April Fool's Day

So, yeah, just so you know I'm probably going to delete my blog soon. I'll keep a copy of everything but I feel like I don't want to do this anymore. If anyone wants to stay in touch, or lurk from the background, the best place to do that would be following me on Goodreads, link is in the sidebar. You don't have to literally follow me, but if you're looking for book recommendations or you would like to know if I ever start a new blog, well most likely I'll post a link there. 

Anyway, I just want to share a spontaneous insight that just occurred to me a few moments ago. I was watching this video on YouTube, and here's the screen shot.

 

Does that guy look 21 years old to you? Because to me he looks a lot older, definitely over 30, and probably over 40. Actually, I showed my mother a picture of that guy from a different clip, and asked her how old she thought he was, and thought he looked like he was in his 70s. Well, personally I don't think he looks that old, but he definitely looks older than 21, and he has bad skin, and am thinking he must eat a lot of pork and a lot of junk food.

It occurred to me that it could be AI generated. Now, I didn't examine it with the magnifying lens, but just so you know the level of sophistication for AI generated videos is getting better, the good ones, the highly polished ones aren't going to be showing people with six fingers and three legs. No, the good ones look very realistic, unless you zoom in, and if you've got a good eye that's where you may notice things out of place.  

Anyway, the spontaneous insight occurred to me while watching this YouTube video, that maybe the primary audience for developing photorealistic AI generated videos as a consumer product is primarily the wealthy class, specifically as a means to achieve the appearance of immortality. For instance, maybe Mr. Joe Schmo who has plenty of money in the bank but has a deteriorating body wants to be a sailor, he wants to live out his dream of being Robert Redford in the movie All is Lost. Well, AI can make this happen. Maybe this dude above is actually some wealthy old man who is too old to learn to sail, so instead he has an image created in his likeness to go on all sorts of adventures at sea, and he gets to be the hero in his own movie, compliments of AI.

So, yeah, maybe AI, beyond its utilitarian function of social control, mass surveillance,  and military application, is being sold as a designer drug for the wealthy elite, as a sort of virtual reality simulation occurring outside of themselves on a screen, in a movie or a game, or any other digital format.

Witnessed

I have so much to say, but don't have the time to put it all together. Maybe I'm a victim of Havana Syn.... 

I really should bring a camera with me wherever I go, because whenever I don't have a camera with me, something very interesting usually happens. 

For instance, I was walking around my neighborhood a month or so ago, and some military jets were flying lower and much faster than usual, like helicopter level, and breaking the sound barrier.   

I witnessed the jet dumping fuel or something that resembled a fuel dump, on the city in a residential neighborhood, a few blocks from where I was standing, which is completely illegal except for the case of an emergency, and no emergency was publicly recorded. This was not a chem-trail, but a fuel dump, clearly coming from the bottom of the aircraft, I literally witnessed it first hand. 

Anyway,  the original idea for this post had nothing at all to do with this memory. I have watched (I originally misspelled the word 'watched' as 'washed', which makes the connection between watching and brainwashing) so many YouTube videos, and as I've mentioned before, I see a lot of it being AI, but it didn't occur to me until today, that there is much more to the story then that.

It's not just AI, it's humanoid robots. I repeat: IT'S NOT JUST AI, IT'S HUMANOID ROBOTS!!

Which are robots that look indistinguishable from humans, but if you were to peel away their skin, and look inside their bodies, you would see that they are not human at all, but are machines made of metal and plastic and computer chips powered by artificial intelligence, and they are here, among us, right now!!

And it occurred to me that the opening of the borders and letting in all the illegal aliens, maybe it wasn't about bringing in actual people, but what if that was a smokescreen used to cover up the much more nefarious activity of infiltrating the country with an army of humanoid robots, that look convincingly like real people, but with their poor English and cover story of coming from different countries, could be used to cover up the fact that they are AI powered robots, and not sentient beings at all. 

Marching On

I need to probably have only one computer, only one interface, and only one primary recorder of reality. It would make my attempt at investigative journalism so much easier. 

Instead, I'm like going back and forth between work computer, personal computer, and computer for just watching movies and playing games, but then when you see something great that triggers a spontaneous insight that may not be on a channel optimized for recording, you just might miss some extremely valuable content. 

Anyway, some notes that I have transcribed here, based on the input from another machine, that I unfortunately was not able to take a screenshot of.

"You could blink your eyes and literally be transported into another world. Outwardly everything appears the same, but the people are different."

A spontaneous insight based on a recollection of events after having shopped at a store earlier today.

Also, I have uploaded a new video on my YouTube Tennis channel. I will probably be putting up some new content related to "Learning to Play the Ukulele". Also, most likely will be creating an Internet Archive account, becoming an archivist, very soon, and hopefully updating my "Unlisted Books" page as well.

The Great Forgetting

What does Covid-19, the vaccine, and the great reset have in common? EVERYTHING.

By the way, this is completely speculative, it's just a theory. You'd have to be intuitive to fully appreciate it.

I'll never forget this documentary I watched a couple years ago during the early state of the pandemic, a video interview of a supposed Chinese whistleblower scientist, blowing the whistle about China working on an experimental drug to subdue the native population of China, to make them more compliant, but it backfired. It ended up destroying people's memories, turning them into homicidal zombies, and most of them died.

