"A Look to the Heavens"

 "The most distant object easily visible to the eye is M31, the great Andromeda Galaxy some two and a half million light-years away. But without a telescope, even this immense spiral galaxy - spanning over 200,000 light years - appears as a faint, nebulous cloud in the constellation Andromeda. In contrast, details of a bright yellow nucleus and dark winding dust lanes, are revealed in this digital telescopic image. 

Narrow band image data recording emission from hydrogen atoms, shows off the reddish star-forming regions dotting gorgeous blue spiral arms and young star clusters. While even casual skygazers are now inspired by the knowledge that there are many distant galaxies like M31, astronomers seriously debated this fundamental concept in the 20th century. Were these "spiral nebulae" simply outlying components of our own Milky Way Galaxy or were they instead "island universes" - distant systems of stars comparable to the Milky Way itself? This question was central to the famous Shapley-Curtis debate of 1920, which was later resolved by observations of M31 in favor of Andromeda, island universe.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100109.html

Chet Raymo, “Try To Remember…”

“Try To Remember…”

by Chet Raymo

“In a sleepless hour of the night, I was trying to remember the last name of a person I have known well for more than forty years. When my spouse stirred in her sleep, I asked her. She couldn't remember either. One again I started mentally through the alphabet. "I think it starts with B," I said. Ten minutes later she rolled over and said, "The next letter is R." Bingo! The name popped into my head. Or I should say, "popped out of my head." Because it was in there somewhere, recorded in a tangle of neurons as materially as if it were written on a piece of paper.

There was a time, back when I was a young man, when some scientists thought memory might be molecular - stored as proteins or RNA molecules that have somehow been modified by experience. The molecule theory of memory rested on experiments with worms (I remember the cover illustration on Scientific American). The worms were taught to navigate a simple maze. Then they were ground up and fed to untrained worms, which seemed to navigate the maze without training. Only molecules, it was thought, could have survived the transfer. Those experiments have been discredited. Scientists now overwhelmingly believe that memories are stored as webs of connections between spider-shaped brain cells called neurons. Each neuron is connected through electrochemical connections to thousands of others. According to the current view, experience fine-tunes the connections, strengthening some, weakening others, creating a different "trace" of interconnected cells for each memory.

But truth be told, memory is still deeply mysterious. How exactly are a lifetime of memories stored and retrieved at will? We know how it works for computers, but how for the human brain? What is self-consciousness? What are dreams? This is the primary scientific agenda for the 21st century. In the middle of the night I go fishing, in that sea of potentiated synapses that are the human soul, for a name that becomes ever more difficult to extract as I get older. I troll the alphabet: A, B, C, D… The name is in there, along with a face and more that forty years of interactions. The Nobel Prizes are waiting.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

•

Graphic: Salvador Dali, "The Persistence of Memory"

"Only Barbarians..."

“Only barbarians are not curious about where they come from, 

how they came to be where they are, where they appear to be going, 

whether they wish to go there, and if so, why, and if not, why not.”

- Isaiah Berlin

"When the Sky Is No More Than Remembered Light: Mark Strand Reads His Poignant Poem 'The End'”

"When the Sky Is No More Than Remembered Light: 

Mark Strand Reads His Poignant Poem 'The End'”

“Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing, 

when the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.”

- by Maria Popova

“It’s such a lucky accident, having been born, that we’re almost obliged to pay attention,” the Pulitzer-winning poet Mark Strand (April 11, 1934–November 29, 2014) observed in contemplating the artist’s task to bear witness to the universe. And yet this universe in which we live is predicated on impermanence, and the lucky accident of our existence is crowned with the certitude of its end from the start. Why, then, are we always so shocked by the finitude of all we hold dear and, above all, by our own mortality? Few are those who can say with sincerity, like Rilke did an exquisite 1923 letter, that “death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love.” Instead, we spend our lives shuddering at any reminder of our inevitable end, unsalved by the miracle of having lived at all.

Montaigne articulated the central paradox of being perfectly in 16th-century meditation on death and the art of living: “To lament that we shall not be alive a hundred years hence, is the same folly as to be sorry we were not alive a hundred years ago.” Still, lament we do, and some of our greatest art gives voice to that lamentation.

That paradox is what Strand explores with transcendent courage and curiosity in his poem “The End,” found in his "Collected Poems" (public library) - the trove of truth and beauty that gave us Strand’s love letter to dreams.

In this hauntingly beautiful recording, courtesy of The New York Public Library, an aged Strand reads his poignant poem shortly before he repaid his own debt to mortality:

"The End"

by Mark Strand

"Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,

Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like

When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,

Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back.

