jacobin.com/2026/04/citizens-united-electoral-corruption-case
Held, L. (2026). Should every State have its own farm bill? . Civil Eats. https://civileats.com/2026/03/19/should-every-state-have-its-own-farm-bill/
On Linux, the standard Ubuntu desktop is Gnome. Here is the direct link to the other variants.
https://ubuntu.com/desktop/flavors
Also Zorin just shipped a new version as well.
https://blog.zorin.com/2026/04/15/zorin-os-18.1-is-released/
Of the versions I’ve tested personally KDE Plasma uses the most memory and needs a decent GPU. Then stepping down it’s Cinnamon, MATE, LXQT (Lubuntu), Xfce (Xbuntu).
I also tested Gnome which I did not like but don’t remember how much memory it took, and likewise Zorin. Both of them did work decently on a 2014 vintage computer with 8 GB memory and Intel built in graphics. Kubuntu (KDE Plasma) did not run well on that PC with the integrated graphics being the bottleneck.
Fedora 43 with Plasma does work well on a 2010 vintage workstation with a 6 core Xeon, 24 GB memory and an AMD RX 560 graphics card.
MATE runs a bit slowly but it does work on a 2.5 GHz Core 2 Duo with 4 GB of memory. It runs quite well on a 2012 2.6 GHz i5 with integrated graphics. MATE is considered old fashioned but it works well and seems friendly for some reason. I mostly use the Mint versions of Cinnamon and MATE depending on the hardware.
It’s a great time to experiment especially given the RAM shortages pushing up new PC prices.
BorealBear 62
> This Norwegian tends to find it uncomfortably hot once the temperature climbs into the mid-twenties.
I think a good portion is genetics — evolution — higher metabolism, or something. Thicker skin, or something. When I think back to the 1960s, walking to school {heaven forbid, how can some parents be so cruel?} the 5 to 8 blocks (three different schools) in 0ºF/–18C weather, I walked with knee socks with bare knees (we had to wear skirts). As long as I kept moving, knees were okay. What is funny is that Calixornia is billed as the greatest weather ever. It isn’t. Caligornia breeds churlish, stupid, mentally-deranged, aggressive, bully lowlifes. And that is not the half of it. When people experience living in Calihornia as “congenial,” it is by accident and temporary. Had I had it to do over again, in 1992 we would have moved to Boston, Massachusetts — for all Boston’s faults, at least it is cold. I warn people off from moving to Calihellnia. And JMG says Calitornia is only going to get worse, partly because the state govmint cannot retain its well-heeled tax-base; those remaining are impoverished gimmee-gimmee-gimmees.
In the Northern Hemisphere, we are embarking on Spring😞. We have had a couple 80ºF/27ºC already, and I wilted during those. Gone is this Spring’s crisp weather. I slog through May-June-July-Aug-Sept-Oct-Nov — seven months of torment. Kill me now. (southeast states would definitely do me in.) Global warming? Give me a solid Ice Age. I would settle for a “Little” Ice Age. Please glaciers, come my way. I beg you, God(s). PRETTY please. Here goes:
————————————————
🙏🏼Dear God(s),
Please be so kind as to send a Little Ice Age to southern Wisconsin this summer. I know it is against your rules, but yes, it would make only one person happy. What if I make it a deathbed wish?
Signing off,
💨🧤🧊🥶🍾💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
————————————————
Mark at #9: You don’t need Kessler syndrome. Something like year 774 Miyake Event (~ 100 * Carrington event) would probably be enough to fry everything on the orbit (also on the geosynchronous orbit), and many electric things on the ground as well?
JMG,
I think your novel ‘Retrotopia’ has plenty to say about the possibility that top-down policy reversals can have a massive impact on general well-being, not to mention percentage of the population incarcerated or drug-addled. That said, I’m not blaming all poverty on the rich. I’m blaming a lot of the current impoverishment and immiseration on the 0.1% who are perfectly willing, in fact eager (cough cough, Bill G@te$, cough cough), to let lots of humans die so that they can make another billion or two. Those are the insatiable ones. The full-on wendigo types. And I think the quote stands in that light. I like it anyway.
I obviously haven’t been around in a while. Did you ever buy that little house with space for a garden you were talking about? The strawberries here are starting to ripen, buckets of blueberries and raspberries setting, potentially the first taste of our Euro pear too. And the carpet of white clover across the backyard is nice as well. Cheers.
“The age of techbros is over, and the time of the blue collar worker is come.”
I’ve been meaning to ask for awhile, how do you think the unionized skilled trades will fair through the decline of industrial civilization? Particularly for trades that are more ‘skills heavy’ rather than ‘labor-organizing heavy’, like electricians(IBEW) and pipefitters/plumbers(UA) that have pretty in depth apprenticeships as there core value along with sizeable marketshare at the utility/industry level. Union electricians and pipe fitters do the maintenance and upgrades/expansions on nuclear plants and refineries for example.
JMG or anyone else:
I may have the opportunity to visit Prague later this year. Would anyone have any suggestions of esoteric, occult, or magical sites to visit, especially related to alchemy or esoteric Christianity?
Separately, does anyone have Prague-specific books to recommend?
Thank you!
Greetings JMG,
I’ve wanted to ask you about this for a long time but I keep getting sidetracked and forget to, so while there’s an open post and I remember here it is: What are your thoughts on Dion Fortune’s assertion of the “Occult Police Force” that she describes having knowledge of, and working with? She even gives a visualization method for direct contact ( If memory serves, a Red Cross on Black Background?). Are they valid as an organized force of the Light? Something that you personally have dealt with, or have had contact with? Admittedly, I haven’t had a valid need to attempt such contact, and would not do so lightly, but the curiosity is tremendous. I “Want to Believe” this is valid! Thanks for your thoughts on this.
Re: Southern Poverty Law Center
Years ago, from the very first description I heard of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), it felt like a burr under my saddle: SPLC never felt legitimate. Now, with this scandal, I know why I felt they were illegitimate: they have been a scam all along.
Dinosaurs Sorodoraus the Elder (the unWise) and Sorodoraus the Younger are major scammers. Many people around the world consider the pair of them as evil. Both Sorodoraus’ will do anything to get their way. They think they know what is best for others, and there, they are dead wrong.
The two above-mentioned dinosaurs suck👎🏼. When will they be gone-d? When will an asteroid hit them?
💨🦖💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
JMG et al,
I’m trying to picture a ritual conducted by Siouan-speaking natives in the Piedmont of Virginia and North Carolina in 1670. A German wrote about it in Latin which was translated by an Englishman who never set foot in America, so the detail aren’t recoverable, but it seems to involve forecasting using reeds and straws
but they aren’t scattered with the patterns interpreted.
So many of you are more familiar in these areas, ever conducted, read about, or witnessed something like this?
“Their reeds and straws serve them in Religious Ceremonies: for they lay them orderly in a Circle when they prepare for Devotion or Sacrifice; and that performed, the Circle remains still; for it is Sacriledge to disturb or to touch it: the disposition and sorting of the straws and reeds, shew what kinde of Rites have there been celebrated, as Invocation, Sacrifice, Burial, &c. ”
Maybe they’re dealt out in a circle like Tarot cards? Ideas?
The account is by John Lederer. https://rla.unc.edu/archives/accounts/lederer/lederertext.html
Jim Kukula: That’s interesting. Am I correct in assuming you are coding or have coded a synth for your microtone music? Is there a microtone-capable instrument that you play? Do any of the microtone scales that you’ve made corrospond to equal tempered tones and intervals besides the fourth?
I find it interesting that your 53-tone octave lands on both Pythagorean and just intervals, and I wonder what the signifcance of that might be. Not that I know much about either thing. I think I’ve seen just tones discussed at some point in the past in this very comment section, but since the instrument I play is a fretted guitar, I didn’t look into it. I mean, I do play microtones when I bend, but I’m not thinking I want to hit some specific pitch according to a microscale, I bend to where I feel the pitch evokes the emotion I want that note to do in that place. The majority of the time this doesn’t require bending at all.
I coded a synth this week to play some drums and chords for me while I play, but I did that because I’m finding a lot of the youtube backing tracks kind of boring and repetitive to play to, and plus I’m tired of having to deal with the ads. The music my app makes would be ridiculous and silly to just listen to as music (which, um, I sometimes do anyway) but as something to play to, I’m pretty happy with it.
I guess consonance and dissonance are in the ear of the beholder.
@Charlie Obert #26:
News sites tend to be rough on my nervous system, what with the ads and the celebrity news-slop that they rapid fire at anyone without an ad blocker.
All of which is to say, mostly I get my news from various Substack writers. I also look at the Current Events page at Wikipedia, in part to get a sense of what narratives the intelligence agencies are pushing.
Dylan #79 re. karma and atonement… well, I am Buddhist, but this might work anyway…
Karma is maintained on the basis of a distinction between self and other. It’s like bank accounts. If you add up everybody’s positive and negative balances, it’s essentially zero. When you let go of this preoccupation with dividing me from you and us from them, karma basically vanishes. It’s illusory nature becomes apparent.
This is what contact with the divine can do. It’s like those astronauts who look down on earth and realize that this us vs. them business is absurd, tragic. “Take, eat, this is my body” – that is surely intimate contact with the divine. How that fits in with the crucifixion exactly… I will leave such mysteries to the Christians.
@ Cynthia Christie #61
Mine would be the origin of human language. How and when it did happen? Was it a one-time thing, or independent developments? Would be so fascinating to have a complete language tree all the way back to the beginning, so we could see, say, what ended up turning into Proto-Indo-European. This also reminds me of a similar late-night thought of mine: compared to people in the deep future, we’re very privileged in the sense that we can still know exactly how and when civilization and agriculture developed*. Due to the Old vs New World separation for most of the Holocene we can also categorically know that agriculture, writing etc were independent developments that happened more than once. At some point that will so far in the past it won’t be recoverable by history and archaeology anymore, which is a bit sobering to think about.
*By the conventional account, anyway. I know our host favors the idea of agrarian civilizations during the Pleistocene, but personally I’m not convinced
@ Jennifer Kobernik #78
As a European, I’ll admit the whole American lawsuit culture has always been hard to grasp. Not that we don’t have plenty of our own foibles, of course. I’m not exactly sure how it works here, but I don’t think you’re allowed to sue for things to nearly the same extent. At least it doesn’t seem to happen. Anyway, I suppose it’d be easy to fix in theory by imposing stricter standards for what counts as unreasonable negligence, but of course it comes down to political will as it often does. Can definitely understand your frustration, especially since it sounds like you’re providing a very valuable service. Certainly more so than the lawyers…:)
@ Aldarion #39
Thank you!
Yes, my comments got eaten.
Oh, I forgot.
Charlie Obert: I’d suggest a couple of blogs: the first is https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/ , which is written by a guy who is, and I may be misremembering since I haven’t got the info to hand, but who is a supply chain manager or something similar in Eastern Europe. He talks a lot about what’s involved with the economy of fuels and minerals, and there’s a general overlap of theme with the Archdruid Report, the former blog of our host.
The other is https://aurelien2022.substack.com/ , written by a guy with experience in diplomacy. He tells a lot about how the sausage is made regarding how nations deal with each other.
Neither of these men confines their writing to the thing I mentioned, it’s just that those were the standout things for me.
I think you suggested some sources before JMG’s blog hoster had it’s hiccup, right? I’d meant to make a note of those, but hadn’t yet done so when it happened. I wonder if you’d mind posting them again?
@Dylan #79
Have to agree with the Dalai Lama on this one
“Don’t try to put a yak’s head on a sheep’s body” He said this in reference to attempts to combine Buddhism and Christianity. He sees a fundamental incompatibility in world views despite an overlap in ethics and morality. He encourages Christian’s to go deep into their own tradition.
I like JMG’s image of different mountains surrounding the valley of life instead of a single mountain with many paths up. IMO attempts to unify spiritualities inevitably means the Bed of Procrustes is used to make everything fit together. The Bed of Procrustes in Greek mythology was a bed that either you were stretched to fit or cut to size to fit.
As regards the crucifixion I regard it as a great act of ritual sacrificial magic done by God with a multifaceted effect. Utterly primal, not primitive as some people regard the Blood of Jesus..
@Northwind Grandma,
just thinking that there are other ways of finding your tribe and a place and people to belong to than the way one looks. When I moved to a new place, one of the first things I did if I could was try to find a local church to attend. One effect of that was to automatically give me a tribe, even if I was in a literal foreign country at the time, or most of the other people at the church were filipino and there was nearly as much tagalog as english being spoken.
I think I’d rather be somewhere where I share the local religion than somewhere I look right.
There has been discussion of the unusual predilection of Christianity towards congregational singing. It’s salted through the New Testament. Jesus and the disciples even sing a hymn at the Last Supper – Matthew 26:30 There are even verse in the Epistles that scholars think may be quotes from early Christian songs. Ephesians 5:14 is one. References to song are also found in the Old Testament.
This group may appreciate this. JMG has referred to holes in the current cosmological model of the universe, put together back in the 20th century. It could be said it may be on a verge of a crisis similar to the one the Ptolemaic heliocentric model went. through in the 1500’s as it was buried by precise astronomical observations.
A short (less than 12 minutes) entertaining animation made just last December detailing observations contradicting the current cosmological model. Though I am a Christian it is not from a creationist or intelligent design perspective.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zozEm4f_dlw
I teach Earth Science and I will wrap up the class with this as the last unit is galaxies, the universe, and cosmology.
Oops! I’ve missed too many comments today, so I must choose well which ones I’m going to answer (to no be boring).
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JMG # 22:
Thank you, I take note of your comment.
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Charlie O. # 26:
Well, I answered you indirectly in the another Open Post before this one, in addition to JMG comment about it.
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Michael G. # 34:
Your link about glowing treetops during storms is amazing! I’ve never heard about that phenomenon, though of course, I’ve read that sometimes in old times over sailing ships, according some sailors, during storms, there was a “fire” over some ships tops. A natural but strange phenomenon related with electricity, methink. And beyond my relative ignorance of hard sciences, I can remember ancient times ships were made of wood, like trees structure…
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Aldarion # 43:
Indeed, it seems European (and then Western) real capitalism began with “strange” friendships between Modern Age states, the Law, and colonialism. It’s an interesting view which I had to study at high school in History class, and I think it’s hard to be easily debunked by another views, if I’m not wrong.
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Ornifex # 51:
A good question…I’m not qualified to answer you wether there’s a real global problem in oil facilities or the confirmation bias is fooling us; but all these news seem strange. However, I can remember journalists choose news which they think (or their bosses think) are interesting. I mean, for example, at least in my country, MSM love to show men who brutalize/kill women, but not how most of men here don’t brutalize nor kill women (OK, woke feminist ideology is working here, too: a not very good example, I’m sorry).
Work hypothesis: if MSM are obsessed with fires in oil refineries and another oil places, maybe they’re worried by oil facilities. Why?
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Dobbs # 71:
An anti-Zionist “hangover” after last events in ME is a possible tendence in near future. Old rehashed “reasons” to support Israel politics (like “the only one democracy in ME” and the Holocaust topic), could begin to loose their “power” soon. Well, I wouldn’t mourn very much this political change in the West, but oh wait! Maybe I see over the horizon an ugly face: the return of real Antisemitism (not the fake thoughstopper used by Zionists to harass their opponents). Which could be a sad and dangerous return…So I’m not happy with that possible near future.
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Finally, I’ve read some comments about Gnosticism. According my limited knowledge of these Christian “heresies” or speaking more neutrally, “branches”, I understand gnostic people said (or say) it’s better to know spiritual world (God included) by personal learning and experience, than by blunt beliefs. I’ve written my view in the short form. Am I right or not?(I hope confirmation and/or correction for my idea, thanks on advance).
@Renaissance Man (#77):
I’ve noticed the same thing, and puzzled over it.
Part of the answer, it seems to me, has to do with the experience of hard limits, as you suggest. One of the wiser sayings I’ve ever come across is “It’s our limitations that keep us sane.”
If one has never felt the constraints of limitations in one’s own life, or if one has been able to ignore them, then one is quite likely to go mad. And since most people obviously are limited in what they can do, one comes to feel exceptional in one’s own unacknowledged insanity: others are indeed NPCs by comparison. Some of the most valuable experiences I have had in my own life have been experiences of failure.
And there’s another thing here,. too: the curiously American set of alternative religions lumped together by historians as the New Thought movement (including the earliest of them, Christian Science). These religions, roughly speaking, deny the very existence of human limitations (and even the reality of the material world): when a person seems to be limited by anything in the world, that is nothing more than a delusion, either personal or of society as a whole. Christian Science even went so far as to claim that death is only an ancient collective delusion: if people were able completely to free their minds from all delusion, no one would ever die.
One of the more recent, highly influential New-Thought authors was Norman Vincent Peale, author of the book The Power of Positive Thinking. It explains a lot about our current national politics that Rev. Peale was the minister of the church (The Marble Collegiate Church) which President Trump’s family attended throughout his childhood in New York City: he was raised inside the New Thought movement, and he never thought critically about its teaching. Alas!
@JMG,
That’s fair enough, but it seems shortsighted. For one thing, if Trump had not pissed off all of Canada at once, by tearing up a deal made in good faith during his first Presidency, Mark Carney likely would not be Prime Minister! Pierre Poilievre’s campaign was torpedoed because he was viewed as too friendly to the Americans and not likely to “stand up to Trump”. Granted, the Liberals did a great job politicking by ditching Justin Trudeau and blaming the last 10 years of misgovernance on that one man– but if Trump hadn’t managed to turn our last election into a single-issue referendum about himself, I’m pretty sure Canadians would not have been dumb enough to fall for it.
You could have had Canada’s oil exporting via the Gulf ports and getting all the harbour fees, getting the economic boost of having extra refined product to export, et cetera and still brought in Venezuelan oil to avoid single-source dependency. It’s not either-or! If the Gulf Coast can’t absorb that much heavy oil at once, you’d have time to expand refinery capacity if needed while the pipeline was finished.
Now we’re pushing to build infrastructure in-country to get that oil to China and Europe, cutting out the traditional Texan middleman. That’s not a win for the USA! Your government might be able to short-circuit it by funding our environmentalists to block the infrastructure, or by staging a colour revolution in Alberta via the separatists there, but right now it’s looking like Canada-US relations are as much as a self-own as what’s going on in Iran. It’s worse for us, but it’s not great for you.
I’d like to write now some ideas about recent and current geopolitical hot areas.
First, I bet you know Orban was defeated in last Hungary elections. I’d like to think, in a “boy scout” ethical view, that this populist right wing politician got fired by a majority of Hungarian voters in a clean way (for example, due to his possible wrong politics)…not thanks to threats by EU elites nor by Kiev regime. Oh, of course I cannot imagine an hypothetical electoral fraud to get rid of this hard line Putin “friend”. I’d like to hope it’s only my personal paranoia and nothing more, but who knows?
On the other hand, I think the current ME mess is in an “impasse”. It’s very possible its main actors in that area are rearming now their armies before a new round of open war starts again, soon or later.
I also think Iran played quite well its limited cards in its asimetrical war way, so its economical/political/military structures have been damaged more than the Eurasian axis like to admit…but less than its correlative and opposite Western axis propaganda (also known like “news”) has said.
It could be an ironic and paradoxical effect of US&Israel destructions against Iran, that these attacks could have weakened Iranian facilities…But on the other hand, they’d have reinforced political “friendship” between the current religious theocracy power supporters, and the more or less secularized and even leftist (to some extent) Iranian people who tends to nationalism. Religious zealots and angry nationalists haven’t the same shared interests, except their hatred against the West. So do the math (hypothetical alliance).
If this “friendship” is true, pro-western Iranians (Monarchists included) maybe have begun to suffer more under this “dual iron fist”, so if they’re clever, maybe they must live with a low political profile now…
I must warn you I don’t speak Farsi not Arab (and I can’t read them neither), so please, read this comment only as a work hypothesis.
I’d be glad to read your comments about these geopolitical views.
Hi JMG,
I finished your latest Ariel Moravec mystery, “The House of the Crows” and really enjoyed it. I love this series and am already looking forward to next year’s installment. I have two questions for you related to the novel. First, can you give us a hint about the plot of the next book. I know that it involves the Bertie Scrubb movie, but will we get to meet the cast and or crew, or will they be peripheral to the story? I must admit that I’m looking forward to you roasting big-budget Hollywood productions (at least that’s what I’m hoping you do.)
The second question regards what you said about ghosts of trapped souls being in a dream state. If that is accurate then it might explained something that happened to my Mother’s best friend regarding a ghost in her home. In the 1950s, when she and her new husband moved in, she was told that the morning room was haunted. Indeed, she periodically saw a mist appear and move through the room. Shortly after her first daughter was born, she had the baby in her crib in the morning room while she worked on some things and noticed that the mist appeared and floated toward her daughter’s crib. She panicked, screamed, “oh no!” and rushed to the crib. The mist vanished and never reappeared. We always wondered why it never reappeared for all the years she lived in the house (until the early 1990s). What you write in the novel about trapped souls being in a dream-like state may explain it. If the emotional state my mother’s friend was in along with her shouting shook at the ghost shook it out of its dream state, then it might have realized where it was and then have moved on. Is this a reasonable interpretation?
Thanks again for this novel series. It really is a lot of fun.
Back on “All Wealth to the AI Servers”, the bubble is not done yet.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/24/google-to-invest-up-to-40-billion-in-anthropic-as-search-giant-spreads-its-ai-bets.html
“Anthropic said the agreement expands on a longstanding partnership between the two companies. Earlier this month, Anthropic secured 5 gigawatts worth of computing capacity as part of an announcement with Google and Broadcom that will start to come online next year. Anthropic could decide to add additional gigawatts of compute in the future.”
So five big nuclear or coal plants industriously boiling water around the clock.
And this headline from Zerohedge (can’t read the article but don’t need to, “Stocks Close At All Time High On Iran Optimism With Semi[conductors] Up A Ludicrous 18 Days In A Row” pretty much says the same thing.
Personally I’m glad the potatoes are breaking the surface. The lilacs are blooming but the cherries are done. It helps to keep me centered.
Hey JMG and commentariat
I already mentioned this on original post, but since it crashed I must do it again.
I recently completed a scale model of a cabinet designed by Enzo Mari, and posted a note with pictures of it on Substack.
https://substack.com/@jlmc12/note/c-247695515
Reid Hoffmann has started a substack and argues that Silicon Valley is based on faith: https://reidhoffman.substack.com/p/faith-in-the-possible
The comments though are even more fascinating, in particular from a Chinese reader:
“framing the startup as the central vehicle of modern progress is a distinctly American narrative. From the Chinese experience, a more accurate formulation might be that state capacity, infrastructure, industrial organization, and corporate competition together form the main engine of modern progress. Many of the key conditions that determine whether technology can truly diffuse are not things a single company can solve by itself. A payment system depends on clearing infrastructure, smartphone penetration, communications networks, and regulatory coordination. EV adoption depends on charging networks, grid expansion, local subsidies, and supply-chain clustering. The same is true for high-speed rail, solar, drones, and industrial robotics. China’s experience suggests that technology matters, and companies matter, but companies do not perform miracles in a vacuum. More often, they stand on top of a system that has already been organized at scale.”
Retrieved from the file Martin saved, my last post.
@Charlie Obert: I am at a point where I am questioning more and more why and whether I need any “news”
@BorealBear re:natal readings: I recommend https://www.etsy.com/nz/shop/SecretFireMagicShop (run by an active commentator here IIRC)
@JMG and others on music in churches: if I understand rightly the whole music thing started as chants and thus as a natural progression from a form of letter/sound mysticism. Then Palestrina (around the time of Columbus?) added counterpoint, for which at the time he was roundly condemned by many in the church who considered it heretical and inspired by the devil. And then having a court composer creating masses and the like became the in thing for elites. The reformation then reacted to this excess in two ways: 1) removal of music in some denominations; and 2) in others ‘democratising’ the music by having the congregation do the singing.
Just wondering how many people on here are taking active steps to distance themselves from the crazy on the internet and the push to do more and more online? I seem to have hit an inflection point last fall/winter on what I’m willing to tolerate without doing something about it.
Thus far since then, I’ve:
gone back to ubuntu from windows
rationed how much internet I do per day and am now consuming significantly less
gotten into an argument with my Dad over an app he wants to use and I don’t
taken to reading a lot more library books than I have in years
bought a watch and am trying out leaving my cellphone at home
paying with cash and avoiding self-checkout (though I was doing that already)
I’ve noticed that I have more patience for reading novels. My dry eye and eye pain has improved markedly (yay! that’s worth a lot all by itself, hopefully this isn’t just coincidence) On the negative side, I’m finding that I have less patience with stupid, and also with other people in my life who are treating me what I feel is badly.
What are other people who are backing away from excessive net use doing?
Hi Michael Gray,
When lightning strikes the ground, the soil enjoys a nice deposit of atmospheric nitrogen. That fertilises the surrounding soil. It’s funny to think of the sheer volume of nitrogen in the atmosphere, and yet plants can only access a tiny small quantity of it, let alone leaving much in the soil, and they use every trick under the sun to do so.
Have to laugh about the copper ground stakes. Copper is a potent anti-fungal, so it’d work a treat in Australia’s more acidic soils. Coffee grounds have some nice quantity of copper in them, and always worth chucking on the plants, but err, they do need lime as well for balance, here at least – Calcium being somewhat thin on the ground.
Building the soil fertility is a good use for all those fossil fuels, and um, err, diseases from mineral deficiencies were a thing not all that long ago, and may soon rear its ugly head. Already I see things in the population, but right now, many of those issues seem to arise from lifestyle choices. Still, it’s the same outcome.
Cheers
Chris
Hi John Michael,
Your interweb site was remarkably weird yesterday, but has settled down today back into a semblance of normality – whatever that is! 🙂 I could still see the old website last night, and the new one, so presumably your server host uses cloudflare, which works kind of like an old radio repeater station. Ain’t much new about this ‘ere interweb thing. Anyhoo, it’s all good now.
Peak Oil continues along its merry old way. With supply down to 80%, it’s often lost on people in first world nations, that there are now those whom are missing out on supply. This is often not discussed in the media, although I’ve read a reference to that here and there. We’re down to the unstated policy of ‘rationing by price’, which I reckon people are pretty good with from what I’m observing. And I’m yet to hear cheering about the situation from the folks oh so concerned about global warming. In fact the opposite seems to be the case. There is a good old fashioned word for that: Hypocrite.
Mind you, like you, I too believe that using the atmosphere like a sewer is a bad idea. Still, a warmer planet is not an apocalyptic event, although depending on personal circumstances, it could feel like that. And neither is Peak Oil going to produce a Mad Max outcome. The wonderful thing about having grown up poor, is that it is not on my list of things to fear. To be honest, strip away what economists describe as the ‘wealth effects’ of asset bubbles, and people used to be far more social and resourceful. How far we’ve climbed, and fallen, all at once! Bizarre isn’t it?
Cheers
Chris
@Dylan: In my understanding (I am far from an economist), “market economy” simply means an economy where a considerable share of interactions are negotiated in money. Of course, even today, there are interactions that are not monetized, in families, churches, fan clubs and so on. And even in 8th century AD Ireland, a few items like silk or jewels might have been paid in money to long-distance merchants. But we are definitely more on the market economy side, while in 8th century Ireland, the huge majority of interactions were customary and not monetized. Even as recently as in the early 19th century, in England and Germany, a considerable part of real estate could not be sold because it was tied to (noble) families.
Now economists have laws about price making under conditions where an infinite number of sellers, each one an individual, interact with an infinite number of buyers, each one an individual. This is remarkably distant from what we see in daily life. Here in Quebec, there are basically only two chains of drug stores, which explains why I feel assaulted every time I buy toothbrushes. Chicken farmers can tell you how prices are formed when there is basically only one buyer in the country.
The funny thing is that these theories about how prices are formed were nearer to reality in pre-19th century Islamic countries, where the markets and the rulers were quite aloof from each other, and also in some parts of 18th century China and (maybe ?) India. I am just paraphrasing some blog posts and articles I read long ago, but I believe they were referencing Kenneth Pomeranz’ magnum opus The Great Divergence (which I haven’t read).