I can't link to the video because I lost the link and can't find it, but I remember it. Anyway, it occurred to me after reading and watching material that talks about a great reset that is a recurring theme in the history of our world, going back at least 5,000 years, and maybe longer, where every so many years, maybe it's a hundred years, maybe it's more, maybe it's less, but after so many years, the powers that be perform a great reset to humanity, which means people who are not in on the scam, either die, forget what happened, or disappear in some form or the other. 

What if Covid, the vaccine, chemtrails, food additives, whatever, what if it's all the same, just different doses, but the result is the same, destruction of body and mind. Of course the people in the VIP club have the antidote. Did it ever occur to you that there is an antidote, but it has nothing at all to do with the vaccines being pushed on the masses? No, that's a a secret that only secret people have access to. Just a thought. 

Perhaps this story has been told before. The difference here is what I'm saying specifically is that maybe the way great resets work is that they attack the target population with a biological warfare agent that destroys memory, and turns people into homicidal zombies, which end up self-imploding, dying, while taking out as many people as they can, much like kamikaze bombers. 

In other words, maybe every great reset involves a pandemic, which is not a naturally occurring event, but is more like a poison manufactured in a lab. 

What if that has been the case for the last 5,000 years? That maybe this happens every 100 years or so. People either die, forget, or disappear. There is no middle ground, unless you are a great actor. Which means that the survivors either fake their own deaths, pretend to forget, by appearing crazy, stupid, or senile, or they join the enemy, by making alliances with powerful people, blending in, and becoming a robot, where cognitive dissonance is the rule of the day. 

Hmm, I wonder where the Jays fit into all this. Court Jays. Perks galore. Smart. Successful. Mentally Ill. Lots of cognitive dissonance. Lots of eyes wide shut behavior among them. Yeah. We shall explore this idea more later.

The New Reality

Have you noticed that there are a lot of new YouTube videos with realistic looking people that are actually artificially generated?

And I'm not talking about movie "extras" in the background. I'm talking about the main character of the video, the main attraction, the primary protagonist, the purported YouTube channel owner taking selfies in real time. 

Yeah, I've noticed it. I'll have to put some evidence later, there's actually a huge amount of it.

What I've noticed is that they use real videos of real people engaged in real physical activities, videos that people uploaded to social media over the years, not realizing that when you upload videos of yourself to social media platforms, the website can use your data in any way it chooses, which means it used a lot of videos for training AI. 

What they do is take original videos of people engaged in action shots and they take that data and can change it, by for instance superimposing a different face on the original content body, and they can also change the background environmental footage, and they can change the script, change the voice, but really it's just a fucking fabrication of reality. 

The evidence lies in the eyes and the hands. If something on a video looks "off" with the eyes and the hands, you may be looking at an artificially created caricature of intelligence.

In most cases people have no idea that their videos have been used in this way, but there also exists a small group of social media content creators, particularly one's with a large audience and a higher net worth, have voluntarily sold their data to the highest bidder. Again, there are examples, and I'll try to post them.

The second observation I've made today is that where I live, in Southern Arizona, I've noticed that over the last couple months, there's been a major reduction of air traffic, despite living under a main flight path, and zero chemtrails, but ever since the election, it's like a switch has been flipped on, and the air traffic is back, and the chemtrails are back too.

I'm wondering if they may be dumping bird flu on everyone. Again there is evidence in support of that too. Either that or we've entered an alternate reality matrix, like some kind of wormhole, where we have entered a different dimension in time and space, and at this point we may all be time travelers in an episode of the Twilight Zone.

Redneck

I've finally deciphered the riddle of the redneck. 

As an outdoorsy Wisconsinite, now living in the state of Arizona, I've never considered myself a redneck. In my mind, whether right or wrong, being a redneck was synonymous with being white trash. 

White trash equals not just being poor, but also being stupid and ignorant.

But I don't think that's the case. 

Just like not all black people are stupid, not all rednecks are stupid. 

So, what exactly is a redneck? 

Typically it is a term used to describe white people, who live in rural conditions, who usually don't have a lot of money, and who don't have a lot of status.

You know if you are white and rich and love being close to nature, living outside in your log cabin, in your tree house, or your yurt, whatever, you probably won't be called a redneck, instead you'll be called rustic, and outdoorsy, and free spirited, and your neck won't be red, unless you fell asleep while sun bathing on the beaches of Tahiti.

Redneck is a term typically applied to white people, of Northern European decent, typically males, with light eyes, usually blue or green, and fair skin, who live in an environment in which they are genetically ill adapted, such as a place that is hot and sunny much of the year, who due to either poverty, or ignorance fail to protect their skin from long-term sun damage. Meaning that when they are outside, and it is very hot outside, and they are wearing minimal clothing, the first place to burn, or to show signs of burning due to long term exposure, is the neck. 

Hence the term redneck. That's all it is, which if you think about it could be perceived as being a racial slur against white people.

Adventures in Synchronicity

Here's an interesting story, and it's a short story, based on the memory of real events. 

There's a grocery store that I shop at nearby where I live, that I absolutely hate, but I only shop there for the convenience of it being close to where I live. 

So, there's an employee there, who looks like a younger, and much shorter version of Rick Steves, the travel guy who tells people how to travel Europe on the cheap if you are an affluent boomer. 

Anyway, this guy works there as a grocery bagger, aka "courtesy clerk", whom I've dealt with as a customer on numerous occasions, but never before had a conversation with, and whom I previously regarded as probably retarded, mostly based on his appearance and mannerisms, you know, short, over 40, and somewhat clueless looking. 