When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,

When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down

No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead.

When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky

Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus

And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight,

Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing

When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end."

Complement with the lyrical "Duck, Death and the Tulip", Marcus Aurelius on mortality and the key to living fully, and the great Zen master Seung Sahn Soen-sa’s explanation of death and the life-force to a child, then revisit Strand’s celebration of clouds and everything they mean."

- https://www.brainpickings.org/

"The Worst Thing..."

 

"Not Sorry..."

"Who is more responsible than a gull who finds and follows meaning, a higher purpose for life? For a thousand years we have scrabbled after fish heads, but now we have a reason to live - to learn, to discover, to be free! How much more there is now to living! Instead of our drab slogging forth and back to the fishing boats, there’s reason to life! We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can be free! We can learn to fly!"

"What he had once hoped for the Flock, he now gained for himself alone;

he learned to fly, and was not sorry for the price that he had paid...”

- Richard Bach, 

“Jonathan Livingston Seagull”

The Daily "Near You?"

Walnut Creek, California, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Strange 'Coincidences' That Should Deeply Bother Everyone Trying To Put The Puzzle Pieces Together"

"Strange 'Coincidences' That Should Deeply Bother

 Everyone Trying To Put The Puzzle Pieces Together"

by Michael Snyder 

"Whether you are a Republican, a Democrat or someone that doesn’t identify with either major party, you should care deeply about the integrity of our elections. Because if we don’t have elections that are free and fair, our system of government simply will not work. If we come out of the 2020 elections with about half the country believing that the race for president was rigged, that is a major problem. Once faith in our elections is gone, it will be nearly impossible to restore, and that is why it is absolutely imperative that we try to figure out how this election went so haywire.

In recent days, I have seen so many people point out some of the numbers from the election that should be deeply bothering all of us. In this article, I am going to try to summarize some of the most important points.

In 2012, Barack Obama cruised to re-election even though he received 3.5 million less votes than he got in 2008.

In 2020, President Trump was supposedly soundly defeated even though he received 11 million more votes than he did in 2016.

They are telling us that Trump was defeated because of a historic turnout by Biden voters. But the number of counties that Biden actually won was a record low for a “winning candidate” by a very wide margin. It is being reported that Trump won 83 percent of all U.S. counties, and Biden only won 17 percent: We are told that Biden won more votes nationally than any presidential candidate in history. But he won a record low of 17 percent of counties; he only won 524 counties, as opposed to the 873 counties Obama won in 2008. Yet, Biden somehow outdid Obama in total votes.

How in the world can you win the presidency by losing more than 80 percent of the counties in the entire country? Yes, I understand that the major population centers are where the votes are. But when Obama won his two elections, at least he was victorious in more than 20 percent of all U.S. counties both times: "Former President Obama ushered in the previous low in 2012, winning re-election with just 689 counties, or 22 percent – breaking his own record set in 2008, where he won with 875 counties, or 28 percent.

Biden underperformed Obama almost everywhere except in the urban population centers that were absolutely critical to Biden’s victory. In those urban population centers, Biden supposedly piled up obscene vote totals that are very difficult to believe.

And it just so happens that those heavily blue urban population centers all seemed to stop counting votes at about the same time on the night of the election. All of a sudden, voting came to a standstill in Milwaukee, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Atlanta. As many have pointed out, if you stop and wait to see how all of the other areas of your state have voted, you can figure out exactly how many votes you need to put your candidate over the top.

When counting finally resumed, there were four massive vote dumps in the middle of the night which proved decisive in some of the most critical swing states:

1. An update in Michigan listed as of 6:31AM Eastern Time on November 4th, 2020, which shows 141,258 votes for Joe Biden and 5,968 votes for Donald Trump

2. An update in Wisconsin listed as 3:42AM Central Time on November 4th, 2020, which shows 143,379 votes for Joe Biden and 25,163 votes for Donald Trump

3. A vote update in Georgia listed at 1:34AM Eastern Time on November 4th, 2020, which shows 136,155 votes for Joe Biden and 29,115 votes for Donald Trump

4. An update in Michigan listed as of 3:50 AM Eastern Time on November 4th, 2020, which shows 54,497 votes for Joe Biden and 4,718 votes for Donald Trump

In the end, Biden won Wisconsin by less than one percent, he won Pennsylvania by just over one percent, he won Georgia by less than one percent and he won Arizona by less than one percent. If you reverse the results in those four states, President Trump would be the winner of the race.

