Full screen recommended.
2002, "We Are Always"
So, we rise from the rubble...
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Sunday, October 4, 2026
"A Look to the Heavens"
"A mere seven hundred light years from Earth, toward the constellation Aquarius, a sun-like star is dying. Its last few thousand years have produced the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293), a well studied and nearby example of a Planetary Nebula, typical of this final phase of stellar evolution. A total of 90 hours of exposure time have gone in to creating this expansive view of the nebula.
Combining narrow band image data from emission lines of hydrogen atoms in red and oxygen atoms in blue-green hues, it shows remarkable details of the Helix's brighter inner region about 3 light-years across. The white dot at the Helix's center is this Planetary Nebula's hot, central star. A simple looking nebula at first glance, the Helix is now understood to have a surprisingly complex geometry."
"I Can't Convince Myself..."
“I can’t convince myself that it does much good to try to challenge the everyday political delusions and dementias of Americans at large. Their contained and confined mentalities by far prefer the petty and parochial prisons of the kind of sense they have been trained and rewarded for making out of their lives (and are punished for deviating from them). What it costs them ultimately to be such slaves and infants and ideological zombies is a thought too monstrous and rending and spiky for them even to want to glance at.”
- Kenneth Smith
“If you want to tell people the truth,
make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.”
- Oscar Wilde
"Life Is An Illusion: Playing Your Part "
"Life Is An Illusion: Playing Your Part "
by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOM
"Having the wisdom to know that life is but a dream does not mean that we ignore living. As children, most of us sang that mesmerizing, wistful lullaby that ends with the words, 'Life is but a dream.' This is a classic example of a deep, sophisticated truth hiding, like an underground stream, in an unlikely place. It winds its way through our minds like a riddle or a Zen koan, coming up when we least expect it and asking that we consider its meaning. Many gurus and philosophers agree with this mysterious observation, saying that this world we perceive as real is actually an illusion, not unlike a film being projected on a screen. Most of us are so involved in the projection that we don't understand it for what it is. We are completely caught up in the illusion, imagining that we are in a life and death struggle and taking it very seriously.
The enlightened few, on the other hand, live their lives in the light of the awareness that what most of us perceive as reality is a passing fancy. As a result, they behave with detachment, compassion, and wisdom, while the rest of us struggle and writhe upon the stage in the play of our life. Having the wisdom to know that life is but a dream does not mean that we ignore it or don't do our best with the twists and turns of our fate. Rather, like an actress who plays her role fully even as she knows it's only a role, we engage in the unfolding drama, but with a little more freedom because we know that this is not the totality of who we are.
And life is more of an improvisation than it is like a play whose lines have already been written, whose end is already known. Like an improviser, we have choices to make and the more we embrace the illusionary quality of the performance, the lighter we can be on the planet, on others, and on ourselves. We can truly play with the shadows cast by the light of the projector, fully engaging without getting bogged down."
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"We are game-playing, fun-having creatures, we are the otters of the universe. We cannot die, we cannot hurt ourselves any more than illusions on the screen can be hurt. But we can believe we're hurt, in whatever agonizing detail we want. We can believe we're victims, killed and killing, shuddered around by good luck and bad luck. "
"Many lifetimes? ", I asked.
"How many movies have you seen? "
"Oh."
"Films about living on this planet, about living on other planets; anything that's got space and time is all movie and all illusion, " he said. "But for a while we can learn a huge amount and have a lot of fun with our illusions, can we not?"
- Richard Bach,
Freely download
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Full screen recommended.Moody Blues, "Land of Make-Believe"
"The Sane Who Know..."
“Human beings are, necessarily, actors who cannot become something before they have first pretended to be it; and they can be divided, not into the hypocritical and the sincere, but into the sane who know they are acting and the mad who do not.”
- W.H Auden
"A dog might feel as majestic as a lion, might bark as loud as a roar, might have a heart as mighty and brave as a Lion's heart, but at the end of the day, a dog is a dog and a lion is a lion. "
- Charlyn Khatero
"Never Fair..."
"Life is never fair,
and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not."
- Oscar Wilde
The Poet: Wendell Berry, "Leavings"
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“Leavings”
“In time a man disappears
from his lifelong fields, from
the streams he has walked beside,
from the woods where he sat and waited.
Thinking of this, he seems to
miss himself in those places
as if always he has been there.
But first he must disappear,
and this he foresees with hope,
with thanks. Let others come.”
- Wendell Berry
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“Perhaps as he was lying awake then, his life may have passed before him – his early hopeful struggles, his manly successes and prosperity, his downfall in his declining years, and his present helpless condition – no chance of revenge against Fortune, which had had the better of him - neither name nor money to bequeath – a spent-out, bootless life of defeat and disappointment, and the end here! Which, I wonder, brother reader, is the better lot, to die prosperous and famous, or poor and disappointed? To have, and to be forced to yield; or to sink out of life, having played and lost the game? That must be a strange feeling, when a day of our life comes and we say, “Tomorrow, success or failure won’t matter much, and the sun will rise, and all the myriads of mankind go to their work or their pleasure as usual, but I shall be out of the turmoil.”