So while (some) Western economists have claimed that the freedom given to markets in Northwestern Europe explained the domination of the world by European countries, it might actually be the case that the marriage between governments and sellers of goods, in the form of state support for monopolies and other corporations, catalyzed the explosive growth of England and then the rest of Europe fueled by coal and oil. It produced huge iniquities, but for a while also a lot of wealth. Opinions will vary if it is adaptive nowadays.
@Zemi #53: Rudolf Steiner frequently talked about traits inherited through genetics vs. traits developed through karma, using musicality as an example. His view is basically in agreement with JMG’s response to you. Check out this archived lecture and search for ‘Bach’ to find the relevant example:
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA097/English/CMP2000/19060314p02.html
@pygmycory #111 – one of my ways of escaping the internet is with paper and ink letters sent though the mail. So far it is just person-to-person. I have tried to get any kind of round-robin letter packet going in various communities, with zero success. Maybe some day! Anyway, if you’d like to give it a try, we can find a way to exchange addresses.
@Cynthia Christie #92 – I use CSound for synthesis. I don’t have any kind of microtonal instrument… I have some software I use to generate score files: https://interdependentscience.blogspot.com/2024/07/freedom-and-constraint.html
The Lumatone looks like grand fun, but rather out of reach for me! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlZv13YZzSM
Lazy, good. The sooner we move back toward a federalist system of 50 semi-independent states that only transfer those specific powers named in the constitution to the federal government, the better.
Grover, as I noted, the behavior of kleptocrats is a big part of the problem. It’s just not all of it. No, I don’t have a little house; I don’t plan on being tied down again by real estate until I remarry, if that happens.
Jason, the more skilled the trade, the more durable it will be, so long as it doesn’t depend on the survival of advanced technology.
Michaela, I’m going to toss this to the commentariat in general, as I haven’t been there and don’t know the sights.
Graeco-Egyptian, to the best of my knowledge, it was something that existed for a while in early 20th century Britain. I’ve heard nothing to suggest that it still exists.
Joel, fascinating. I have no idea; anybody else?
BeardTree, so noted!
Tyler, of course it’s shortsighted. Trump shares with many New Yorkers a fatal inability to realize that acting like a New Yorker doesn’t necessarily work well outside the five boroughs.
Chuaquin, I’m still watching all these events and am not ready to make public statements on them.
Chronojourner, I don’t know enough about Hollywood productions to roast them; the filming of the Bertie Scrubb movie will be an ongoing factor during the next book, and we’ll get to meet a few people involved, but it’s not the main plot engine by any means. As for the ghost lore in The House of the Crows, to the best of my knowledge it’s accurate, and your interpretation of the ghost encounter seems plausible to me.
J.L.Mc12, hmm! Nicely done.
KAN, interesting. The Chinese comment seems very sensible to me.
Pygmycory, it’s certainly strengthened my resolve not to go on social media!
Chris, exactly. I really do need to return to peak oil in these discussions, don’t I?
@PumpkinScone #55
Imaginary numbers are interesting: the idea behind them is at first glance highly dubious, and the way they’re taught can I think be justly criticized for defining them into existence. However, complex numbers can be reconstructed in linear algebra as 2×2 matrices (square grids of four ordinary numbers), and under the normal rules of matrix arithmetic they behave exactly as we expect complex numbers to behave.
@Siliconguy #76
You might be surprised to find a small number of mathematicians are dubious that numbers like e, π, or even √2 are numbers in the same way that 5 or 1/2 are! The doubt arises from the need for an infinite amount of information to specify the number in concrete terms, whether in decimal, as the limit of a sequence or series, as a continued fraction, etc.
To the obvious counterargument that these numbers arise in nature, the rejoinder seems to be that (a) they actually only arise approximately because reality is messy and especially in light of modern physics seems to have a fundamental discreteness to it, and (b) π and √2 generally arise in a unit-dependent way.
For an example of the latter issue, a square with side length 1 will have a diagonal of √2, but you could just as easily have taken the diagonal’s length as the fundamental unit, and then the sides would be √2/2 diagonals in length. What this might suggest, then, is simply that we can’t measure exactly the sides and diagonal in the same units. (I’m far from sure I agree with this argument, but it’s not obviously unreasonable.)
I tend to agree with TylerA here:
“@JMG,
That’s fair enough, but it seems shortsighted. For one thing, if Trump had not pissed off all of Canada at once, by tearing up a deal made in good faith during his first Presidency, Mark Carney likely would not be Prime Minister! Pierre Poilievre’s campaign was torpedoed because he was viewed as too friendly to the Americans and not likely to “stand up to Trump”. Granted, the Liberals did a great job politicking by ditching Justin Trudeau and blaming the last 10 years of misgovernance on that one man– but if Trump hadn’t managed to turn our last election into a single-issue referendum about himself, I’m pretty sure Canadians would not have been dumb enough to fall for it.”
For what it’s worth, I really don’t like Carney and did not vote for him (globalist bankers have always been one of my least favorite kinds of politicians whichever side of the spectrum I’m on at the moment), but that doesn’t mean I’m a fan of Trump’s behaviour towards Canada or want to get annexed by the USA. I can dislike both of them, and I’d bet there’s plenty of other Canadians in the same boat.
Re: Christian congregational singing
I’ve worshipped many times in Methodist and Lutheran churches, and rarely in Roman Catholic and Baptist settings. The Lutherans and Methodists offered hymnals with 4-part harmonies, and people learned to sing them to glorious effect. (One Lutheran practice has been that everyone sings the melody for the first verse, and when they break into harmony parts for subsequent verses it can bring mist to my eyes.) The Catholics just provided a melody and maybe a guitar player or two, and the Baptists had a choir and/or soloist and very little for the congregational participation. I was taught that the Wesley brothers composed hymns for their early Methodist church as a way to bring sacred texts to illiterate laborers. The combination of rhyme and melody is more easily learned than random prose, and one’s mind is less likely to wander totally away when called back to attention by a sung liturgical response. I find that it’s easier to imagine a musical setting while lying awake at night, groping for psychological comfort.
Charlies Obert – Where to get news?
The “Tangle” daily on-line newsletter is good. They aggregate clearly identified positions from the left and right, then try to present a balanced common-ground position. There’s a free version, which is all that I have time to read, and a paid version that goes deeper into some issues.
I read ZeroHedge, too, and sometimes a satire in the Babylon Bee alerts me to a topic that deserves follow-up in serious reporting.
Mr. Greer
I have been practicing your teachings in The Druid Magic Handbook, and reached the end some time ago. I would like to further my education and practice, and also to diversify my knowledge, so have gotten a copy The Heathen Golden Dawn. However, I remember you saying something about different energies and exercises not meshing well together, and read something similar in W. E . Butler’s Apprenticed to Magic, which I read on your recommendation.
I’m worried about bad outcomes from trying to combine the exercises from your druidry book with those in the Golden Dawn. Or bad outcomes from switching immediately to the Heather GD exercises in lieu of those from Druid Magic; is this a valid concern? Do I need to rest a bit to let things, reset, as it were, before trying out the Golden Dawn exercises? Can I continue doing the Sphere of Protection, grove ceremony &. co while also beginning to practice the Golden Dawn? For divination, would there be interference caused by going from ogham to runes?
Another question, please. You’ve gone into discursive meditation quite a bit. I was using it as a topic of discursive meditation, itself, comparing it to the Golden Dawn practice of a daily review, and wondering if they both filled the same niche, as far as developing the mental sheathe toward a mental body goes. And that got me wondering if any mental exercise at all, say abacus practice, or learning a new language, etc, if these all contributed to the mental body’s maturation, or if there was something specific about discursive meditation in particular?
Thank you
Cynthia Christie #97 – here is the list of sites I mentioned in the Phantom April Open Post.
– Naked Capitalism
– Simplicius substack
– Larry Johnson substack and site (Son of the New American Revolution)
– Unz Review – several writers incl. Ron Unz
– Strategic Culture Foundation (Alistair Crooke and Pepe Escobar among others)
– rt.com – Russian
– presstv.co.uk – pro Iranian
– Hua Bin – Chinese blogger on substack
Sylvia 57
> if there are no human jobs in 20 years then all of those children of today are doomed to live in their parent’s basement
Just ignore this classification of ****. It means nothing. My comment 12: see my list of blue collar jobs which, by the way, currently are going begging all over the USA. For the last few years, and now, there is more DEMAND for such workers than there are workers. I would add “welder” to my list. I haven’t sat down lately to conjure up a more thorough list, but I am sure the commentariat has suggestions.
Women *CAN* do men’s job, but they need to be very “into it” to put up with all the male-garbage sexual innuendo-crap. (I was there in the 2nd wave of women libbers 1960s; the 1920s being the 1st wave). If I was around the next 30-40 years (73 now), I would be MORE than willing to get a heck of a lot better at one of following two career choices:
(1) REALLY learn to cook (*), I mean REALLY, REALLY learn to cook — that is, become at least a consistent B+ cook.
(2) Fitting clothes and getting to know the new world of soon-to-be limited fabrics (but dear Gods, keep denim), learning to be dressmaker, seamstress, sewist (not sewer), or tailor, or,
A woman will never, ever starve if she knows one of those skill-sets.
Particularly food. Just remember back to a place and time where you had no choice but to eat “plain,” flavorless, dull food; even if the food was good nutrition, one could hardly gag it down; it got thrown out. That is what makes a good cook: scarfing down food or letting food sit on the plate uneaten. When have you ever heard of there being too many GOOD COOKS around?
I should know. My “mother” had to be the lousiest cook in creation. She had one way to cook liver. I don’t know what method she actually cooked liver (probably sauté), but she had one,— and only one,— sauce. See if this sounds appetizing. ***She served liver in a watered-down milk sauce.*** Does that sound like you would want it again, or do you gag just thinking about it? (Maybe this note will inspire you to take up cooking as a life-long challenge.) I can never forget that milky-liver. Stoupper’s boxed frozen dinners will not last forever.
* The two best-ever cooking textbooks are both by America’s Test Kitchen (ATK). Get them while supplies last:
(1) America’s Test Kitchen’s Cooking School Cookbook,
ISBN 9781936493524.
(2) Cook’s Illustrated The Science of Good Cooking,
ISBN 9781933615981.
Both cost a mint to buy new, but used, one can get substantial discounts. Every potential cook needs one of each. And guard them jealously. Don’t let them out of your sight. And don’t get food on them.
Find a “hands on” career that YOU find and choose: that is, actually do something with your hands.
Anyway, that is my spiel for today. (At 73, I get one a day.)
Have a good food day,
💨🍗🫛🥔💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
JMG, re post dark age civilizations: Yeah, that would be an interesting one to know. I’m wondering also when that will be. I wonder if we’re facing a period of climate instability such that fixed agriculture and civilization will be off the table for a while, at least in some places.
BorealBear, re language origin/tree: That’s another good one! Even just the first part, how and when language appeared. What a nifty thing to know that would be. Interesting late night thought as well. As I said above, I wonder if agriculture might need re-inventing, so our descendants will know about that.
About non-human paleo-civilizations on Earth, I’m actually quite interested in that as well. In fact if I got two things to ask the all-knowing genie I imagined, that would be the second one: were there such civilizations. As it is, I find I have to be agnostic about this. I am neither convinced nor convinced against.
BeardTree, re the cosmology video: I wonder if the truth will turn out to be that we’ve figured out the universe as best we can given the clues we have, and unfortunately those cracks or anything that’s not understood, will just have to remain as such. I read once where a famous cosmologist had said that some trillion years hence, it will still be possible for intelligent life to emerge, but it will be unable to figure out the universe because vital clues will be missing. Maybe that’s the case now. Vital clues are missing now, and that’s just how it is. I find I’m quite at peace with this. We’ve figured out the part that matters: the limit of our capabilities. We can send robots to Mars to mark up the hitherto pristine regolith with track marks, but we aren’t going to be sending spaceships to colonize distant worlds.
@TylerA and JMG re: Canada – US relations
Canada is obviously being aligned as an antagonist to the US. We (Canada) are China’s and the EU’s pawn, with PM Carney taking marching orders. We have no say in our destiny at this point.
I expect even harsher economic penalties in trading with the US going forward until either Canada fractures under the pressure, or cries uncle and gets on board with “fortress America”.
As far as I stand, I would rather be friends with my neighbour than friends with people who live half a world away (who also hinge their friendship on me constantly antagonizing said neighbour).
BorealBear: I have to correct myself. I meant that I’m interested in the idea that the appearance fossil-fuel using species who promptly cook the whole place might be responsible for climate spikes from millions of years ago, not about anything from the Pliestocene. I should probably google words like that before I respond to them, not after. 🙂
Jennifer Kobernik 78
Try Biberk insurance at website of that name. It is a Warren Buffet company. We have had their small business liability insurance for about five years. Never had to claim anything.
💨📝💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
“I appreciate the authors in the sacred geometry field who’ve pointed out that zero and infinity are both completely imaginary”
Infinity is already recognized as not a proper number, but I’ve had similar thoughts about zero.
You can sometimes use “nowhere” as though it were a place, or “never” as though it were a time. “Where can I find a married bachelor? Nowhere. When perpetual motion be achieved? Never”. You can also sometimes use 0 as you would a number. “How many apples are there in the basket? None/zero.” But all of these only work sometimes. You can’t say that a concert is taking place five miles south of nowhere and eight minutes after never, and you can’t divide any number by zero without a basic arithmetic falling apart.
Though if you were to divide by zero, I’ve always felt infinity is the intuitive answer. Consider the real number line: Every point on the line is dimensionless, with a length of zero, and there exist an infinite number of points between any two numbers on the line, but that infinite amount of lengthless points “adds up” to the finite non-zero length separating those two numbers.
∞ * 0 = X
X / 0 = ∞
X / ∞ = 0
0 / 0 = ∞ / ∞ = X
Where X is any and all positive numbers; you take a little bit of nothing, mix it with some everything, and then you get all things.
Aha! Your answer reminded me about people talking how the unchecked migrations of people groups in the West are also introducing agents of hostile foreign states. If Iran is doomed to lose this war they are making sure the rest of the world goes down in flames suffering an even bigger loss by creating the worst oil crisis in history. From what I’ve read online the crisis is baked in even if Trump ends the war today.
Hi JMG,
If this is too long, please post it not. I got carried away. Sorry. —NWG
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pygmycory 111
Question> Just wondering how many people on here are taking active steps to distance themselves from the crazy on the internet and the push to do more and more online?
Answer>I am doing more and more OFFLINE, and less and less ONLINE/ON COMPUTER. Except for JMG’s blog here, a couple sub-stacks I check in on weekly, getting email, doing the job of bookkeeping and the hobby of genealogy, and minor other things, I am mostly offline. On UTub, I watch the occasional Shirley Temple movie clip “The World Owes Me a Living” (not) that I remember from childhood, some Laurel and Hardy routines, some Abbott and Costello routines (Who’s on First ‘Base’?), some Carol Burnett routines (the green window curtain Gone with the Wind routine still cracks me up), some Three Stooges shorts/movies, order flower essences, I disconnect digitally.
I don’t send many emails. The act of emailing feels false. It is likely I will initiate a real-life “paper letter,” old-fashioned, pre-2000 correspondence with an old high school girlfriend, age 72. It is odd that we were 14 and 13 once,— together trying to make sense of the world. She knew me when. The two of us survived this long, and I am surprised at that. Our time is nearly up. I look into the abyss without worry. I buy books of paper.
At the moment, I am busy with our small business, focusing on what I need to get done and letting go of all else for the time-being; I will pick up the threads in a few weeks.
Jethro (husband) is a refugee software engineer of Silicon Valley (GrislySpawn Gully) so, of course, he HAD to (past tense) acquire the newest, brightest, shiniest, and most expensive iPones and iPuds available since 1984. I went along, kicking and screaming.
Then, all of a sudden, I reached my ultimate limit around 2020/2021 when, after moving house, we had to get a new refrigerator, washer, and dryer. What I witnessed bowled me over.
When I heard that the above appliances came with “web connectivity,” or whatever it was called, I had a meltdown. The-Cailleach came out.
{Have you ever met a Cailleach up close? Think of the worst thunder and lightning storm you have ever been in, and that will give you an idea to what extent I blew my top.}
I said to the male salesman, “You think, I, a female, want my washer to be on the Internet? Are you males crazy? Why the hell would I want my fridge on the Internet? So it can tell me when to open its door, and tell me what to reach for, then eat? It would tell me I need to eat THAT orange and not that leftover chicken? Have you all lost your minds? And that is not even including I have just given any random lowlife on the Internet permission to TURN OFF my fridge, so when I awaken one morning I find the refrigerated food warm+rotten, where I have to throw the food out, costing hundreds of dollars? The committees at ELGEE and Samscum have nothing better to do than try to fit all the world into the wires of the Internet?
THEY ARE NUTS. And no, I don’t need to get an email telling me my dryer has timed out. How about I just walk the 40ft and check to see if the dryer is finished? I need the exercise. And no, I hear, using my ears, if and when the washer is unbalanced with waterlogged pillows — the whole neighborhood can hear the din. I don’t need my washer sending me an email informing me that my washer is making a god-awful noise and will soon take off into the stratosphere, propelled by its thunderous noise, leaving a gaping hole in my house where the washer had exploded. I can hear all that using my, ahem, ears. That is why women from Day One stay near the washer and dryer when those appliances are ON because THOSE LARGE APPLIANCES ARE DANGEROUS.
Plus, I get my emails only once a day when I feel like getting them, so I won’t even be at my Macintosh in order to receive the email that tells me that my dryer’s lint has caught fire. I will just have to use my, ahem, nose to smell the smoke.
Not only that, I found out garage door openers have Internet-access these days, which means strangers can see when one leaves (when one opens and closes garage door) the house so they can burgle your house right after one drives away. Has everyone gone whacko?
When one’s entire house *CAN* be on the Internet, that is when I called it quits. My inner-Cailleach came out — I had a major s***-fit, and the s***-fit continues whenever I think about it, like now. (self-talk: now Northwind, calm down. Let the cold wind wash over you. Breathe out. Breathe in. You are okay. The big bad Internet is not outside the door waiting to eat you.) <<>>
So, I am not the ideal GrislySpawn Gully wife. When techworld couldn’t stop the treadmill it was on, I knew the Internet and computers were doomed; when overpaid technology committees could think of nothing better than harass women in their homes, with the everlasting cockamamie promise that Internet-access would make life better. In what universe?
So, it is offline that I find solace. I only plug in to the digital world when I/we need it. We are ramping up a micro-business, and now, at this point in time, having our own website will be a big plus. THAT will be fun because I speak pidgin-html. A website is created by skilled writers. Add splashes of color of hokey clipart. Presto chango, Web 1.0, here we go. A website we can maintain ourselves affordably.
Another thing where I knew the Internet was doomed was when the developer of my favorite color app (starting about year 2000) on the Mac announced (around 2015) it was no longer going to support ColorSchemer. That was the most simply and elegant color app invented, and I mourn its loss daily. If I had known around 2015, I would have frozen all Mac upgrades just so I could run that app. After ColorSchemer was kaput, I knew it was only a matter of time until paper would re-emerge as winner, that digital was just a flash in the pan. Pfft. So people return to analog/mechanical, if we can. That is when I mostly stopped buying “ephemeral” books based on air (Kindling; Nookie).
I am considering deleting 95% of the apps I have accumulated from my iPong and iPoodle, leaving only apps I actually use, like a couple writing apps, genealogy app, and bookkeeping app.
Offline is where real life is. I am happier offline. I use digital when/if it suits me/us. We will use it when it makes sense. In other words, we will use ONLINE/DIGITAL on a limited basis. Our micro-business, in a year or two, will be selling handmade wooden objects via a website we have yet to put together; and the putting together of that site will be a lot of fun and be hugely worthwhile.
So, 10,000 words later… ugh!
💨🧣💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
JMG # 80:
In your answer to Sylvia, you wrote (news) they all are lying. Of course, I agree. MSM are mainly owned by private corporations in favor of this or that propaganda, and some state owned media, who usually are mouth pieces for this or that government ideology. Social
media aren’t much better, because they tend to be in this or that ideological echo chamber…
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Poor and rich people topic:
I think some people end in poverty due to economical politics to favor rich people, but I’m not a naive leftist, so I think others are poor due to personal wrong choices. The elephant in the room is addiction. If you aren’t rich enough to pay your expensive vice (for example cocaine addiction or gambling), you’ll end poor as a rat soon…or even worse, imprisoned after having funded your vices stealing others. Addict people, when are full driven by their vice(s), cannot leave it at will…but when they started it, they decided to go on it, so they’re partly responsible for their problem(s).
By the way, one of my childhood nightmares was being attacked by a heroin addict, armed with a needle (AIDS?) or a knife when I went to school or returned home, during last ‘80s, because part of petty crimes here were commited by addicts who used stolen money to inject it in their blood…(well, my another nightmare was ETA terrorism, but it’s another topic).
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Beardtree # 101:
Cosmology IMHO is in the border between science and philosophy, in the sense that their hypothesis cannot be proven directly nor in a full way in a lab, but their “evidences” usually are indirect and problematical, methink. So I agree. There are some holes in current official cosmology.
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Pygmycory # 111:
I tend to use less internet and avoid being too worried by actual news, since the COVID pandemic, so I’ve got more time to read novels and essays.
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JMG # 117:
OK, I respect your cautious attitude about recent and current geopolitical events. Indeed, I’m not sure what really happened and it’s happening now in those hot areas, so my “paranoid” ideas must be understood as “work hypothesis”, not thick truths. No argument here.
Thank you, Mr. Greer and Dylan, for your replies to my query @ #53.
Which makes me wonder if Dylan is your REAL name, Dylan. I have a friend who called his daughter Layla after the Eric Clapton song. Just so long as nobody names their daughter after some dreary song like “Comfortably numb”. 😉
Mr. Greer wrote, “No, I don’t have a little house”.
So I clicked on “Home” at the top of this screen. Up came another screen, which told me
403 – Forbidden
Access to this page is forbidden.
And the page URL is:
ecosophia.net / transfer /
I removed the spaces around the forward slashes.
> “There are quite a few scholarly fields these days that have basically been shut down because there’s no more original work to be done. ” — JMG
Our physics lecturer told us that hydrostatics was a closed science. “We can answer any problem in hydrostatics.”
Then he added, “We can still fool students, though.”
Re singing in church:
When my nephew was baptised, the only people in the Anglican church were a small crowd of family and friends crowded around the font.
At the part of the service where we all had to sing, the priest put it in a very nice way. He said, “It says in the Bible ‘let us make a joyous noise unto the Lord’. It doesn’t say we have to sing beautifully. So let’s make a joyous noise, please, and make it loud so He can hear us.”
So we all sang out lustily if not tunefully, and went home happy with our performances.
Lathechuck, in my case, no, it doesn’t help. It’s like trying to have a conversation with someone when thirty other people are talking loudly at you, all at once. But I’m glad to know most people don’t have this problem.
Oatmeal, yes, it’s a significant concern; magical systems based on the Sphere of Protection don’t play well with systems based on the pentagram ritual. If you want to proceed from The Druid Magic Handbook to other books that are compatible, you might consider The Dolmen Arch, two hefty volumes of occult training, or my recent book Revisioning the Tree of Life, which is also wholly compatible. As for discursive meditation, its advantages aren’t limited to its ripening of the mental body. Exercises that don’t involve the mind in exploring abstract meanings don’t have that effect at all, but learning a new language does; if all you’re interested in is the effect on the mental body, that would work.
Northwind, er, please rein back on the profanity. This is a family-friendly blog and so I bleeped words in both your latest comments. Remember that “frack” and “shale” are always appropriate swear words for this community!
Valenzuela, I like the thought of a concert five miles south of nowhere on the day after never, and I can think of some musicians I’d like to schedule for that!
Ornifex, and they may not think they’re doomed to lose this war…
Zemi, thanks for this. My tech person has fixed it.
Martin, exactly. I wonder what will happen when most fields are in that state. With regard to joyous noises, I’ll pass, thanks. Quiet is much more joyous to me.
Hey JMG
I don’t know if you already know, but in Australia one of the biggest developments has been the government saying they will be enacting reforms and various cuts in order to reduce the cost of the NDIS, due to the massive amounts of rorting and the drastic increase in people accessing the scheme.
It has been expected for a while that the government would be doing this eventually, since so many “providers” have been taking advantage of the scheme, mainly via overcharging services. This has caused the cost of running the NDIS to rise by billions of dollars, but it is unlikely the government will go so far as to shut it down entirely since it is currently one of the few sectors that has significant rates of economic growth and employment.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/apr/22/ndis-changes-reforms-cuts-national-disability-insurance-scheme-explained
More on “Strong Gods.”
Reno says that a part of the post-war consensus was disenchantment and a reliance on science as the way to perceive the world. In his ending chapters, he discusses that one of the strong Gods is transcendence, that the post-war group tried to stomp out.
Since Reno is a Roman Catholic convert, he refers to bringing back Christian religion, especially Catholicism as a way to overcome the post-war mentality and scientism. He believes that Covid and the government’s reactions to Covid spelled the beginning of the end of the 20th Century. In other words, bring back religion in all its forms.
So I guess the folks here are living in the 21st Century with their focus on magic and other matters.
One more thought on “Strong Gods.”
I believe that Iran War spells the end of the 20th Century. Once it is over, NATO will cease to exist, along with Europe retrenching. China will fall apart as it stands now. The US will retrench as well to having industry and government be responsible to the citizens in a reciprocal arrangement.
That is my reading of the situation. That the Iran War signals the breaking apart of the post-war world.
Charlie O. # 123:
I think Simplicius, in spite of his pro-Russian bias(or maybe thanks to it?) usually gives good information; and he isn’t a mere Putinist mouth piece. I like he tries to think by himself, methink.
On the other hand, I don’t have access to RT from my country, thanks to anti-Russian censorship implemented by EU&NATO since 2022 (free speech?). I don’t really miss to read it today, because I remember it was mainly Putin propaganda, but censoring due to wars or woke subterfuges is always a bad thing.
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Martin B. # 135:
Fake myth of “closed sciences” returns periodically within some reckless scientists. It happened during last XIXth century, before past century revolutions; I think Einstein thought for a while that after his Relativity Theory there wouldn’t be more advances in hard science, and so on. It seems to me an arrogant and mental lazy attitude, too. By the way, I also think often Einstein has been depicted as a pop secular saint (?), but he dared to say that Science soon would explain everything, so philosophers would be soon unemployed (well, maybe he said it with more polite words). He was in a debate during the 1920s with H. Bergson, and the French philosopher seemed puzzled by the scientist “being of light”(cough). OK, it was a great genius, but nobody’s perfect…
One thing I always find wild about Atheist Secular Materialists is the claim that Atheists don’t make any claims about their state of disbelief. And that Atheists do not Attack or Defend. A wild claim that I can not fathom anyone with any intellectual honesty making or accepting.
@Tim PW
Thinking of this term: ‘Maple Maga’. It rings as a shallow conception to mask that Canadians who still believe in the spirit of the country will fight back. We ginned up Americans interests in freeing Canada from corrupt rule before in The Patriot War, using the hunters lodges to build militias. Some interesting ideas there…
Perceptions can also change and I am hesitant to believe of our country’s destiny is so easily taken.
Carney is an adept globalist and has incorporated much of the conservative agenda to, in part, de fang them, which was admittedly brilliant. But he’s not just a globalist he’s also an American businessman, and in some ways a counterpart to Trump. Would you be surprised if there is a back door deal to protect America’s flank as they back out of their International interests by courting Europe and China? What would happen if a shadow deal like that was made public?
Seriously cool biology. Proton pump propulsion.
The bacterial flagellar motor is finally understood after 50 years.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-physical-life-force-turns-biologys-wheels-20260420/
If you are wondering where the protons come from, water has a disassociation constant of 10^-7 which doesn’t sound like much, but at 6.02 X 10^23 molecules of water in 18 grams or 18 ml, there are plenty of temporarily free protons hanging about the place.
@Cynthia #125 Yes, cosmology is like an archaeological dig and its interpretation – intelligent guesswork about the past. Yet I believe they still haven’t really determined how the great pyramids were built.