The voting behavior in the key midwestern states was particularly suspicious. The following comes from Patrick Basham: "Midwestern states Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin always swing in the same direction as Ohio and Iowa, their regional peers. Ohio likewise swings with Florida. Current tallies show that, outside of a few cities, the Rust Belt swung in Trump’s direction. Yet, Biden leads in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin because of an apparent avalanche of black votes in Detroit, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee. Biden’s ‘winning’ margin was derived almost entirely from such voters in these cities, as coincidentally his black vote spiked only in exactly the locations necessary to secure victory. He did not receive comparable levels of support among comparable demographic groups in comparable states, which is highly unusual for the presidential victor."

There are countless people that have been looking into how vote totals in the most critical swing states may have been manipulated, but the big tech companies have been doing their best to keep such information from spreading widely.

In fact, it is being reported that Facebook applied an “emergency change” to its news feed algorithm right after the election: "In the aftermath of the contentious presidential election, Facebook reportedly made an “emergency change” to its algorithm, which resulted in the suppression of content from “hyperpartisan” outlets. Employees at Facebook are now asking if the “nicer news feed” can stay in place long term, according to a Tuesday report from The New York Times." This “nicer news feed” greatly favors mainstream news outlets such as CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times.

The big tech companies are absolutely determined to shape how we think, and the power that they now possess is colossal. They will determine what “truth” is allowed to be told in the years ahead, and they will continue to push our culture down a dystopian path that only leads to complete oblivion.

This election was a major turning point, and those that directed events behind the scenes are on the verge of totally getting away with it. But this isn’t just a loss for the Republican Party. This is a loss for all Americans, because our entire system of government is crumbling right in front of our eyes."

- http://themostimportantnews.com/

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

"LA County Supervisor Eats At Restaurant Hours After Voting To Ban Outdoor Dining"

"LA County Supervisor Eats At Restaurant 

Hours After Voting To Ban Outdoor Dining"

by Andrea Widburg 

"In the early days of television, Sheila Kuehl had a role in a now forgotten show, "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis", which ended in 1963. She then became a leftist, a lawyer, and a politician. Despite the long interval between her Hollywood years and today, Kuehl still clings to that lampooned Hollywood notion about stars versus "the little people." How else can one explain that, after railing against restaurants and voting to shut them down, Kuehl promptly went to a nice restaurant for dinner?

During the lockdown, politicians continued to draw their taxpayer-funded paychecks and telecommute from the comfort of their homes. Meanwhile, they targeted small businesses that depend on dealings with the public. More than any other business, restaurants were in Democrat politicians' crosshairs.

As of mid-September, more than 100,000 restaurants had closed across America. In the two months since then, it's certain that several thousand more have closed. The San Francisco Chronicle, for example, runs a regular column identifying restaurants that are gone.

Every closed restaurant represents several people's lives going down the drain. The owner who sank all of his money in the restaurant, the employees who worked there, the suppliers who were dependent on its custom, and the surrounding stores who counted on the foot traffic it brought — all of it's gone. And I might add, there's no reason to believe that these horrific losses made a damned bit of difference to the course of a virus that is relentlessly working its way through the population.

While the people have suffered, the politicians imposing this suffering, like European royalty of old, have flaunted their special status.

Denver's mayor, Michael Hancock, flew to his family within 30 minutes of telling Denver citizens to stay home for Thanksgiving.

Andrew Cuomo, having reinstated the lockdown across New York, boasted about his family coming home for Thanksgiving.

Illinois's Governor J.B. Pritzker, another Democrat millionaire, was happy to see his family travel during the height of the spring lockdown.

Pennsylvania's health secretary, "Rachel" Levine, who leftists pretend is not a mentally ill man telling people he's a woman, forced sick people into nursing homes in May, even as he secretly removed his own mother. Levine, incidentally, is being floated as a possible surgeon general. That's just what America needs: a hypocritical, self-entitled, mentally ill surgeon general.

And in California, Governor Gavin Newsom started by making headlines for imposing ridiculously stringent lockdown rules on people's Thanksgiving celebrations, including requiring outdoor dining only, suggesting masks throughout the meal, giving people limited permission to use the bathroom, and cracking down on singing.

Then, just before Thanksgiving, photos emerged of Newsom and his wife having an indoor dinner with a large crowd of lobbyists at the über-expensive French Laundry in Napa Valley. None of the guests was masked. Afterward, Newsom gave a fake apology because Democrats are so certain that they've achieved perpetual power that they don't even bother anymore to go through the motions of political humility.