Well, anyway, as I'm waiting in line at the store today, this guy must have been on his break, and was waiting in line behind me, and he says hi, and I say hi back, and so out of a spontaneous urge to make small talk, I ask him how his day is going. 

He says:  "I'd rather be with my books." 

I say: What do you mean? Reading or writing?

He says: Both. I'm a published author. I'm working on a new book. 

I say: Oh, really? Is it nonfiction or fiction? 

He says: I'm writing a supernatural novel. It's a mystery and detective story with a strong focus on the supernatural. Specifically, it's about vampires. 

I say: Oh, that's very interesting...

(Etc. Etc.)

I said something about the creative process, about how having a job that doesn't require a lot of mental effort, but is physically demanding without being mentally draining, is a smart idea for creative people not wanting to be so mentally drained at the end of their work day that they can't create. 

It's very strange to think that some of the people you see bagging groceries and cashiering in grocery stores, may actually be former professionals with Master's degrees. 

Random Insight Number 02-20-24

So, I noticed that when I'm talking to someone in person, like, for instance, at the grocery store, and I move my hands when I talk, you know, "speaking with the hands", that I tend to have my left hand up and my right hand down, both hands held palms up, like a cup, which is an intuitive gesture of openness and honesty, and the complete opposite of this:

It's an unnatural positioning. It's a position depicting underhandedness and deception. In one hand the arm is raised as if wielding a sword, but a sword that you can't quite see. On the other hand, it's as if it could be reaching for a pocket knife. When I look at this picture and think about mirroring the positioning of the hands, I can't do it, it's like there is a force field preventing me from doing so. Not that it's physically impossible, but just that I think that there is a memory reminding me not to go there, similar to a child being told at a young age not to touch the hot stove, even though you haven't yet personally experienced the harm yourself, you trust the guidance of your elders.

Thoughts on Vaccination Status, Intelligence and Intuition

I'm not sure what my actual IQ score is, but I remember taking a non-professionally administered IQ test as a kid, and scored around 120. Of course, this test may not have been accurate, but if it was, it means that I'm above average intelligence, but far from being a genius.  

I also remember that when I was in elementary and middle school in the 1980s, every year or so, we used to take these standardized tests, but they never told us our scores. It turns out they were IQ tests. Where the results were sealed up in a file, locked away in some classified dossier, and it's anybody's guess who had access to it, or if it still exists to this day.

I remember being in middle school, and having emotional problems that affected my school work, and I was getting poor grades, and so I had regular meetings with my school guidance counselor, and he was trying to understand why my grades were so low, despite me having some of the highest standardized test scores in the school. I didn't know what my exact score was, but was told it was very high. 

Also, I have this vague memory, probably when I was around 12 or 13 years old, of having a meeting with my school guidance counselor, who was this creepy little Jewish man who looked like a pedophile, who tried to recruit me to go to some special school for the gifted, but it was a boarding school in another city, and I didn't want to leave my friends and family, so I declined. Then I remember at a later time regretting it, and asking him if I could still do it, and he said no, it was a one time offer, apparently there were limited vacancies, and it was no longer an option. I'm glad I didn't go along with it, because it was probably some secret government run MKULTRA program, where I probably would have become some mind controlled assassin, and would probably be dead by now. 

The point is, it wasn't my intelligence that saved me, it was my strong powers of intuition. 

This is the same factor I feel that is at play in my choice not to be vaccinated. 

Although I did receive my childhood vaccines, which fortunately back then were only a small handful compared to how many they give now, I have never received a vaccine as an adult, and have never received a flu shot ever in my life, and that's probably a contributing factor of why I am very healthy, look 20 years younger, and rarely ever get sick. 

A lot of really smart unvaccinated people seem to think that to get or not get the vaccine is a real-world IQ test, and that if you're vaccinated, it means you're an idiot. And of course the high IQ vaccinated think the same thing about the unvaccinated, that the unvaccinated are idiots. 

So which is it? You've got really smart, super educated professionals, scientists and medical doctors on both sides of the debate, that are for and against vaccinations. And of course, you've also got those people who are ordinarily for vaccines, but just not all of them, particularly when certain safety signals have been triggered. Which makes sense. For example, if you're making a medicine to treat high blood pressure, and during clinical trials people actually get worse, or not any better, you should stop administering this drug, but that doesn't necessarily mean all high blood pressure medication is bad. So too with the vaccines. 

But then you've got some people that have total faith in all vaccines, no matter what, that they will continue to support vaccines that should have been pulled because they are either making the problem worse or not helping at all, simply because they mistakenly believe that since it has been approved then it must be safe, and fail to see that the experts and governmental authority figures are capable of getting it wrong and are capable of flat out lying to the public because they themselves have been corrupted. 

And that's called cognitive dissonance.

Anyway, it appears that the resistance to vaccines involves more than a persons IQ or educational level, since there are smart people in both groups. There's got to be some other personality factor involved. And I don't think it's conscientiousness, either, because on the Big Five personality test I score almost 100 percent, and yet, supposedly the official line has been that it's conscientious to get vaccinated in order to protect others. So despite being one of the most conscientious people on the planet, thanks to my intuition I saw through that propaganda effortlessly. 

