"The True Purpose of Tarot"

"The True Purpose of Tarot"

by Maria Popova

“Nothing like this has ever happened before or will ever happen again,” a friend said to me about a lucky turn of events - a statement that struck me as touchingly self-negating: a recognition that life has violated her predictions about what is possible, immediately followed by a reassertion of unquestioned confidence in her powers of prediction.

The very fact that life surprises us is evidence that it can surprise us, that it will surprise us over and over. To mistake our theories of probability for a realistic representation of possibility is to forget that the improbable gave us all we know of existence. And yet precisely because the future is a garden of infinitely forking paths in which any outcome is possible, we yearn to know the direction our lives will take. This is absolutely and categorically impossible. We may, of course, have expectations and beliefs about what is likely to happen. But they are simply imaginative stories to which reality bears no obligation, stories negating the fundamental fact that the imagination of life is always greater than that of the living.

Because we cannot bear this indeterminacy, we have been inventing technologies of divination since ancient times. But while they may be futile in foretelling the future, they are not useless — their misunderstood gift is that they tell us back to ourselves, revealing regions of our psyche over which our conscious thought casts an impenetrable shadow, giving us a tuning fork for the purest note of the inner voice. (This, of course, is the concept of the bird divinations.) D.H. Lawrence knew this when he observed that divination is really just an annealing of attention and that “an act of pure attention, if you are capable of it, will bring its own answer.”

Chilean-French filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky articulates this beautifully in "The Way of Tarot" (public library) - his insightful exploration of one of our oldest and most enduring divination technologies not as a predictive mechanism but as a spiritual path. Declaring himself “absolutely opposed to reading hypothetical futures,” and “repulsed” by the notion that we are prisoners of destiny - a notion that began in the Greek theater of antiquity and was replicated in the determinism of twentieth-century physics - he writes:

"If, from the moment we are born, a god is directing every step we take, what is the good of striving for anything at all? Should we believe that our life is inevitably laid out in advance and all we are allowed to do is submit? To confront the idea of reading the cards, I had to define my notion of future. The reading subject either has or does not have a purpose in his life; he acts in accordance with projects, and he makes plans. When he starts worrying about knowing his future, he is depreciating his present actions, which he doubts. But the present is a fleeting instant: what weighs upon the development of the person receiving the reading is the past, which can act like ballast that tends to cause the future repetition of traumatic experiences from childhood (I will either do or not do what others have done or did not do to me), or as a source of energy that pushes us to progress, to change -  in the best cases, transform ourselves. 

If I have to accept the existence of a preordained future, I would visualize the present as a point from which a fan of infinite paths departs. An intentional action or an accident, something that happens by chance, projects us forward and obliges us to live one of the countless fates possible. This would allow me to declare, even when “everything has been written,” that the divine menu does not consist of a single dish but a huge selection. Free will consists of choosing one of these infinite sentences Fate hands down."

Just as the primary function of prayer is to clarify our own hopes and fears, to hone our priorities and reassert our values, the primary purpose of tarot is not to give us a telescope aimed at the frontiers of the future but a microscope aimed at the most elusive intricacies of the self. Jorodowsky writes:

"When we eliminate the illusion of “reading the future,” the Tarot becomes a psychological tool and a tool for self-knowledge. By honestly confronting the characteristics of our personalities that have gone off course - habits, identifications, manias, vices; narcissistic, antisocial, schizoid, and paranoid disorders; personal delusions, crazy ideas, depressive feelings, emotional immaturity, twisted desires, and needs imposed by the family, society, or culture - we can attain knowledge of our real essence, in other words, what is innate in us and not acquired. The individual can stop being what others want so that he can become who he truly is."

For a kindred approach to the problem of knowing ourselves, which will always exceed the problem of knowing the future, dive into An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days."