The latest politician who can't be bothered with the rules she imposes on little people is former Hollywood actress Sheila Kuehl: the Los Angeles County Supervisor, a Democrat, ate outdoors at Il Forno Trattoria in Santa Monica, just hours after casting the deciding vote to ban all outdoor dining in the county last week.

"You can watch my 7pm live report on this in the link above. Tonight at 10pm I'll have a full story about this, including reaction from local restaurant owners, and fellow L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn, who did not support the decision to ban outdoor dining." @FOXLA

- Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) December 1, 2020

Kuehl said during a recent Board of Supervisors meeting that outdoor dining is “a most dangerous situation,” saying she felt there was a risk of transmission of the virus from unmasked customers to their masked waiters and waitresses. “This is a serious health emergency and we must take it seriously,” Kuehl said. “The servers are not protected from us, and they’re not protected from their other tables that they’re serving at that particular time, plus all the hours in which they’re working.”

According to Kuehl, she ate there one last time before she destroyed it. Okay, I made up the part about destroying it, but her spokesperson said the meal was a fond farewell. “She did dine al fresco at Il Forno on the very last day it was permissible,” a spokesperson for Kuehl told Fox 11 after the broadcaster received tips about what happened. “She loves Il Forno, has been saddened to see it, like so many restaurants, suffer from a decline in revenue. She ate there, taking appropriate precautions, and sadly will not dine there again until our Public Health Orders permit.” But what about Kuehl's claim that such dining was "a most dangerous situation"? Apparently, it's dangerous only for the little people.

These people are disgusting. I used to think voters were fools who kept voting them in. I now suspect that voters were naïve and credulous for believing that elections are fair. In California, at least, a lot of people probably got into office "the Dominion way." We need to clean up elections and throw these people to the curb."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

○

Related:

DEC 1, 2020 12:10 PM: "New Lockdowns And More Rigidity Are Disastrous For US Jobs"

"China: A Cold Shower"

"China: A Cold Shower"

by Fred Reed

"In a sort of distributed Ouija board enterprise, intellectuals these days predict the likely evolution of relations between China and America. These authorities do not wallow in consistency. China will take over the world. Alternatively, China will collapse because of a surfeit of men, because the different linguistic regions will become independent, because their debt bubble will explode, because the Chinese can’t “innovate,” and because the population is aging and there won’t be enough workers. And of course, the American military will remain regnant over the planet and nearby galactic space. The US will always stay ahead. Or it won’t. This seems to cover the basses.

Well, maybe. But if you watch what the Chinese are actually doing, you may get the impression that China is largely ignoring the American military and letting the US spend itself to death while Beijing focuses on commerce, business, R-and-D, commerce, the economy, education, technology, and more commerce. You might additionally get the idea that China is a confident, well-governed, energetic people on a roll and doing quite well in the inventive department. The snippets below may support this impression of technical and economic vitality."

A "must read", please view this excellent, complete article here:

- https://www.unz.com/freed/china-a-cold-shower/

"How It Really Is"

 

"2021 is Already Optimized for Failure"

Flown like this the flag means "in dire distress".

"2021 is Already Optimized for Failure"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"I often discuss optimization here because it offers an insightful window into how systems become fragile and break down. When we optimize something, we're aiming to get the most bang for our buck: maximize our efficiency, profit, productivity, etc., while minimizing our costs.

To maximize our goal, whatever it is - profits, power, whatever - we strip away redundancy and buffers because these add costs and don't boost our desired output. They create resilience, i.e. the ability to survive disruptions, but the logic of optimization is relentless: get rid of all extraneous costs, because resilience doesn't boost the bottom line. This trade-off--trading resilience for optimization - looks brilliant when everything goes according to plan. But when events veer outside the narrow parameters of the optimized system, the system breaks down: supply chains break, safety procedures fail, and so on.

Even more consequentially, optimization strips away anti-fragility, Nassim Taleb's term for the ability to not just survive disruptions but emerge stronger and more adaptable. What happens when inflexible, sclerotic systems optimized to benefit self-serving insiders encounter chaotic turbulence or conditions outside the expected parameters? They collapse because the system is optimized for failure. Put another way: when a system is optimized to benefit insiders at the expense of resilience and anti-fragility, it is effectively optimized to fail because life is not programmable to a steady-state, predictable stability.

2021 is already optimized for failure in key ways:

1. The mRNA vaccines have not been properly tested to answer essential questions such as: can a vaccinated individual retain enough of the virus to infect an unvaccinated individual? As I explained before, the only way to really test a viral vaccine is to put the vaccinated volunteers in a controlled setting saturated with the virus for many hours. If none of the volunteers have any virus in their post-exposure serological tests, then the vaccine works. If the volunteers still have the virus but didn't become severely ill, this doesn't mean they can't infect others.