- William Makepeace Thackeray, “Vanity Fair”
"A Great Madness Sweeps The Land"
"A Great Madness Sweeps The Land"
by Charles Hugh Smith
‘In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups,
parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.’
- Friedrich Nietzsche
"A great madness sweeps the land. There are no limits on extremes in greed, credulity, convictions, inequality, bombast, recklessness, fraud, corruption, arrogance, hubris, pride, over-reach, self-righteousness and confidence in the rightness of one's opinions. Extremes only become more extreme even as the folly of previous extremes wearies rationality.
Imaginary sins are conjured out of thin air to convict the innocent while those guilty of the most egregious fraud and corruption are lauded as saviors. The national mood is aggrieved and bitter. The luxuries of self-righteousness, indignation, entitlement and resentment have impoverished the national spirit. Bankrupted by these excesses, what little treasure remains is squandered on plots of petty revenge.
Blindness to the late hour is cheered as optimism, confidence in the false gods of technology is sanctified while doubters of the technocratic theocracy are crucified as irredeemable infidels.
Witch-hunts and show trials are the order of the day as those who cannot stomach the party line are obsessively purged, as healthy skepticism is condemned as a mortal sin by brittle true believers who secretly fear the failure of their cult.
Mired in a putrid sewer of suspected subversion and disloyalty to The One True Cause, heretics are everywhere to those caught up in the mass hysteria. In this choking atmosphere of toxic hubris, self-righteousness, indignation, entitlement and resentment, humility is for losers, prudence is for losers, caution is for losers, skeptical inquiry is for losers.
Completely untethered from cause and effect, those confident in the inevitability of a glorious future of unlimited expansion cling to past glory as proof of future glory, even as their hubris leads only to a treacherous path of decay and decline. As they stumble into the abyss, their final cries are of surprise that confidence alone is not enough.
Those who see the madness for what it is have only one escape: go to ground, fade from public view, become self-reliant and weather the coming storm in the nooks and crannies where cause and effect, skeptical inquiry, humility, prudence and thrift can still be nurtured."
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“Rescreening Dr. Strangelove”
"Is Donald Trump Considering Using Nuclear Weapons On Iran?"
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“Rescreening Dr. Strangelove”
By Hugh Iglarsh
"A friend of mine saw Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” when it first opened in Paris in 1964. He and his American army friends were rolling on the floor throughout. The French audience, however, sat in stony silence. It wasn’t a comedy to them; it was a documentary. What is it now? In general, Hollywood is America dreaming – but Strangelove is something different, a “nightmare comedy,” in Kubrick’s words. It is prophecy disguised as farce – the finest dramatic analysis we have of the paradoxes of deterrence, that strange world of interpenetrated enmity and overriding common interest. What follows is a look at Kubrick’s masterpiece as satire, history and cultural critique.
Watching the film today, one realizes that Kubrick was exaggerating only the details and personality quirks, not the fundamentals. Peter George’s somber novel "Red Alert", upon which the film is based, evolved into a comic script of its own deeper nature, almost without intervention. As Kubrick said, “The most realistic things are the funniest.” In the Strangelove universe, the serious constantly morphs into the humorous, which then reveals itself as deadly serious.
Historian Margot Henriksen, author of "Dr. Strangelove’s America," describes the movie as a kind of expose – a frontal assault on “the cherished seriousness and rationality of America’s nuclear ethos and establishment Strangelove showed the previously disguised cold war reality for what it was: immoral, insane, deadly – and ridiculous. Distinguished critic Lewis Mumford defended the film’s blackly humorous take on nuclear holocaust as an example of deadpan Swiftian wit: “It is not this film that is sick: What is sick is our supposedly moral, democratic country which allowed this policy to be formulated and implemented without even the pretense of public debate.”
Strangelove’s literary antecedents go back even further, to the Old Comedy of Aristophanes – the comedy of Periclean Athens, which was ribald and irreverent and deeply political. It’s a theater of living, participatory democracy, of a citizenry involved in every matter of state. Also, it’s a comedy grounded in the body and nature, as for instance in Lysistrata, in which the women of Athens bring the bloody and stupid Peloponnesian War to an end through a brilliantly organized sex strike, or in other plays, where the chorus of frogs or wasps or birds comments on human affairs from an ironic inter-species distance. The film’s insistent “strange love” sexual subtext places it firmly in the Aristophanic tradition.
The characters in Strangelove embody social hierarchies; they are flattened, if highly compelling, and command a very different kind of response than does the typical Hollywood character – a critical reaction, rather than an emotional identification. It is similar to what Bertolt Brecht describes as the alienation effect, forcing the viewer to see characters in terms of what they represent, coloring the subjective perception of objective reality, and creating the psychological conditions for both detachment and enlightened re-engagement.