José Antonio Marina is an old and respected spanish philosopher, who during his long career has written mainly about Phenomenology, human intelligence, Ethics, Education and Religion(s), between another more topics. After this Spanish thinker short depiction I’ve made, I want to tell you about what I think are his most interesting ideas (IMHO) in the philosophical/religious debate. I hope not to offend anybody beliefs, but I think Marina was a brave man when he wrote some years ago, his essay “Por qué soy cristiano”(Why Am I a Christian). I guess he answered to some extent to the famous and controverted Bertrand Russell book “Why Am I Not a Christian”. I think Russell was brave and provocative when he wrote that book, because secularization within western thinkers were smaller than today. However, nowadays, when non believers are majority within universities elites in the West (and a lot of average people are not religious neither), Mr. Marina essay seems brave and provocative too. He could have pretended an apparent and easy agnosticism to not upset his fellows, but he tried to show that reason and faith don’t have to be enemies, at least for him.
It’s possible his reasonings have upset some Conservative and Traditionalist Catholics, because he opened a can of worms, when he pointed an uncomfortable past event during his thoughts about Catholicism.
I’m thinking in his criticism against Vatican I Council, when the Pope (Pious IX methink) and his Cardinals ordered Catholics to believe in a new dogma of faith: the Pope infallibility.
According Marina thought as a Catholic/Christian philosopher, beliefs are not rational (or better said, they’re beyond reason), but they cannot despise nor deny human reason. Faith needs some reason to work within human beings experience. Popes infallibility can be understood (to some extent) as the Vatican reaction against secularist philosophies and ideologies during the XIX century (and maybe the Italian unification against the declining Pontificies States); but it cannot be justified by any believer who really thinks by him/herself. Marina explains this view better written and explained than I can do, but in the short form I agree. According every Christianism branches, only God is perfect, but human beings are imperfect. The Pope is a man, so he isn’t perfect, so…oops! (?). Of course, a Pope knows much more than a simple believer about religion, but pretending he never can’t be wrong in faith topics seems near an insult for everybody who uses its reason and good faith. Well, the Pope isn’t God (cough). Indeed, catholics, orthodox and a lot of protestants believe in three Persons within God, not four.
It’s possible this counterattack made by Rome against the anti-religious or heretics free thinkers wave didn’t work well; even it could be partly a motive for explaining the massive runaway within western thinkers from Catholicism, during past century. I write this impression as a work hypothesis, and of course I admit I’m biased by my view as a fringe Christian.
Unfortunately, I think this book nor another essays written by Mr. Marina haven’t been translated into english. After an online search, I’ve only been able to find a French translation of his Ethics essay, named “Une éthique pour naufrages”(well, I’ve written it according my raw memory).
Interesting is no01’s substack, especially “weaponizing the periodic table” – a short description of some of the most important rare earths, and also the relevance of mangesium, for aluminium alloys for example.
Most of the smelting and refining processes for rare earths are 70-90% in China’s hands, with a comment the West would apparently need 15 years to rebuild such industry in the US, and that assuming there is access to relevant deposits.
Some things are also extracted from coal dust for example.
China is willing to poison whole provinces for this dirty rare earths business.
It is also very ironic, the US government sold the remnants of its strategic helium reserve a few years ago, after diminishing it gradually since 1996.
Craig Tindale is also an interesting analyst in matters of industry and supply chains, informing us on the consequences of many of the infrastructure attacks in the middle east and beyond.
Some articles of anslem perrera and “veronken” have been public. Interesting detailed info at times.
Meanwhile also sulfur and sulfuric acid are lacking, partly a side product of oil refining. Sulfuric acid being needed in semiconductor production and other things, sulfur also an ingredient in fertilizer.
Considering many of these informations and apparently a peak of production of shale oil in the us last October (but I don’t remember from where the info), it seems the US attacked this March for good reason: China banned exports of rare earths this year January, without which the US cannot build a single military item, and which are sourced as finished smelted products almost exclusively from China.
The time window closed for the US to stave off a descent into oblivion as a global actor it seems.
Meanwhile there are many reports, Europe opened its strategic oil and jet fuel reserves, for mere burning so the markets stay satisfied, without replacement, probably in anticipation of an end of the blockade in Hormuz.
Fatih Birol, leading figure of the international energy agency, expects impacts of fuel shortages in Europe by the end of May, and he warns people underestimate the gravity of the situation entirely, also because consequences come with such a delay. Beginning of next year, this years fertilizer shortage and subsequent loss of planting in the spring season will lead to shortages in global food supply.
Shortages in electronics are possible, while Iran threatens to attack internet infrastructure in the middle east. Apparently there is an underwater cable in the strait of Hormuz conducting a big part of the worlds internet and financial transactions.
“materialistic ‘progress’ leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.”
Another paraphrase of Tolkien’s words and thoughts by Humphrey Carter in his biography of Tolkien
I’m working a Polytheistic Golden Dawn based on the instructions you gave on dreamwidth. It’s going very well so far.
For your Celtic Golden Dawn system, did the tarot assignments to the tree of life ever appear in print?
More broadly, I think you’ve said your CGD Cabala isn’t exactly the same as traditional GD Cabala. Do you have any pointers on how to approach the study of Cabala in an original PGD?
Thank you
The “About JMG” section on the right side of this blog currently says
“John Michael Greer is a widely read author, blogger, and astrologer whose work focuses on the overlaps between ecology, spirituality, and the future of industrial society. He served twelve years as Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America, and remains active in Druid nature spirituality as well as several other initiatory traditions. He currently lives in East Providence, Rhode Island.”
Methinks this needs to be updated to reflect the fact he now lives in Maryland instead of Rhode Island.
I wrote the first post on the fly and don’t have a copy, but it does seem to me that the internet is now a psychological battleground with much content deliberately attempting to mess with people’s heads – if it is true that only about half of content is created by humans, and a good percentage of humans are publishing slop, that suggests useful content is diminishing – search engine degradation with bots trying to direct users to slop makes it harder, and seeing people write “I was talking to grok” and “Chatgpt said…” should have Robby the Robot from Space Family Robinson shouting “Warning Will Robinson – Danger!”
Brandi #32 (original thread)
“I resonate with every sentence from your post. Worked in edu-tech 2000-2016. Went back to school to finish an English degree (because reading) and study economics (to try to make sense of things which it did but not in the way it was designed), then transitioned to gardener/potter. Hands in the mud and not on a keyboard best keeps me grounded. Too bad about the Internet, yah?”
Ha – we were in edu-tech too!
Sold as the new shiny future but in fact an animated corpse.
Sometimes it seems that being on earth is a matter of learning what not to do and how not to do things… neti-neti
“Hands in the mud and not on a keyboard best keeps me grounded.”
We’ve found that too; a lot.
Grover #87 (original thread)
“I’ve just now reached my breaking point with just about every other website I haunt”
Yeah – in the end I decided to stop general browsing for a while. It was a bit weird to begin but quickly proved its worth.
Shifting focus from having a screen as an intermediary and turning in other directions worked well – first direction ‘look within’ and second direction ‘do physical work’ opened things up in a good way.
A third direction, ‘beyond’, adds a nice extra dimension giving a triangle (on paper – but it’s actually more interesting than that), and the dynamic flow of balance gives an effective fourth space between the three points.
Back-slid a bit when the Middle East kicked-off, but looking for info on that soon proved to be tricky. Having to scroll through internet slurry in the hope of finding something useful ended up feeling like a waste of time – a bit like circling through levels of Dante’s Hell; so, backing away from things again seems like a good idea.
‘Hell is empty, all the demons are here’.
‘On Mother’s Day I will be 6 years cell phone free. Six. Glorious. Years.”
Nice!
We are still on pay as you go 2g phones but I think their plan is to turn that off around 2030 – what is disturbing is the push to make everyone access services online – a monumental FUBAR waiting to happen, just like Mr Creosote from ‘The Meaning of Life’ – Gonna be messy.
https://www.zerohedge.com/military/interceptor-drone-arms-race-emerges
First were drones, then interceptor drones, then interceptor drone interceptors.
I’m getting vibes of the old short story, The Battle by Robert Sheckley. It’s made its way into a lot of collections.
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?58544
@Slithy Toves #76: Since this is an open post, here goes:
Proportion of circle to diameter,and the near asymptote
Blanchefleur’s smile; there in the throat her greeting
sprang, and sang in one note the infinite decimal.
Charles Williams, from The Sister of Percivale
Your comment about the approximate nature of π reminded of the “near asymptote” in this poem!
Hi John,
I know you are bearish about self-driving cars, AI and Mars cities reaching the full potential that is touted by techies like Elon Musk. So what are your feelings about fusion power? I’m 67 and it seems like all my life that fusion power has always been “just 20 years away”. Personally I hope the day never comes. Humanity needs more energy about as much as a junkie needs more heroin.
Several years ago JMG wrote about a social cycle that alternates between in politics and interest in religion. Which column did that appear in? I’m sending my metaphysical novels to agents and getting no interest, so I wonder if religion just isn’t in fashion these days.
“William, granted. False information is one thing, but in a society that does everything online and tends to be embarrassingly credulous when it comes to online content, these new gimmicks are likely to cause a great deal of trouble. The point I’d make is that there are already significant trends away from the internet, and this will shift them into overdrive. I’ve read that some intelligence agencies are already going to typewriters and filing cabinets in place of computers, since it’s so easy to harvest data from the latter; the more riddled with fraud and impersonation the internet becomes, the more firms and individuals will simply back away from the internet altogether.”
While the internet is ground zero for this sort of thing, it’s far from the only place it can happen. There are some very clever methods of artificially aging paper available now, to make a memo or will look like it’s the right age; voice recordings are now easy to fake; and there are other methods of attack as well: simply put, the methods to fake materials has also advanced faster than the capacity to detect fraud.
I don’t see how a society in which large organizations spanning multiples continents are normal can function under these kinds of strain; I don’t see how anything resembling the modern world can function without these large organizations (if only to handle things like oil delivery); and right now I don’t expect to see a Butlerian Jihad for another few years.
Even when one does get started, I’m not at all sure that the modern world can survive it, and frankly I have no idea what kind of world will emerge from such a drastic change as a Butlerian Jihad would seem to imply.
@JMG,
I have to admit I’m still not sure about “Canada is a geopolitical enemy” in #46 — evidently Trump agrees, but we in Canada just cannot see it. Aligned with China and the EU– in what way? Economically, our trade is primarily with the US. Legally, our common law system borrows from yours. Militarily, the Canadian Forces are so integrated into the US force structure we’re basically Foederati. Air defense goes through NORAD– which is run by the USA– sea defense is simliarly linked. The few ground troops we have cannot get to war without American lift capacity.
In what meaningful way does Canada serve as an enemy? Culturally, perhaps? Culturally, we’re a blue state that’s very smug not to be connected to the red states, but our brand of suicidal progressivism is very much recognizable in Democrat politicians. Indeed, it originated in the USA! I can see how Republicans would look at us as infuriatingly attached to their opposition, but that hardly translates to being a geopolitical enemy of the USA.
Sure, we trade with China– but its the same scale as US trade with China, in terms of total trade volume, and some years the USA has a higher percentage going to/from the PRC. Percentage-wise, America has double the trade with the EU than Canada does. The USA was able to absorb most of Canada’s economic output, and we were happy to let you have first dibs and send the scraps elsewhere.
So I really don’t get where the sentiment of “Canada is a geopolitical enemy” came from. Could you explain it? That’s not a rhetorical question. Sure, Canada’s geopolitical alignment is starting to change now, but, uh… it wasn’t our idea. That’s what happens when you declare someone your “geopolitical enemy” and threaten to invade, which is how Trump’s annexation talk was taken here.
It’s all still so very reversible. Sure, Carney has the soul of a Eurocrat and he gave that speech at Davos– but trust me on this. When the next American leader breaks out the milk bones he’d find Canada ready to sit up and beg like a good lap dog again. It doesn’t even need to be economic concessions! Just friendly rhetoric will do. We’re dumb like that in this country.
@pygmycory & Tim PW
I didn’t vote for Carney either– I can’t ever see myself voting Liberal– but he’s actually doing better than I expected in some ways. It’s a crying shame about the hate speech overreach, but that’s happening all over. It’s not even limited to Canada/EU– even Florida has given up on the idea of Free Speech with their draconian antisemitism laws.
In my lost comment from the lost iteration of “open post” this week I mentioned that, based on the recommendation of another commenter here, I was reading “Surpassing Wonder; The Invention of the Bible and the Talmuds” by Donald Akenson. I’m in the last of the three chapters called “Siloam’s Teeming Pool” (which invites comparison to “The Crawling Chaos”). It has led me to update the old witticism — so that it would now read that there are THREE things you don’t want to see being made: sausage, the law and the Bible. Akenson even brings up Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake” for comparison. I’m finding this to be a rewarding and entertaining read.
@pygmycory #111,
I’m quite certain your eye issues are related to decreased use; I’ve noticed the same thing when I have too much screen time. You’re lucky your local library system still has books worth borrowing! Ours throws out anything past a couple years old– with the result that they hardly have any physical books anymore. When you complain they point you to the e-book service that they subscribe to. Which can only be accessed via an computer or smartphone, not even proper e-book readers!
E-ink like kindles use is so much easier on the eyes I’ve been tempted to do like some nerds have and re-create the old black-and-white Macintosh computer from the 80s with an e-ink display. Back when people though the computer could be a “bicycle for the mind” rather than a brain-squid sticking its tentacles deep into every area of life.
Thank you for the recommendations, and answers, Mr. Greer. I’ll go looking into those titles.
As for the discursive meditation, I’m not exclusively interested in mental body development, though it is a priority as I’d like to spend as little time in this realm as I can, but it’s more an issue of trying to minimize wasted time; if I combine all my exercises from language study, mental exercises, magical exercises, meditations, etc, it can take between 2 and 3 hours a night. I work full time, and have other responsibilities, and sometimes, honestly just want to cut loose, and go drinking with friends, or whatever, so that’s a significant time commitment. One that can make me feel pressed. I’ve been able to maintain it, but there are times I wish it could go faster.
When I was originally exposed to the idea of a daily review, it was merely a recall of events of the day. I do that for about 20-30 minutes, and also do discursive meditation, about 15-20 minutes every day. Then on reading the daily review practice in the Heathen Golden Dawn, the daily review was not only a memory review, but also contemplating how one action led to another, how they related and meshed, and encouraged seeing things from other points of view, that sort of thing. It sounds very similar to discursive meditation, or to the kind of daily contemplations that were popular at church, and that got me wondering if I could drop one, and save 20 minutes or so.
But if memory exercises alone don’t improve mental body development, then I suppose that line is out, and I need to continue doing both.
Again, thank you.
JMG,
Re the evident suicide of David Wilcock – I was never a fan, too many fantastical theories and predictions, though I guess I can give him credit for getting some people interested in metaphysics. I do think he really believed in what he was preaching. Would you suppose this was a case of somebody having their entire Weltanschauung yanked out from under him when his predicted new age parousia failed to materialize? Maybe something like those Western intellectual Marxists who commuted suicide after Khrushchev revealed the extent of Stalin’s mass murders?
Thanks
JMG,
It is interesting that many speculate about wether or not Iran will win this war in the middle east . But for the last 25 years or so the U.S. military has conducted war games to simulate the outcome of a war with Iran. In every instance Iran ends up winning ( or just not losing). In the most famous example ,General Van Ripper played the part of the Iranians and instituted a distributed command and control structure and extensive guerrilla war and the closing of the straight. In the war game he won decisively.
Back then the US had many more advantages than it has now. The Navy, Air force and Army were larger and more effective than they are now. Iran had yet to develop extremely accurate long range missiles, and Drones ( a huge advantage to the defenders) had not come in to the picture yet. In addition if the US had started a war 10 years ago they would have at least partial control of countries on both sides of Iran ( Iraq and Afghanistan). Also, 10 years ago the Chinese did not have a complete GPS and satellite system to offer to Iran for ISR purposes. It seems that the US and Israel launched this war at the worst possible time, yet some people still expect victory when past analysis says otherwise.
@Northwind Grandma, I hear you on the ‘internet home’. I don’t want any of that stuff either. Thank you for the in-depth response. That was really interesting.
@Chuaquin, JMG and others, also thanks. It is interesting to hear from other people what they’re doing and how it is going.
I still probably spend more time on the internet than would be ideal, but there’s definitely been a sea-change since last fall, and my internet time wanders downward rather than up. One major headache that I put off dealing with is that when my health issues have a bad day, it becomes difficult for me to do much else, and I default to things like watching youtube or reading stupid fanfics for many hours. I decided to put dealing with that off at first because it was too hard and go after the lower-hanging fruit of more normal (for me) days, with good results, like my not giving up on the whole thing as too hard again, and spending more time doing off-internet things, some of them even productive and useful.
But more recently things have gotten easier in terms of the weather and getting off the net, so I’m starting to deal with the ‘what else can I do when I feel horrid?’ issue. Books, providing my eyes are good and holding the book doesn’t hurt. On bad eye days, go outside (if it isn’t too bright for light-sensitive eyes even behind sunglasses and hat), do almost anything not-reading. And my eye does seem to be improving substantially, which makes that part easier because it is happening less often and I’m restricting eye-based activities less frequently.
Basically, I’m muddling through, but I’m seeing a really major difference and I am very happy with how its going.
@dylan, here is a short course on early modern China explaining how the government rather systematically worked against monopolies.
Chuaquin #102:
Re real antisemitism, that seems to be well on its way back in Europe, courtesy largely, though not completely, of the Islamists we have so unwisely decided to import en mass. There have been outright attacks on synagogues and Jewish businesses. For example, just last month Jewish ambulances were set on fire in the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Hatzola_arson_attack
In the US, from what little I’ve heard about them, the groypers (the crowd around Nick Fuentes) seem to be genuinely antisemtic.
And for what it’s worth, while there is a lot about Israel that can be legitimately critisized, quite a few people who do so seem to also genuinely hate the Israeli people. Here, for example, is a video of a woman who walked up to a couple of Israelis (how she knows they’re Israelis is beyond me) and harassing them for being ‘baby killers’: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DWzZS5JAIaI/
At the moment, she has raised $37,627 by crowdfunding after being fired over this: https://chuffed.org/project/176426-support-jens-free-speech
The commentator from the Instagram video also notes that she’s been fired before, the last time over denying that Hamas raped women during the October 7th attacks. The images in her crowdfunding page also claim that, so I assume that she did indeed say that, has indeed been fired over it, and has not changed her mind.
So yeah, I think the return of antisemitism is not just some future hypothetical.
—David P.
JMG, the new blog no longer has the “your comment is awaiting moderation” page, you just get taken back to the top. Could you ask your tech people to fix that? It’s nice to know that one’s comments have not vanished in the ether.
—David P.
Actually, the last comment got me to that page, so nevermind.
—David P.
Okay, I’m curious – can we compile a short list of activities that help developing a mental body? Not to replace meditation, but for variety’s sake. So, learning a new language (which puts everyone ahead of Americans 😉 ) can do the trick – which is a good thing, because if I had to grok math (the most abstract thing I can think of), I’d never get off this planet. What else would work?
It is interesting to see that it is not only the US that can issue ultimatums. https://x.com/_southasiatimes/status/2047550960344400380
As to the question of whether the Iranians are idiots, I do consider it well worth asking whether it would not be an entirely idiotic move for Iran, which is NOT a country that is granted international impunity as a matter of course, to destroy fuel refineries and other such infrastructure in random countries it sees as potential allies.
JMG, re your reply to Valenzuela: I assume you mean that it’d be just fine with you if the musicians you’re thinking of never reached your ears again? I am now very curious to know who you’re thinking of. I have a bit of a suspicion that if you do share that information, I may find some of my own favorites on that list, from which I would derive good-natured amusement.
Jim Kukula: Thank you for sharing that. My curiosity about microtones is now fully satisfied.
Dzanni and Michaela, thank you for the book recommendations!
Hi JMG,
I sent a comment last thursday but with the problems in the change of the server you mantioned, I didn’t see the comment nor your answer, so I will repeat it:
What is your opinion about the possible effect of the Hormuz closure on the life of people around the world in the future?.
Some people think this is a short term problem and in few months we will return to the normality, and a minority consider this as a catastrophic event, and even if the Strait open, magically, today, some of them consider the damages made until now could produce the begining of the end of the Industrial Civilization , because the damages will accelerate the depletion of fossil fuels, and will produce a systemic geopolitical instability in the energy center of the system that will affect the prospect of economic growth in a global scale from now on (except in some more lucky areas for some time like de US for some years).
Cheers
David
Northwind,
Thank you, but I just checked it out and it looks like they don’t offer farm liability, either, unfortunately. The offerings vary by industry.
JMG, what are a few of your favorite charities? I recall you mentioning some, and maybe one that Sara supported, too, but I can’t remember/find them.
I see nobody picked it up from the first round, but I‘d like to bring the odd pop cultural phenomenon Angine de Poitrine up again anyway:
A few weeks ago, a performance filmed by KEXP radio went viral. They are known to host good acts, usually on the edge of the mainstream, and always with impeccable audio engineering, so their stuff tends to be odd-good and be seen by a solid number of people, but this time both aspects were much more pronounced than usual, with the act in question being really strange and the reach being enormous.
The band is a two piece, an excellent drummer and a guy playing a microtonal, double-necked bass/guitar combo instrument into a loop station, which he uses to layer repeating bits of music into quite complex arrangements. They are both dressed in Cirque du Soleil-esque, polka dotted, masked outfits, (one looks like a cartoon mash up of the King in Yellow and Pinocchio, and other like a grinning Easter Island head with a dangly nose), and the stage is decorated accordingly. Their music is clever, engaging, and quite powerful, but between the use of a 24 note scale and the more than unusual licks and melodies, it also sounds really alien, a perfect fit for the look of the band.
YouTube is spilling over with music teachers, critics, and commentators documenting their baffled and amazed reactions, and the band went from niche local oddity to global sensation in an instant, selling out all their merch and worldwide concerts.
What I find so remarkable about this is that this act is outside of what we have known as mass appeal in every respect. They‘re virtuoso musicians, and their stuff is interesting and funny, but it is composed entirely of parts that were always fringe music: odd scales, microtonality, polyrhythms, unusual song structures, no singing, no choruses – it‘s a really good attempt at wrapping the oddest bits of alternative music into one thing, and then packaging it in Dadaist stage art. That, of all things, is taking the world by storm, with people of all ages calling it the freshest stuff since the Beatles, and the online discussion of the phenomenon ranging from childlike amazement to grateful reverence.
Like I said in the first iteration of this post, I get a very intriguing vibe from this whole spectacle. Austrian clairvoyant Egon Fischer has been saying for a while now that he‘s seeing society splitting into two parts, one of which embraces the sudden elevation in awareness that is necessary to navigate what we have made of the world through social media and the other big changes of recent years, and the other choosing maybe the kind of blissful ignorance that Lovecraft mentions in the opening paragraph of the Call of Cthulhu.
I have the feeling that Angine de Poitrine are Prophets of that first group. Millions of people have apparently reached a state of mind where two abstract clowns making the oddest possible music you can conceivably dance to is exactly what they need.
That puts a smile on my face, and hope into my heart 🙂
Have a look at that famous performance, and enjoy reading the comments:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ssi-9wS1so
Pipeline explosion in Louisiana, the number of such incidents keeps increasing.
https://www.wafb.com/2026/04/25/pipeline-explosion-reported-st-helena-parish-authorities-say/
Could be an Iranian that got in under Biden? This will be the biggest crisis for the Petroleum Civilization yet and the world will blame the US and Trump specifically, especially when Trump keeps mouthing how the US profits from more oil sales. That is the US government and US companies, not ordinary US citizens. Not looking good at all.
Mr. Greer, do you think it would’ve been possible to bomb military targets and Iran’s infrastructure in the first three weeks so as to render the country toothless then extract the enriched uranium before a global crisis was a given?
As an update, officials said a pressure buildup in a natural gas line caused the blowout, then again officials have lied before. Could as easily be the first explanation, strained infrastructure.
https://www.wbrz.com/news/explosion-reported-in-southwestern-st-helena-parish-witnesses-felt-it-1-5-miles-away/
Has anyone else here enjoyed The Holographic Universe, by Michael Talbot? I remember stumbling across the book some years back, when it felt like my spirituality was at a low point, and it opened my eyes to how much of what modern science says can’t happen with regards to consciousness and how the mind affects the body can, in fact, happen. I’ve been rereading it lately, and it still holds up, though I remain unsure how much of the holographic theory of mind and the universe is a metaphor and how much should be taken literally, considering how much of the book reads like foreshadowing for the later New Age movement.
About numbers and the future of physics (or any other form of scientific enquiry):
“∞ * 0 = X
X / 0 = ∞
X / ∞ = 0
0 / 0 = ∞ / ∞ = X”
There are indeed ways to do this in mathematics. See, there’s ∞ and then there’s ∞. The question is, how quickly you approach ∞. If you approach ∞ and ∞ with the same “speed”, then ∞/∞ = X. If the first ∞ is faster, then ∞/∞=∞ and if the second is faster then ∞/∞=0. Similar logic can be applied to approaching 0. Also “imaginary” is a label that’s not really fitting since “imaginary numbers” actually do exist, at least in the mind of mathematicians. They are part of the reason that we can describe certain natural laws to such an accuracy, that some get the impression there would be little left to explore. Regarding this claim, I’d like to (again) quote Nobel prize winner A. A. Michelson (from roughly 1890): “The most important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplemented in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote.” I don’t see any reason to believe that *this time it’s different*.
Well, and certainly you can imagine yourself (or someone or something else) going infinitely in one direction and perhaps even infinitely in the other direction which would amount to “-∞”. There are two things with this. The first I already mentioned, and the second – that you can imagine something doesn’t mean that it’s possible to do it or get even close to doing it. Isn’t this the same in occultism (or anything else)?
In some way it’s funny that us humans are casually talking about mathematics and natural laws – yet nobody has ever seen a natural law and quite possibly nobody knows what mathematics even is, too.
Cheers,
Nachtgurke
@Jim Kukula #94: Thanks for this. Although you’re using Buddhist concepts, I can feel (if not readily conceptualize) a link with the Christian mystery of the Eucharist. ‘Communion’ is the more prosaic term, and the meaning of the word could be heard as having Buddhist overtones, at least to my ears. It’s worth meditating on, I think.
@BeardTree #98: I have long treasured a similar quote by the Dalai Lama that also encouraged non-Buddhists to go deeper into their own traditions rather than convert to his. I found it very refreshing to be given permission to be who I was born to be (in this lifetime, at least!) There is a similar quote in the Bhagavad Gita, something to the effect of ‘better to struggle in one’s own dharma than to thrive in the dharma of another’.
That said, I don’t see my question as being about harmonizing abstract worldviews, but about investigating facts. My intellect tells me that Jesus Christ is a real person and that karma and reincarnation are facts of life. If you don’t see it that way, I won’t push the question again, but I am curious to hear what you have to expand upon about the crucifixion as ‘a great act of ritual sacrificial magic done by God with a multifaceted effect.’ What were those effects, in your view?
@Aldarion #114: Okay, that’s really helpful. So an economic system can lie somewhere along two axes, one being customary vs. monetary and the other individual-directed vs. state-directed. The first is deeply linked to the development of a civilization over time and the second seems to be more based on cultural and political decisions. If these were the two axes of a graph, then traditional Inuit society would lie way over in one corner of the graph (mostly customary, mostly individual-directed) and modern Venezuela would lie way over in the opposite corner (mostly monetary, mostly state-directed). I would agree that state-directed capitalism is the real secret sauce of Western hegemony, but that it has appeared before (Qin Dynasty China, Late Roman Republic), but lacked the sanctity of corporate personhood to really kick it into overdrive.
@Zemi #133: You’re welcome. My friends are all aware that should I one day have daughters, they will be named after the three cardinal virtues: Faith, Hope, and Thrift.
BeardTree (no, 98). In this globalized world, we are all a bit like that yak-headed sheep! For that matter, each of these religions is already the result of blending.
Dylan (no. 79), Christianity and karma/reincarnation blend very organically in the teachings of Edgar Cayce. Many New Thought teachers have a similar perspective.