One of the problems is the goal of the Covid vaccine trials wasn't to determine if the virus was eliminated by the volunteers' immune system; the goal of the trials was to determine whether the vaccinated individuals became severely ill with Covid or not - with "severely ill" being conveniently left undefined. Individuals who'd already had Covid and who took the vaccine were not tested separately for safety and after-effects, so this remains an unknown.

The unanswered questions about the vaccines' real-world results will be answered in due time, but not in the lab; they'll be answered in a public-health "experiment" without precedent. If you wanted to design a testing process that was optimized for failure, you'd end up with this haphazard, hurried process careening toward approval. The trials and testing of the Covid vaccines are not equivalent to those applied to previous generations of vaccines.

The bigger the claims and the harder the sell, the greater the number of red flags raised. If a product works as wonderfully as advertised, it will sell itself. If "consumers" have to be coerced into buying the product, that speaks volumes - whether we're free to discuss it or not.

2. The fiscal-monetary "solution" being readied for 2021 - print/borrow as many trillions as needed to prop up zombie corporations and obsolete institutions - is optimized for failure. The unstated goal here is to save everything that's been rigged to benefit self-serving insiders and never mind the consequences: we've "proven" we can print infinite trillions with no ill effects.

This appears to be true until diminishing returns hit the wall and linear dynamics suddenly spin into non-linear semi-chaos. At that point, all the levers that we reckoned were god-like in their stability and power - the Treasury selling bonds which the Federal Reserve then buys, and all the other financial tricks and manipulations - no longer work as expected.

3. The sacrosanct "solutions" that we worship as secular gods - central bank-dominated "markets" and the machinery of politics - are both optimized for failure. The "market" and politics have both incentivized extremes of indebtedness, leverage, corruption, fraud and waste, all under the happy belief that the banquet of consequences will never be served. Alas, the tables are groaning with consequences that have been piling up for 12 long years of excess speculation, manipulation and happy-talk PR.

The policies of the past 20 years boil down to this: if we keep blowing ever-larger private-sector asset bubbles, rewarding the few who own most of these assets, this "wealth" will magically restore our economic health. This is of course completely delusional: by concentrating wealth in the hands of the few, the policies have also concentrated political power in these same hands.

Ours is a system perfected for extremes of inequality and corruption. If you set out to design a social-political-economic system that was supremely optimized for failure, you'd end up with America's status quo. Today's financiers are like French nobles being led off in chains discussing their next glorious party, oblivious to the end-game just ahead. The political class are like the elites haggling over games in Rome's Forum in 475 AD, months before what was left of the empire collapsed in a heap.

4. America's social cohesion has been lost, leaving only empty platitudes, suppression and coercion. "We're all in this together" shouts the captain of the galley as those chained to the oars are flogged to keep a thoroughly corrupt and illusory "growth" alive. With civic virtue lost to the moral corruption of maximizing private gain by any means available, the foundations of society have crumbled, as I explained in "Moral Decay Leads to Collapse."

One sure way to identify a system optimized for failure is if all the insiders are absolutely confident the system is optimized for my success regardless of how many policies serve the infinite greed of insiders and how many red warning flags are ignored."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/

○

"In dire distress"... Folks, to use the slang, "You ain't seen nuthin' yet."

We will...

"There Is Always The Hope..."

“What happens to people living in a society where everyone in power is lying, stealing, cheating and killing, and in our hearts we all know this, but the consequences of facing all these lies are so monstrous, we keep on hoping that maybe the corporate government administration and media are on the level with us this time. Americans remind me of survivors of domestic abuse. This is always the hope that this is the very, very, very last time one’s ribs get re-broken again.”

- Inga Muscio

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 12/1/20"

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 12/1/20"

○

by David Leonhardt

• Moderna says its coronavirus vaccine is more than 94 percent effective, and the company has asked the F.D.A. to authorize it. If all goes smoothly, the drug could begin reaching Americans by Dec. 21.

• “The long darkness before dawn”: Donald McNeil, a Times reporter who covers infectious diseases, examines the grim months ahead, when virus deaths will almost certainly surge before vaccines are widely available.

• After weeks of lockdown, new cases in England have fallen by 33 percent. The policy is set to end tomorrow, though some regions will keep tight restrictions.

• Dr. Scott Atlas, a White House coronavirus adviser who espoused disputed theories, resigned. His term was about to expire this week.