Historically, 1963 was a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis and a couple of years after the Berlin Wall crisis. It was the last moment that some Pentagon brass and nuclear strategists believed that the USA would have a significantly superior strategic position vis-Ã -vis the Soviets, allowing the possibility of a first strike. President Kennedy was surrounded by such thinking. From the book "JFK and the Unspeakable," by James Douglass, regarding events in 1961: “His military advisors continued to ride hard toward the apocalypse. Kennedy was appalled by Generals Lemnitzer and LeMay’s insistence at two summer meetings that they wanted his authorization to use nuclear weapons in both Berlin and Southeast Asia. His response was to walk out of the meetings. After one such walkout, he threw his hands in the air, glanced back at the generals and admirals left in the Cabinet Room, and said, ‘These people are crazy.’ ”
Only one month after the terrifying Cuban Missile crisis, the Joint Chiefs of Staff requested a buildup of strategic forces to the level of a disarming first-strike capability. On November 20, 1962, they sent a memorandum to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara stating, “The Joint Chiefs of Staff consider that a first-strike capability is both feasible and desirable.” Their studies showed that a first strike would kill at least 140 million Russians – but that American casualties could be kept down to a “manageable” 10 or 12 million. This is almost exactly what General Turgidson says in the movie. (“Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say… no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh… depending on the breaks.”) In September 1963, Air Force General Leon Johnson said to Kennedy, “I have concluded from the calculations that we could fight a limited war using nuclear weapons without fear that the Soviets would reply by going to all-out war.”
Kennedy understood the real but unstated objective. Knowing that the Pentagon was gaming him, he responded, “I have been told that if I ever released a nuclear weapon on the battlefield, I should start a pre-emptive attack on the Soviet Union, as the use of nuclear weapons was bound to escalate and we might as well get the advantage by going first.” Again, it’s precisely the gambit attempted by General Turgidson in the War Room regarding the “unpublished study” about the correct (i.e., murderous) response to a nuclear “accident” – a study apparently not shared with the president.
Kubrick’s mind was legendarily omnivorous and retentive. He subscribed to the "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" and had read just about every book ever written on deterrence and thermonuclear war. His imagination is so rooted in hard fact that he could intuit what was taking place behind closed doors. Lyman Lemnitzer, Curtis LeMay, Edwin Walker, Herman Kahn, Henry Kissinger, so many others – like Kennedy, Kubrick realized it was a cast of maniacs that kept the nuclear show going. Kubrick and co-screenwriter Terry Southern encapsulate that insanity in the characters of Ripper, Turgidson and Strangelove – an alliance of the psychotic, the narcissistic and the psychopathic, each bizarre in his own way, but all ultimately collaborating in a genocidal groupthink.
Good satire goes directly for the insoluble contradictions, and Kubrick hits so many of them – for instance:
• Only those with a superhumanly developed self-restraint and sanity could be trusted to be in control of nuclear weapons – but only a madman could create and support the logic of mutual assured destruction and its associated concepts of “overkill” and “megadeath.”
• Also: The effectiveness of nuclear deterrence depends on a hair-trigger response to attack – so a system ostensibly intended for preventing war is constantly provoking fear, creating a spiral of suspicion in which defense and aggression become indistinguishable.
• Also: To deter, the system must be rigid and flexible at the same time, robotic and humanly controllable. An engineer will tell you that any system designed around fundamentally opposed qualities is an accident waiting to happen. It is a doomsday machine, an idiot system of world-destroying power.
• Also: While the rhetoric is that of war avoidance – “Peace is our profession” – the underlying mentality is that of total victory over an evil enemy. So “accidents” are programmed in, as the pretext for a first strike with “acceptable” American losses. But the extent to which the possibility of a first strike is countenanced gives the lie to any ethical superiority over the other side. The system is morally bankrupt.
• And finally: The bomb supposedly exists to protect freedom and democracy, but at moments of crisis (which in a balance of terror means every moment), we see how the system actually functions – as the ultimate expression of elitism, accepting the very real possibility of human annihilation as the cost of dominance and control. It is the apotheosis of what C. Wright Mills, writing a bit earlier, described as “crackpot realism,” the thought process of a paranoiac. The system is politically self-deconstructing, reducing itself to rubble here before our eyes, in 90 real-time minutes.
All of these contradictions are embodied in the character of Dr. Strangelove, the crippled, fragmented machine-man who hovers like a dark angel in the corner of the War Room and our consciousness. He is the ultimate accomplishment of the film: a rich and open-ended symbol – a key to understanding both an aspect of human nature and a specific moment in time. He has become a permanent part of our culture, graphically revealing the surreal, fascistic energy that permeates the inner workings of the military-industrial complex.