Again, I think the main factor is probably intuition, some of us naturally have a higher developed level of intuition than others that we instinctively know what to do and what to stay away from. It's kind of like a built in compass. But it's also perhaps illustrative of a persons level of trust or distrust of authority, and level of faith in "the experts" or government itself, and that maybe that distrust is coming from their intuition, as we are able to see the big picture beyond the details, and beyond the words of public service announcements put out by the CDC and the WHO. And also have the perspective of weighing in on the historical precedent of government corruption, of corporate manipulation of data, of biological warfare and harmful experiments conducted on populations by their own governments, corporations, and the Department of Defense. 

That being said it's quite possible that a vaccinated person with a high IQ and a Masters degree or higher could have simply been unaware of the historical precedent of corruption. And again the factor most likely responsible for that is probably intuition, that if they had access to the intuition in the first place they definitely would have made themselves aware of it, just like I have. So, yeah, I'm going to stick with this theory. 

The key insight I get from the realization of this is that the single greatest thing we can do to make the world a better place to live in, is to improve the intuitive knowledge of each and every single living person on this planet. If we can do that, there would be a great renaissance of prosperity for all. 

Unfortunately, it is also my intuition that some of these vaccines may actually be working to destroy a persons intuition, and when that happens, you've got a slave species without a soul, who are more easily controlled, because once a person loses their moral compass and the power of the intuitive mind, they can only look to "the experts" and the authority figures to tell them what to do, because they will be incapable of figuring it out themselves.

All the Billionaires are Probably Evil

 When I saw this: 

I thought of this: 

Comments: Could it be that Oprah Winfrey herself, the once trashy daytime talk show host, and self-help book guru promoter, is actually the African American version of Ghislaine Maxwell, a sex trafficking handler for the satanic elite? 

Yeah, probably.

Mirrors and the Power to Reflect the Invisible

I made an interesting observation last night. I have this mirror on my bathroom door, which when the door is open, and you are in the right position in relation to it, you can see the mirror reflection of the bathroom wall mirror in the door mirror, creating a mirror within a mirror effect. I learned that this phenomenon is referred to as the Droste effect. 

Example of Droste effect:

Random image found on Google

So, in my case, I could see a reflection of myself from a distance in the mirror on my door, reflecting off the mirror in the bathroom, which created a Droste effect of myself, showing a mirror within a mirror within a mirror, where the smallest mirror reflection of myself appears very far away. Where maybe instead of 10 feet away, it appeared as if were actually 20 or 30 feet away, which is not really possible, because my room is something like only ten feet wide, so of course it's an optical illusion. 

But this made me think of telescopes and microscopes, how mirrors are used to amplify and to magnify distance, to make faraway objects appear close, and to make smaller objects appear larger.

Okay, not a revolutionary insight, but the second thought that occurred to me is that how just as mirrors are used not only to reflect an image, but to amplify an image that is either too small or too far away to see, this technology could perhaps also be extended to the realm of magical divination. 

So yeah, that's the insight, that while a mirror has real tangible scientific utility in being able to amplify our sense of sight, and to extend our range of vision, it seems also likely that it could perhaps be utilized in such a way that enables one to see into another dimension of reality, such as that indicated in mythological folklore, regarding scrying with magic mirrors and crystal balls, which is really just a spherical 3 dimensional mirror. 

So although this observation has been made long before in a mythological context, that of using mirrors for divinatory purposes, the fact is it's actually a very logical association to make, in light of the fact that mirrors do have the power to amplify our senses, to see that which otherwise would remain invisible.

Example of magic mirror: 

From Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Commercials no longer human?

I generally don't watch much television, haven't had cable for over six years now, but when I do, with the exception of Netflix (which I probably won't keep) I stream the majority of what I watch online for free, which is mostly YouTube, Tubi, and Freevee. 

Since I haven't watched cable TV for years, I'm not sure if the streaming TV commercials are different than what's shown on regular cable TV, but I've noticed something peculiar happening the last few months with the streaming commercials, particularly on the free apps Tubi and Freevee. 

I've noticed that many of the streaming commercials are clearly being narrated using Artificial Intelligence, and what's really bazaar is that not only is the voice not human, but the script is often improper English, suggesting the commercials are originating outside of the US, probably China, though not absolutely certain about that, and written by people not fluent in English. 

You probably have some exposure to what an AI voice sounds like if you've ever used a virtual assistant like Cortana or Siri. Well, I've had a little bit more exposure than that, because one of the freelance side gigs I've done in the past was listening to audio files and evaluating experimental AI voices for qualities such as naturalness, professionalism, situational appropriateness, emotional warmth, and overall likeability.

So, after listening to hundreds of audio files, I've got a good ear for what AI voices sound like, and not sure if other people have noticed this, so I'm putting this out there for the benefit of anyone who may not have been aware of this, that they are in fact using AI for voices on some TV commercials. 

This relates I think to a news story I heard not long ago about China experimenting with using holograms for TV presenters, which may or may not be AI based, and were testing if viewers could detect the difference between a hologram and a real person without telling them about the experiment. Apparently most people were fooled, or never suspected anything different about the news presenter. 

I've always suspected something off with the NBC news presenter, Lester Holt, who always seemed kind of robot like to me. Like I wondered could this guy really be an android right out of Westworld, or maybe he's a hologram, or maybe he's not even real. I mean I've never met the guy, how do you know if the people you see on TV are even real, they could be AI based simulations. Which is not to imply that they are all simulations, but that some of them could be, as the experiments in China have proven it's been done before.