• “Teachers are not OK right now,” one educator told The Times. The whiplash of closings and reopenings and the stresses of remote learning have driven many in the profession to exhaustion.

Dec. 1, 2020 12:03 AM ET: 

 Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak 

The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 63,269,300 

people, according to official counts, including 13,615,100 Americans.

At least 1,467,500 have died.

  Dec. 1, 2020 12:03 AM ET: 

Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count

- www.nytimes.com

○

Related:

"Front Line at a Nursing Home – An In Person Report" 

○

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

○

Updated 12/1/20, 5:26 AM ET

Click image for larger size.

- https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

"Market Fantasy Updates 12/1/20"

"Market Fantasy Updates 12/1/20"

Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...

Only the consequences are real - to you!

○

"The more I see of the monied classes, 

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

○

- https://money.cnn.com/data/fear-and-greed/

○

Gregory Mannarino, AM 12/1/20:

"Important Updates:

Stocks, Gold, Silver, Bitcoin, Crude, Dollar, Debt"

 - https://traderschoice.net/

○

Updated live.

- https://www.marketwatch.com/tools/marketsummary

○

- https://markets.businessinsider.com/

○

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

○

Daily Update (Nov. 30th to Dec 1st)

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

○

Insanity... 

○

And now... The End Game...

Musical Interlude: Gnomusy, "Footprints on the Sea"

Gnomusy, "Footprints on the Sea"

Free Download: Viktor Frankl, "Man's Search for Meaning"

"Man's Search for Meaning"

by Viktor Frankl

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”

"Some details of a particular man's inner greatness may have come to one's mind, like the story of a young woman whose death I witnessed in a concentration camp. It is a simple story. There is little to tell and it may sound as if I had invented it; but to me it seems like a poem.

This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. 'I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard,' she told me. 'In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously.' Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, 'This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness.' Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. 'I often talk to this tree,' she said to me. I was startled and didn't quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. 'Yes.' What did it say to her? She answered, 'It said to me, "I am here - I am here - I am life, eternal life."

Freely download "Man's Search for Meaning", by Viktor Frankl, here:

- https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/

"There Are Times..."

"There are times the lies get to me, times I weary of battering myself against the obstacles of denial, hatred, fear-induced stupidity, and greed, times I want to curl up and fall into the problem, let it sweep me away as it so obviously sweeps away so many others. I remember a spring day a few years ago, a spring day much like this one, only a little more sun, and warmer. I sat on this same couch and looked out this same window at the same ponderosa pine.

I was frightened, and lonely. Frightened of a future that looks dark, and darker with each passing species, and lonely because for every person actively trying to shut down the timber industry, stop abuse, or otherwise bring about a sustainable and sane way of living, there are thousands who are helping along this not-so-slow train to oblivion. I began to cry.

The tears stopped soon enough. I realized we are not so outnumbered. We are not outnumbered at all. I looked closely, and saw one blade of wild grass, and another. I saw the sun reflecting bright off the needles of pine trees, and I heard the hum of flies. I saw ants walking single file through the dust, and a spider crawling toward the corner of the ceiling. I knew in that moment, as I've known ever since, that it is no longer possible to be lonely, that every creature on earth is pulling in the direction of life- every grasshopper, every struggling salmon, every unhatched chick, every cell of every blue whale - and it is only our own fear that sets us apart. All humans, too, are struggling to be sane, struggling to live in harmony with our surroundings, but it's really hard to let go. And so we lie, destroy, rape, murder, experiment, and extirpate, all to control this wildly uncontrollable symphony, and failing that, to destroy it."

- Derrick Jensen, 

"A Language Older Than Words"

Graham Nash and David Crosby, “Wind On The Water”

"As I rocked in the moonlight,

And reefed the sail.

It'll happen to you

Also without fail,

If it happens to me.

Sang the world's last whale."

- Pete Seeger

“Wind On The Water”

by Graham Nash and David Crosby

"Over the years you have been hunted
by the men who threw harpoons,
And in the long run he will kill you
just to feed the pets we raise,
put the flowers in your vase,
and make the lipstick for your face.
Over the years you swam the ocean
Following feelings of your own,
Now you are washed up on the shoreline,
I can see your body lie,
It's a shame you have to die
to put the shadow on our eye.
Maybe we'll go,
Maybe we'll disappear,
It's not that we don't know,
It's just that we don't want to care.
Under the bridges,
Over the foam,
Wind on the water
Carry me home."

○

"Requiem"

 

“The crucified planet Earth,

should it find a voice and a sense of irony,

might now well say of our abuse of it,

"Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do."