- https://www.themarginalian.org/

o

Freely download "The Way Of Tarot", by Alejandro Jodorowsky, here:

- https://pdfcoffee.com/qdownload

o

Free online Tarot Reading:

- https://www.llewellyn.com/tarot_reading.php

"Now Everyone Has a Voice"

"Now Everyone Has a Voice"

by Todd Hayen

That’s a good thing, right? Isn’t that what we’ve been fighting for all along? Isn’t that what Norman Rockwell meant when he painted "Freedom of Speech" - the guy standing up to speak, with some folded-up paper in his pocket? That’s what free speech is all about, isn’t it?

“Every man has a voice to be heard.”

Yeah, I thought that was the whole point, too. Now I’m not so sure. I remember when the Internet was first coming into mass awareness, and I read an article commenting on it as a forum for every thought every person ever had. The article said this would be the first time such a bulk of information would flood our attention, almost all of it unedited and unvetted.

The author who wrote this article believed this would be a huge problem: that before then, information was sorted through, vetted, and deemed “worthy of human consumption” before it was made available to the throngs of humans grabbing for it.

This is good and bad, of course. The “good” is that before something was published, many eyes went over it, it was carefully determined to be accurate, and it was rejected if found to be preposterous, sensationalist, or downright a lie. (I am speaking here more of news items and non-fiction work.) Of course, if something was labelled “fiction,” the scrutiny was a bit less extreme. But it was still important to identify it as such (recall the famous Orson Welles “War of the Worlds” broadcast).

Now, with the internet, and to a lesser degree with self-publishing that bypasses traditional publishers, anything can get out there. Anything. And there seems to be no responsibility regarding accuracy, identifying fiction from non-fiction, and opinion from evidential proof.

Of course, needless to say, the “bad” of the old system is that anyone who controlled the press controlled what the press published. This would include even book printing, and particularly the printing of news, which should not be controlled by anyone other than editors and writers. Writers expressing their free thoughts is one thing; editors determining who gets published, or radically altering what writers write in order to express a certain narrative, is another.

But often editors are owned by the system (whether it be governments, institutions, special interest groups, or advertisers), and don’t even do the proper job they were meant to do. This is a problem - and quite frankly always has been. Particularly in countries known for the restriction of their citizens’ freedoms, such as the former Soviet Union, Communist China, and a litany of other countries, current and past. A “free press” is a relatively new thing. As well as a “free country” - both are now rapidly disintegrating.

So, rah-rah for the internet and self-publishing! Not so fast. With it come more problems of a different nature. With the advent of the “free internet,” where it takes nothing to get your voice in front of millions, and with no editing to free it from untruths and crappy writing, the responsibility for accurate literature falls on the reader, not on the author or the agency that releases the writing. The crappy writing is the responsibility of AI to correct (ha ha!). That leads to another problem: it is more difficult now to dismiss bad information based on bad grammar as it used to be!

This dilemma, sadly, gives the agenda even more power to announce nearly everything that hits consumers as “misinformation.” Since they now can say that if information does not come from their own established sources (and we all know what those are), then it simply is not to be “trusted” - it is “dis” or “mis” information, and should be ignored, or worse, attacked, deplatformed, etc. The net they cast is wide, intending to capture anything they find that does not meet their own criteria, thus labelling far more than unedited, unvetted nonsense as misinformation.

It makes you wonder if the internet was invented for this very purpose - to make it impossible to distinguish information coming from reliable and accurate alternative sources from information coming from Yahoo-types with diarrhea of the mouth. The same goes for the invention of AI - since everyone is now on a witch hunt to discredit AI writing, we may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater if we believe nothing good can come from AI literature.

Again, I don’t have a solution to this problem (do I ever?). I only hope for more awareness on the part of the consumer of information. As I said earlier, it is largely now our responsibility to weed through the junk and find what is true and makes logical and heartfelt sense. This requires more than a cursory look at Facebook chatter (and similar social media sources). We need to be reading history, science, and medical literature to vet the authors, their research methods, and particularly their funding.

We cannot be like the sheep-types who only look at the source for their vetting of information, who do not “do their research” and only believe verbatim anything their exalted leaders have to say, or their idolized news sources have to convey. And at the same time, totally ignoring, and I mean TOTALLY ignoring, ANY AND ALL information that comes from other sources, even empirical sources such as friends and family who have experienced contradictions in their own lives that the mainstream sources insist on.