@Tyler, pygmycory, Tim & JMG re: Canada – I, too, can’t stand either Carney or Trump (the latter was in my good book during his 1st term, but he has behaved like a mafia don with pre-frontal lobe dementia during his 2nd term!). I say “sack ‘em all – we want our countries back!” Both leaders are playing with fire that is burning thousands of small and medium-sized businesses to the ground on both sides of the border, and entire sectors of the economy north of the border! The latest to be hit hard with tariffs is the tools, die and mold sector of which 85% of their sales go to the US and which, if allowed to continue hemorrhaging money, will disappear entirely from Canada by or before the end of 2026 (at which point China and/or Mexico will happily fill the void). Meanwhile, chicken Carney refuses to meet again with the Big Bad Trump or address any flashing red lights on the dashboard of the Canadian economy. Neither leader gives a damn about the “little people”: they each have their marching orders and pursue them with the grim efficiency of an elite class that is out of touch with reality.
@Beardtree, Lathechuck, KAN & others regarding church congregational singing. I guess each person has their own unique experiences. My family belonged to a High Anglican church where congregational singing, accompanied by pipe organ, was the highlight of the service. Then in my teens I befriended the organist/choirmaster of the gigantic Catholic church in my town and I became the lead bass / tenor / alto (depending on the year) and cantor there: pretty much the same kind of music and quality of music as the High Anglican church, but with the Catholic church there were the added components of singing biblical verses (which the cantor did) as well as sung “dialogues” between the officiating priest at the altar and the choir in the loft at the very back of the church during Sunday morning high mass. Being a massive, old, stone church, the echoes between the front and back of the church (without amplification) were wonderful.
My favourite singing event of the liturgical calendar was Tenebrae (usually held after sunset on Maundy Thursday) in which, after each sombre scriptural reading, some lights would be extinguished until the church was enveloped in total darkness. And then we, as the choir, would sing in that darkness, at the top of our voices, “Tenebrae factae sunt”. I still get goosebumps remembering it. The words “powerful magic” do not even begin to describe the experience!
@ Pygmycory: I have cut back heavily on my Internet use and got off social media entirely lately. I find that I am a lot less tense and judgmental because of that change. Unfortunately, all the emotions hiding behind that judgment are now coming up for me to deal with, so there’s that. I do craft work and read when I get bored instead.
Hi John Michael,
Absolutely. I’m of the opinion that a 20% reduction in available energy per capita will undoubtedly cause economic ructions of considerable force. However, so what? There are no guarantees, and so much activity in the west is inordinately wasteful that we can cut back on a lot of useless enterprise, and still get to eat and remain entertained.
Dunno about you, but my memories of bins as a kid were of those small galvanised trash cans which were handled by people and dumped into a truck. In these more enlightened days, there are now four bins separating out waste streams, which requires four trucks with robotic arms. The whole system looks extraordinarily wasteful to me with an end which might be best described as fluffery. And people abuse the system too. If you have ever purchased woody mulch derived from the green waste collection services, you’ll discover that somehow folks don’t comprehend that plastic flowers, and plastic dolphins, are not green waste. I have to sift the lot, and people make weird claims that they can’t understand how microplastics are everywhere! I’ve got some ideas about that story… 😉
I don’t want any part of that system and have no rubbish pick up here, although I do take metal for recycling to the local tip because I’m pretty sure that the stuff is physically recycled once it’s shipped overseas – and that is a whole ‘nother story in itself. The rest, I dunno man. My gut feeling suggests that it is probably not good. I must say, there is talk of a nearby waste to electricity co-generation plant being built, and it’s about time. Chucking plastic into landfill is not a good use of the inherent energy, as recycling of that stuff is a fine joke. Although clean polyethylene and some clean vinyls can be recycled. Note the use of the word: clean.
Oh hey, whilst I’m ranting, there is a purpose: I read the other day that a council in the state to the north of here, has decided to reduce the pick up of one of the bins in order to reduce their diesel bill. The reasoning was that the fuel was better allocated so as to ensure continued trash pick up – it was the green waste bin which was cut. Hmm. And that is the future right there. A shortage of jet fuel for example, means only the wealthy will fly. There are easy cuts to be made. That’s life and there’s no guarantees, but it is hardly the apocalypse is it?
Cheers
Chris
“….magical systems based on the Sphere of Protection don’t play well with systems based on the pentagram ritual.”
My only experience is with the SOP and not any system and not with any pentagram based system.
My guess is that the SOP involves requesting assistance from the elements the invoking the spirits above, below and within whereas I think a pentagram system is based more on commanding or trying to command elements and spirits and the pentagram forms a protective area for the mage? Cooperative & respectful, safer but maybe not so efficient SOP versus a more assertive, risky but higher chance of success with a pentagram system?
Hey JMG
I thought I would mention that apparently Peter J Carrol is dead now, along with the famous Australian novelist David Malouf
https://www.specularium.org/blog/the-wizard-has-gone
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/apr/23/david-malouf-australian-author-of-remembering-babylon-and-ransom-dies-aged-92
Re: Carmen Moravec-Jones
My WAG (wild-ass guess) is, she clawed her way up from dire rural poverty in Pennsylvania. Unless she’s a light-skinned black, as suggested by her maiden name of Carmen Jones. (Perhaps Ted is blond enough they’d have pale-skinned children.) Then Carmen would more likely be straight outta Compton or Trenton. Whatever her ethny, Ted, a rather passive sort, fell in love with her energy and drive. Carmen fell in love with his laid-back attitude. He calms her down when she gets too wound up. At least, he used to. Now he mostly stays out of her way.
I look forward to seeing Summerfield. I hope the original name was something like Zommerdal, founded by unruly Dutch with interesting ideas.
Speaking of Kessler events;
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-rassvet-satellites-elon-musk-starlink-b2944561.html
“Russia launches first internet satellites to rival Elon Musk’s Starlink”
Now it’s going to get even more crowded up there.
With a 7X50 binoculars you can watch the starlink satellites go by. They are also shown by the Stellarium program. I can see why the astronomers are annoyed.
re: kesseler events & starlink–
My understanding is that a cascade is incredibly unlikely to start from these satellite swarms, because they are in such wastefully low orbits– Starlink Satellites only last 5 years up there! The resistance of tenuous amounts of air drags them down. Debris from a collision will come down even faster, tending to have a higher surface-area-to-mass ratio. Fast enough to save everything on that orbit? Doubtful. Fast enough to keep the whole swarm from going? Maybe. Fast enough to make relaunching a hideously expensive proposition rather than physically impossible? Absolutely.
At least for Starlink the sats are tiny and don’t carry much reboosting fuel– no point, as you can’t carry enough to fight air resistance– so a collision is very, very unlikely to toss enough debris into higher orbits to mater. Now if one of the hundreds of launches needed to set up and maintain a Starlink-style sat swarm goes ‘boom’– that might be a different story.
There are a few airship companies out there salivating over the idea of Starlink self-distructing in an orgy of space debris; the Russians might be working towards their own network eventually, but they’re showing right now that balloons can replace it over the battlefield.
@Seeking the Pure Land re: #142 –
One thing I always find wild about Atheist Secular Materialists is the claim that Atheists don’t make any claims about their state of disbelief. And that Atheists do not Attack or Defend. A wild claim that I can not fathom anyone with any intellectual honesty making or accepting.
IMO this is because fundamental to the protective antipatterns underpinning the belief system of secular materialism/atheism is that “atheism is not a religion.” As such it eschews – must eschew – religion-coded terminology like “belief/disbelief”, and it doesn’t “attack/defend” because it doesn’t consider itself part of the same ontological framework as “religion.”
BeardTree, re the pyramids: I’m certainly open to the idea that they haven’t, but I don’t know enough to say other than that. I know I disbelieve any notions about aliens having built them because aliens are no more able to do interstellar travel than we are, but that’s the only firm idea I have about the subject.
Jennifer Kobernik, # 29. I second the Louise Erdrich Birchbark books, though maybe for when your daughter is older.
Joseph Bruchac too, he’s very prolific. Most of his stuff is for older readers, though we did read Dog People (Dog stories) and Between Earth and Sky when my son was younger (he’s 9).
We enjoyed Allen Sockabasin’s, Thanks to the Animals when he was little. I also read some of Wigwam Evenings by Charles Eastman (Sioux), from 1909. One site to peruse for books is Birchbark Books out of Minneapolis, founded by Louise Erdrich. Hope this helps!
Pygmycory re: staying offline. If I had my way, we’d go back to no home computer and using the library’s computer’s. I found when I did that, I was fairly disciplined, going in with a list for my one hour allotment. As it is, except for this blog, email and one or two other blogs, I tend to stay off. We still try and pay bills by mail but it’s getting harder to do. My husband and I share a flip phone. We homeschool, with one reason being to keep our son’s initial learning experience as analog and real life-based as possible. We want him to be prepared for decline and to know there are other ways to learn and live that don’t involve the internet. So a lot of our behavior around the internet/online life is based on modeling a minimal-online way of life to our son. At 58, we remember life without online everything and it wasn’t that bad!
Oh, my son has a 1920’s Royal typewriter he got at our dump’s swap shop for free. He is totally stoked because we just ordered (yes, from that slimy river . . . ), a new ribbon for it! And our librarian ordered him a book on typewriter repair, which he’s eager to learn about. Of course he wants an I Pad just like his more mainstream friends but I hope someday he’ll appreciate our attempts to give him an analog, hands-on childhood.
Ellen in ME
Jennifer Kobernick @ 25, about business liability: Something has to give somewhere. How much longer must we tolerate the burning of entire towns because of power company deliberate negligence? I use the word ‘deliberate’ on purpose. The paying out of fines and compensation to burned out residents of West Coast towns by PG&E has apparently become a budgeted business expense. If “businesses are people, my friend” I don’t quite understand why they can’t be prosecuted just like the rest of us. The issue here isn’t law suits, it is elite class criminal negligence.
Grover @ 52, “Live simply so that others may simply live.” I have seen that attributed to St. Elizabeth Seton.
neptunesdolphins @ 140 “China will fall apart as it stands now. ” May I ask what makes you think that? China seems to be very successful in many ways. Do not successful nations usually have the loyalty of their citizens? China may eventually have to disgorge Tibet, but beyond that why would the nation not remain substantially as it now is?
About the infamous pipeline: It was never meant to benefit Canada or the USA. There is a reason why the refineries are on the Gulf Coast, which is so that their products can be shipped to the highest bidder. I have also heard of a Native American prophecy that once the “black snake” passed across or beneath a certain river, the world would end.
I would like someone to please explain why the attack on Venezuela was necessary? If we need Venezuelan crude oil, we surely could have arranged to buy it. So what if Chavez nationalized Venezuela’s oil? We manage to live with KSA controlling their own oil. Business execs in more than one field need to understand that they run their companies; they don’t get to make foreign policy.
I am also puzzled by prevailing attitudes about Russia. The Russians are not my enemy. Czarist Russia was our ally during the Revolution and Lincoln’s ally during the Civil War. We may have defeated Japan in WWII, but Soviet Russia defeated the Nazis. As for Putin intriguing against Mme. Clinton in 2016 he would have been a fool not to do so, given her known warmongering propensities.
@Dylan. I don’t regard karma and reincarnation as facts. The crucifixion enabled free access to God through the body and blood of Christ as our righteousness (I prefer the older English version of that word – rightwiseness, the death of Jesus made us rightwise with God). The beginning of the defeat of death and the new creation as Jesus being the “first fruits of the resurrection” We get to hitch a ride on him – “the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus” and he said “I came to seek and save that which was lost”. The breaking of demonic power “he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death – that is the devil” Also it serves an example of obedience when he said in Gethsemane “not my will but yours be done” when facing the crucifixion and the was strengthened by an angel. God will strengthen us also. as we follow his example. It clearly says that the blood of Jesus, his death as we place faith in will cleanse us. In the Old Testament they would place their hands on the sacrificial animal. When we trust in the Lamb of God who takes away sin by our confessing him ,trusting in him we are placing our hands on the sacrifice done on our behalf. When the sacrifice was presented in the OT at times the fire of God would fall upon it. God sends the gift of the Holy Spirit upon those who trust in Jesus for by calling upon his name we are presenting his sacrificed body which bore our sins and his blood that cleansed them. Jesus said he came “to serve and give his life as a ransom for many” Mark 10:13 Faith and believe in the original Greek mean “to trust in, rely on, and adhere to” not mere intellectual assent” this of course is something that grows over time as we accept, rely on, know the Lord as present friend, brother, connection to the Father and the Spirit.
Maybe the prospect of Tomorrowland is a gift from Heaven in the first place. Which got shut down once humans are heading in the wrong direction.
No more discoveries and hence cool stuff allowed. Until humans get it back together again.
@Inna #74
My kid is in a similar position and I admit that I’m sad for him rather than hoping it gets worse. I know it’s not obvious to people not involved but there was real scope for creativity in the field. Whatever happens, I think the opportunity has passed. We have a backup plan though involving – blue collar work! Who’d have thought it!
@JMG
I know you’re rarely short of a topic but the Sacred Geometry take on number lines and related matters would certainly interest me.
Just popping in to say as usual I appreciate a number of comments in the thread, such as Northwind’s and BorealBear’s feelings on temperature and weather.
Ditto. As a hobby farmer, I really don’t like to ever experience temperature above 20C (68F) and actually 12-15C (54-59F) is about right – that’s the zone where you can work outside and still wear pants.
As for the perpetually-mystifying “California has great weather” crowd – listen man, I have always wanted to visit California. Might never happen. But definitely one thing I can’t abide is too much sun: continuous sun not punctuated by weather makes me absolutely loopy, like put-me-in-a-white-jacket-loco.
As for Northwind’s comment about living “where people look like you” – well, yeah. I consider this to be common sense but you know what they say about common sense not being.
I’m not really tryna stir the pot, a pasttime which I’ve aged out of, but it’s a remark that ties together some of the other comments in the thread.
Like other folk above, I have been enjoying my New Year’s Resolution of minimizing screen time. Like others, I kinda got fell-off-the-wagon with the latest Mesopotamian misadventure until I realized, once again, that the people who “do media” on this stuff HAVE to make it sound like every day is the end of the world.
Anyway the point that I was trying to get to is there’s a number of writers, influencers, philosopherizers, punditers, and other assorted scriveners whom I followed closely during the world-class stressful covid years, whom I really have let go, I’m not too much taken with anymore, for a variety of reasons, but one of them being, my sweet summer child if you think that politics matters anymore I just don’t know what to say to you.
This might be more true in Canada than the US but as far as I can see it’s not much more less-true in the USA. And to be particular and bluntly-clear on what I’m saying: there’s a species of commentator who thinks Thee Moste Importante Thing You Can Possibly Do is settle yourself in Based Red State, irrespective of other variables.
I disagree with this, and think it’s wrong to the point of resembling a category error. The most important thing most people in general can do to ensure their safety and wellbeing heading into the future is to live in an area where people are “like you” – and I don’t mean politics, which is orders of magnitude thinner than blood.
The future in some places is Bosnia x Rwanda x South Africa x Argentinian collapse, but in general much less so the more homogenous the region – even if it’s a heckin’ Blue State.
Anyway, not to be all serious and stuff. During my 2026 escape from screen time, I’ve managed to, inter alia, plow through all six of the Jane Austen novels, in case anybody wanted to start an Ecosophia Austen Book Club (mostly kidding, but maybe not!).
@ Aldarion and @ Dylan – in re your discussion of markets and etc.
I’m not up on the big picture, but I can offer a data point from the limited perspective of one person who spent two months in China in 2004. I found it confusing, to say the least, to realise that, although I was in a “communist” country, the cities we stayed in (Beijing, Chengdu, and Nanjing), were chock full of entreprenarial enterprises, many of them right on the street. There was the “eggy pancake lady” we frequented in Nanjing, whose very efficient food cart set up every day in the same place, produced a very handy, roll up pancake snack full of instantly cooked egg, veg and sauces. There was the “shoe repair lady” who set up her heavy duty sewing machine and case full of glues and strips of material under the overpass every day, who actually carried out two shoe repairs for us, and who refused to take a tip from us that was larger than her asking price. (Possibly, given the strong bargaining culture where an initial price is offered with the expectation of being beat down, she considered her asking price to be high enough). There was the “scissor and knife sharpening guy” who roamed about on a bicycle that could be parked on stilts and turned into a pedal operated grinding wheel. And so on.
I do not think I was ever in a place that felt as “free market” as did the streets of these Chinese cities in 2004. Obviously there may have been a lot of regulation and control going on in the background that we were not aware of, but the phenomenon of sole street traders selling almost everything imaginable, in almost every imaginable nook and cranny, was visible and (for us, coming from a more bureaucratically constrained west), rather startling in its vibrancy.
JMG # 137:
Your answer to N. Grandma: I agree. I respect your view about profanities. Indeed, I personally think that, when people use too many profanities, they eventually degrade their language and erode their deep thoughts. However, I’m not perfect, so I admit I use those words, but only when I’m very angry. And within some contexts, a profanity can be used, methink. For example, there’s a spanish word to depict women private parts (which I won’t write); well, in my mother’s tongue is seen sometimes as a funny mild profanity. However, some years ago I met a German guy who told me the same word translated to his language was a heavy and unpolite word in his country (?).
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Seeking…# 142:
Yes, it seems a dishonest attitude within a heck of Atheists (here too). Another tricky attitude of them happens when they say/write their view isn’t a belief/opinion, but the Absolute Objective Truth (Science shows there isn’t any God and blah blah blah…”).
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Siliconguy # 153:
Thanks for your link, interesting…If the past century battle king was (to some extent) the machine gun (for example, my grandpa was a machine gunner during our last Civil War), it seems nowadays battlefields king’s the drone. I think there aren’t real good antidrone technologies yet, but well, somebody’s thinking now about countermeasures against countermeasures…anti-anti-drones.
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Clay D. # 163:
War games aren’t real wars, because “the map isn’t the territory”, but maps are useful to know territories, if you don’t mistake the two levels; so I find your comment very interesting.
I’ve written several times here that I think Iran can’t win this war…in the sense of defeating the Western axis in a Waterloo or Dien Bien Phu way. However, it could drive/force the USA to withdraw its troops due to certain circumstances (money is money). Another possible end to the war could be a “de facto” stalemate (grey situation) for the two opposite axis alike…though Trump could pretend he has won.
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(To be continued)
J.L.Mc12, that’s eventually going to happen here as well. I personally know several people on our disability scheme who are perfectly able to work; they simply didn’t want to. It’s a well-organized scheme: with the help of people already doing this, you find a doctor who will certify you as disabled due to some invisible issue such as anxiety, and as long as you keep going to that doctor (and the doctor keeps getting government checks for your care) you sit back and live on benefits. The Neopagan community here is full of people like that — you’ll hear sour jokes from time to time about the Pagan disability cult. The downside is that people who are actually disabled are going to be hurt when the cutbacks begin.
Neptunesdolphins, one of the benefits of being out here on the fringes is that you get to stay ahead of the curve!
Seeking, that delusion pervades the popular cults of our time. “It’s not an ideology or a belief system, it’s just plain common sense!” I’ve heard that repeatedly from various points of view. If you point out the holes in that thinking, of course, you get blind rage — which is how you know that it’s a conscious evasion.
Siliconguy, er, so many allegedly wonderful discoveries have turned out to be smoke and mirrors that it might be wiser to say that this is the latest theory about how flagellae move…
Curt, it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out now that the global economy is disintegrating.
Ishtarnidus, yes, the tarot attributions have been published in my book Coelbren. As for the Druidical Cabala, if you know an existing system of Cabala, modify it as needed to fit the symbolism and philosophy of the tradition you’re working with — that’s what I did, certainly.
Anon, all in good time. I’ve had a lot to do.
Earthworm, this seems reasonable to me.
Siliconguy, it’ll be interesting to see how this turns out. It’s not impossible that drones may end up becoming a negative-sum game, in which all sides have to invest in drones and antidrones and anti-antidrones, which all spend time fighting each other and no longer affect the battlefield!
Peter, there’s a fine book by Charles Seife, Sun In A Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking. I encourage you to read it. He points out the obvious, which is that commercial fusion power is about as likely to succeed as perpetual motion, but nobody in the scientific fields involved wants to admit this because it would shut off a lavishly funded gravy train and render whole university departments useless.
Tom, I don’t recall the specific post, but the cycle’s real. You’re also running against the hard reality that the audience for metaphysical novels is fairly small and the number of people who write them is rather large, so supply and demand are not your friends. You might see if there’s a small press that specializes in such novels or, failing that, consider starting one.
William, again, a few hundred years ago the methods of fraud were far in advance of the methods of detection, and that was also an era when business and political interests sprawled across multiple continents — look up the Dutch East India Company sometime. That said, the modern world isn’t going to survive anyway — the global economy is already coming unglued — and it’s entirely possible that here and there, fraud will help give it a push over the cliff.
Tyler, some of you in Canada can’t see it, I’m sure. I don’t propose to argue the point; I think that events will demonstrate it soon enough.
Oatmeal, I don’t favor the extended daily review, not least because it takes so much time. Manly P. Hall’s version, which is simply a quick reflective summary, seems more appropriate anyway, and given a choice between daily review and discursive meditation I’d pick the latter every time.
Will, I don’t know enough about the man to speculate.
Clay, here again, I think the US misjudged the situation spectacularly, and assumed that the Iranian government was ripe for popular overthrow. Thus the flailing around for an offramp we’re seeing now.
Athaia, anything that makes the mind relate to meaning and and value will help. One that hasn’t been discussed much is writing one sonnet every day. I specify sonnets because using rhyme and meter forces you out of habitual turns of phrase, and sonnets specifically require a central theme which is set out in the octave (the first eight lines) and changed in an interesting way in the sestet (the last six lines).
Scotlyn, oh, anybody can issue an ultimatum. I imagine the Iranians are trying to figure out how to communicate with a New Yorker, and have decided to try imitating his speech habits.
Cynthia, I don’t know if he’s even performing any more, but every song by Justin Bieber I’ve ever heard made me wish that sound waves didn’t travel.
DFC, I think it falls midway in between those options. We were due for a step down anyway, and this is going to make that inevitable; there will be global impacts extending for some years — but it’s not the end of industrial civilization.
Jennifer, I favor Masonic charities, since they’re staffed by volunteers and not by executives skimming off six-figure salaries. The Scottish Rite RiteCare children’s language and reading program is a special favorite, but the Shrine children’s hospitals and burn clinics also provide a valuable service; in both cases the children get care free of charge.
Ornifex, it’s entirely possible that this is the work of somebody from the al-Quds organization, Iran’s overseas espionage and sabotage network, but we’ll have to see. As for your question, almost certainly not; my guess is that the US had an unrealistic notion of the likelihood that the Iranian people would overthrow their government once the latter was decapitated.
Chris, I well recall galvanized steel trash cans. Most US jurisdictions only have two bins, though the robot arms are in evidence. As for the apocalypse of cutbacks, exactly — oh, plenty of people will shriek like gutshot banshees, but we’ll adjust.
Scotty, that’s part of it, but another part is that the pentagram rituals all rely solely on the descending energy of the solar current, while the SoP and its relatives use both the descending and ascending currents.
J.L.Mc12, I heard about Carroll yesterday. The guy with the scythe takes us all…
Nemo, nope. Ariel’s mother grew up at the bottom end of the middle class and got her name via a mother who thought it sounded nice. As for Summerfield, alas, no — nothing interesting has ever happened there. 😉
Mary, no, we couldn’t have arranged to buy it. Venezuela under Chavez and Maduro was allied with China and Iran and was uninterested in selling oil to the US. The attack changed that.
Info, or maybe it’s a nightmare from which we’re finally waking up.
Andy, duly noted!
Brendhelm @190,
I think you’re right about the underlying reasons though to be fair to them they are technically correct that Atheism is not a religion/worldview. Atheism is just a claim that there is no god. You can’t really make a religion or worldview out of a single claim of not god. Since you could believe in ghosts and astrology and be an atheist, a lot of Atheists turn to Satanism, or that time they joined the Neopagans and New Agers. That’s why when an Atheist talks about Atheism its always in comparison to Christianity. (or the other religions when they remember they exist) Its why Atheist content by itself is so boring.
I think the truth is that when they say they’re Atheists, they’re not really being honest with themselves. Their religion/worldview is Secular Materialism, and that they are very much in denial of. They really shouldn’t call themselves Atheists, but instead Secular Materialists.
> If we need Venezuelan crude oil, we surely could have arranged to buy it. — Mary Bennet
In the mid-80s I was at university with a guy who was an officer in our South African Citizen Force. He told me he’d just come back from a weekend camp where they’d been addressed by an American liaison officer.
The American said there’d been a change in their doctrine. They had decided if they needed something they would just buy it instead of keeping a military big enough to take whatever was needed.
Obviously that doctrine has changed again. Now it’s a case of “If we can’t control it we’ll destroy it so no one else can control it.”
Hey JMG
First, I must show you this amazing post I saw on Reddit today. Someone has made a meme about you on r/noncrediblediplomacy!
https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDiplomacy/comments/1sw1dqy/comment/oicd9rt/?context=3
Secondly, I must clarify something about the NDIS. I think you may be confusing it with our “disability support pension”, which is social welfare that directly pays recipients money. The NDIS is a completely different system. It doesn’t directly financially support people with disabilities at all. Rather, it only funds specific services, or equipment, that can support a disabled person. So, a person on the NDIS can use it to pay for a therapist or a wheelchair, but they can’t use it for anything they want, such as beer or a gaming console.
The people rorting it the most aren’t the recipients, but the providers. It is fairly easy for a group of people to register themselves as disability support providers/workers, then ask for ridiculous amounts of money for fairly inexpensive things. Not only that, but organised crime has often gotten themselves involved. There are departments devoted to investigating this, but there is so much to investigate that they are overwhelmed.
That being said, too many people are accessing it, and I agree that they need to raise the eligibility criteria so that only people with significant disabilities are using it. I come to understand that the government is focusing on getting autistic people off of the NDIS, and possibly putting them on a different and more appropriate government program.
https://ndiscommunitysupport.com.au/what-is-ndis-and-how-does-it-work/
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/apr/20/ndis-infiltrated-organised-crime-gangs-australia
Chuaquin @201
I think part of the reason for a lot of their intellectual dishonesty is partly due to their denial of actually holding a worldview/religion but also because they’re constantly needing to be defined by what they are not. If religion didn’t exist the Secular Materialist would have to invent it. (which they have done, multiple times. For example the singularity/trans-humanist believers)
I’ve noticed that a lot of Atheist bloggers, reddit posters, and youtubers have the same manner and style of argumentation as Christian Apologists. (or any apologist really)
I read in the news this morning that Wolf Blitzer had a “Pulp Fiction moment” last night; he emerged from the bathroom and found the situation had deteriorated. I wonder if he took in a book to read.
Chaquin:
If you define propaganda as Evilly Evil Lies by our Evilly Evil Enemy – that’s not how I think of rt.com. It is pro-Russian and supportive of Putin, and that is why I read it, to get that angle.
By definition propaganda is what The Other Side does, and it is by definition lies. Our side does not do Propaganda; Our News bravely supports our country.
I sometimes read Victor Davis Hansen, who is very intelligent. I suspect he thinks of what he is writing as The Truth. If you are someone in Russia, is he American propaganda?
Pygmycory # 163:
You’re welcome!
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David P. # 165:
Yes, they’re ugly and dirty news. I think there’s a thin line which divides democratic dissent against current Israeli government and open Antisemitism. We must be very careful…
Unfortunately, some (woke) leftists and Islamics have crossed it now or some time ago. For example, pardoning or hiding which attitude and behavior have the “epic freedom fighters” of Hamas to Palestinian women and gay people (cough).
However, for example it’s also a pity some Zionists blame as Antisemitic (thoughtstopper) every spanish people due to current diplomatic crisis between Israel and Spain govts. Or how some Israeli Jews who don’t have like their leaders politics are blamed as “Antisemitic Jews”.
But finally returning to your topic: yes, “new” Antisemitism must be a motive for concern to every democratic person. So we must choose well our friends due to possible “dangerous friendships”.