The irony would be that we know what we are doing.

When the last living thing has died on account of us,

how poetical it would be if Earth could say,

in a voice floating up perhaps

from the floor of the Grand Canyon,

"It is done. People did not like it here.”

- Kurt Vonnegut

"Winding Up Americans"

"Winding Up Americans"

by Jeff Thomas

"For the last four years, Americans have become increasingly polarized – divided between Democrat crusaders who are determined to save America from becoming a racist, sexist Nazi dictatorship under Donald Trump, versus Republican crusaders who are determined to save America from becoming a liberal Marxist state under a Democratic reign.

This fervor has become so extreme that families can no longer meet for the holidays without a conversational blow-up. No longer are people "entitled to their opinions." This has become a crusade between Good and Evil. ("I’m good. You’re evil.") The absurd nature of this dichotomy has reached the point that even Dr. Phil is increasing his viewership by featuring disputes between siblings who are on opposite sides of the political divide and are no longer speaking to each other.

At this point, all that remains to be done by the networks would be to air a Red versus Blue television game show in which contestants compete with their own family members to "Win the White House."

Until November, the great majority of Americans appear to have been hoping that the November election would end this strife one way or the other. My take on this has been that the opposite would happen after 3rd November. The fireworks would increase exponentially after the election. The election would be hotly contested by whomever was the apparent loser.

This should easily have been foreseen, as the media on the right have insisted for months that the Democrat encouragement for mail-in ballots was a precursor to election fraud. Similarly, the media on the left have insisted for months that Donald Trump’s suggestion that he may not accept the election results meant that he was planning a coup after he (presumably inevitably) lost the election.

And now, the battle has been met. It’s been estimated that 93% of all Fox watchers are Republicans and 95% of MSNBC watchers are Democrats. Since neither side watches the other’s news program, each side is cognizant of only its own team’s heavily slanted rhetoric.

The conservative media is awash with details of voter fraud by Democrats, whilst the liberal media states with equal conviction that Mister Trump and his lawyers have provided no details whatever. Therefore, those who voted Republican will conclude by watching their own "unbiased" news channel that Democrats have tried to steal the election and thereby steal control of the country. And those who voted Democrat will conclude by watching their own "unbiased" news channel that Republicans have tried to steal the election and thereby steal control of the country.

But how did this get to be so bad? Americans have not been so wound up – nor so polarized – since 1861, at the beginning of the Civil War. Indeed, the post-election fervor is as strong as though Fort Sumter had just been fired upon. More importantly, what will be the outcome?

Will the courts rule against the claims of Mister Trump? If so, that decision will enrage an already angry right-wing crowd, refusing to vacate the White House and defending it against the pinko mob. Or will the courts rule in favor of Mister Trump? If so, that decision will unleash nationwide riots, intent on bringing down the evil dictator.

Either way, we can anticipate that the US will be in flames. If for any reason the level of strife is insufficient, those with deep pockets will hire squads of shills as mercenary soldiers. The populace will be in terror. Republican voters will beg the federal government to bring in the troops to contain Antifa and the BLM mob. Democratic voters will beg the federal government to bring in the troops to quell the Republican militias.

In such an upheaval, the one thing both sides will have in common is that they will both beg for the creation of a police state. And the federal government will answer that call. Martial law would be declared, possibly as a "temporary measure," until normalcy has returned. But what if normalcy does not return? What if pockets of violence continue to pop up all over the map with regularity? If that occurs, martial law would need to continue for as long as it was deemed necessary, which would be likely to translate into a permanent police state.

At one time, the media was for the most part impartial and benign, but in recent decades it has been bought out by four large corporations. And some of those corporations own and direct both liberal and conservative networks, which would seem to be at odds with each other. However, they are not. Today, the objective of the media is not to offer news. It is to create strife – to pit one half of the electorate against the other. In doing so, the ruling elite have the justification to lock down the entire USA under martial law. Once that has been accomplished, the elite may do as they please. As in all countries where a police state has been achieved – such as Nazi Germany, Mao’s China or Stalin’s Russia – once military control has been put into place nationwide, meaningful protest ends.

In each of the above cases, the populace was whipped up into a frenzy of hate and violence against the Jews or the aristocracy or whatever other demon had been invented. But the real objective and the result were the subjugation of the populace. The American populace has been programmed like windup toys, with the ruling elite winding up the keys on their backs as tightly as they will go. When the levers are released, Americans will act dramatically and, in many cases, blindly.