On a somewhat related note, what's up with this guy's neck? Either he has some undisclosed medical problem, or he's not human. I showed this clip to my mother, who is not in the least bit conspiracy theory minded, and she said something like not only has she never seen anyone do that, but she said this guy looks like he doesn't like humans much. 

Constipation

This is a spontaneous insight I had last night, didn't post it then, because it was already really late, and didn't want to dilute the waters, having already posted my post for the night.

Okay, so apparently there currently is an epidemic of heroin addiction in the U.S. I thought of this because I saw something on the news about it yesterday, saying just that, but also mentioning the fact that heroin causes major constipation, where the addicts may go weeks without a bowel movement.

I myself have never tried heroin, and based on what I know about it, probably wouldn't if given the opportunity, but I've known a couple addicts in my life, and I remember them saying that that first hit of heroin was the best moment of their lives. We're talking religious ecstasy, in their words better than sexual orgasm, the most blissful moment ever, but never again reproduced. They get the best high of their life, but it's only a one time thing, each time they use they try to reproduce that original moment, but to no avail, and from this point forward the more physically dependent they become on the drug, they need it just to feel normal, but never again feeling super normal.

My spontaneous insight is that perhaps the reason why heroin causes constipation is because at some level it is a mental/emotional laxative, which fools the body into thinking that it has already let go of the biggest BM of their lives, but in actuality it was only in their own mind.

They are constipated because the drug fools them into thinking that they already emptied their bowels, when in actuality they merely descended into the bowels of hell, masquerading as heaven. They let go mentally and emotionally, but physically, not so much, making the letting go no more real than an illusory dream. Which is why in this sense most drugs, perhaps all drugs, don't have the power to make you enlightened, when the enlightenment gained is at a dream level, which rarely, if ever carries over to actual physical space.

Fake News, Real Commercials

This is a spontaneous insight.

A thought occurred to me today, a question, a speculation, just a thought, that sometimes what we watch on the news is put there not because it is newsworthy, but because someone paid money for a particular story to be aired, because they had a vested financial interest in one particular point of view being promoted.

Of course, this is self-evident, right, that the presentation of news is subject to commercial and political manipulation, but did it occur to you that maybe there's an actual underground market going on with the mainstream national news, where news is bought and sold like commercials, much of it totally scripted to fit an agenda. Not always political, but purely commercial. Meaning, that maybe people are meeting behind the scenes, to discuss the buying of national news slots, meaning we'll cover this story if you have enough money to pay for it.

Example #1

The Martian movie is released, coincidentally there is a big story on the national news about finding new evidence of life on Mars, namely a source of water, which would make colonizing Mars a real possibility.

Speculatively, you could call it a covert infomercial, where the producers of The Martian movie made a deal with the network to air a news story, backed up by science, which would surely generate interest in and boost sales of their product.


Example #2

Online fantasy sports betting is the latest rage. Stories of people winning millions, some making six figure incomes. I'm thinking wow, I don't really watch sports, but maybe should get into this. I used to play poker, but the site I used to play at got shut down by the Department of Justice. While there is still some legal online poker, it sucks compared to what it used to be, the earnings potential are just not worth it in my case, is heavily taxed, fewer players, etc.

But now we've got fantasy sports betting. Not necessarily new, but lately it's been getting a lot of media coverage. Just today I saw a segment on the news about a guy, with an economics degree, probably in his twenties, claiming to make a six figure income from it, and just this morning made $12,000.

I'm thinking wow, I've got to get into this. I've got a knack for this sort of thing, recognizing patterns, strong intuition, looking for profitable loopholes in the system. But then a spontaneous insight occurred to me about this particular news segment about the guy claiming to make six figures from this, that that kind of endorsement must surely be good for business, beneficial to the fantasy sports betting industry. Do you know how many sales that must have generated? Probably a lot.

Point is, maybe that story was planted. I mean maybe the guy was telling the truth, and he really did make as much money as he claimed, but how common is it really? Likely it isn't very common, but maybe the guy isn't just lucky, but is maybe also a shareholder or something, and for each new person that signs up, as a direct result of hearing his success story, he takes a cut of it. It's like a sort of insider trading. How much does this happen? Probably all the time.

School shootings, overexposure of gun violence, bought and paid for by the anti gun lobby. There's all kinds of factors, but I'm beginning to think that the majority of news is bought, nothing more than a paid infomercial pretending to be news.

The Putrid Smell of Disease

You know how old people have a tendency to smell bad? You know, that whole cliché about smelling like an old geezer, or an old biddy, smelling like urine, BO, bad breath, and dirty crotch. Sorry to be so blunt, but you know what I mean.

The elderly. Usually it is assumed that the smell is the result of poor hygiene. Being unable to wash properly, either due to poverty, of not having people care for you and unable to care for yourself, or of laziness, not having the energy or the strength to care, each breath a hardship, getting up is a struggle, walking around, a struggle in balance, a broken hip waiting to happen. They lose their hair, and their coordination, and their ability to reason, their ability to speak, like their reverting back to infancy, like a drooling baby, with no knowledge about the world, unfamiliar with their body and the laws of gravity, totally at the mercy of the elements and the goodwill of strangers.

But the difference is that the bright light animating the infants zest for life, being open to it all, smiling, because everything is new and wonderful and beautiful and brilliant and creative, and they are eager to learn, to love and to be loved and to become a part of this life, a wonderful adventure awaiting them, is missing from the elderly falling apart, dying not because they choose, but because it is a written death sentence; the ground is breaking away beneath their feet, the organs are collapsing, the skeleton support of life is disintegrating, and it is entirely out of their control, and they are unprepared for it.