In the end, Strangelove walks – he regains his potency – because this Nazi technocrat has finally become the voice of authority in the putative democracy that helped defeat his first fuhrer. He no longer needs to conceal his nature and desires. These boil down to a sadomasochistic scenario of female sexual slavery, in which the sickest members of the military-industrial patriarchy are given exclusive right to the most nubile women. It is a eugenics-inspired rape fantasy, out-Hitlering Hitler. And the gathered War Room crowd salivates over the prospect.
We realize that the narrative arc of the movie is that of coitus interruptus, which begins with Turgidson’s painfully suspended tryst with his secretary and is consummated with the final orgasm of destruction. At last, with the end of the world, the sexual suspense is broken and we can breathe; the relief is palpable. The only kind of sexual satisfaction that can exist within the mechanized and disembodied world portrayed in the film involves violence and the projection of power, which compensates for the inner emptiness and lack of feeling in a militarist wasteland.
This is the crux of Kubrick’s and Southern’s irony in Dr. Strangelove: that the higher the stakes, the greater the megatons and megadeaths wielded by these nuclear warriors, the more diminished and enfeebled and grotesque they become. A system that grants godlike powers simultaneously denies real humanity. In the end, loving the bomb means losing the soul.
Strangelove reveals the nuclear standoff as more than a political problem – it is also a symptom of self-alienation, of an imbalance between life and death, Eros and Thanatos. Underneath the antic surface – for instance, in the close-ups of General Ripper’s lined face and haunted eyes – there’s a tragic half-awareness of something terribly wrong. Something that may have to do with communists or fluoride or precious bodily fluids, or maybe something deeper that we no longer have the spiritual or emotional capability to understand or confront. The film is an attempt to regain that capability by seeing the situation as a whole, from a comically human perspective. The belly laughs that the movie elicits come from our core and bring us back into our full, social selves, away from the isolated, phobic, hyper-rationalized world of General Ripper and his compatriots.
Dr. Strangelove offers no solutions to the nuclear quandary. It just shows us where the logic of the system points, in terms of both origins and outcomes. By casting the nightmarish absurdity of the system in a comical light, he strips it of its metaphysical terror. Once we have seen Dr. Strangelove – the ghost in the war-making machine – as he is, we can begin the process of freeing ourselves from him."
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Full screen recommended.
Bomb run sequence...
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Full screen recommended.
Major Kong Rides The Bomb...
"Maddest Of All..."
"When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams - this may be madness. To seek treasure where there is only trash. Too much sanity may be madness - and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!"
- Miguel de Cervantes, "Man of La Mancha"
"Our Natural Predators"
Samson slaying the lion.
"Our Natural Predators"
by Paul Rosenberg
"Nearly every creature upon this planet has one or more natural predators: creatures that prey upon them. Humans are a striking exception; even though we’re bereft of natural weapons – claws, ripping teeth and so on – we easily protect ourselves from even large predators. There are the occasional “bear in the woods” stories, but those come when we leave our constructed environments.
The reason we’re so able to keep ourselves safe is simply that we can think. Humans have, since long before recorded history, figured out how to master wild animals. And so we have no natural predators… or at least none of the usual type.
Our Predators Are Intellectual Predators: In case anyone is pounding a desk, screaming “war,” don’t worry, I’ll get to that in a minute. Humans are not destroyed by claws and teeth, they are destroyed by ideas. In fact, they are highly vulnerable to ideas. In particular they are suckers for authority, for idols and for promises of free stuff.
We see these vulnerabilities from one end of human history to another. Here’s just a brief explanation:Authority: A large number of humans will obey a well-presented authority without critique. The doctor in a white lab coat, the politician wearing a fine suit and podium, the monarch with a crown and a retinue… people turn off their minds when confronted with them and simply comply. The fact that so many order-givers play up their authority proves the point: they wouldn’t take pains to create such images if they didn’t work.
People will also reflexively defend authority, if for no other reason than they’ve already obeyed it and they don’t want to look stupid.Idols: Humans find psychological comfort in holding to a great and powerful entity. It makes them feel safe. If you frighten people, then supply them with a powerful figure (Mussolini makes a nice example) and they’ll line right up. It’s no accident that the communists made giant images of Lenin, Stalin, Mao and the others: It works. Free stuff: From the plunder of enemies to robbing the rich to technical incarnations of the same principle, humans are easy marks for this scam. We’ve all watched it in action, and so I won’t elaborate further.
Okay, Now I’ll Do War: War begins with the people. Genghis Khan didn’t make his own arrows, after all. No warlord is solely blamable for his slaughters. Warfare rests upon the complicity of normal people. Those people must be manipulated, in one way or another, to supply the materials and bodies required for war. (Crime can be an individual venture, of course.)
No war-seller, so far as I know, has clarified this better than Nazi boss Hermann Göring. Note from this passage that he and his Nazi brethren didn’t use bullets and swords to make people service their war machine, they used ideas: "Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
And Göring was right that it’s the same in any country: Our entire species is vulnerable to this type of predation.