We are being forced to take more action in this regard every day, considering the onslaught of AI-created visuals and text. Most of what we actually see now in media is AI-generated, and of course that means that most of what we see now in media is simply not true and is prompted by people who have their own agenda - whether that agenda is just a mischievous prank or a desire to sway masses of people to take certain action that fits a nefarious agenda.

I have no desire to stop the flow of information, regardless of where it comes from; I firmly believe everyone has the right to speak their word (although fewer should probably exercise that right!). I do have a desire to facilitate change in people so fewer and fewer of them find benefit in being liars, evil, or advocates of destructive agendas.

I also have the desire to see people develop more critical systems of thinking, not because the world is out to get them and they have to be aware of such a probability, but because a thinking mind is a healthy mind that is not easily swayed by unhealthy minds. Just as it was before the advent of the printing press, people must begin to rely more on word-of-mouth information, and information coming from uncertain sources needs to be more carefully scrutinized.

The reliance on word-of-mouth needs to come from the expectation that the majority of people we come in contact with are decent and share the same values we do. In my humble opinion, this is the world we must all be willing to work toward."

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Blues Masterpiece,

"People Get Offended Faster Than They Get Smarter"

“People Get Offended Faster Than They Get Smarter” is a witty, tongue-in-cheek blues about modern life, thin skin, and the disappearing art of laughing at yourself. The singer watches the world with a raised eyebrow, noticing how quick people are to take offense while being much slower to learn from experience. Driven by a rolling blues guitar groove and the sly, sarcastic cry of the harmonica, the song blends humor, observation, and old-school blues wisdom. The voice carries the tone of someone who has seen trends come and go and isn't surprised by much anymore. Everybody's got an opinion... But not everybody's got perspective."

"Americans Are Stealing Food Now And Stores Are Locking Everything Up"

Full screen recommended.

Epic Economist, 9/12/26

"Americans Are Stealing Food Now 

And Stores Are Locking Everything Up"

"There are two separate things going on in this video, and it matters that they do not get blurred together. The first is what somebody says once they are caught. Hardly anybody argues they did not do it - they argue about what it was for, and the sentence that keeps surfacing is some version of I needed to feed my family. That may be true and it may be a line, and there is no way to tell which from the outside. The second thing is not people at all. It is equipment. A camera counting you. A check at the door. A glass case you have to ring a bell for. All of it signed off as an answer to the first thing, and all of it landing on the ninety-nine who paid. That is the part nobody explained to anyone who shops in one of these stores, and it is the part this video is really about.

What this video covers: • Baby formula, eye drops, razors, shampoo, deodorant and even cereal locked behind glass. • Pressing a call button and waiting ten minutes for someone to unlock one item. • Walmart staff opening a cabinet for every single makeup item. • A chaperone just to smell a candle, and $9 Legos behind a glass wall. • Carts that lock their wheels at the Walmart exit. • Receipt checks at the door, and the shoppers who refuse them. • A cashier with no security in the store, told to call management and nothing else. • The math behind stealing baby formula: gas, work, the next paycheck. 

A lawmaker who says stealing for basic needs is fine, and a shopper who disagrees Every clip is a real person, filmed on their own phone, in their own words. Nothing here is staged. If it happens to you: do not run, do not argue standing there, and do not sign anything in a back room. Ask for the police rather than a private conversation - a written record protects you, a manager's memory does not. Say very little, say it calmly. In nearly every state a shop can legally hold you briefly if they genuinely believe you took something; what they generally cannot do is search your bag without your say so. A receipt check at an ordinary shop is a request, not an order. Warehouse clubs are different. What is locked up where you shop - and how long did you wait for someone to open it? Put it below, with the state."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"The Trump-Israel-Iran War Takes An Atom-Bomb Sized Turn!"