Disintegration while still living, little by little things stop working properly, like an impending computer hard drive failure, things slow down, start acting strangely, chaotically, programs don't boot properly, they freeze up, like a glitch in the system is causing complete chaos and malfunction, and eventually the computer is dead, it just won't boot anymore, nothing you can do but replace it.

The insight is, that the horrible smell so often encountered in the elderly, is not simply a matter of poor hygiene, poverty, or laziness, but rather, it's the odor of decay, of disintegration, of sickness and disease, of organ failure, and of death, eating them away as they live, gradually gnawing away at them, until nothing is left. You see, you start dying long before you actually die, sometimes even before you actually start living, in the sense that life is experienced in the full awareness of your heart. It can go on for years, this disintegration, being a very gradual process, but the signs are there for those who know what to look for, what to smell for, and what to listen for.

The smell of urine reveals much. A great depth of insight can be had, for those trained, or intuitively receptive, to know the signs, to recognize the differences between healthy urine and unhealthy urine. The smell of death and disease is always unpleasant and putrid. No perfume or cosmetic can cover it up, it is exuded in the pours of the skin, in all bodily fluids and secretions, it shows in the eyes, in the nails, the complexion, the voice, and the breath. It is fully visible with no place to hide, except in plain sight to those who fail to see it.

Everybody is Watching

Watched a movie last night, its name is unimportant, but what caught my eye was that several people in the movie were using smartphones, taking pictures and video clips of strangers on a plane and uploading it to social media; which would later be misconstrued as proof for a crime, used against them, making them look bad, but who would later be found innocent.

It could admittedly go either way, amateur video footage has both helped and harmed, but the fact of the matter is that it's everywhere, and there's no escape.

Everywhere you look people are doing that, or have the capability of doing that, of being amateur journalists and spies; filming people without their knowledge or consent, and sharing it online. This, coupled with the fact that reality TV is becoming the most popular type of television content, is normalizing this intrusion of privacy, making people more comfortable with the idea that it is okay to be watched, to always be watched, and to have our private lives a matter of public record.

I had this insight that the prophecy of the Orwellian Police State, where everybody is under constant surveillance, is not necessarily something that must be imposed by governments or corporations, but is more likely realized by the hands of ordinary people equipped with smartphones and blogs, doing the dirty work for "them".

Musings on Diversity and Localism

"Cotton kills."

I'm sure you've heard that before. It's in reference to wearing cotton based fabrics in cold weather conditions, in that, cotton loses its insulating ability when wet, which could be deadly when worn in freezing temperatures.

I don't know why I was thinking about this, but it just popped into my mind last night completely out of the blue. I guess maybe it was because it was so unbearably hot outside that I was thinking about taking a vacation near an iceberg. Contemplating the adage, "cotton kills," lead to a long chain of associations in my mind, about the materials we use in various products, such as clothing, building materials, etc., being most suited for the climate of the materials origin.

For instance, cotton clothing is probably most suited for the type of climate where cotton plants grow, which is generally hot weather conditions. Which means that the statement "cotton kills" is only applicable to cold weather conditions, and not at all true in hot weather conditions, or those conditions where the cotton plant naturally thrives.

Okay, we all know this right? Nothing new here. But the essential insight I got from this, is that the same general principle is true I think for all things, at least in reference to natural materials. Synthetics, on the other hand, are a crap shoot, their efficacy depending entirely on whether their design matches the needs of the climate. Generally the best materials to use for any given place, are those that are either locally obtained, or if imported, come from, or are adapted to, an environment having similar climatic and geographical conditions.

That generally, what's best for the south, comes from the south. What's best for the north, comes from the north. What's best for the desert, comes from the desert. What's best for the tropics, comes from the tropics. What's best for the mountains, comes from the mountains. What's best for the forests, comes from the forests. What's best for the plains, comes from the plains. Or what works well in dry conditions, probably will not work well in humid conditions. What works well in cold conditions, probably won't work well in hot conditions.

It's so obvious, right? But look around you, and see how much stuff follows a standard homogeneous cookie cutter design, used everywhere the same way, even when it is not appropriate to the local conditions.

This is another example of the importance of diversity. Not diversity for diversities sake, or solely for the appearance of diversity, but diversity in the sense of different places having different strengths and weaknesses, and different needs, which require using different methods, that invariably produce different results. Diversity in the sense that the world should not look the same everywhere, or use the same materials or methods wherever you go.

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But diversity is not just about appearances, it is about adapting to different conditions in ways that are most appropriate to those conditions. Doing things the same way, when it is in fact the best way for the present conditions, is not wrong. Doing things in different ways that don't work well for the present conditions, just for the sake of valuing or promoting diversity, may be wrong. That is a distortion of diversity. Misunderstanding that diversity is a product of environment, and should not be reproduced in environments inappropriate to it. Or in other words, what works here, may not work there, and to force something to fit in the name of diversity, is like forcing a square peg into a round hole, and not at all a healthy form of diversity at all.

It is not healthy diversity to import building materials or clothing that is most suited for humid conditions, if it is to be used in dry conditions.

I'm wondering if there is some greater truth here, concerning diversity and localism, that extends beyond material resources, that applies to systems and cultures and intellectual ideas, about how to build cities, how to manage businesses, how to organize societies, and how to govern people.