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Siliconguy # 188:
Thank you for your link and news. Things are getting hotter in orbit. It was only a matter of time than Russians counterattacked in near Earth space against their hated Mr. Musk satellites (well, hatred seems to be mutual between Putin and the billonaire). So collisions between satellites could be soon more likely, as probabilities…
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Scotlyn # 200:
OK, China has become a capitalist economy under a hard One Party leadership (well, dictatorship), but I think you missed an elephant in the room: there are many corporations, apparently private, which indeed are owned or controlled by municipal, regional and State authorities, “indirectly” by having their capital majority, for example. And even private businessmen who eventually can be billonaires, mustn’t derail from general economical nor political general lines “suggested” by Beijing government.
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JMG # 202:
I’m not a drone expert, but I think your opinion is possible. Some war freaks say the best way to destroy a dron is another drone…but of course, drones can use countermeasures against anti-drones drones, so an unending “drone inflation” could happen soon or later.
“Info, or maybe it’s a nightmare from which we’re finally waking up.”
Perhaps. Although according to old myths. There were purported advanced civilizations more advanced than our one. And didn’t rely on primitive energy sources like fossil fuels.
The Myth of Atlantis and such tales. I remember seeing weird documentary in China on CCTV about a possible civilization of the past that also had Airplanes like our one as part of a cave painting, from a vision or somehow the cave painting was actually new.
It would be cool if true.
Question for the audience. I ran across this note in an article about the measles outbreak.
“Health officials in multiple states are concerned measles cases are going unreported because there are people who aren’t seeking diagnosis and treatment.”
For those of you that are old enough to have had the measles did any of you get carted to the doctor’s office? I didn’t, nor did my brother. Measles was considered a routine illness and nothing to get excited about. Obviously that is no longer true which is a different question.
Being a viral disease there was nothing the doctor could do anyway, at least then. Rest, drink plenty of fluids, where sunglasses for the photophobia, if the fever gets too high feed the kid an aspirin. (No one had heard of Reye’s syndrome back then, it must be very rare.)
Re: Venezuela
JMG, you answered Mary that “Venezuela under Chavez and Maduro was allied with China and Iran and was uninterested in selling oil to the US.” Please correct me if I’m wrong – it’s my understanding that it was the USA who placed sanctions on Venezuela and thereby reduced imports of Venezuelan crude oil. If the USA had decided to lift the sanctions at any point in the last years, it could have immediately started to import as much as it was willing to pay to the Venezuelans.
It is possible that the recent coup in Venezuela will make Venezuela produce more oil and/or sell it to the USA at lower prices (just as the impeachment of Dilma in 2016 led to Brazil exempting American oil companies from export taxes), and it seems to me that that is what Mary was alluding to.
Re: Canada as geopolitical enemy of the US. Even Justin Trudeau was willing to bend over backwards to accommodate the USA’s wishes when he jailed the Huawei executive traveling in Canada who was not accused of any crime by Canadian justice. So it does seem to me that it was Trump who transformed Canada (maybe?) into his enemy.
Chuaquin, re the bad word for vulva: Interestingly, the English cognate of that word appears to similarly be much less serious in the mother country than in some parts of the Anglosphere, including this one.
JMG, re music you’re not a fan of: Oh. Hypothesis not confirmed. There are some artists in that musical territory who’ve made songs that I like. Bieber is not one of those. I only know one of his songs. I certainly do dislike it, although I wouldn’t say something as strong as you did about it. For some reason, my intuition was that you would name Metallica or possibly others from that general territory.
@JMG,
I’m not sure events can demonstrate the point under discussion. If Canada begins to act in opposition to the USA on the world stage, you can point and that and say “see, you were our geopolitical enemy all along” and I can point at it and say “well, we were forced into taking that stance, because America stopped treating us like an ally.” To show our government was in opposition prior to January 2021, you’d have to show some action taken by the Canadian government that was oppositional. If you aren’t interested in doing so, that’s fine, but I can point to dozens of relatively-recent cases where Canada acted against its interests to further the greater cause of the “Epstein Empire” as third-worldists are now calling it. For example, when the Mounties grabbed Meng Wanzhou on behalf of the USA, that was not the action of a nation aligned with China. Et cetera, et cetera.
Also, just as with Biden in 2020, if a Democrat gets in in 2028, it’ll be back to vassalage-as-normal regardless of what the actual trade policy is. Biden did nothing to soften the USMCA that Trump negotiated to replace NAFTA with something more favourable to the USA, after all. I hope I’m wrong about that; broadening our alliances in a more permanent fashion rather than clinging to Uncle Sam’s apron strings forever would probably be good for Canada, long term. As Kissinger said: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”
@190 Brendhelm
When I was an atheist, I was annoyed by that.
Is it possible to not claim God doesn’t exist, while lacking belief in him? Yes, but those people wouldn’t be trying to pull off “gotcha” arguments or comparing belief in deities to belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. They conflate belief that no gods exist with a 100% certainty that no gods exist, then say they’re Dawkins scale 6.9s (considering the existence of God about as likely as the existence of fairies* in the garden) so they’re not making positive claims.
*Ironically, as a mage I have to accept on faith that the Fair Folk really do exist but prefer wild places to gardens!
Mary Bennet, re: business liability
I don’t entirely disagree, but I also can’t help but notice the negative effects when they include a pretty high likelihood of destroying my livelihood. What do you think about legislation that removes the corporate veil for contracted debts and for criminal liability, but not for civil liability (thus requiring a higher standard of proof in court), and/or carve-outs protecting one’s home and land/vital assets up to a certain amount (which would protect small business owners from losing everything but would still expose the vast majority of assets belonging to anyone in the “elite”)?
Mary Bennet,
Also, I wanted to note, corporations *can* be sued just like any other person, as they are considered legal persons. The problem is that you can only get at the assets of that “person” (the corporation) in a lawsuit, not the separate assets of the owners, members, or shareholders. So while I don’t agree with corporate personhood, it doesn’t prevent you from suing the corporation. Also, of course, business owners can still be criminally prosecuted for all sorts of things regardless of whether they were done on behalf of the business. The main protection provided by corporate entities is asset protection (of assets not owned by the corporation itself), from creditors or claimants in a lawsuit, not some sort of criminal immunity. This is not to say that corporations don’t get away with plenty that’s criminal, of course, or that the corporate structure doesn’t get used to muddy the waters when it comes to who is responsible for criminal actions.
I feel like an idiot for missing this until now: the problem isn’t technological per se. It’s the fact that so many people (myself included it seems!) have a weird reaction to technological change, and have a hard time seeing that old solutions would work just as well for “new” problems. A few hundred years ago, there were extremely draconian responses to fabricating official documents of any kind, as a way to put a stop to this sort of thing. There’s a reason the copying the king’s seal used to be considered a form of High Treason after all, a fact which I already knew about but was somehow not connecting to the current reality.
Somewhere along the line, a policy decision was made to stop treating forgery as an existential threat to the state, and merely as an ordinary crime. Maybe that made sense when the tools of detecting forgery briefly pulled ahead of the tools to detect it, but with the tools for forgery rapidly catching up to the tools to detect it, and in some cases already past it, that is no longer the case.
I still think that right now there’s a huge problem because of these tools, but a huge part of it is that unlike, say, five hundred years ago, or even three hundred years ago, the full weight of the state is not coming down on the people who are engaged in fraud. This means this problem, like a lot of the ones facing the modern world, has a fairly simple solution, but one which is currently outside of the Overton Window: start treating forgery of any official document like an existential threat to the state, and all of these tools will pretty quickly vanish into the winds.
By the way, for what it may be worth, as a Canadian I would like for us to realign with the US and tell the EU and China to go pound sand. The EU, because it’s the very soul of globalist lenocracy, and China because they think the Opium Wars were yesterday and therefore have nothing good in mind for us. I think Anglo North America should stick together and that the border is more of a historical accident than a delineator of any real difference.
@Andy #197
Thank you for sharing! I see the irony in the fact that sheer practicality got my kid into CS (duh, that’s where the money is after an undergraduate degree, unlike lawyers and doctors. Now this path is anything but certain. As for “There was real scope for creativity in the field”. I hope you are right. My fear is that the keyword is “was”. It’s great that you are discussing a backup plan. We are not even talking about it. I’m just cheering them up to cross the finish line and be done with college. I also compile a mental list of their talents (teaching, photography, and cooking) to be ready with alternatives.
Best of luck to you and your kid, Andy!
I’ve been trying to write essays for a few years, and can’t seem to get past the standard university format. Like they do a good enough job helping me clarify my ideas, but it makes all my writing come out as dry and flavorless. Do you have any advice to help me fix the narrative voice of my essays?
Thanks!
JMG & Commentariat – trying to write an explanation for someone on the vehicles of incarnation – does this make sense or not?
*****
In the way that someone going on an expedition needs a map, correct clothing, equipment and supplies, so it is that for a soul to experience material reality it needs certain things to function here.
Imagine that the soul is too large to directly enter and experience this limited material world, but it can ‘extrude’ a small part of itself into this realm using certain dense vehicles – i.e. mind, body and personality.
The soul is the explorer; it does not have a map as such, but it creates a ‘mind’ to make a map of reality and an ego/personality to interpret/process information. Much of this information comes via signals from the body (senses,feelings etc). However, things get complex because the explorer (the soul) is much more than the body, mind and personality – those are the tools of the explorer, not the actual explorer.
As the personality gains experience and patterns things in the material and mental worlds, it makes more and more ‘noise’ and the subtle signals of the explorer get drowned out by the reactions and habitual responses of the personality.
Over time, immersed in sensations, passions and desires of the bodily ‘vehicle’, the ego comes to think it leads the expedition. The result tends towards chaos because the vehicles of body, mind and personality have certain capacities but lack some important ones. The vehicles exist because consciousness precedes them and without this ‘spark of life’ that is consciousness they could not be. The body, mind and ego are like partial small reflections of something greater, but seeing the body in a mirror and feeling the sensations of the world, we each come to identify the body we have as our actual self.
So, rather than unfolding mind and imagination by ‘hearing’ the signals of the soul percolating through, there is a risk of only paying attention to signals coming from the body. By doing so, one becomes more animal like in behaviour and outlook – focussing on sensation and self and excluding awareness of ‘other’ self absorption does not widen horizons and perceptions, it narrows them.
Things get interesting by asking: What if we have to learn how to be human? That by making choices and then learning to live with the results and consequences of those choices we adopt ‘directions of travel’ – we can change direction any time by making different choices, but another question arises: ‘What choices to make?’
And that is the start point of adventures that go beyond being intoxicated by sensation; development of an unfolding and evolving personal Ideal, discernment and hopefully compassionate wisdom.
*****
Thank you.
@Siliconguy #153
I expect drones to follow the same evolutionary trajectory as manned aviation. Scores of small slow cheap-as-chips plasticy propeller-powered drones eventually morphing into a handful of expensive all metal jet-powered behemoths for same reasons it happened with manned warplanes.
It is sorta already happening: there are jet-powered Shahed versions already which are naturally more expensive.
In regard to the drone wars, it just occurred to me history has rhymed,
“[destroyers] were conceived in the late 19th century as a defense against torpedo boats, and by the time of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, these “torpedo boat destroyers” (TBDs) were “large, swift, and powerfully armed torpedo boats designed to destroy other torpedo boats”.”
Then I found this.
“The Shahed-136 is now toting a shoulder-fired heat seeking missile as Russia continues to expand the drone’s capabilities.”
https://www.twz.com/air/russian-shahed-136-kamikaze-drones-now-carrying-manpads-missiles
Oh… no doubt there are members of the Iranian Quds Force espionage team deeply embedded IN New York, fluent in New Yorkese, and rather easily passing as New Yorkers… 😉
(Which is to say, yes, I think you are right…). 🙂
I have a question to the commentariat that I don’t know where else to post. I was reading about the (improbable) friendship between T.S. Eliot and Charles Williams and realized they were both writing a kind of long, philosophical or metaphysical poem that has a long tradition in English, but I couldn’t think of any German equivalent.
It seems to me that English has had such long, philosophical poems since at least Alexander Pope (whom I haven’t read). Tennyson also wrote long, only very slightly narrative and much more philosophical poems like “Maude” or “In Memoriam” (which I couldn’t stomach). They were highly appreciated by the modernist poets – Pound’s Cantos, Eliot’s Wasteland, also Hart Crane and others. Charles Williams tried his hand at long poems, too, though I prefer his shorter ones.
Is there a technical term in English for “long, non-narrative (or hardly narrative) poem about philosophical/metaphysical/theological subjects”?
I know of comparable modernist poems from Brazil, where the tradition was in full swing until at least the 1960s – João Cabral de Melo Neto’s “Uma faca de uma lâmina” (which I cherish) or Ferreira Gullar’s “Poema sujo” (which I can’t appreciate at all). I don’t think such poems were written in Brazil before modernism, but I might be wrong.
But I can’t think of a single example in German. All the modernist poets I know wrote either rather short poems (like the Expressionists) or else drama – several from Bertolt Brecht are among the most famous ones. After failing to remember a single example, I tried several search engines, which failed, too. My rather superficial acquaintance with French poetry doesn’t contain examples, either.
Does anybody know if there are such poems in German (or other languages) that I missed? More interestingly, does anybody have an idea why this tradition was so strong, for so long, in English, more than in other languages?
I have been reflecting on the concept of “geopolitical enemy” which has emerged in the conversation between JMG and Tyler.
So, here I am, a 66 year old American-born woman who has travelled in many countries who, during various points in my lifetime, might justifiably have seen the US as their “geopolitical enemy”. Certainly as a country on which they would wish to be less dependent. What I will say is that at no point in any of my travels – Latin America, China, North Africa, or Europe – has ANYONE ever treated me personally as a “geopolitical enemy.” I find that most people can very easily distinguish between the actions of a state, carried out to advance the interests of that state’s elite, and ordinary people who are governed by that state.
It is not hard for vested interests to find themselves in conflict with other vested interests. It is rather more difficult, in my humble experience, for ordinary people to find themselves in conflict with other ordinary people, although most of us are subject to the various strategies our own elites resort to to keep us in line, and to recruit us to battle others on their behalf.
(Note, I’m not saying it’s impossible – but you always have to begin by convincing an ordinary person that we are MORE threatened by those other people over there, than we are by the elites who we know are already exerting controls over us and taking extractions from us on a daily basis.)
Which is to say, there ARE geopolitical enemies, but there is no ordinary person from anywhere who I will accept as a personal enemy from a distance. (And this is based on the general willingness of people everywhere I have so far travelled to refuse to treat me as an enemy when the geopolitics governing the relations between our respective countries would have indicated that they might have been justified in doing so).
Egon Fischer also writes, all past cycles of change in written history have changed humans life and ideas through new technology, bu the upcoming shift will make humans and societies from within – this sounds approximately like saying, the age of technological marvels is over, many will return to introspection and inner paths, as always in these times of great empires downturn, as always since there is humanity some will.
Also he notes, the Earth is not originally a prison planet, but currently acts as such. With the help of dark forces, humans have constructed it as such, but this is ending. Historically, he says, this has led to a negative view of the human body as a prison too, but that as well will change.
Popular and well known Austrian comedian Roland Dueringer (born 1963) said, since nine-eleven, there have been constantly global events where he assumed one day what we take as given will break away. In the current situation he finds having plans for the coming years absurd – we don’t know what is to come, and business as usual may not continue.
He also remarks how in his prime of theater and television acting, nineties and early millenium years, cast actors joked and did unbelievably hilarious things together in the pauses between acting and filming sessions.
Nowadays, everyone’s only on their phones, “swiping”.
Frey India, a millenial, mourns he kind of youth ostensibly common in the nineteen nineties she never had, along with many younger people it seems; amateur videos of school kids in the nineties and raves are trending among the youth; some young women seem to grow tired of the corporare flavour of feminism and globalism.
Below many youtube videos showing rave parties of the nineties, many write they are in their fifties or beginning sixties, arrived with family and an ordinary life, but they remember their halcyon days in the rave scene as young people, how incredible that was, unthinkable nowadays.
There is not such a small number of people old and even young, apparently, who grow really tired of uniquitous, all pervading digital devices.
I myself was a child in the nineties and early millenium, so I was also never party of the nineties youth culture. I also miss that I never was.
Not everyone I met who was an adolescent back then enjoyed the time, but really a good many said, they had an incredible time, something magical.
As you are saying mister Greer, all this contemporary stuff may come unglued no in anyways; at least there has been an immense acceleration in the global system coming apart at the seams, these past six years.
Meanwhile gold traders and other financial people who oppose the current order due to the downturn and demise in standards everywhere in the West now turn increasingly to spiritualists and astrologers.
Dominik Kettner and Phillip Hopf, two such well known German traders criticising the status quo have invited Christoph Niederwieser, an Austrian astrologer for business.
Niederwiese clearly is making an effort not to be insulting or overly taking any party in his analyses.
They hated on him often he says, for example when in 2021 he predicted the demise of Germany and its industry, and many did not want to consider that and spitefully attacked him in the comments.
What I find fascinating: from analyst english literature professor (well allegedly so) Jianfg Xueqin, to indian astrologer abhgayil (in interview with Preeitka Rao) to if I recall correctly several others, they all predicted greater Israel to succeed, and later on be in partnership with Iran.
@JMG about the pentagram ritual and the Sphere of Protection
I could not ever validate what you said about the currents each ritual uses; I do the standard pentagram variety and middle pillar.
Now, I am interested, is the Sphere of Protection “better” in that sense than its Golden Dawn counter part, did the just not know better?
Introspection along side these, be it that in includes Discursive Meditation or that we would call all introspection discursive, is of course I would almost say, the most important, most general exercise, not an energetic one, so not prone to such incompatibility.
I consider buying the Dolmen Arch to complete my collection; unfortunately a lot of books I did not even get to read yet.
The reason being now theres still money and opportunity.
I for one, think I may be happy to stick with the basic cleansing, charging energetic exercises, though I know there are advanced reaches of that.
How important is it to do advanced practices as opposed to the basic SoP/Pentagram/Middle Pillar Rituals I wonder – for an amateur, maybe trying for higher reaches of energetic ceremonial magic is not always the right thing for every incarnation.
What about the vocalizations that work well in ancient Hebrew, there will certainly be good counter parts in the celtic golden dawn?
I dont know how much more of a future my incarnation here in central Europe has anyways, but having these books and committing to some of the practices may do something good to conserve valuable knowledge around here, who knows.
Is there a link to the Ecosophia potluck? I saw it, and then it disappeared.
Hi JMG
Recently I have been interested in the history of megalithic constructions, and the mysteries associated with them because even if main stream historians dismissed how difficult the building of those constructions is; so there are legitimate questions about who, when and how those constructions were built with such gigantic stones, presumably with Bronze Age tools. And also why almost all of them are mute, with any painting, sculptures, texts, figures, etc… as if someone voluntarily had erased all the footprints of the people that made those constructions, as, for example the Giza pyramids, all empties and only a more than dubious painting was found in the Cheops pyramid that associated it to this pharaoh, nothing in the other two.
I send some links to videos about some megalithic constructions around the world that are astonishing and very difficult to explain how they were built by Stone or Bronze Age tools (or the tools we now know of those times):
Lebanon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFA7vf1Z2vQ
China
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZi4sIMhad8
Japan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJb58oTNly0
There are all around the globe. It seems there are huge amount of things we don’t know about our past
Cheers
David
@JMG, Tyler, and anyone else who is interested in the mutually harmful relationship between Canada and the USA: I do agree with JMG’s statement that Canada is the USA’s enemy and is allied with the EU, but perhaps for reasons different than JMG’s. Though it is practically a forbidden topic in discussion, there is plenty of evidence to show that Canada was given ‘independence’ from the UK in 1867 to serve as a bulwark against US expansionism and in reaction to its civil war – but this independence is more a convenient fiction than a fact. The sad truth is that although nearly every American knows at least some parts of their Constitution (as well they should), how many Canadians do you know who have actually read Canada’s Constitution (most of which is the British North America Act of 1867)? I know of only a few – and they are constitutional lawyers!
Constitutionally, 100% of Canada’s land belongs to the British Sovereign (all of our properties are owned in ‘fee simple’); the Commander in Chief of the “Royal” Canadian Armed Forces is (surprise!) the King (that’s why when Britain goes to war, Canada automatically joins – there is no debate about it in the House of Commons); the most powerful person in Canada is the Clerk of the Privy Council (not the Prime Minister); every legislative ‘Bill’ must be pre-approved by the Governor General (the King’s representative) if it involves spending money; and not only the Prime Minister but every Member of Parliament swears allegiance to the King – not to the Canadian people, and not to the Canadian Constitution. Even Canada’s “new and improved” Constitution (circa 1982) had to be approved by British Parliament before it could be co-signed by the Queen and PM Trudeau The Elder. Canadian sovereignty is a lie; always has been. We are still a British colony; but both the Brit and Canuck establishments pretend that it just ain’t so. And since Britain has pretty much become a vassal of the EU (at least economically), Canada has been dragged along. Hence the rise of PM Marx Carnage (his brother manages the estate of Prince William). It’s pretty much guaranteed that when EU/UK declare war on Russia, Canada will do so right away – and find some pretext for it. If Canada has to be some other nation’s satrapy, I’d far rather it be America’s than the Europeans’ or the Chinese – but nobody in Canada’s so-called federal government is interested in my opinion!
@ Chuaquin #209 –
Oh, admittedly. Probably several elephants in the room. 🙂
As I said, it was my personal, limited-perspective, impression gained from a short-lived, somewhat culture-shocky travel experience… 🙂
To get other views, you need to consult other pairs of eyes.
My orignal post was one of the last before the Change, so here it is again:
Hello All,
I have not fallen of the face of the earth. But, our colleague Erika has withdrawn from planning.
I have a tentative plan for Adocentyn in Providence. Theme Past, Present & Future
Friday, 6/19 Past
• 1:00 PM Meeting with Roger Williams, founder of Providence and the First Baptist Church in America
• 2:30 PM History tour of Providence, led by me, about 2 hours, hill climbing involved
• Dinner TBD
Saturday 6/20 Present in a rented space. Piano available
• 9:00 to noon time for talks/presentations
• 12:00 1:00ish lunch delivered
• 1:00 – 5:00 time for talks/presentations
• 6:00 dinner at Track 15
Sunday 6/21 Future
• from 9:00 on, open discussion.
This will cost me about $1,200.
I have a sign up link on Google forms at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdd6bPmi_cQ0svcPDdLfnEotjQChh–FjrwQjBcJtE5zTZqQA/viewform?usp=sharing&ouid=116501315668463762438
In a month, I will respond to anyone who signed up with a request for a deposit, which will vary depending on number of responders. 3
If you want to present on Saturday, post in the link
There is an open discussion link at
https://peter-van-erp.dreamwidth.org/267.html#comments
Chuaquin #209:
Sure, I absolutely agree that conflating criticism of Israel and antisemitism is a problem.
That said, I’m personally much more concerned by the real antisemitism. So I could get called antisemitic for criticising Israel. Big deal. If I’ve learned anything in the last ten years, being called a double-plus ungood whatever-ist really doesn’t mean much. It’s just a snarl world. It shuts down discourse, yes, but I think people are collectively realising that this is happening and its only a matter of time until it loses the rest of its already much diminished effectiveness.
On the other hand, I only need to look at the semi-regular Gaza protests over here to see how quickly these people go from “Israel should stop bombing civilians” to “from the river to the sea.” I’m always slightly tempted to ask just what should happen to the current population of Israel but I value not being beaten up or stabbed.
Curt #228:
As a Zoomer, I absolutely resent most of modern technology (and I say this as a CS student; even computing was better in the nineties). If I were to be offered the chance to go back in time and change my childhood, I would absolutely party more and scroll less.
Oh well. I’ll make up for it in my next incarnation, I guess.
—David P.
Seeking # 206:
Yes, they seem to need their main and favorite black beast (Christianism), and in a much less way, the another monotheisms (Islam and Jews), maybe because they’re far more dangerous targets, by evident reasons (ahem).
Secular materialism could de defined in the short form IMHO like a philosophy which idealizes a Science seen as an almighty power without real competence. Indeed, most Atheists love Scientificism too.
—————————
Charlie # 208:
Well, EU pretend to make Europeans think our anti-Russian propaganda isn’t propaganda; only Putin propaganda is “evil”(ahem). So I agree. Our propaganda seems “true news”, of course if we aren’t aware of its agenda.
By the way, I sometimes read BBC Mundo to know what says this NATO mouth piece about current wars in Ukraine and ME.
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Siliconguy # 211:
I remembered like in a fog that I had measles when I was 3 or 4 (near my first actual memories from my childhood). It wasn’t easy, but according my parents it wasn’t a severe illness.
—————————-
Cynthia C. # 213:
An interesting comment to a non native English speaker/commenter like me…Thanks. In addition to my comment about sexual profanities in spanish, men and women private parts have their respective (slightly unpolite) “vernacular” name alike (which you can use or avoid depending of a funny or serious contexts), and several sinonymous and euphemisms to replace their use (more or less funny). It’s said smart and educated people know when they’re allowed to use them or avoid them in social relations.
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DFC # 231:
Thanks for your comment and links. There seem to be a gap between how much primitive and shoddy were our ancestors, and how much power and knowledge were really needed to build megalithic structures during Prehistoric times, and Egypt Pyramids during early Ancient Era. I think there isn’t a fast and easy answer to this mysterious gap, but I can guess “primitive” people was wiser and more skilled than we think, or we want to think. Maybe they used some kind of lost technologies, maybe based in wood and another things which didn’t last; as work hypothesis. So those technologies are difficult to be rebuilt now.
@ Siliconguy #211
I had measles at age 2 in 1950. I don’t remember it but my mother says it was a bad case and they were afraid I might die. In those days the doctor made house calls. I don’t remember the doctor calling for German measles (rubella) or whooping cough, but he did examine me when I had mumps. I had to pull down my pants and lie on my back while he checked out my winkie. A hugely unpleasant experience. My mother watched from the doorway so I guess it was legit. Apparently mumps can leave you sterile.
Measles can be dangerous, particularly if children are malnourished. The British actor Rex Harrison of My Fair Lady fame had a glass eye because of measles as a child. There are some ghastly photos of children with eye damage because of measles. Don’t look at them.
I caught chicken pox at the age of 25, in London. I visited the National Health doctor who backed away from me and said I either had chicken pox or smallpox and gave me a script for calamine lotion. During the time my blisters were visible no one would come near me. The worst side effect was damage to my social life. As it happened, there was a death from smallpox in London at that time as a result of a laboratory accident.
JMG,
In confirmation (and high approval) of your suggestion of the Shriners system for donations, let me relate my experience training there in the 1990’s-2000’s, and later regarding research. First, they accept patients for whom there is a good chance they can make a real difference – ie offer care that can substantially improve functional long term outcome (ie not custodial only, but for patients with potential for improvement). Second, they watched every dime carefully, and made sure their staff and trainees did so.. Costs were part of the training, with consideration and knowledge about balancing costs with benefits, as part of the education (at a time when most institutions ignored costs, or played to BigMed/profits). Restrictions were limited, yet expensive aspects had to be justified and expected to be worthwhile.
In addition, insurance was not accepted by Shriners for a very long time, so it was not “what insurance approved” influenced costs, but actual ones (time, risks and dollars). Uninsured patients got the same care as insured (staff and physicians usually had no idea if patients had insurance or not). Everyone was on salary, without vested interests, beyond doing good work and helping the patient/family. How much care helped the patient/family IN THE LONG TERM, was emphasized. This was recognized by other physicians in the field, such that Shriners research has been, and remains, exceptionally respected. Shriners long-term record keeping (beyond government requirements, often multi-generational) has added perspective.
In addition to my comment about Marina the philosopher, about his writings on religion, I can tell you this evening (local time) I was slightly bored. So I used a search engine to find (as a possible wry amusement) how people in their usual ideas pack (right wing/jingoist/Catholic) had reacted to Mr. Marina ideas, especially his view on the Pope infallibility.