The Way Forward: Our first step forward, as the AA people rightly say, is to admit we have a problem. And we do have a problem. It’s fixable, but so long as we refuse to acknowledge it, it will remain.
We’ve already covered the basic vulnerabilities above, but our habit of chaining one thought to another, as if each were purely and unquestionably correct, is another major issue. Author Ben Hecht explained this very well, when he commented upon people who were, “unable to think, except in homage to other thoughts.”
Hecht was right, and stacking one concept upon another, and then on another, leads easily into gross errors, unless each of those thoughts are perfect, complete and ideally expressed… which they never are. Still, stacking thoughts up in this way (ever deviating from precision) yields the comfort and confidence – and the justification – of having thought.
The bottom line here is that our predators use words and emotions to make us do their will. They are, in illustrative terms, vampires, sucking our will from us. They convince us, through emotional pressures and devious logic – by using our vulnerabilities – that it’s right for them to collect our sacrifices, that failure to obey them will bring us shame, that comfort and safety require our immediate obedience, and that being restricted is the only way to be safe. All of that is predation.
Again, if we are to stop being abused, the first step is to realize… to accept… that we have a problem. We must recognize that we have vulnerabilities; then we must forgive ourselves for them. After that it’s straightforward and not terribly hard." For more, see "The Twilight of Authority."
John Wilder, "Choose Your Fate"
"Choose Your Fate"
by John Wilder
"I think a lot about what could be versus what is. Probably too much, sometimes. What sort of examples? Well, a piece of walnut could be turned into fine furniture that might be used for hundreds of years. Or it could be burned in a fireplace and turned into ash.
That’s what I’m talking about. Yes, both of the results are useful, but one has enduring value while the other is ephemeral. Yeah, if it’s the single piece of firewood that keeps you alive for a night, well, that’s a goal, but in all the years I spent cutting firewood, not a single stick ever lived up to that level of valor. In fact, some sticks are downright bad, when a doctor presses my tongue down with a stick, I feel depressed.
There are other things, though, since I’m done talking about my wood. There is the split between having a high IQ and the performance that comes from that. Yes, generally higher IQ is correlated strongly with having a higher wealth and income, but I’ve seen geniuses who wasted it all. Athletic ability is in there, too. How many potentially great athletes disappeared because they had the work ethic of lightning: they followed the path of least resistance?
I could go on and on with examples of this, but I’m thinking that these are enough. And, generally, it’s not firewood that I’m concerned with as much as human potential. A wasted stick of mahogany is one thing, but a wasted Isaac Newton is a tragedy. Man, after a few pints, Isaac really was a mess: Leibniz really pissed him off somehow.
The biggest part, I think, of turning human potential into achievement is something very simple: language. In one sense, I think we speak the world we live in and ourselves into existence. When I say, “I’m going to write a post today” that changes my future. There have been several times I’ve promised something like, “And I’ll have a great post on Monday” and I was very pleased with the result of what I created each time I said that.
We take, I think, potential and will it into use. There is no time, ever, that I achieved something great and that it was something that accidentally happened. Dead Roman philosopher Seneca said that luck is when preparation meets opportunity, but the preparation took place in order to prepare for the opportunity. Thomas Jefferson didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to write the Declaration of Independence. Nope. Jefferson wanted to write it. Plus, they knew if Franklin wrote it that it would have been filled with jokes that everyone would have missed until after the FedEx® horse and buggy dropped it off to the king.
I’ve noticed that when I say that I’m going to do something, that’s 90% of the way to success in whatever I had planned. Today, for instance, I wanted to write a post that didn’t focus on politics or the cares of the day since I felt I wanted a brief change before jumping back into the fray. So, with that declaration, I looked at some notes I had scribbled down, and saw that there were three that were related. And I started writing. Words, then, crystallized my vague intent into something specific.
This brings me to the final point: the difference between potential and achievement is words, but with intent. Nothing (generally) happens in my life without intent. Sure, there are accidents. Sure, there are the things that other people do that change my plans, but more often than not, the only real barrier to any achievement that is physically possible is me failing to put my goal into words and intent.
I think that intention is important. Without intention, all I see are obstacles. If my goal becomes to achieve, however, I start to try to focus in my mind ways to achieve my goal by going around, through, or even using those obstacles to my advantage.
The final point is: What is it you are here to do? Why are you here? If you’re unhappy, why aren’t you changing your circumstances? Until we draw our final breath, we have choices. Sure, I don’t have the same wide array of choices in this world that I did when I was 18, but there is still a lot of runway left for me to say those words that lock in the intent.