This is not at all a complete idea, but was just an example of the associations that came to mind last night as a result of contemplating the idea that "cotton kills," but not always, sometimes it is actually the best and most suitable fabric around, depending on where you live and how you use it.

What I learned by thinking about this is that the factors that determine the suitability of any given material or method, and which is also the primary shaper of cultural diversity, is more often than not the actual environmental conditions and unique physical geography of the earth itself.

Attempting to make everyone the same in all places, is just as unhealthy and counter to true diversity, as making all places equally diverse representations of all things; that is, importing diversity simply for the appearance of diversity, like for example, encouraging the use of different building materials or clothing, even though they may be inappropriate for the local conditions, is not real diversity. It is a mockery of diversity, because real diversity is a product of the natural adaptation to different physical environments over time, where culture is the result. Culture is the effect, environment is the cause. When you put different people in one place together, over time, this group of people becomes something completely different than what it used to be, where they become more alike than different, but completely different than what they were before.

Example, you can export a bunch of cotton clothing to cold weather climates, but eventually people are going to figure out that the local materials, that grow well in that environment, like wool, for instance, is much better. People adapt to the land, and if they don't, they have a difficult time, or they don't survive at all. Diversity is a direct response to the land. Different land, materials, and methods produce different culture.

A multicultural rainbow means absolutely nothing, other than being a shallow façade of diversity, if everybody looks different but thinks the same, or if the way we think and act is out of harmony with the needs dictated by the environment.

Gemini Dreams and Insights

Metallic Toad Dream

I had a dream last night that I was sitting out on my patio and noticed a spider web up above me. It extended from a corner of the patio's ceiling with strands of webbing attached to some of the potted plants in front of where I was sitting. The webbing was sort of in the way, that someone could accidentally walk into it, so I cleared it away, just the bottom strands, and left the uppermost part of the web attached to the corner. Finally I see the spider curled up into a ball in the deepest shadow of the corner. It was white and large, with almost a squarish body, and my first thought was that it may be poisonous.

I looked away for a moment, but when I looked again in the same spot, instead of a spider, it was now a round silver coin, which appeared to be very old and of foreign currency, attached to the web. The spider appeared to have changed into a coin, or perhaps I had doubts about it having been a spider in the first place. As I'm thinking this, the coin turns around to its other side, and reveals itself to be not a coin, but a small metallic looking toad. Not a lifeless object, but a living creature. No sooner than revealing itself, or shape shifting into a toad, it quickly moves further into the shadow, and disappears completely into a hole in the wall. And that was it. End of dream.

Random Insights

I had these random insights a few days ago. The first one occurred to me while watching a movie. Just completely out of the blue, unrelated to the subject of the movie itself, I was looking at a woman on the screen and this thought spontaneously popped into my mind:

"The Body is a Spacesuit For the Soul"

Assumption being that there is a non-material essence underlying the fundamental being of each person. Perhaps you could call it a mixture of consciousness and spirit, spirit being the energy that animates the body, soul being the individual personality of the spirit, and consciousness being what links spirit to matter, as a self-aware being living among other self-aware beings.

Nothing too revolutionary here, and I'm sure anyone who doubts the existence of a non-material reality or spirit, would think the idea completely absurd and dismiss me as being a naive flake, but either way I thought it was interesting to think of our bodies as being like spacesuits perfectly adapted for earthly travel.

Just like astronauts can't walk on the moon without wearing a spacesuit, people can't walk on the earth without a physical body. But the body is more like a vehicle or a specially fitted outfit of clothing, than the actual person. The body as a tool essential to our survival in this environment, is an extension of our being, but it is not the source, or the fundamental substance of who and what we are.

"The Power of Will"

This other insight I had shortly before going to bed a few nights ago after having had a couple of beers. I was holding this almost empty bottle of beer in my hand and thinking about what was stopping me from throwing this bottle of beer against the wall. I had no intention of doing so, but just as a sort of thought experiment, the idea entered my mind. Well, of course, thinking about the consequences of it is what stopped me. The broken glass. The spilled beer. The mess. The noise. The anger it would cause my housemates. It would be a totally senseless act, with absolutely no good reason for doing so. But what was really stopping me? The power of the will, that's what.

The power of the will is extremely strong. It's like a superglue. Once an idea sticks, it's very difficult to get it unstuck. Thinking about this beer bottle and the choice not to throw it against the wall, got me thinking about the greater role Will plays in the physical laws of the universe, and to what extent Will is a defining ingredient in determining whether something is possible or impossible.

What role does will play in things like gravity, and not being able to walk through walls? What role does will play in the aging process, in what is considered to be the natural lifespan of the human being? Perhaps it is possible to change reality and to redefine the limits of what is possible and impossible, by changing and refocusing the power of the will. To walk through walls. To astral project your consciousness thousands of miles away without "physically" leaving the room you are in. The ability to see with microscopic vision, with telescopic vision, to see into the future and the past, and to do these things without the use of external technological devices like telephones and computers, but purely through the conscious manipulation of your mind and the power of your will.

The power of the will is not just a matter of thinking differently or trying to convince yourself of something, but is actually a matter of really believing it with all of your being on both a conscious and a much deeper subconscious level. You have to really actually believe it. As long as you "know" that it's impossible to walk through walls, either through personal experience or because all the scientific studies say so, your will shall reflect that impossibility. But as soon as a scientific breakthrough is made in that area to enable that to happen, it will revise your entire thinking on the matter, and what was previously considered impossible, becomes possible, because the information needed to support that idea, to confirm it in your will, has been modified.