I think they could do it better, please. The smartest and deepest criticism against this philosopher thoughts about religion(s) I’ve found online, can be written, in the short form, like “Marina is a Freemason and a Socialist (so he isn’t worth to be read)”. Well, I think this is a typical example of an “ad hominem” fallacy; a direct personal attack whose authors don’t make an effort to understand and then debunk opposite reasonings. Indeed, a symptom of mental laziness and a not very honest “modus operandi” against one of the main thinkers of Spain in the last decades.
Even if Marina is really a Freemason and a (very mild) Socialist, these personal tendences don’t invalidate his reasonings. By the way, being a Freemason (like our “boss” John is, too), isn’t a crime in democratic countries, unless you think every Freemason is an Atheist or a Satanist who eats babies for breakfast (I’m using sarcasm). On the other hand, it isn’t impossible to be a Catholic/Christian and a Socialdemocrat alike. There are different ways to believe.
It seems sadly that a lot of right wing Catholics think they’ve got the monopoly of Christianism as True Believers.
Another attitude within some of them which upsets me (to some extent), happens when you ask them why they believe/think this or that idea, and they answer you in a very serious mood, “because it’s ordered to be obeyed from Rome”. So it’s only true or false because the Vatican says it. However, there’s been and there’s to some extent different ways, philosophies and theologies within Catholicism (and of course, outside it in another branches of Christianism). Well, I find this lack of a true own thought similar to certain Lenin phrase, when he said/wrote that he and every other Communists should see as truth everything the Party would say/wrote as truth. An embarrassing coincidence between some right wing believers and old school Commies (cough), to avoid a personal thought.
Regarding corporations and liability, Companies Act legislation in New Zealand makes board members of companies personally liable for certain things done by the company, namely:
– Reckless Trading: Continuing to trade while insolvent;
– Negligent Trading: Incurring obligations they cannot fulfill; and
– Breaches of Duty: Acting in bad faith or not in the company’s best interests.
For a while there bank and finance company directors were also personally liable for compliance failures under the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act, to the tune of up to $200,000 each. (This was removed because the government decided it was making banks too averse to lending to small business.)
@DFC #231 A couple of years ago I learned to my astonishment that Japan wasn’t always “Japanese” and that around 300 BC was when the Japanese (or Yayoi) began to arrive and supplant, often violently, the Jomon people who were the ones who built the ancient megalithic structures the YouTube depicts. There were cultural differences, the Jomon were more of a hunter/fisher/gatherer culture, and the two peoples were quite different in appearance. .
I don’t share all of this blogger’s beliefs, but here is one explanation for why Canada is a geopolitical risk for the USA: https://barsoom.substack.com/p/ukrainada.
The TL;DR is that Canada is at risk of becoming a beachhead for one or more much more populous Asian countries, and America being forced to choose between closing the long and inherently porous land border, or simply taking over Canada and doing the much easier job of controlling airports and seaports.
I think any ‘Canada as geopolitical enemy of the USA’ started with Trump’s actions and words towards Canada. It is hard to stay friends with a country when their head of state starts threatening economic destruction as a prelude to annexation, and tears up agreements he himself made with your country earlier.
Still don’t like Carney though. International banksters are NOT my favorite animal and I don’t trust him to have the welfare of average or poorer Canadians at heart at all. I don’t want to be his acceptable collateral damage in the pursuit of his goals for Canada.
I would like to see Canada become more self-reliant and avoid entanglements that get us involved in foreign military adventures, or become so beholden to another nation that we have little control over our own fate. No matter who that other nation is: the USA, the EU, or China.
I would like to be friends with both the USA and Europe, if possible. And have a more distant but mutually-beneficial trade relationship with China. But I don’t want Canada to be exploited as a wholly owned subsidiary by anyone, or get torn to pieces by the great powers fighting over our resources.
Still, what I want doesn’t exactly have a huge influence on events.
@ Chris “I must say, there is talk of a nearby waste to electricity co-generation plant being built, and it’s about time. Chucking plastic into landfill is not a good use of the inherent energy, as recycling of that stuff is a fine joke. Although clean polyethylene and some clean vinyls can be recycled. Note the use of the word: clean.”
Back in the late 1980’s Dow Chemical proposed that the best response to plastic waste was essentially burn it for energy and capture the output waste to be stored elsewhere. This was proposed as something that would be done for a few decades until a better solution came along. The argument was that there are simply far too many plastic types and it various quality grade that you wouldn’t be able to recycle more than about 10% of it one time. Turns out the real number is about 8%.
It was argued that it was better to treat plastic as an intermediate state of oil and use it for energy rather than just rubbish or low grade plastics. Also recycled bottles tend to release microplastics 10x what a virgin material bottle will, turn out when you break polymers to create new bottles you just create a huge amount of smaller chains that can break off.
It was a surprisingly pragmatic proposal to the issues of plastics that acknowledged the issues with the materials while providing a feasible response. Nothing came of it and now we have 4 rubbish bins to be picked up every week and have 9 billion tons of this stuff in holes in the ground and floating in the ocean. Great job us!
@ JMG # 202:
“Nothing interesting has ever happened there” — oh, you’re being sly. I’m rooting for old weird Zommerdal!
I bet young Carmen Jones took some teasing about her name. Her friends likely never heard of the movie musical, but some of their parents or grandparents would have. It’s not exactly The Sound of Music.
Sometimes what draws two people together, later drives them apart. Also, the death of a child is a horrific strain on a marriage. Won’t be surprised if Carmen and Ted divorce.
I agree w/ Patricia Mathews # 44: Carmen needs serious therapy. She’s all slap slap: “This is for your own good!” Ted would need therapy too, after enduring her rage for decades. I can see why Britney knuckled under. Benefit: she’s the golden girl, not the loser. If she and/or her mother get a pink slip, they’ll come unglued.
Will Ariel ever try to contact her late brother?
Excuse me for WAGing. I guess about everyone. I wonder about the pirate cos-player near the beginning of Book Two. Failed stage career in the Big Apple? Community theater actor who now plays for pay because his retirement fund went bye-bye?
@ Chuaqin #102 ” I’ve read that sometimes in old times over sailing ships, according some sailors, during storms, there was a “fire” over some ships tops.”
That would be St Elmo’s fire. A lot of good reading on this Wiki page. – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Elmo%27s_fire
@ Chris “Peak Oil continues along its merry old way. With supply down to 80%, it’s often lost on people in first world nations, that there are now those whom are missing out on supply.” – “We’re down to the unstated policy of ‘rationing by price’” – “And I’m yet to hear cheering about the situation from the folks oh so concerned about global warming.”
I have summarized your comment a little. I’m not sure with we will have hard rationing here, although with the government already having a 1 to 4 scale on restrictions, I think they know what is coming. I suspect Australia will not run out of any specific oil products that coming in raw forms but the costs are going to go up to compensate for on going supply. Things we get from the world factories, like most plastics and textiles, there is a case to be made they will run short.
Nate Hagens is helpful in mentioning that 50% of all oil is consumed domestically, thus if you purchase oil on the open market a 20% drop in supply actually means a 40% drop in purchasable supplies. since Australia’s oil supply is largely tapped out, we are almost exclusively purchasing on that market. We are currently in the Wile E. Coyote moment when we have run off the cliff face but have yet to look down at the drop.
The most I have heard from people that were all concerned about global warming is they are very nervous about not be able to fill up their car at the price they want. Easy to be a critic of the system when you treat it as a luxury to do so. I have also seen them chant the quickly formed mantra of “War cannot shut down renewables”. I cannot find the essay now but it was one of the De-growth blogs that rightly called them out in the hypocrisy of cheering on a war to advance their agenda. That regardless of oil or solar, it simply moves the same problem of excessive extraction to a different flavor of extraction all so they do not have to change their living standards.
Many are rushing to get EV’s but that can only do so much, must also be nice to have the luxury of having that option available. Just remember another mantra, EVs aren’t about saving the environment, they are about saving the automotive industry. EV’s just look like the last gasp before the unstoppable decline sets in over the next decade.
Syfen #221 – Try writing short poetry, and also working with forms like the sonnet forms. Anything hackneyed and overdone will show up quickly. Then, maybe try writing short essays (200 words, approximately). Write down your honest opinion about something like barbecue or potato salad or athletic practice. No more than 500 words. Throw them all away, if you can manage that. Remember that humor doesn’t translate well to the written page, and write something you think is funny anyway. After all that, then you might try writing essays again. Just a thought. I write lots of essays here and there for limited distribution, and I’m asked to write them as well. None of them were cranked out of an English stylebook.
So I let this topic rattle around in my head for a bit before saying anything.
I looked up “secular materialism” and yeah, I suppose that shoe fits. I don’t see why I should adopt that as a label though, when everyone knows what an atheist is.
I’m also quite aware that my atheism is a belief. That belief is not confirmed by science. I don’t think it even could in theory be confirmed by science, which by the way has pretty well had its run. I’m also aware that my belief isn’t in a privileged category for any other reason. It is not the default.
I hold my belief for the same reason others hold theirs: because it suits me to.
It’s not that I’m banking on some atheist afterlife either, like uploading your mind to a computer or cryonics or whatever. All that is bogus anyway. I’m serenely content with the idea of returning to the nothing from whence I came. Those who aren’t will of course adopt beliefs that suit them, as it should be.
JMG,
From time to time you have mentioned that you mostly read books by dead people. Today as I was listening to my analog stereo setup while house cleaning I realized that I had come to the age and set of musical tastes where most of the music I listen too is also by dead people.
Aldarion #164: Thanks for the link!
Ambrose #181: Good to know about Cayce. Steiner also has lectures on this topic, I’m sure, but I’ve yet to come across them.
BeardTree#195: That sounds more or less like what I heard growing up in Protestant circles. I think it’s harder for someone like me in the present day to understand because the logic you’re using depends on a prior understanding of animal sacrifice as a means to divine connection and purification, and I don’t have that background. (Everyone in first-century Palestine would have that background, which is why the New Testament explains it in those terms).
Scotlyn #200: I’ve heard similar descriptions from people who have visited India and Iraq. The barriers to small-time entrepreunership are very minimal, so anyone seeing a local niche can acquire the necessary equipment and skill and make themselves a living. In my country, insurance companies and licensing bodies have made all of that harder. In my current job as an events coordinator at a downtown venue, I am frequently explaining to recent immigrants from East Africa that in order to have their family gathering in our building they need to have event insurance, special occasion permit to serve alcohol, certified bartender… and I watch their jaws drop a little as the needless costs mount up on top of the rental fee. I just have to shrug my shoulders and say, sorry…. that’s Canada. It’s not a free market here, it’s a bureaucratic extraction economy.
Here is a fun one relating to the oil restrictions. ‘Long-held bitumen standards waived after supply caught in Strait of Hormuz’
Quick summary, due to a lack of supply, Australia is lowering the standards of bitumen used on roads. The substitute is a harder grade which will age quicker in our heat, there is also talk about raising costs for road maintenance. *Wheeeeee!* down the slope of decline we continue! Enjoy the pot holes.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-26/australia-bitumen-supply-crisis-strait-of-hormuz-disruptions/106566896
@ Siliconguy #211 “For those of you that are old enough to have had the measles did any of you get carted to the doctor’s office? I didn’t, nor did my brother. ”
Didn’t you get the memo? We are all meant to be helicopter parents now that must panic at the smallest scratch or cough that poor little Jane and Jimothy get. Regardless it means a mad dash to the hospital. 😉
@DFC #231 “Some links to videos about some megalithic constructions around the world that are astonishing and very difficult to explain how they were built by Stone or Bronze Age tools (or the tools we now know of those times):”
I think there is always two parts to this. One part is knowledge we have lost, the other is the trick that a lot of magicians (both kinds) use. We tend to underestimate just how much effort some people will go to to do amazing things. It isn’t always just intelligent technique but sheer stubbornness to get something done. But when in doubt just blame aliens. 😉
@Dylan #250
I became a Christian in my early 20’s after spending sometime in eastern religion/new age stuff. I had exposure growing up to some mainline Methodist stuff and the Christian story was there in the background more so in those days. I came to Jesus as the living resurrected way or door to God and as the one who gives the Holy Spirit. The work of the Cross concept was not part of the understanding. When I prayed to trust in and receive Jesus my eyes and mouth flew open at the sudden face to face closeness of God. Years later I delved into the work of the crucifixion and was stunned by the primal weirdness and at the same time enchanted. Yes, Christ crucified as it says is foolishness to the wisdom of the world. To think a guy tacked up on a piece of wood is so central! Christianity is very strange.
Jennifer Kobernik 216
It seems you are describing an LLC (Limited Liability Corporation),— its separation of assets between personal and company?
💨📄💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
Ron M. # 232 and others:
From my relative European ignorance, I can think about Canada and USA relationships, in a humble way, that they maybe repeat the usual neighbors relation, when one country is stronger and the second one is weaker. To some extent, it has also happened always between Spain and Portugal. Often Spaniards have looked Portuguese as “brothers”…but thinking about us like big brothers for them, in a paternalistic way. Some Spaniards think Portugal is a less advanced country (ahem) than us, and poorer. Some Portuguese complain they feel historically threatened by Spain (sadly, it isn’t a paranoia when you read Iberian history).
It’s not the same, but I think Canucks and Americans, to some extent, are brother countries too. And Canada has been always weaker than USA, so do the math. Unfortunately, brothers aren’t always good friends…
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Scotlyn # 233:
It was your personal view, no argument here. I’ve never gone to China, but I’ve met people who travelled there and there’s here in my town a thriving Chinese community (even there’s a “Chinese” street full of their businesses). I see Chinese here use the free market to live and some of them eventually get rich (big expensive cars), but even outside their country you notice the long hand of their totalitarian State (for example, in some bars you find discrete small national flags).
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David # 235:
I understand your view. I think woke western leftism is playing with fire in its uncritical support for Palestinians. I’ve always supported the two States “solution” for the main ME predicament: an Israeli country and a Palestinian one, but I’m not naive. I think it would be very difficult to get a deal between such enemies like Zionists and Arabs, and then to wait there would be peace between that two neighbor States for a while…
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Michael G. # 246:
Thank you for your link. I think that’s the phenomenon I had in my mind. It’s said that natural creepy phenomenon was seen by old school (superstitious) sailors as a bad luck sign, at least here.
I’ve just learnt a new word: “rojipardo”(red and brown). Local woke left, within its own impoverished slang language, began to label non woke leftists with this term, a time ago. Well, I’m a bit slow to catch recent trends, methink (oops).
It’s perfectly possible to be a “progressive” but not a wokester; at least in my country there’s a wide minority of non woke leftists who don’t like current cultural wars madness. I’ve personally met some of them in my town, they seem nice people. I partly agree, so maybe I’m partly a “rojipardo” too…OMG!
“Rojiverde” is an euphemism which roughly means “fascist-like”, “red fascist”(sic) or directly “fascist”, depending of its context. So it’s IMHO another thoughtstopper against dissidents. I’m quite upset after having known this Orwellian-like term.
It’s true there have been until now unpleasant hybrids between Communism and Fascism, for example the German National-Bolsheviks; but I think the woke “modus operandi”, labelling non woke left as half-fascist (or even worse, as directly fascist), goes beyond its usual dishonest and poor thought way. I knew that according usual wokesters madness, every right wing people (even mild Conservatives) are suspected of being “fascists”, but this attack against their own “comrades” is too blunt and brainless. So if/when a leftist rejects rationally void cultural wars and unlimited migration it becomes a (near) fascist too…
I think woke left makes good the biblical phrase: “To see the straw in the other eye, but…”(authoritarianism, censorship and so on). Maybe local wokesters will be soon losing their last “friends” and allies within their own side of the political spectrum, if they haven’t lost them since some time ago.
@David P.
“even computing was better in the nineties” – computing fascinated me in the nineties as a child and it soon stopped thereafter. By 2005 I started definitely to hate it.
That’s by the way ALSO a frequent meme on the internet: “back then when technology was fascinating”
– also a common one: “the internet used to be a place to escape the real world. Now the real world offers an escape from the internet”
Definitely a fascinating trend of what concerns the cult of progress.
I have no idea what will happen in Europe – I personally notice NOTHING in my little world, diesel has become a little cheaper once again they say – but all the various predictions are only dire.
The network and infrastructure is still available mostly 24/7 to us Europeans, with a certain increase in local outages – however, should that change, for good, it will change our modern culture as well.
Thousands of flights have already been cancelled, apparently if I believe certain critics on youtube, the governments of the EU have opened their strategic oil/jet fuel reserves IN HOPE of a near solution to the crisis – that is why we are waivering in a dangerous sense of security here.
I always say, as long as middle class people still jet to Thailand to make cheap vacations for a month in January, nothing for the core of our society has really changed (never mind the growing impoverishing rabble).
Once THAT change, it is a true change of an era…!
@Cynthia #248 “I’m serenely content with the idea of returning to the nothing from whence I came.”
Being more of a platonist-flavoured polytheist, I can safely say – “I am serenely content with the idea of returning [eventually, after further adventures and misadventures] to the Everything from whence I [and all the gods] came.”
May all your goings and doings be blessed! 🙂
Reflecting, just a bit more, on the question of music in worship spaces…
Well, Ogion in Leguin’s Earthsea Trilogy famously said – “to hear, one must be silent.”
And, it seems that spiritual experience (the kind that involves getting to know a god through personal encounter) does require that – at least sometimes – one be silent, so that one can hear. (And here I am not saying anything that has not already been said a few hundred times by our host in other contexts).
It is an interesting question as to whether any given worship service or mass, or group religious ritual has been designed to incorporate any kind of god-listening in mind, or is it more oriented towards talking, singing and praying AT, in a more solipsistic kind of approach.
Does anyone have any recommendations for reading relating to the theory behind and development of what was referred to in the New Thought movement as ‘magnetism’? Thank you
@Nemo #245 –
About Daniel’s death – I remember thinking, at the time I read that scene, “His son. His only son.” which would have made matters worse.
And in this current discussion, you mentioned the possibility of Carmen getting a pink slip, which, having followed what’s happening to jobs at her level, I’ve been wondering, myself. That would break the whole thing wide open – or destroy her.
@Phutatorius: Between Blitzer and Hegseth, lots of Pulp Fiction moments going around lately. I bet there are scenes like the one with the gimp that happen a lot in D.C. that we don’t even know about : )
https://quentin-tarantino.fandom.com/wiki/The_Gimp
Lyam Christopher is such a youtube man giving benevolent lectures on hermetic practices, especially on the pitfalls every scholar must face, cautioning viewers or readers about the many dangers involved in practicing the mind according to will. He mentions JMG at one point; I wonder if he is a reader here as well.
He also elaborates on true inner freedom and happiness, versus the illusion of external gratification and its many faces that may possibly appear.
Here in Eastern Austria around Vienna, spring since the end of February has been mild.
The winter has been colder than the past fifteen years on average, with slight minus degrees where it would usually be slightly above zero and drizzle in Vienna. Although there were also February months with up to fifteen degrees.
Then at the end of February, there was one day with an extreme bout of snow, long time not seen around here, marvellous, all the branches of the trees thick with snow, and on the very next day, temperatures shot upwards drastically, the days after well around 10C or more, all snow melted.
Snow in general has been around more often this season in Vienna, where in past years it was around a centimeter of snow for two days in the season.
I always felt a cold winter precipitated a war spring, at least in my times, and this year it is true: not quite as extreme as 2018 with 20C in March and 26C in April, but a steady 15C-20C degrees since March, with a few days dropping below 10C in March, but also a few days above 20C since then. Last Saturday, 25th of April was up to 25C in Vienna.
Very very dry, also.
Many people complain particularily about the extreme jumps in temperature. I remember past years where temperatures fell 15C down or even 20C.
Meanwhile I already know when there is such an extreme drop in temperature, the following days will be a lot of rest, and no harder exercise or workings for me. That way I stay in good health, because many people get ill then.
As for the commenters who said 15-20C is ideal: I concur entirely, be it in my case however because I am so vulnerable to the sun.
It’s often mentioned how humans can be scantily clothed in cold weather as long as we are in active mode, doing work, something a modern comfortable personality cannot imagine.
I have once wandered around Vienna short sleeved at 10C, people with their jackets looked at me weirdly.
I could do so because I did exercises before; the breathing and motion grants that you are warm from the inside.
And so my ancestors were certainly outside a lot, tanning as needed, while I, a modern dweller, am not big fan of lying in the sun. So sun burn is a horrible risk for me.
A colleague once remarked his enjoyable stay in the Netherlands, where it was always around 10C to 15C with high moisture;
I prefer that british climate, because you can be fully clothed and prevent sun burn, you need not take care of that.
As much as I loved the tropics, I won’t travel very far anymore anyways, I always wished to live in a tropical rain climate as a child, I went there once as a young man and it was as marvellous as I always imagined, but in the end, I am really made for a cool and rainy climate.
Beginning in the first of May, Russia stops delivery of oil from Kazakhstan through the druzhba pipeline into Germany. Another dent in the already strained energy supply.
I have got more and more the feeling, this crisis will be it – the nail in the coffin for middle class excessive consumption in Central Europe.
Corona was not that – because the middle class boarded flights and consumed as always.
When the pizza delivery man does not come, is what I am implying.
I may be wrong as I was since 2016 about the speed and extent of the decline. But maybe I have only cried wolf two times.
It’s not just the Artemis II that is retro (complete with Stanley Kubrick revived from cryofreeze to film the “event” : ), but cassette culture is really making a comeback. A company in France has tapped into the desire of people to listen to tapes… while lots of bands and musicians are releasing music on tape, there was a need for a manufacturer to produce tape decks, walkmans, and the like. That’s where We Are Rewind came in, they have even produced a new massive hip-hop ready boombox. The boombox is a bit pricey, but I am happy to see these retro manifestations.
https://www.wearerewind.com/
More cassettes info….
https://walkman.land/
Ebay is also your friend if you are looking for an old cassette deck component for your stereo receiver.
Here is a pic of my current set up:
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!nXmk!,w_315,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ba9564a-2124-468a-8c7b-7d75fe7459f9_4000x3000.jpeg
Some good news to start the day;
“People are really galvanizing around bookstores as a force for good in our culture,” he says. “You see that in the fact that there are about 70% more bookstores now than there were six years ago in the United States. After 20 years of declining numbers, they’re coming roaring back.”
https://www.fastcompany.com/91529634/independent-bookstore-day-bookshop-org-founder-on-how-small-retailers-are-taking-on-amazon
Still trying to see if I can meme:
https://imgflip.com/i/aq9doo
Mary Bennett wrote:
neptunesdolphins @ 140 “China will fall apart as it stands now. ” May I ask what makes you think that? China seems to be very successful in many ways. Do not successful nations usually have the loyalty of their citizens? China may eventually have to disgorge Tibet, but beyond that why would the nation not remain substantially as it now is?
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President Xi is purging the generals and party officials for two years now. U.S. China watchers keep looking for missing generals, and missing officials. Several theories is one that Xi feels threatened by movements within the upper levels or he is increasingly become isolated. One of the missing people is Xi’s closest and oldest friend.
Japanese broadcasters – NHK – featured several stories within the past three years of “laying flat” in China. Young people are dropping out of society and refusing to leave their homes. Other young people have taken to living under bridges since housing costs are so high.
Chinese economy is based on exports. They are now oversupplied since the world’s economy is slowly contracting. Trump’s tariffs had a big impact on their manufacturing. Epoch Times (a notorious anti-PRC news site) have been reporting on factory slow downs and unrest in the provinces.
China’s population is decreasing. They have about 10 males to every female. They are approaching below the replacement rate. The PRC based their power and economy on a plentiful population.
“The President’s Daily Brief” podcast with Mike Baker (retired CIA) features Chinese experts. (Baker is a moderate in outlook.) The podcasts explored the cost of the Venezuela takeover by the U.S. and the blockage of the Straits of Hormuz on Chinese oil and gas supplies. Before the takeover, China had “bases” in the Western Hemisphere as part of their Brick and Belt initiative. They and the Iranians were heavily involved with Venezuela and its oil. Since Venezuela is no long in play, China and Iran have been chased out of the Western Hemisphere. Now with the Iran War, China has to use up its oil reserves. It is dependent on foreign oil for its economy.
The removal of Iran and Venezuela along with countries bowing out of the Brick and Belt initiative or reneging on their payments, has forced China to look inward for keeping power. It has been on shaky ground for about five years now. The war in Iran may push it over.
That is my opinion. I hope I have explained my point of view.
“Today as I was listening to my analog stereo setup while house cleaning I realized that I had come to the age and set of musical tastes where most of the music I listen too is also by dead people.”
I know that one. Even those that are still alive are retired as in Ronstadt, Streisand, Tanya Tucker, and Fleetwood Mac.
Bummer.
@scotlyn #258: Yes, I do agree that listening is lacking from most Christian services. In fact, it never ceases to surprise me when the minister says “Now let us pray in silence”, but starts talking again after one or two seconds, so there is absolutely no chance of any listening, silent praying or reflecting. Rarely, there is time without any words, but with instrumental music.
I do think it should be possible to have communal singing, but also silence in the same encounter, but I can’t say I have ever been to such a service where this was the case. Only (and rarely) small groups in a liturgical meeting .
@JPM: “Pulp Fiction” impressed me as being the most cleverly plotted, disgusting movie I ever watched. (There are three different scenes where the character played by John Travolta takes a book to read into a bathroom and re-emerges later into a new crisis. So I don’t know if Blitzer took a book in with him.) The gimp in DC is not hard to imagine. Avoid storefronts with choppers parked out front. (That goes for Silver Spring as well.) And if I’m not mistaken that meme is a drone with a didgeridoo. Pretty good. A didgeridrone.
@Chuaquin #254 “Unfortunately, brothers aren’t always good friends…” – true words, indeed! That comment made me smile. Sadly, Canadian people like to say to themselves and to each other, “We are not Americans… we are better!” Meanwhile, they tolerate being pushed around by their big brash brother to the south and periodically forget that this brother shares his allowance with the little brother and if anyone were to pick a fight with the little brother the big brother would pound them into hamburger meat! I think the US/Canada dynamic has certain parallels with Spain/Portugal, Australia/New Zealand and (historically at least) Russia/Ukraine.
….and the German (originally Indian?) astrologer calling himself “Enmanuel von Zehnstern” who hit the mark often already (and predicted a wild year in the beginning of this year) he said, April is the month of escalation (obviously) and the next escalatory time is end of June, beginning of July.
Curt#263
Acording your sensibility to sun radiation I recomend you to not go to the South of Europe in no winter time.
@ Chuaquin #254
Well, yes, states will always be with us, and every last one of them reaches the longest hand that it is capable of stretching out to control and extract from those it governs (and others, too, where possible).
States do not interest me all that much, in that their interests (which do conflict with one another, as they are generally rivals competing with one another in the same control and extract business) tend to blend seamlessly into one another when it comes to the relations any given state has with the rest of us who are ordinary people. We know we are ordinary people because neither wealth nor power bothers to consult with us when making their moves and advancing their interests. We are the great unconsulted. 😉
I remain perennially interested in ordinary people, who, in their great diversity, and who, in their individual, cultural and communal uniquesnesses and propensities, tolerably often manage to muddle through and survive the worst their states have to throw at them, and sometimes not only survive, but also thrive. (Granted, the thriving of the non-wealthy, non-powerful and ordinary, mostly happens by remaining low key and off radar). And this, despite, not because of, any peculiarity of the state they happen to live under.
Michael Gray says:
#251 April 26, 2026 at 10:57 pm
“It isn’t always just intelligent technique but sheer stubbornness to get something done. But when in doubt just blame aliens. 😉”
Who is talking about aliens? why you mentioned aliens? It is a cheap argument.
I don’t think, for any moment, that those constructions were made by aliens, but also I don’t believe they were made with bronze and/or stones hammers and chisels and dragged by people using only their hands and muscles, there are many stones of 800-1600 tons (as in Baalbek, Lebanon) that are transported many miles from the quarry to the final place, and someone need to explain me how they cut them with extreme precision, moved them so far away in higher altitude, and then lifted them to put one above others with extreme precision; I am engineer and some times we have to move large weights by cranes, and that is not easy at all even today.