I’m here tonight writing because I want to be. I’m going to get up tomorrow morning because I want to. And I know I haven’t written the best essay I’m going to write, because I know that’s in front of me, not behind me. And I know that the grandest revelation isn’t behind me, it’s in my future. So, almost everyone reading this today has the option to make the work that they do with the rest of their life a pile of ashes, or a piece of furniture worth being handed down. Maybe I’ll make a recliner. That way my grandkids could say, “Me and this chair go way back.”
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Dan, I Allegedly, "It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like The 1970s"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 10/4/26
"It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like The 1970s"
"Are we reliving the 1970s? Falling wages, rising energy costs, inflation, expensive housing, higher interest rates and growing financial pressure are creating some striking parallels between the 1970s and 2026. In this video, Dan looks at what happened during the oil shocks, inflation crisis and economic turmoil of the 1970s - and compares it with what Americans are experiencing today. We also look at gold, silver, oil, gasoline prices, the economy, inflation, interest rates, mortgages, housing, employment, the stock market, tariffs, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the financial pressures hitting consumers. Does history repeat itself, or does it simply rhyme? The parallels are fascinating - and some of them are impossible to ignore."
Comments here:
"Who is Brainwashed?"
"Who is Brainwashed?"
by Todd Hayen
"Everyone, you might say. But I don’t think so. Them? Us? A little of both, I’m sure. So what’s the point? If you can determine who is brainwashed, you know who to keep your mouth shut around. Completely shut. Not only is it pointless to try to teach them anything, you put yourself in a rather bad spot if you say much of anything that contradicts their brainwashing. That doesn’t mean you have to agree with them to stay safe. You just can’t let them see that you don’t.
This is weird, I know, but trust me when I say we need to stay out of touchy conversations with brainwashed people - especially if they have any influence over you: family, close friends, bosses, employees, and the like. We have reached a point where conversations with people who already think you are a conservative, Right-thinking conspiracy theorist are not only unpleasant; they can do you irreparable harm. You may be pegged as a super-extremist, not worth giving the time of day.
I have not yet experienced physical harm from any of these types, but it is probably coming. They are so devoid of sensible thinking that you may as well be a hard-core disciple of Adolf Hitler. Once you get pegged, that’s it. And it doesn’t take much at all.
Speaking of Hitler, this situation now may very much be like it was during the Hitler regime in Nazi Germany. From the history I know, it didn’t take much for your neighbour, friend, or even loved one to call the Gestapo on you if you so much as hinted that ol’ Schicklgruber was out to lunch. Chop, chop, Nazi hater. No one had a nuanced viewpoint; it was either black or white - black was pure Nazi, white was pure Nazi-hater. No in-between. Chop, chop.
Today it is more like you are either decent, like they are, or you are a racist, a misogynist, a transphobe, a Christian Nationalist nutcase, a Trump lover, a gay-killer, on and on. Nothing in between or nuanced is recognized as “okay.” Once you are not 100% on board with them, you are dust. Worse than dust: shit.
Now, don’t I sound hateful? If someone you suspect is brainwashed in this Leftist/Liberal way, it doesn’t mean you have to cast them out, be mean to them, or stop talking to them altogether. You just can’t risk letting them pin the label on you. So, you stay clear of any conversation more meaningful than a deep discussion of the historical significance of modern-day pickleball. Or who won the latest ball game (any ball will do). Or whether someone’s recent manicure turned out to be a nice color.
There are, of course, a few things of mild importance you can risk. (Am I being mean-spirited here? Hopefully not. I don’t mean this is all these folks ever want to talk about. I am only giving you the warning signs: stay on the obvious surface topics. Those are the safe ones.)
If the conversation moves off one of these safe, banal topics, shut up immediately. Fake a coughing fit. Go to the washroom (remember, I am in Canada, “wash” room it is). Most likely they won’t care, won’t suspect anything, and may not even notice. Typically, these people are self-absorbed enough that they don’t really want to hear what you have to say anyway - even if you agree with them. They are just as pleased to listen to themselves and their fellow ideologues echoing one another. You dipping out, no matter how awkward, will save you.
But what if you blunder? God have mercy on you. The mildest form of recognition will be a pause in the conversation and a look of puzzlement: “Did I just see a ghost walk by, or did he really say what I thought he said?” Shut up immediately if you see this. They may decide it was a ghost after all, and go on with their conversation. If they catch you, though - if you reveal even an ambiguity in your stance on some subject - you are done.
You may not suffer the entire assault at that sitting (it depends on the size of the foot you stuck in your mouth), but you have points against you. Surely the person you shocked will go home and ask their partner, “Did you hear what (insert your name here) said tonight? What do you think that means?”
I once stupidly said, in mixed sheep/shrew-ish company (this was early on, when I still thought most people had their wits intact), “I can see the abortion issue from both sides. If someone believes a two-day-old fetus is a human being, I can see them feeling women’s rights don’t give them the right to murder a human being. But I can also see that if someone does not believe a fetus is a human being, then women have bodily autonomy.”