Economically, politically, and socially, the United States seems to be headed down a path that’s not only inconsistent with the founding principles of the country, but accelerating quickly toward boundless decay. In the years ahead, there will likely be much less stability of any kind.

At this point, it’s not too late for people to stand back, take a deep breath and ask themselves if they’re not being conned into their own subjugation. But it would appear that they’ve been wound up so tightly that such objectivity is unlikely to occur. However, if they do not, they risk losing what remains of their once-proud democracy."

- https://internationalman.com/

Critically Important! The Still Report, "Expert Witness Election Fraud in All Battleground States"

The Still Report,

 "Expert Witness Election Fraud in All Battleground States"

Start at 00:38 to avoid commercial.

○

Related:

"The 'Smartest Man In The Room' Just Joined Sidney Powell's Team"

"Election 2020: The US Constitution Goes to Court, 

Or, 'Vaccinating America’s Political Virus'”

○

So, it seems the reported Delta Force raid on the CIA server farm in Frankfurt, Germany is factual, and the very servers used in this massive fraud have been recovered...

"US Special Forces Raid and Capture CIA 

Server Farm in Frankfurt, Germany?"

Do you remember the traditional penalty for treason?

Must Watch! “Restaurant Apocalypse; Americans Are Stressed Out; Home Prices Over-Inflated; Credit Destruction”

Jeremiah Babe,

“Restaurant Apocalypse; Americans Are Stressed Out;

 Home Prices Over-Inflated; Credit Destruction”

Everywhere and everything... Pardon me, but we're absolutely, 

totally FUBAR'd in every conceivable way, shape and form...

and God help us, the worst is yet to come...

A Suggestion, Mr. President

 

Gregory Mannarino, “In Our Faces! Extreme (Dangerous) Fakery, Something Sinister Is Going On Here”

Gregory Mannarino

“In Our Faces! Extreme (Dangerous) Fakery,

Something Sinister Is Going On Here”

- https://traderschoice.net/

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Sea of Dreams"

 

2002, "Sea of Dreams"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Cradled in cosmic dust and glowing hydrogen, stellar nurseries in Orion the Hunter lie at the edge of a giant molecular cloud some 1,500 light-years away. Spanning nearly 25 degrees, this breath-taking vista stretches across the well-known constellation from head to toe (top to bottom). The Great Orion Nebula, the closest large star forming region, is right of center. To its left are the Horsehead Nebula, M78, and Orion's belt stars. Red giant Betelgeuse is at the hunter's shoulder, bright blue Rigel at his foot, and the glowing Lambda Orionis (Meissa) nebula at the far left, near Orion's head. 

Of course, the Orion Nebula and bright stars are easy to see with the unaided eye, but dust clouds and emission from the extensive interstellar gas in this nebula-rich complex, are too faint and much harder to record. In this mosaic of broadband telescopic images, additional image data acquired with a narrow hydrogen alpha filter was used to bring out the pervasive tendrils of energized atomic hydrogen gas and the arc of the giant Barnard's Loop.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap101023.html

"People Who Don’t Get It: Living with It"

"People Who Don’t Get It: Living with It"

by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOM

"When dealing with people who seem very unaware, remember that everyone must find their own way to awakening. You may be someone who understands the true nature of reality, perceiving deeply that we all emanate from the same source, that we are all essentially one, and that we are here on earth to love one another. To understand this is to be awakened to the true nature of the self, and it is a blessing. Nevertheless, people who just don’t get it are seemingly everywhere and, often, in positions of power. It can be frustrating and painful to watch them behave unconsciously. We all encounter individuals of this bent in our families, at work, and in all areas of public life. It is easy to find ourselves feeling intolerant of these people, wishing we could be free of them even though we know that separation from them is an illusion.

It helps sometimes to think of us all as different parts of one psyche. Just as within our own hearts and minds we have dark places that need healing, the heart and mind of the world has its dark places. The health of the whole organism depends upon the relative health of the individuals within it. We increase harmony when we hold onto the light, not allowing it to be darkened by judgment, anger, and fear about those who behave unconsciously. It’s easier to accomplish this if we don’t focus on the negative qualities of individuals and instead focus on how increasing our own light will increase the light of the overall picture.

When dealing with people who seem very unconscious, it helps to remember that every one must find their own way to awakening and that the experiences they are having are an essential part of their process. Holding them in the light of our own energy may be the best way to awaken theirs. At the same time, we are inspired by their example to look within and shed light on our own unconscious places, sacrificing the urge to judge and surrendering instead to humble self-inquiry."

- https://www.dailyom.com/