Another example is the Cheops pyramid with their millions of stones weighting 50 – 80 tons, and some of them 100 tons (in the main chamber), and displaced from a quarry distant 800 km from Giza, this is not easy to explain with the ships, wood cranes, ramps and the supposed techonology in the ancient Egypt.
Yeah!, sure! “The Triumph of the Will” as the Leni Riefenstahl’s film, that’s only what you need to make all possible…Sorry but not.
I am quite sure something is missing in this story, not related to aliens, but how we understand our own past around 12.000 – 7.000 years ago and in fact what kind of civilizations could exist in this distant past.
Cheers
David
Ron M#232. To be a subject state of UK will lead to the war with Russia, but to be a subject state of USA will lead to the war with China. What is the better option for the Canadian people ?
@ Chuaquin #254
Further to my last, here is a humourous quote by Terry Pratchett, which gets at what I’m saying – https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7864435-the-people-of-lancre-wouldn-t-dream-of-living-in-anything
One could paraphrase the key sentence in it like this:
“They’d also found that it didn’t do to pay too much attention to what the [State] wanted, because there was bound to be another [state] along in forty years or so and he’d be certain to want something different and so they’d have gone to all that trouble for nothing.”
(this is not a million miles away from the historical trajectory of almost every country in both the Middle East, and in Europe, at least). 😉
What states get up to is “a game of thrones”, which can get repetitive and boring, apart from the direct effects on us when the knights blunder into our fields, or burn our cottages, and I am far more interested in what people (ie peasants, like me) get up to when we can’t be bothered to pay much attention to *this* state, because there will be another one along in a few decades, and we may as well get on with what WE want in the meantime, and not be going to all that trouble. 🙂
Scotly#227 A citizen of an state hasn’t any control of their state’s geopolitic. This control is in the hands of elites wich predates the citizens , wich really are more servs than another thing. But in the case that the elites will prepare a war, and will need that their ” citizens” become cannon fodder, they’ll dispose propaganda campains aimed to achieve that their “citizens” will hate to the citizens of their enemy country .
Northwind,
My (possibly out of date) understanding is that of the various business entities, corporations, LLCs, and limited partnerships provide personal asset protection from creditors or lawsuits to owners/members, while sole proprietorships and general partnerships do not. But we use an LLC, so that is what I am most familiar with.
None of the various business entities (including corporations) really do much for criminal liability. You can still be held criminally liable for actions taken on behalf of the business. Liability limitation is pretty much solely for civil liabilities whether you are a giant corporation or a two-member LLC.
Why corporations get away with so much criminal stuff is another question. From what I can see it is partially a matter of diffuse decision making and plausible deniability (where any one person can’t be directly causally linked to, say, a medication that causes a birth defect, especially in a criminal context where standards of proof are higher than civil; lack of political and prosecutorial will, and the ability to spend massive amounts of money on lawyers if necessary (which also discourages prosecution). But I can’t claim to fully understand why more malfeasance isn’t criminally prosecuted.
Ah, it seems I’m late to a party that had to start late! Well, that makes me feel better about being so late to the whole thing. Speaking of being late, I have a comment from the previous blog post that I’d like to post here, as I meant to type them up but just ran out of time. Time… now there’s the most valuable resource in this universe. I don’t suppose you know any techniques for conjuring up more of that, do you?
So, about Situationism and the art of the Derive – how hilarious that I should read this right when my work had the power go out from a blown transformer that led most of us to stand around for most of our shift, as management wanted to keep us around to work the remainder of our shift, which was about 3 hours when it all was fixed. So everyone got paid to sit around, free of purpose, free of restriction or compulsion. My coworkers complained that they were bored and wished to go home. When I pointed out we were getting paid to sit around and do what we wanted, which is literally the dream, and should enjoy and take advantage of management’s stubborn incompetence, they gave me a thousand yard stare and then went back to their phones. I shrugged and left them all in the air conditioned break room they spent about 5 hours in. I wandered, free and easy, crawling among the equipment, peeking into hidden folds, going anywhere and everywhere I wasn’t supposed to. I ran into all types. Anxious type A personalities that wanted to gather up all the tools and material in case we got sent home and the emergency power ran out, which I learned we had 2 hours of. I helped them for a bit and gathered my tools before the lights ran out. When the dark settled in, they all scurried away, and I wandered free and easy. Later, I ran into copper thieves in the dark. I told them that the cameras would be out with the emergency lights dead, which I’d learned from the girlfriend of the head of security, told them where the copper bin was, and wandered on in the dark, leaving them to their mischief. While they took any and all possible heat on themselves – though they got away with it, as far as I can tell, and now owe me – I chose to poke around in the guts of the facility with a flashlight, access all the backdoor areas I shouldn’t get into – you’d be amazed how many magnetic locks open on power failure, and how many doors can be jimmied open with an old credit card. I didn’t take or break anything – just tried to understand the guts of the machine I lived most of my life in. It turns out the whole thing is largely splices on splices and held together with electrical tape and prayer.
I had quite the adventure. I thought about writing a post about it during the free time, and then decided to actually live something interesting instead of trying to write or blog about it. So, I’ve decided that I’m pretty sold on this whole Derive thing. So much of our lives really is the same old rut over and over again. I’ve used ritual magic to change the ruts – I’ve used regular practice to carve a nice new one, thank you much, and one of my own choosing at that – but to really just go off the path and wander? It gave me a thrill like from my younger days, when I’d drift from music festival to music festival, but without, you know, having to set my entire life three sheets to the wind. A reasonable, responsibly managed bit of absolute freedom, instead of having to make a whole lifestyle out of the free life. It’s been an interesting journey.
So, over the course of my wanderings, I’ve found a fantastic fnord. It’s the word tyranny, or an accusation of being a tyrant. I’ve remember at the start of the Iraq war, it was said that it didn’t matter if there were wmds, it was justified because we needed to defeat a tyrant. Now we say the same about Iran. Everyone liberal says Trump is a tyrant – it was used to justify the latest death threat against him. I hear conservative gun guys refer to virginia’s new democratic governor as a tyrant because of the gun control laws she passed, saying they wish someone would take her out. Heck, it’s right on the virginia flag – sic semper tyranis, with lady liberty standing with a spear atop the corpse of a tyrant. The spirit of Rome lives on… including its desperate desire to protect the wealth and interest of a ruling class, which is totally fine, as long as there isn’t a single leader taking power, especially for the common people – that’s forbidden. Except, you know, that’s the imperial system we have, just all dressed up in democratic drag as real republic. Again, the spirit of Rome lives on. It’s just wild to see otherwise calm people suddenly get so enraged and justify violence with the mention of one word, like a switch is flipped and a hidden personality comes out, very gollum/smeagol style. Makes me wonder what switches I might have that activate what versions of me inside my mind. I have a mind to go cutting some of those wires…
Moving servers is a major nuisance. 🙂
On the original post, I had asked a question about composting blackberry bramble. I saw (and replied to) a first answer by, iirc, Chris at Fernglade (thanks for that! Burning it would indeed be the easiest solution, but I’m afraid it won’t work for me due to laws and regulations). I then haven’t been able to come back for a few days to check for further answers, i.e. if anybody else should have replied, this is just to let you know I haven’t seen your answers before the post went amiss – sorry about that! I might re-ask the question next month… 🙂
Milkyway
Oops! In my last comment (#255) I wrote “rojiverde” instead of “rojipardo”, which was what I wanted to write.
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Curt # 256:
I agree. If you open EU oil reserves only to keep prices not too high (hoping current ME mess ends soon), you’re preventing to have an available emergency/strategic oil stock if a real shortage situation would happen in near future. It’s a reckless decision, methink.
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Neptune…# 269:
I read in your comment in China there are 10 males to every female. Well, after having scratched my head (quite puzzled), I guess you’re writing about young, children or babies population there, not all the country population. Please, could you explain better that fact?
By the way, I was told recently that Chinese universities have began boosting hard sciences (especially the most useful for practical technologies) and letting drop like a rock philosophy, human studies and another “useless” knowledges. If this is true, I guess this strategy could be apparently successful in the short term, but I doubt it’ll be good in the long term.
Interesting comments by Cal Newport on his blog at https://calnewport.com/who-asked-for-this/ about an article on Silicon Valley that stated:
“Within recent memory, people who made software and hardware understood their job was to serve their customers. It was to identify a need, and then fill it […] But at some point following the financial crisis, would-be entrepreneurs got it into their heads that their job was to invent the future, and consumers’ job was to go along with that invented future. […] In the place of problem-solving technology, companies have jumped on successive bandwagons like NFTs, the metaverse, and large language models. What these all have in common is that they are not built to really solve a market problem. They are built to make VCs and companies rich.”
He writes in particular about the propaganda side of AI hype. But what may be more interesting is his note that the entry-level job market for college graduates was rebounding in the US according to the most recent stats, thus seemingly confirming that AI is not automating those jobs as many had suggested.
Hi JMG,
“Siliconguy, it’ll be interesting to see how this turns out. It’s not impossible that drones may end up becoming a negative-sum game, in which all sides have to invest in drones and antidrones and anti-antidrones, which all spend time fighting each other and no longer affect the battlefield!”
Stanislaw Lem described a scenario a little like this in his novel “Fiasco”. In his case he imagined this causing catastrophe for the populations involved in the conflict, but the picture of drone warfare you are describing put me in mind of it. He explored some similar ideas in “The Invincible”, which puts them into more of a sci-fi/horror context.
Describing these to you I’m forced now to acknowledge that both are apocalyptic scenarios, I enjoyed them both, but read them before I discovered your work.
Thanks,
Johnny
@ Patricia Mathews # 44 and # 260 —
Yes, Carmen is not quite sane. And yes, she’s abusive. Unlike most abusers, she’s not a sadist. She truly wants what’s best for her kids, but has no idea what that means. So it’s slap slap slappity!
Britney, having worked so very hard, done all she was supposed to do, to win the corporate job lifestyle, to not end up like her loser weirdo of a sister … hooboy. If she’s downsized, she might take up substance abuse or other risky behavior. Rather than that slow death, she might just out-and-out suicide. Then Carmen would really go nuts.
WAG: Several books down the line, what brings Ariel and Dr. Moravec to Summerfield is Britney’s attempted suicide. *Attempted* and therapy would be the best outcome if she gets canned.
Since I made a vow to keep making updates here, in order to motivate myself and stay accountable: that silly cross-political romance novel I mentioned last year is still being written. I went through a period of burnout in February, but am back on the horse – currently in the middle of drafting chapter 18. Unfortunately next month we are moving house… so there may not be a ton of progress by the next open post. But, I will still post here! Until it is done! 0_0
Another tension has popped up in physics: different ways of measuring the gravitational constant G leads to statistically different values.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1681-7575/ae570f
Perhaps Rupert Sheldrake’s hypothesis that G isn’t actually a constant might be true after all, if these results hold under further scrutiny. If so, then physicists will have to develop a new theory of gravity because both Einstein’s and Newton’s theories of gravity assume a constant G.
I found this tweet from Dylan Byers regarding the WHCD shooting and the reaction of Americans outside the journalist bubble quite interesting.
https://x.com/DylanByers/status/2048411961344323986
For those who don’t like clicking on links: Dylan and his buds were at the Correspondents Dinner when the shooting happened and went to a bar near the hotel afterwards to touch base and watch the news coverage. Not a single TV was tuned to CNN or Fox News. It was all hockey and no one in the bar seemed to know or care about what had happened just blocks away. Dylan seems to have realized for the very first time just how much apathy has poisoned his fellow citizens. Specifically for the journalist class and the D.C. bubble.
The funniest part for me was when they asked the bartender to change the channel to CNN and then a little later the bartender had to change it back to hockey because the manager said they have a policy against showing political content. He concludes by wondering if they’d picked the wrong bar and why people seem to be tuning out from mainstream news coverage.
Absolute poetry.
Andrew (#259) asked:
“Does anyone have any recommendations for reading relating to the theory behind and development of what was referred to in the New Thought movement as ‘magnetism’?”
New Thought developed from the theories and practices of a man named Phineas Parkhurst Quimby in Maine as a time when itinerant lecturers were traveling around the US giving demonstrations of “animal magnetism,” also known as “Merserism” — basically the ancestor of today’s hypnotism. Quimby had several students, the most influential of whom was Mary Baker (Patterson) (Glover) Eddy. Eddy was the founder of the “Church of Christ, Scientist,” more commonly known as “Christian Science.” Its principal teaching was that all forms of illness (and even death) were basically ancient delusions, and that if one could sufficiently rectify one’s thinking, one could heal any illness and, ideally, even never die. For Eddy, the entire physical world–time, space, matter, energy– was an illusion: “Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal.”
Eddy had a very dominant personality, and maintained extremely tight control over her Church and its members: independent thought, and even the slightest deviation from Eddy’s own theory and practice, could lead to expulsion from her Church. Thus many of her most intelligent, articulate and charismatic followers soon found themselves personae non gratae in Christian Science. Rather than depart in silence, they often set up rival organizations to spread their own versions of what they thought were the truths Eddy had discovered. These formed whats soon came to be called the New Thought movement. The most influential of them was Emma Curtis Hopkins, sometimes called “The Mother of New Thought.”
But not all of the New Thought groups derived from Hopkins; a few rose independently of her. The most esoterically minded of them was Malinda Eliot Cramer, out in San Francisco, who was fairly well read in other esoteric currents of her time, including Rosicrucian and Gnostic publications. Cramer called her organization “Divine Science,” riffing on Eddy’s “Christian Science.” Her magazine, Harmony, is perhaps the most occult-friendly of all the many early New-Thought periodicals. ( You can read her magazine, and many others as well, online at https://iapsop.com/archive/materials/index.html )
And, naturally enough, the extensive American-published literature on animal magnetism continued to be read, as it has been in Quimby’s day: its utility to the New Thought movement was too obvious to be overlooked by its early teachers.
Charles S. Braden (Spirits in Rebellion: The Rise and Development fo New thought, 1963) and J. Stillson Judah (The History and Philosophy of the Metaphysical Movements in America, 1967) are two very good introductions to all this forgotten history.
This may be more than you really wanted to know. If so, I apologize. But it’s a very important part of the history of religions, and especially women-led religions, in the USA. (Very many New-Thought organizations were founded and led by women; male leaders were a fairly small minority there.)
Chuaquin, re informal words for human external reproductive features: We have a variety of such words as well. If I could say the words, I’d break that down for you, but since I can’t, it’d be kind of awkward to try and do that.
Scotlyn, re blessing: Thank you. May you enjoy happiness, fulfillment, and peace.
Milkyway 283
> question about composting blackberry bramble
Old, whole, dead bushes are good for wildlife in which to find shelter. Occasionally, a bush here gets too unwieldy, overgrown, has outlasted its usefulness, I ask my landscaper to cut it to the ground, then relocate the dead bush to some protected part of the yard, or edge of yard, or under a fir tree, and let it be. Some wild critter(s), from insect to rabbit can use it to, for example, get out of the wind. Forget about it, and leave it there forever. My wise landscaper told me that dead trees and bushes have a function in the ecosystem, particularly as housing for small mammals.
I did this with a couple 8-10 foot trees that were getting in the way of any major change of your yard. I had the landscaper drag the two dead trees to the other side of the house, about ten feet from the house, tipped them on their sides, touching,— birds absolutely love the dead trees, particularly chickadees. The branches, of course, stay bare, but I like that attribute because I can see the birds in summer. Each tree is too heavy for the wind to pick up and carry, which is good. One doesn’t want a giant tumbleweed rolling around the yard. Small bushes may need to be tethered to something.
💨🐦⬛💨Northwind Grandma
Dane County, Wisconsin, USA
@ DFC RE : “Who is talking about aliens? why you mentioned aliens? It is a cheap argument.”
Sorry that was not pointed at you in any way. It was just a joke as unfortunately aliens ends up being lumped onto these things. The Deus ex machina “And then a miracle happened!” moment some people leap to. Rather than accepting that we just do not have enough information, they just blame Aliens as a means of having a neat though wildly improbably narrative. And then I suffer whiplash from the hyper sonic eye roll I had just performed.
I was thinking some more about belief systems and why we adopt them, and I had a thought. If there’s one belief system that rings almost as true to me as secular materialism does, it is as follows:
“Intelligent Design is true, and the design is for the benefit of one very special Golden Child species which will be lovingly guided through the lifetime of this universe and possibly many subsequent ones, and have lives rich with meaning.
We, however, are not it. We are one of innumerable accidental byproduct species, of which the Designer is aware as a type, but couldn’t give a fig about individually and won’t lift a finger to help. All such species have the impulse to seek deeper meaning but will never find it.”
This belief explains my experience of the world just as well as secular materialism, and the neat thing is I can handwave away the hard consciousness problem by saying that that’s one Golden Child module that copied over to us relatively undegraded, without also risking a belief in a thoroughly unwanted afterlife.
Oh wait, that doesn’t necessarily follow. There might be some sort of accidental purgatory with that, or Temu heaven. Ok, never mind, atheism it is.
If it is true though, there’s a good reason why interstellar travel is impossible: It’s so none of us can physically get at the Golden Child.
@ Anonymous #289 ” Another tension has popped up in physics: different ways of measuring the gravitational constant G leads to statistically different values.” – “If so, then physicists will have to develop a new theory of gravity because both Einstein’s and Newton’s theories of gravity assume a constant G.”
Wouldn’t surprise me at all. A few year back I was recommended the book in these comments “The Big Bang Never happened”. This was one of the many things highlighted that would appear and disprove or at least change the big bang model and the estimated age of the universe. Widely panned on release in 1992, a lot of the issues in cosmology the author highlighted then have started to become much more widely accepted in the last decade.
Modern physics falls into that axiom of “All models are wrong but some are useful”, we know that modern physics models are incompatible with each other but for localized effects they are good enough.
Also you cannot blame Newton too much, his physics stuff was barely a side hobby. For everything he wrote on physics, there was a hundred times as much on Alchemy. But don’t highlight that to scientists, they don’t like to acknowledge that.
Clay & JMG,
The USAID layoff situation is something I wished to avoid and took precautions. Different country, different organisation, but I chose to lower the lifeboat all by myself when iceberg warnings were getting louder and more frequent on the radiowaves. The music still plays and I can see the steam boat getting farther away, some of my friends still trying to shout at me to get back on. “If you row really hard” – they are shouting – “you might catch us still and be let back on the boat, even if only in 3rd class.”
The seas are rough, but I there is a sailboat approaching, heading the other direction. Not back to port, but on an entirely different course. Looks like they are going to pick me up. It changes all kinds of plans I have made, requires learning entirely new kind of skills, but also promises some sort of stability, with hard work, and endurance, that may indeed lead into a better life. I am promised only half a year now, but that is how it seems to work in this new world.
Anyway, the truly valuable things in life are often not purchased with coin. Regular magical practice, taking more control over my own health and well-being, exercise, none of that needs to cost me very much money at all. If anything, the financial constraints have really helped me to focus on the essentials. It is odd to look back and think that whilst I have not bought nearly anything else but food and absolute necessities for more than half a year now, I do not seem to be suffering tremendously.
Now the situations differ, of course. What is better in my situation compared to those USAID workers is of course that I had the time to prepare my exit and do it in a more or less controlled manner, got retraining and all that. Regardless, It was a wild ride and in a way still is, but I can not imagine how it is for the former USAID people. I had more than a decade to prepare for the shift mentally, and they just slammed right against the brick wall at full speed.
Hi John,
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/26/malis-defence-minister-sadio-camara-killed-amid-coordinated-attacks?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Significant developments in the Sahel.
Jihadi forces are getting more powerful and humiliating Russian mercenary forces.
Ron M. # 273:
Yes, sometimes international relationships between neighbors become toxic. And paternalist speeches about brotherhood between countries can’t hide this sad but real fact. I didn’t know Australia and NZ had complex relations too, maybe it was under my radar because they don’t share a common ground border (but yes, indeed they’re neighbors in geopolitical terms).
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Scotlyn # 276:
I understand your view about states and the street people, though you can see I’m interested in Machiavellic power games between states (also called “geopolitics”). I’m aware of social life and (geo)political life as different levels, but they’re not separated (they’re correlative to some extent). I think people can be indoctrinated by politicians, especially within totalitarian states like China…but some people are more hard to be influenced by state propaganda than others.
Finally, I’d like to tell you a real story. Since their independence, Algeria and Morocco have been rival states in geopolitical terms. Their governments have been trying to fuel their correlative xenophobia to their own population. However, I’ve personally seen here how some Moroccan and Algerian migrants can be good friends. Evidently, they’re outside their countries, and they share their religion, culture and, to some extent, language. Ironically, maybe spanish xenophobia makes some North Africans forget their xenophobia against their neighbors.
*******
# 279:
OK, states are states so they play their usually dirty games. However, I can say I’m interested in geopolitics and inner states politics, not because I love them, but for my “selfish” interest. Knowledge is power so to some extent, when you guess political agendas within your country and foreign govts, you can be less influenced by propaganda, to some extent. This is my view. I wish you understand it.
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Anonymous # 289:
R. Sheldrake IMHO is a very underrated scientist, due to his provocative ideas, which unfortunately have led him into a fringe situation within science(s) world. For example, if gravity force isn’t an exact constant, every basis of nowadays science (and scientificism ideology attached to it) could be in trouble, to some extent. Indeed, the idea of exact universal laws in the universe has been a “leit motiv” in sciences for centuries…So Sheldrake opened a can of worms when he pointed that hypothesis.
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Cynthia C. # 292:
I perfectly understand your motives, don’t worry…I won’t write my mothers tongue words for human genitals, though I can tell you we’ve got some unpolite/polite levels too, from technical/polite words to name them, to big profanity “status”(and between these levels, another one with funny and mild profanities, which can be used in informal contexts).
@Chuaquin
But, it is unclear whether any strategic reserves in the EU are yet opened, including jet fuel.
Unfortunately it is difficult to find anything palpable on the internet in an ordinary search.
Hello Mr Greer and the commentariat!
A couple of months ago I had asked about the uses of astrology when the exact birth time is not known. Useful advice was given on how to construct a natal chart with only a birth date available. I have since searched on how astrology could further personal development without any reference to natal charts and would like to share here what I had found. The source is The Planets Within by Thomas Moore, itself a distillation of work by the Renaissance philosopher Marsilio Ficino.
According to Ficino, soul is governed by planets each of which has its own domain and can act in a beneficial or a disruptive way. A soul should be in balance between body and spirit – when it is drawn too much towards either problems occur. A balanced soul is governed in an appropriate way by all the planets (a sort of polytheism) and psychological illness arises from planets exerting too much influence – pathological monotheism. Too strong or too weak of an influence of a particular planet can be mitigated by wearing clothes of specific colours, eating certain spices, using appropriate gemstones and other forms of natural magic.
The book by Thomas Moore does not give sufficient information on individual planets to act as a practical manual. It does recommend learning further about each planet (which I gather could be done by studying psychological astrology literature). Thinking about one’s dreams is also recommended. The important point is that all this can be done without any knowledge of the natal chart – since we carry all the planets within, they all matter, and with a little bit of application we can figure out which ones require work for our lives to improve.
According to Wikipedia, Thomas Moore was influenced by CG Jung, and the system espoused in The Planets Within does have similarities with Jungian therapy. Mr Greer has written recently on how Jung’s work actually fits into a long occult tradition, so I guess the resemblances come from Ficino belonging to the same tradition rather than Moore retroactively ascribing Jungian thinking to Ficino.
@ Anselmo #280 –
Please take a look at my comment just above yours at #279… 😉
@ Aldarion #271
Yes, it would be interesting to craft a “communal silence” into a religious service, and invite the divine to be present, wouldn’t it? 🙂
I think that, among Christians, this habit is mainly found among Quakers, who do practice “communal silences” precisely for the purpose of listening to the divine.
@ Milkyway #283
In re clearing brambles (and getting rid of the evidence), there are two solutions on our farm.
1. the largescale solution – over the course of a couple of months two years ago, my husband cleared a total of around a hectare of bramble that was growing at the edges of a planted forest, by slowly cutting, uprooting, and piling the remains into trenches, and stamping them down. (The trenches had been dug at the time, twenty years earlier, when the forest was originally planted). These have slowly composted down, and although, every now and then a new bramble plant gets itself started, it is easier to deal with these when they are small.
2. the smallscale solution – this is the one carried out by me around my garden spaces, which tend to verge into the wild at the edges. I tend to be strict about keeping the brambles from invading, although I never completely clear them from their proper home in the wild edges. Any brambles that invade into my garden spaces are cut up by me into smallish lengths (20-30 cm) so that I can fit them into and squash them down in a basket I carry around once or twice in the springtime. I do not mix them with my normal composting materials – at first. Instead I tend to heap them up on a stone or concrete base until they are dry and dead – sometimes as long as a year. Then I will slowly add them to my compost, being attentive to immediately root out any remains that try to produce a new plant.
Obviously these are long term approaches, and well, your bramble is a wily and devious and very energetic volunteer! For us it is a case of “let live on your side of the fence, but only there” and continual vigilance. 🙂
I was going to save this for the next post on Situationism, but, since I don’t know if of when that will be, I’ll post it now. I’ve been reading, with considerable interest, Donald Akenson’s “Surpassing Wonder: The Invention of the Bible and the Talmuds.” Quoting from p.267; “The Christian scriptures, I have argued, are an impressively coherent, wondrously successful entity, because the “New Testament” honours the ancient Hebrew grammar of religious invention and does so at three levels…. Specifically, at the level of macro-structure, I suggested that the “New Testament” cannon was organized like a successful piece of architecture. This structure is similar in design to the Tanakh, but it looks out over an entirely different countryside….”
End of quote. In other words, he’s saying that the Christian “New Testament” amounts to a detournement or hijacking of the Hebrew scriptures. I’ll take it a step further. The evangelical or dispensationalist branch of protestant Christianity does essentially the same thing, hijacking the “New Testament,” and places evangelical dispensationalism into the service of Zionism. A double detournement! Both a “gotcha” and a “gotcha back.” Some of this has been intentional; specifically the support, by Samuel Untermyer, of Cyrus Scofield, and his “Scofield Reference Bible.” The results are appearing daily in the current world news. I think more research on this is in order.
Neptune…# 269:
I read in your comment in China there are 10 males to every female. Well, after having scratched my head (quite puzzled), I guess you’re writing about young, children or babies population there, not all the country population. Please, could you explain better that fact?
By the way, I was told recently that Chinese universities have began boosting hard sciences (especially the most useful for practical technologies) and letting drop like a rock philosophy, human studies and another “useless” knowledges. If this is true, I guess this strategy could be apparently successful in the short term, but I doubt it’ll be good in the long term.
—
The abundance of males came about with the one child policy and the ability to sex children in the womb. India has a similar problem btw. Since the culture values males over females, females were aborted more often. A lot of unwanted females ended up in orphanages – hence the Americans going to China for adoptions. A children’s cartoon on PBS – “Arthur” featured a story where one of the families adopted a Chinese girl and raise her.
The problem became acute in the early 2000s, when the Chinese families went looking for brides. They could not find any girls. I remember watching Chinese TV (we had for awhile a local broadcaster who featured international TV) and counting the number of girls on one hand. So a lot of families are decrying “dead ends” at the moment.
Micro-radians and piconewtons. That paper on direct measurement of gravity was interesting. Finding such a tiny effect on such a noisy planet is a challenge. The people working on LIGO, (the gravitational wave detector) had similar problems.
Reposted to save the trouble of scrolling back up to find it.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1681-7575/ae570f
(Warning: Geo-political topic coming soon)
Maybe you don’t like politics, but eventually politicians are going to find you (and in the worst cases, leading you toward a sad end).
A real example:
First, some recent historical events. Let’s go to the Caucasus, with your permission…
Armenia and Azerbaiyan managed to recover their independence like old-new countries, after the USSR collapse. In the short form, if you don’t know yet, Armenia and Azerbaiyan are neighbors…bad neighbors. Armenia is a Christian culture country, and Azerbaiyan is a Muslim society. However, the main and worst motive of problems between these two countries is the disputed region called Nagorno Karabaj. Several wars and lesser level conflicts have happened since the ‘90s. Turkey and Russia (and maybe USA) have helped one country or the another one in these clashes.