Can you say “stupid”? Wow. I was lucky I made it home alive. Everyone in the room pegged me, even the shrew-ish folks - probably more because I had just proved I was an idiot. You can’t be ambiguous. You certainly can’t say, “I can see this from both sides.” You have to be all in. Totally toeing the company line. That is all that is acceptable.
So what if you do get pegged? That depends on how egregious the slip was, and how thoroughly they are washed. You can usually tell when it was a bad hit. The offended party will shun you. Remember: you are now worse than shit to them. I mean really bad.
If your sheep-spouse was in the room for the falling-out, they may divorce you. At the very least they may leave you, or threaten to. There will be zero understanding. Do not try to fight it with “Can’t I have beliefs you don’t have? Can’t I have a differing opinion?” Forget it, chump. You are dust.
They experience this as a value dump. You have become worse than Satan. You cannot be redeemed for believing anything that fails to match their ideology. And as I have said a dozen times here, this is not a “sort of different” opinion. If you are not 100% in agreement, you are dust. Not 99%. Not 98%. Certainly not 50%. And if you disagree completely - run. You may literally be in a life-threatening situation. Who is brainwashed? The ones who cannot grant you a single inch. That’s how you know. Keep your mouth shut."
"McDonald's Just Turned Its Menu Into Ads - And You'll Pay For It"
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 10/4/26
"McDonald's Just Turned Its Menu Into Ads -
And You'll Pay For It"
"McDonald's is using AI to price your Big Mac based on what you'll pay - and it's going to cost you more. In Fresno, California, the same Big Mac costs $5.69 at one 64 mcdonalds and $6.89 just 2 miles away. Reuters reports McDonald's is pushing AI tools that suggest prices based on customers' willingness to pay. I break down what that means for fast food prices, food inflation, and your wallet. Plus: McDonald's just announced the McDonald's Media Network at its September 23rd investor day - ads on drive-thru menu boards, restaurant screens, and the app. You'll soon see Nike, weight-loss, and insurance ads where your menu used to be. And McDonald's is testing hand-breaded chicken strips at 200 locations to take on Chick-fil-A and Raising Cane's, while quietly shrinking items like chicken nuggets - classic shrinkflation while cost of living keeps rising. What are you seeing at your McDonald's? Higher prices, smaller portions, new ads? Let me know in the comments below."
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Adventures With Danno, "Rising Costs Everywhere, Tough Times Ahead"
Adventures With Danno, 10/4/26
"Rising Costs Everywhere, Tough Times Ahead"
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Saturday, October 3, 2026
"US on High Alert: Russia, China & Iran Turn Against America"
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 10/3/26
"US on High Alert:
Russia, China & Iran Turn Against America"
"Threats against the United States are surging - FBI and Homeland Security warn Americans to stay on high lert as Russia, China, and Iran all turn up pressure at once. President Trump says the US will not back down and will not pull out of Iran after billions spent and lives lost. At the same time, Vladimir Putin warns Russia will use ALL weapons in its arsenal, including nuclear options, to defend its territory - with NATO tensions exploding over Kaliningrad and the Baltic Sea. In this update we break down what it means for you: Iran's nuclear ambitions, Russia nuclear threats, Iraq sounding the alarm on ISIS fighters spilling over from Syria just 1 day after US troops ended the counter-ISIS mission, G7 diesel reserves getting released as wars squeeze fuel, and Taiwan receiving long-delayed US F-16Vs as China fumes."
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"You Only Need These 15 Canned Foods to Survive Hard Times!"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 10/3/26
"You Only Need These 15 Canned
Foods to Survive Hard Times!"
"Prices keep climbing, paychecks don't, and one bad storm is all it takes to empty every grocery shelf in town. When the power goes out, the delivery trucks stop, the warehouses go dark, and the store you count on can stay empty for days. The only food that matters then is the food already in your kitchen. This video counts down 15 cheap canned foods to buy while you still can - from canned coconut milk and pumpkin to Vienna sausages, corned beef, chili with beans, light tuna and canned salmon with the bones. Most people never think about it until it's too late. They stock the wrong cans, trust a rinse to fix the salt, store low-acid cans above 85 degrees, and open a bulging or seam-dented can when there's nothing else left. Hard times don't send a warning. The people who get through them are the ones who filled the shelf before everyone else ran to the store."
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"A Look to the Heavens"
"Light-years across, this suggestive shape known as the Seahorse Nebula appears in silhouette against a rich, luminous background of stars. Seen toward the royal northern constellation of Cepheus, the dusty, obscuring clouds are part of a Milky Way molecular cloud some 1,200 light-years distant.
Click image for larger size.
It is also listed as Barnard 150 (B150), one of 182 dark markings of the sky cataloged in the early 20th century by astronomer E. E. Barnard. Packs of low mass stars are forming within, but their collapsing cores are only visible at long infrared wavelengths. Still, the colorful stars of Cepheus add to this pretty, galactic skyscape."