Because the power of will is not just an individual matter, but is shaped in great part by the power of consensus, or collective agreement, reinforced by way of authority, popular culture, science, religion, and the law. The more people who believe in something and are told it is true, the more powerful and the more real this something becomes.

Addendum (added a few hours later):  The point of this insight, concerning the power of will, is that physical laws operate according to a similar principle, and that by observing the power and influence of your own will power in action, you can gain a better understanding of how the universe works. Or something like that. Just thinking out loud here, trying to retrace the line of thought going through my mind a few days ago, and writing about it here after the fact.

Random Insight - 4

Be not deceived by appearances.

Very often sexual attraction, that of being completely captivated by a person's appearance, is very much like being hypnotized and put under a magical spell, a spell that makes you feel like you're under the influence of a very powerful drug, a drug which may cloud your judgment causing you to make all sorts of poor choices. Where you may perhaps see someone in a more favorable light than is actually the case, simply because of the way they look, while ignoring possible red flag warnings, like character flaws and personality incompatibilities, that you would have noticed right away if you were not attracted to them.

This is true not just in romance but in all interpersonal relationships. Sometimes beautiful people get more favorable treatment, are taken more seriously and given better opportunities than ugly people. So it's a good idea to sometimes imagine a beautiful person as ugly, and an ugly person as beautiful, while really listening to what their saying, and closely observing what their doing, to get a clear and honest sense of who they really are as a person independent from their appearance, because appearances can sometimes be deceptive.

I do this quite frequently, not just in person, but also while watching television. Especially when watching something serious, like an interview, a speech, or political debate, I like to close my eyes, or cover the TV, and just listen to it without watching it, without being distracted by their appearance and mannerisms...to really focus on the substance of what people are saying. Because appearances can be deceptive, not just in person, but especially on television, with all the smoke and mirrors and magical incantations, with all the glitz and glamor and fancy suits and flashing lights, it's easy to be distracted and deceived into misinterpreting what you see, or mislead into putting greater or lesser value on the essential message of what a person is saying.

Try this sometime:

1. Visualize a beautiful person as being monstrously ugly, maybe even imagining them looking like a skeletal corpse.

2. Visualize an ugly person as being the perfect embodiment of beauty, like an angelic being right out of a heavenly sphere of perfection.

3. And momentarily try not to concentrate on a person's outward appearance at all, seeing them as neither ugly or beautiful, but letting their words and deeds speak entirely for themselves.

Random Insight - 3

Carpe diem - Seize the day; gather ye rosebuds while ye may.

What do you like? What do you want to do? Make note of whatever interests you now, because interests have a tendency of changing over time. Sometimes your interests, passions, and callings in life are a once in a lifetime opportunity. Sometimes it's now or never, and if you miss the call, you miss the boat forever.

For instance, if you are interested in climbing a mountain, embrace it while you can, because chances are if you put it off for too long, there will come a day when it is no longer an option, perhaps due to declining health or old age, or simply because your interest itself has eventually faded away, and so it will forever remain impossibly outside of your reach.

Which is okay, but don't take your interests for granted. Not everyone shares them. Not everyone feels the same calling as you. Are you troubled by the state of the world and want to do something about it? If so, know this, that not everyone is troubled by it enough to actually want to do something about it. Not everyone wants to solve the problems of the world. Many people are apathetic, so wrapped up in their own lives, that they don't care. But if you do care, it's up to you to answer that calling, because very few hear it, and even fewer actually act upon it.

This simple observation applies to all things, everything that interests you, whether it be a hobby, or topic of research, a career ambition, or a physical challenge, as you get older, new interests emerge, and your old interests may assume less significance, possibly falling to the wayside completely.

Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May
(1909) by John William Waterhouse

Never take it for granted that whatever interests you now, and whatever you feel passionate about doing now, will always be of interest to you. Because time has a tendency of changing our lives, altering our perspectives and inclinations. So if you hear the calling in your heart to do something, no matter what it is, however simple or complex, however trivial or profound, do not put it off for too long, because otherwise as they say, he who hesitates is lost.

For instance, right now my interests are primarily educational...reading. I do not yet know enough to successfully do what I want to do. I have not been happy in my previous roles of employment. I have yet to find work that is personally meaningful to me and that I believe in with all my heart. And the only way I'm going to resolve this problem is through education, by reading extensively, embracing my interest in reading before this interest fades away.

I've been a reader for quite some time, but the problem has been that I sort of jump around from one unrelated topic to the next. But if you jump around too much, it's like going around in circles and takes you twice as long to reach your goals. This isn't to say that you shouldn't diversify your reading, because you should, but you also want to make sure that you concentrate on the key areas of interest. Otherwise without concentrated focus, you become what they call a Jack of all trades, but a master of none.

I think big. World changing. Creating a new template for a new world. That is where my thoughts are, and have been since my teenage years. But I have not been focused. I've been jumping around, not just in reading, but in life. So have accomplished nothing, by my standards, other than bringing me to this point in time now where I have enough presence of mind to recognize where I now stand.

Where do you stand? What interests you? What do you want to do? Whatever it is, don't put it off for too long, seize the day now before the passion is gone.