Last war between Azerbaiyan and Armenia happened three years ago. Azerbaiyan army defeated Armenian forces, according some analysts, due mainly to its massive and well aimed use of drones. I personally had bad taste enough (remorse) to see a short online video in which some Azerbaiyan soldiers killed a few Armenian unarmed prisoners. I guess it wasn’t a fake video.
I read somewhere online (unfortunately I don’t remember the site), that 2023 Caucasus war could have been predicted to some extent…and I’m not talking about paranormal visions of future.
The elephant in the room of this war (and maybe a heck of wars too), is a tendence which was noticed by some journalists and social scientists, more or less since a year before that war began. It seems MSM in Armenia and Azerbaiyan alike increased their usual mutual xenophobia, redoubling powerfully “news” and opinion articles against their neighbors. Oh, in addition to this xenophobic wave, in social media and books, claims pointing the Good People (us) and the Bad People (them) commonplace were much more usual than in previous times. So do the math. First people interested in a growing xenophobia in Armenia and Azerbaiyan were…their own governments, due to the perpetual problem: Nagorno Karabaj.
It can be said the xenophobic campaigns in the two countries were the prologue to the real political and military escalation which led to war. Cause and effect.
Govts can order more agressive “news”(propaganda) directly using their public owned MSM, or indirectly “suggesting” private media with the “carrot and stick” strategy (positive incentive or threat of punishment). Thinkers who write books can be bribed or threatened too, and people who read books is a minority, but they can influence a lot of less educated people…Social media tendences can be fueled by a few active haters (maybe shrills, maybe zealots, in more or less proportion). Of course, some average people can be influenced by propaganda better than other people. However, unfortunately it seems the competing opposite propaganda campaigns were successful in the two countries. Young men (the favorite candidates to become cannon fodder…err…soldiers) seemed eager to fight against their evily evil enemies. So eventually there was a war.
I don’t know wether this “war forecast”’system has been proven using it to show a political-social pattern in past wars, or not. However, if there would be a real evidence of this tendence before every war, this fact would mean we could be able to predict future wars looking to present hypothetical xenophobic propaganda escalations. At least as a work hypothesis.
Andrew #259
I’m currently reading Emmet Fox, a New Thought leader popular during the Depression years. His message can be summed up by the AA slogan “Let go and let God.” He started life as an electrical engineer and I find his message somewhat more grounded (heh) than others’.
I don’t know if this is the sort of magnetism you were talking about:
“The Law of Attraction (Mental Affinity): Fox believed that what you focus on, you attract. By controlling mental states and concentrating on God, one creates a “spiritual magnetic field” that draws in desired circumstances, often summarized as using mental magnetism to bring forth good.”
Incidentally, Fox was against relying on affirmations repeated parrot fashion. He said, “You’ll end up like a parrot: stuck in a cage.”
Speaking of kicking the can down the road, this article on Iran and the relation of all this to energy suggests that “peak oil s no longer a credible short-term concern.” : (
https://quillette.com/2026/04/27/this-is-not-the-1970s-iran-war-trump-oil-energy/
He also doesn’t seem to think the people in charge will make mistakes like the people in charge during the 1970s did.
“if the Iranian threat to regional peace and trade has been eliminated or significantly constrained by the time the flow of oil restarts—even if there has been widespread destruction and even if that flow is initially limited—the price of oil and gas may drop below pre-conflict levels.”
Call me a curmudgeon, but that just seems a little too hopeful for me. There are too many unknown factors that could spiral out of control, and what might not be a short term concern to most people is still a long term concern for those of us who’ve learned to pay attention to this thing called peak oil.
@Phutatorius #305: Can I get an Amen!
Well done, and watch out for the gimps and Pulp Fiction detournements!
Forecasting I. # 298:
According my usual online and legacy MSM which I read, current Sahel situation isn’t very clear to say who’s winning there. However, if your information is true, it means the Islamist/Yihadi forces have been backed by…who knows?
By the way, have you got another info source to confirm these news? (better from another country).
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Curt # 300:
OK, so you doubt EU has really opened its oil strategic reserves. It’s possible…In that case we should see that hypothetical fake reserves opening like part of current Spectacle to show everything’s normal until now (hoping markets believe in the EU trick to keep oil price not very high?).
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Neptune…# 306:
Well, I guessed that disproportion between males and females had some relation with the “wise” Chinese governments births control, during some decades. So you were writing about current Chinese young generations, born during hard birth control times. Not the older generations (that was my doubt). OK, it’s not a joke. Social-demographics problems are real. I think since some years ago, China govt has softened its birth control politics, maybe too late…
I must add: Egon Fischer though doubts JIang Xueqin’s assumption of the viability of Greater Israel.
Chuaquin, re bad words: There’s a question I have about one Spanish word, which I can identify without writing it, but the new post is tomorrow so it’s probably not time to start a whole new thing. If I remember, I’ll ask you on the next Open Post.
“For example, if gravity force isn’t an exact constant, every basis of nowadays science (and scientificism ideology attached to it) could be in trouble, to some extent.”
Nah, physicists will just develop a theory in which the gravitational constant varies by space and time. Some physicists have already done so with developing theories that postulate a variable speed of light, also typically considered to be a constant:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_speed_of_light
so the precedent is already there in science.
“Perhaps Rupert Sheldrake’s hypothesis that G isn’t actually a constant might be true after all, if these results hold under further scrutiny.”
The idea of a varying gravitational constant didn’t originate from Sheldrake. According to Wikipedia, the physicist Paul Dirac said in 1937, years before Sheldrake was born, that it was possible that the gravitational constant might have varied across the lifespan of the universe:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-variation_of_fundamental_constants
J.L.Mc12, funny. I’ve posted something in response. As for the NDIS, so noted; I’m sorry to say I don’t know a great deal about Australian public welfare arrangements…
Info, occult traditions talk about those civilizations, but they don’t specify energy sources. They do note that in the most recent set of them — we can use the term “Atlantean” for those, if you like — advanced technology wasn’t widespread as it is today, but was reserved for the priestly elite and thus required much more modest energy supplies; crude oil may be primitive but there’s a lot of it, while notionally more advanced sources seem to have been much less abundant. I’m quite sure, for a variety of reasons, that aircraft existed in very ancient times, but there don’t seem to have been many of them — another technology reserved for the priesthood, and remembered mostly by way of imagery that looks oddly like a child’s drawing of an old open-cockpit monoplane…
Siliconguy, I got it, stayed home from school for a few days, and that was it. Measles is only a serious threat if the patients have something else weakening them, such as malnutrition or immune deficiency, or if it gets into a previously unexposed population.
Aldarion, the situation was much more complex than that. There was the usual rising spiral of mutual hostility leading to the sanctions and the rest of it.
Cynthia, I’m no great fan of metal but I recognize the artistry involved in it. Too much of current pop, on the other hand, always leaves me feeling that there’s something cheap and dishonest about it.
Tyler, so noted. As I already tried to tell you, I don’t propose to argue the issue; I’ve indicated my take on it, and if you disagree, why, by all means disagree.
William, I think it’s precisely that: it became easy enough to detect forgery, for a while, that the penalties decreased. Now that we’re back in the normal situation, with forgery being very hard to detect, I’d expect the penalties to rise accordingly.
Syfen, read an essay you think is well written, paying close attention to how it gets the effects it does. Then read one of your essays, figure out what the good essay does that yours doesn’t, and rewrite your essay, copying the techniques. Rinse and repeat. Academic prose is ghastly stuff, and it can take quite a bit of practice for someone who’s gotten used to it to learn good writing.
Earthworm, that strikes me as well written and cogent.
Siliconguy, or consider the way that manned aircraft differentiated from spotting platforms for artillery at the beginning of World War I to the wide range of types in use by the end of that war.
Scotlyn, yep. It’s normally safe to assume that every nation has sleeper agents inside the borders of every one of its current and potential enemies; that’s just basic common sense in intelligence terms.
Aldarion, I don’t know of a term for them other than “long philosophical poems.” You’re right that there’s a long and noble tradition of them in English, but I wasn’t aware that this wasn’t true in other languages.
Scotlyn, er, the category “geopolitical enemy” refers to nations, not individuals! Your husband’s sheep farm isn’t large enough to matter geopolitically. 😉
Curt, well, we’ll see. I’ve suspected for a long time that the great changes in history ahead will come via technological change, too, but it won’t be a matter of progress — it’ll be a matter of complex technologies dropping out of use, and waves of change following the adoption of simpler ways of doing things. As for the rituals, “better” always begs the question, “better for what?” The SoP and the pentagram rituals each have their own uses; it depends, as always, on what you want to do.
DFC, it’s doubtless true that there are clever tricks of working with large stones that the builders of the megalithic age knew and we have forgotten. It interests me that in many lands, there are traditions that insist that sound was used to shape and lift great stones — a reminder, and a useful one, that it’s sheer arrogance to think that our kind of technology is the only kind that can exist.
Ron, interesting. I wasn’t aware of this, for whatever that’s worth.
Great Khan, thanks for this.
Gardener, yep. IThe Shrine hospitals and burn clinics have been around for a very long time, and their management is supervised by retired businessmen who serve without salaries and know all the sleazy tricks that the medical industry can get up to. That’s one of the reasons they do so much good.
Nemo, heh heh heh. You’ll be in for several surprises as we proceed. The only spoiler I’ll offer at this point is that Britney is much less of a perfect child than she pretends, and has her own agenda in all this. As for the rest, stay tuned for book #8 in the series, The Serpent Ring, in which the tensions in Ariel’s family will blow sky-high…and not in the way you or Patricia M. seem to expect.
Cynthia, ah, but not all atheists are secularists or materialists. (Talk to some old-fashioned Buddhists sometime.) I appreciate, though, that you recognize your atheism as an unprovable belief, like my polytheism.
Clay, oddly enough, I haven’t gotten there yet. I do listen to dead musicians, quite a few of them, but also a lot of living ones.
Michael, wheee! indeed. It’s a long, bumpy, potholed road down…
Chuaquin, funny. In Nazi Germany, you’d hear some Nazis accuse others, insufficiently hostile to Marxist ideas, of being “beefsteak Nazis” — brown on the outside, red on the inside.
Scotlyn, I get the impression that a lot of people find that music helps them get into a spiritual state of mind. I’m perfectly willing to admit that, since that doesn’t work for me, I’m just plain weird. 😉
Andrew, start with Franz Anton Mesmer, who introduced the concept (“magnetism” is short for Mesmer’s “animal magnetism”). Beyond that, Robert M’s list is important.
Justin, huzzah! I’m even more glad that I have a tape deck.
Siliconguy, huzzah twice over! That’s even better news.
Paedrig, quite the adventure! As for “tyrant,” true enough.
KAN, interesting. I’ll look into the job-market stats; that could have significant impact. OpenAI just failed to meet their revenue and user targets and their CFO has admitted that they may not have the money to meet the $1.5 trillion in data center commitments they’ve made, which could have an even bigger impact; the possibility of a stock market crash driven by the failure of the AI firms to make good on their fantasies is a very real one.
Johnny, Lem was a brilliant writer! I can enjoy a good fictional apocalypse as well as anybody, for that matter. 😉
Nemo (if I may), heh heh heh.
Shinjuki, glad to hear you’re still slogging away. The middle sections of a novel, at least for me, tend to be the slow times, and often difficult to get through; sheer pigheaded stubbornness pays off, though.
Anon, I’m increasingly beginning to suspect that nature has no laws and no constants. She just does what she wants, and regularities are purely a matter of scale; vast as she is, it takes a while for her to change something.
StarNinja, fascinating. Thanks for this.
Cynthia, that’s almost Lovecraftian — which is to say, I like it. Maybe the golden child species is the mighty beetle civilization that, according to Lovecraft, will rise on Earth after humanity goes extinct, and our sole reason for existence is to tweak the planet a bit so that the rise of the beetles will be that much easier.
Oskari, I spent most of a decade trying to warn people in that class that their gravy train was coming to an end, and mostly got mocked for it. Now it’s rather too late. I’m delighted to hear that you spotted the future en route and took a more productive route to it.
Forecasting, I wonder who’s funding the jihadis. These days, it could be any number of nations.
Soko, bingo. I recently wrote an essay surveying the occult texts in Jung’s library, which will be published next year in an anthology on Jung’s occult side; he had a very solid collection of modern as well as ancient astrological texts, and so had the same background Ficino did.
Phutatorius, that makes perfect sense. I’d add that the Old Testament as we know it is also a détournement of ancient Hebrew traditions, carried out after the Babylonian captivity to reorient religious ideas in the image of the monotheist faith of the Jews’ Persian liberators.
Justin, it’s quite possible that the price of oil could drop sharply…for a while. My suspicion is that one main point of this war was to provide political cover for removing sanctions on Iranian oil, so as to drive the price of oil down temporarily. In the long run? Another temporary boom, followed by the usual. (And given the way things have turned out, there may be no boom.)
@Anselmo #278: Well, since you asked…
Canada is already being massively influenced by agents of the Community Party of China. Our national spy agency has reported that multiple electoral ridings (districts) in Canada have been influenced by Chinese agents in several recent elections, but the sitting government refuses to allow the names of the traitors who are sitting in the House of Commons to be released. Canada has several Chinese police stations operating within our borders; their locations are known and nothing is being done about it. Chinese scientists stole Ebola samples from our high security biological lab in Manitoba and smuggled them to Wuhan. Canada is suffering a horrific fentanyl crisis thanks to the precursor chemicals that are being shipped by China and let into our port of Vancouver thanks to only 1 container out of 100 being inspected on the docks; they are “processed” by known super-labs within our borders. Our natural resources are being sold to Chinese companies which fortify their “possessions” and control ingress via armed guards (on Canadian soil!). The massively distorted real estate market in Canada is due to the laundering of immense amounts of money by the Chinese underworld in Vancouver and Toronto. China has been fighting a one-sided war with Canada for a long time: a war of economic, criminal, social and ideological conquest. If you think I am making this stuff up, check out the writings of independent reporter Sam Cooper, who maintains a website called ‘The Bureau’. Sam is no kook; he has given testimony to the federal committee on international interference and is considered an unassailable authority on the topic.
Meanwhile, Russia is an example of what Canada once was and again could be. We have very similar climates, possess vast natural resource wealth, sparse populations, and have multi-ethnic populations. Canada’s government sh*ts on our history, forbids resource extraction and development, declares that we are a “post-national country”, kills as many of its citizens as possible “legally”, allows over a hundred churches to be burned to the ground with no investigation, is making the quoting of biblical scripture in public illegal, and has allowed millions of people to flood into the country unchecked thereby fraying the social fabric and weakening social cohesion and allowing almost continuous conflict among mutually antagonistic religious and ethnic groups on the streets of its big cities (and don’t get me started on our two-tier legal system that gives criminal immigrant populations a ‘free pass’ so that they don’t get deported). All this has been going on gradually, Fabian socialist style, since 1963. In contrast, Russia has blossomed into a strong nation that is proud of its ethnic and Orthodox Christian past, has had an Orthodox church building boom for three decades, has developed its natural resources wisely, manages its multi-ethnic populations in a harmonious way in that it respects the numerous religions and cultures within its borders while they all acknowledge that the Russian character is that of the majority population (Slavic, Orthodox). And, most importantly, it is not overtly meddling in Canadian affairs. Modern Russia closely resembles the Canada that my parents spent the first four decades of their lives in; a beautiful nation that has been all but strangled to death. Canada is blindly walking into the cage that the Russians managed to get out of in 1991 (and paid a dear price for its freedom).
In other words, joining the Eurocrats in a war with Russia would not benefit Canadians in any way (though it would delight the Ukro-Nazis who were allowed into Canada after WW2 thanks to the arm-twisting of the vile British); while joining the USA in a war against China would bring only good to Canada. By the way, I have a whole heap of second cousins who till the soil of central Michigan – the birthplace of one of my grandparents. So, I don’t claim to be wholly unbiased.
JMG #317
Thank you.
I’m writing it for a neighbour whose mind is much engaged with such things at 86 years of age. And it’s proving to be a good exercise for me too.
We gave her a copy of The Occult Philosphy Workbook a while back specifically for the section Cycles of Life and Death (not often we live next to people interested in this stuff). She seemed to get a lot out of it.
Interestingly, we gave another copy to Bacon’s brother because we’d been having discusions about life and death, again, for section 3, but we got it back as he did not take to it.
There is a truth to leaving those sleeping to their sleep – in our enthusiasm we forgot that.
@JMG (#317), replying to Anon, wrote:
“I’m increasingly beginning to suspect that nature has no laws and no constants. She just does what she wants, and regularities are purely a matter of scale; vast as she is, it takes a while for her to change something.”
I think you’re quite right. What you suspect lines up very well with the visionary experience I had 70 years ago, where the entire cosmos was shown to me as one enormously ancient and vast, sentient, living , “fiery,” Being, Which–not Who!–existed outside of (and had created) such transitory things as time and space, matter and energy–a Being very much with Its own free will and unfathomable designs. Even in my science-and-math-nerd days, way back in high school and early college, I never could get wholly behind the usual assumptions that there are immutable laws of nature and immutable physical constants. That’s what eventually pushed me over into more humanistic fields of study. So it’s been no surprise that “constants” like G and c are turning out not to be so invariable after all.
There’s also the Allais effect which shows that the strength of gravity on Earth is correlated with solar eclipses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allais_effect
@ Chuaquin #299
“I’m interested in geopolitics and inner states politics, not because I love them, but for my “selfish” interest. Knowledge is power so to some extent, when you guess political agendas within your country and foreign govts, you can be less influenced by propaganda, to some extent. This is my view. I wish you understand it.”
Yes, thank you for explaining your view, and it is understandable. 🙂
As a peasant, I do not find that knowledge [of geopolitics] is power [for me], partly because I believe the chances of my gaining such knowledge from where I stand (among the thoroughly unconsulted, as I said), is not very high, and partly because such small powers as I have are limited, and I want to devote them to building the health of my fields, my family, neighbours and friends, my business, and to the cultivation of my own body, mind and spirit.
Let ’em get on with their agendas, while I get on with mine. 🙂
Admittedly, for some people, knowledge [of geopolitics] is frank entertainment – somewhat bloodier and more dangerous to life and limb than most sports, for example – and every bit as likely to lead to passionate support for one’s chosen team. But I do not find that it holds my interest for long, unless I have a special reason to pursue specific knowledge. For example I have pursued deeper knowledge of the pharmaceutical industry on an ongoing basis for many years, because my business involves attention and care to people’s health, and so it is both relevant, and an instance where this kind of knowledge can inform the exercise of *my* power..
I hope I have explained my point of view. I appreciate the conversation, I must say, since it helps me think better. 🙂
@ Phutatorius #305
Re “gotcha” and “gotcha back” – very, very INteresting!
(And yes, my own background, as I think we have previously discussed, is of the dispensationalist, zionist-propelling*, style of evangelicalism… so I can sometimes feel personally, at least ancestrally, implicated here.) 🙂
Thank you for the book review. I may take a closer look. 🙂
* this may be a chicken and egg situation, but I keep coming to references to Christian dispensationalist movements which appear to predate references to Jewish zionist movements, and which may have had to work hard at getting that particular fire started for religious, “accelerationist” reasons of their own.
“For awhile…” yeah, I could see that being a strategy. I don’t know about 4D chess, let alone 5D chess, but I can see that strategy being a motivating factor in all this.
***
There is an interesting article on Guy Debord here, focusing on his memoir Paegyric, which I have not read. It gets more into the style of his prose and a bit on signs (aka semiotics, I suppose) rather than his politics, but an interesting read. Very continental. It made me feel very American just reading it. Perhaps because this morning I was dreaming of buying pulp western magazines off a paperback turnstile in a thrift store. But yeah, I’ll read this stuff too. It’s all going into my subconscious compost heap.
https://therepublicofletters.substack.com/p/irrevocable-brilliance
JMG, first re spirituality: I’ve got a fair bit going on in my head right now about spirituality, reality, and what happens after. The last day of an Open Post is probably not the time to delve into it and it may be of benefit to let that continue on its own for a bit anyway. Briefly, the main reason why I’m able to admit to atheism not being the default or somehow a uniquely sensible belief, is because I am wavering in it. More on that next Open Post, or if the topic of the week happens to land right in the zone I’m thinking of anyway, which would require synchronicity on par with a beetle knocking on the window. Huh. That sounds like an experiment, although I didn’t set out to create one.
re music: There are genres that I see the same way – the first thing I mean, requiring artistry that I respect and admire, even though it’s not my cup of tea. Usually those genres have at least one or two examples that I do actually like.
re my “Golden Child” whimsy, Lovecraft’s beetles: Glad you liked that! It was a bit of “what if” fun but I’m not entertaining that as a candidate for the actual truth. However, were Lovecraft’s scenario the actual truth, my attitude about that would be: “The honor is to serve. Good luck beetles!”
Hey, two things about beetles. Hmm….
Can’t wait to see what the eldritch horrors announce as the winner of the vote for tomorrow! 😉
“…the category “geopolitical enemy” refers to nations, not individuals! Your husband’s sheep farm isn’t large enough to matter geopolitically. 😉”
Yes. 🙂
Exactly! Exactly! 🙂
Put another way, this sheep farm could – accidentally – turn out to be in the way of some geopolitical scheme or other, but then, it could turn out to be in the way of some gigantic storm, or earthquake, or plague.
For a peasant, them’s the breaks. You do what you do until something much larger turns up and stops you. Then you recover, as best you can, and get down to doing it again, as best you can. With the help of such local biota, and theota, as you can befriend.
Hi JMG,
A year or two back, my husband’s and my investment advisor recommended we use some of the funds in our CMA to buy Pfizer stock (we declined, BTW). I mentioned that on one of the covid Open Posts, and you commented that it could well be that the firm’s advisors had instructions to flog Pfizer stock to prop up the price.
A week or two back, when our advisor called to suggest stocks he thinks we should buy, he promoted a company involved in constructing data centers and small nuclear power plants to power them. When I said no to that idea, he promoted Amazon and Google. We said no again. But I thought it’s worth mentioning these data points, given your previous comment.
Anonymous re: #315 –
Late in the cycle, but I’m starting to question the cosmological principle (that at large enough scales, the universe is isotropic and homogeneous).
To an ant in the middle of a forest, the “world” would seem isotropic and homogeneous. at large enough scales – sure, there are different trees and rocks and ferns and brambles and clearings and weather and streams, but across a large enough area it all averages out. Until of course you reach the edge of the forest and all of a sudden everything’s different.
For all we know, things look the same in all directions not because they are the same until infinity, but because we’re far enough from the edge of the “forest” that we can’t see the timberline. Maybe our physical laws, like the forest’s rainfall patterns, only apply within our spatio-temporal bubble and very well could be different in the “desert” a trillion light years away, or in the “tundra” a trillion years from now.
Hi JMG,
Yes, he was great!
It’s interesting to know that apocalyptic tendencies/viewpoints aren’t a deal breaker for you with fiction. When you are reading something like that, do you notice this quality about it right away, or does it take reflection to see this in it?
Also, is that something you have to do anything about when you are writing yourself?
Thanks,
Johnny
Cynthia C. # 314:
OK, current post “life time” is going to end soon, so let’s wait until next Open Post.
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Anonymous # 315:
Well, maybe you’re right, but old school scientists aren’t going to accept that change easily, methink. Indeed, it’s been a known tendence in History of the Science that people in favor of new theories and important changes often have suffered a fierce opposition by the “serious” old systems supporters. Even someone said a time ago that science advances after every old scientist funeral…
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Peter # 316:
Thank you for your comment. I didn’t know that fact about P. Dirac (I think he was a French scientist). Well, if Sheldrake wasn’t the first one, it seems that supporting gravitational constant variation doesn’t follow the Faustian story of the lone epic scientist against the old school…but it’s an idea which appears and disappears within science debate.
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JMG # 317:
Oh, “beefsteak Nazis”, a new thoughtstopper for my collection…By the way, woke obsession to label as Fascist everybody in the right wing (and even in their side too) who dislike their mad crussades, seems an inverted “hate speech”…
Scotlyn #302 Thanks !
JMG,
Thank you! I guess I’ll go back and read some of your old essays.
In my reply (#291) to Andrew (#259) I should also have explained what Mesmer, and following him, the New Thought authors, thought “animal magnetism” was. Basically, it was originally thought to be a hitherto unknown force of living nature analogous to ordinary magnetism, which affected humans (and other animals) much as ordinary magnetism affects iron or steel. A skilled operator was thought to be able to deploy animal magnetism to heal (and also to harm), and even to compel other people to do the operator’s will against their own will. Later forms of the theory sometimes used other names for it, such as “vital force.”
The phenomena in question are now somewhat better understood; partly they may be accounted for by hypnosis, partly by the placebo (and nocebo) effect. However, these two things may not be enough to explain everything that Mesmer and his early followers seem to have been able to do.
I never understood the idea of universal laws of nature in science. The entire concept of a “law of nature” that applies everywhere in space for all time is at odds with the philosophy of empiricism in science that says that we can only hold true the things that we experimentally test for and confirm via the scientific method.
And well, the problem is that we’ve never experimentally tested any of the so called “laws of nature” a few millennia ago, let alone the 13 billion years people are talking about these days, so by scientific empiricism we really cannot assume that our laws of nature holds if we go far back enough in time or in the future. A similar thing can be said about virtually everything about the universe beyond a certain distance away from Earth.
Earthworm, it’s appropriate to reach out, but recognizing when it doesn’t work is also appropriate. The sleepers have to choose to wake.
Robert, I’m not sure why this didn’t occur to me when you mentioned your experience before, but what you described is remarkably like H.P. Lovecraft’s Azathoth. You’ll sprout tentacles yet. 😉
Anon, that’s pleasantly weird. Thank you!
Cynthia, so noted! I’m all in favor of the mighty beetle civilization myself; maybe it comes from being a big fan of trilobites and other extinct creatures when I was a kid, but the thought of humanity going extinct someday never troubled me. Amusingly, I find there’s a monument to the boll weevil in Enterprise, Alabama that strikes me as apropos…
Scotlyn, fair enough!
SLClaire, thanks for these. Yeah, seeing those flogged strikes me, as the kids say these days, as sus.
Johnny, it’s hard to miss apocalyptic qualities in a story! If you know your way around the history of apocalypticism, as I do, the standard imagery sticks out like a sore tentacle. As for me, no, I don’t have to avoid those — I always try to make my plots plausible, and apocalyptic plots are never plausible. They always require extreme assumptions.
Richard, those are reasonable concerns!
JMG, re the beetle statue: Apropos and amusing indeed! That put a big smile on my face! Thank you for that!
@334 Richard
1. Modern science is from the Faustian civilization that strives for infinity, the vanishing point on the horizon. So very likely its science would assume that universal laws exist.
2. It is also culturally monotheist, and if the universe is an artifact of One Creator God, it makes sense that the whole thing would be governed by a set of divine decrees.
I’m very late in posting this one, and late in reading it, too, but this post is an utterly enchanting look at one of those customs that “had that particular quality of English folk ritual in that it was at once utterly specific and entirely unexplained, handed down with precise instructions and no justification whatsoever.”
In this case the St Mark’s Eve (April 24th 11pm to April 25th 1am) vigil at one’s parish church porch which, if kept three years would open to the watcher’s sight a procession of the wraiths of people due to die over the following year. A fun read, that is up the alley of more than one person reading here. 🙂
https://lizziebickerstaff.substack.com/p/today-is-st-marks-eve
Is the internet nearly over?
I wanted to see definitions for ‘ineffable’ to check my understanding and the following was presented as the top result:
ineffable
/ĭn-ĕf′ə-bəl/
noun
1. plural Trousers.
2. One who is not to be named; one who is too high in his profession or in the fashionable world to be named with others.
Ron M #318
But USA is divided in two sides bitterly confronted; The MAGA wich now is MIGA , and the ultraglobalists wich , in my opinion , are not too much different of the rulers of Canada.
“But USA is divided in two sides bitterly confronted; The MAGA wich now is MIGA , and the ultraglobalists wich , in my opinion , are not too much different of the rulers of Canada.”
There is a third group opposed to both sides, that both sides try to suppress to the best of their abilities.