"The Earth"
"The Earth"
by Sheila Black
"What can I tell her over breakfast when she says
her son suffers from madness, and because there
is no mental health, he has ended up in jail,
and she is relieved, because at least he might
be safe there or he might get to see the doctor.
We are eating egg-white omelets; we are counting
carbs. We are buttoning ourselves in our clean dresses
and high-heeled shoes in order to bring home the bacon,
doing what we need to do and “It is what it is.”
Her granddaughter and daughter are living with her
in the one bedroom. Nights, the daughter lounges by
the pool, looking at her phone, while she teaches the child
to plant seeds in a flower bed she feels bad she does not own.
She tells she cried in the car coming here; she did not know
me then. She thought we would be talking to each other
the whole time about what we are selling, what
the other might buy, but somehow we left that behind
over the toast with the tiny pots of strawberry jam.
Who can explain all this luxury, all this despair?
Or how we all hold our secret shames so close
and gloss our lips with “Cinnamon Fire” as if that were
some legitimate form of protection. Cinnamon Fire!
She just turned fifty. I tell her wait ten years - you
won’t know more, but you will get closer to forgiving,
because it is all happening on a wheel that spin
so fast. Why not stop to look at the pink flowers
you’ve planted with your granddaughter? Why not feel
your bare toes in the good wet earth? We play with the crusts
on our plates. The waitress takes the coffee away. We
are strangers again, each carrying our lonely fear
our children won’t find their way, wishing for them
some inner logic - sacred trust of earth and self, that exists
for each of us so far within, so far under the skin, we
can’t even begin to say what it is made of; it merely is,
poised between love and grief: the blue space we call wonder,
which is merely the dew on the grass, the shadow the sun
makes as it rolls over the vast skin of the Earth."
Crystal Heaven, "Lost Pearl Kingdom"
Full screen recommended.
Crystal Heaven, "Lost Pearl Kingdom"
"Step beyond the crystal waters and discover a lost kingdom hidden within a breathtaking fantasy world. Journey through magnificent pearl palaces, enchanted islands, crystal rivers, magical waterfalls, glowing gardens, ancient forests, and peaceful lotus lakes. Every scene reveals a new corner of this dreamlike kingdom, filled with shimmering waters, mystical crystals, beautiful flowers, golden architecture, and peaceful natural landscapes. Let the gentle flow of the water, magical scenery, and soothing fantasy ambient music with sweet acoustic guitar, soft piano, delicate harp, and distant heavenly humming carry you into a world far beyond reality. This relaxing fantasy journey is perfect for: relaxation & stress relief, sleep & peaceful nights, studying & reading, meditation & mindfulness, Dreaming & imagination, Creative inspiration, exploring magical fantasy worlds. Put on your headphones, relax, and let yourself wander through the Lost Pearl Kingdom. Perhaps somewhere beyond the crystal sea, there is still a hidden palace waiting to be discovered..."
Native American Elder, "How to Walk Away From Everything That Stole Your Peace"
Full screen recommended.
Native American Elder,
"How to Walk Away From
Everything That Stole Your Peace"
"Gravel Roads and Fading Prayers"
Full screen recommended.
"Gravel Roads and Fading Prayers"
"Welcome to The Delta Old Lantern - a home for deep Delta Blues, Southern Gothic storytelling, old soul music, and timeless blues wisdom. Here you’ll find dark Delta Blues inspired by dusty backroads, front porch memories, aging souls, quiet struggles, and the changing world around us. Every song carries the spirit of old acoustic blues, slide guitar echoes, worn-out roads, and stories carved by time. The Delta Old Lantern creates atmospheric blues music for listeners who appreciate raw emotion, old-world storytelling, lonely highways, weathered hearts, and the beauty found in growing older. These songs are inspired by the spirit of classic Delta Blues legends while bringing a modern cinematic sound for today’s listeners."
The Poet: Maya Angelou, "A Brave And Startling Truth"
"A Brave And Startling Truth"
by Maya Angelou
"We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space,
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns,
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth.
And when we come to it,
To the day of peacemaking,
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms.
When we come to it,
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate,
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean.
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass,
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil.
When the rapacious storming of the churches,
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased.
When the pennants are waving gaily,
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze.
When we come to it,
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders,
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce.
When land mines of death have been removed,
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace.
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh,
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse.
When we come to it,
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory,
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets.
Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun.
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world.
When we come to it,
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe,
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace.
We, this people on this mote of matter,
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence,
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor,
And the body is quieted into awe.
We, this people, on this small and drifting planet,
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living.
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow,
And the proud back is glad to bend.
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines.
When we come to it,
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body,
Created on this earth, of this earth,
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety,
Without crippling fear.
When we come to it,
We must confess that we are the possible,
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world.
That is when, and only when,
We come to it."
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