"The Trump-Israel-Iran War Takes

 An Atom-Bomb Sized Turn!"

by David Haggith

Excerpt: "As of this weekend, the Iran War has done more to diminish US power in the Middle East than I have seen in my lifetime. I’m going to start with the smallest of events that I’ve said was coming in order to share some valuable information with everyone. Then I’ll move on to the massive turn of events in the Middle East that happened over the past two days due to US ineptitude in this war. 

Starting with the smallest point first, which is still of historic significance, diesel in the US just soared past its highest price in history! So, those rising fuel prices I promised would hit this summer are resoundingly and solidly here just as summer nears its close: "Diesel hits all-time high of $6 per gallon, and just about everything will cost more."

The nationwide average price of diesel hit $6 per gallon Friday for the first time, an ominous record for the fuel that powers much of the U.S. economy. The price was $6.05 as of Friday morning, according to data from motor club AAA. The national average price of regular gas was $4.29, up 15 cents since last week. Since the war with Iran began in late February, the nationwide average diesel price has soared by 60%.

“The cost of diesel gets into just about everything,” KPMG chief economist Diane Swonk said in a recent interview. “From running a farm ... [to the] cost of food, but also everything across the economy that’s shipped,” she said. When diesel prices rise, everything “gets that extra fee tacked onto it.” Swonk predicted that the high cost of diesel will be an “inflationary problem” for months to come.

And we made it here even ahead of seeing those “spotty” out-of-fuel signs at gas stations that I said would be coming. I did report on a few, but there was no deeper explanation in those X posts as to whether the gas station owners just didn’t realize their tanks were nearing empty, as sometimes happens, or actually could not get fuel. So, I won’t claim that as an accurate prediction yet, but what that means is that fuel prices are still going higher once actual shortages do start to show up. (At least, one of those did sound like more than the station owner/manager forgot to order fuel in time as the person wondered out loud, “What’s going on?” as in “Why hasn’t my fuel arrived yet?”)

This week, Trump made the surprising (only in that it came from his lips) announcement of the obvious, which is that the war and the high prices on fuel will continue until the day after the election because Iran will do all it can to reduce his power while in office. He’s pathetically blind or just lying, though, to be claiming their pressure will end right after the election due to their desperation for a deal. Not everyone has the short attention span of Donald Trump. The Iranians have been in the long game for decades.

Today, Middle East nations are negotiating with Iran to see if they can get Iran to open the strait. Iran will use the negotiations as a process to keep buying time, as they always do, so that the war of attrition bites deeper into America’s back side. They will say something along the lines of, “Yes, we will open the strait if every nation in this room promises to kick all American military bases out of their country.” That would be a huge win for Iran, and such a negotiation point puts the onus back on the nations that are begging for strait mercy to change the situation in the Middle East. It would achieve one of Iran’s major objectives in this war. 

At this point it is actually within the realm of feasibility that Iran could get that kind of agreement and actually kick the US permanently out of the Gulf, and today’s blockbuster event really underscores why nations like Saudi Arabia will be seriously considering such a move. Moreover, the US has a huge financial burden to add to its toppling mountain of debt if it is going to rebuild all those bases, which means it might not press so hard to remain there. A US military official has just admitted the US received major damage: "Navy Secretary Casually Admits Iran “Blew the Hell” out of U.S. Base."

Fox News’s Jennifer Griffin wrote. “Haven’t heard a senior U.S. official admit this on the record until now.” Others noted the Iranian military capacity does not seem to be as depleted as Trump claims. Naturally, the always-lying Trump administration has been underplaying the damage done by Iran; but it eventually gets out as ships limp home in worse states than the US originally admitted.

With Trump now promising a $5,000 economic stimulus check to every single adult American if Republicans sweep both houses of congress at an estimated cost of $1.25-trillion, adding the cost of rebuilding all those military bases and replenishing their military hardware is going to be a tough addition to the price of this war. So, if nations that have experienced heavy damage because of those bases now demand the US go away, the US might not push back as hard as it would when it was a more prosperous nation. That is the cost of having a towering national debt that now looks like the Leaning Tower of Piza.

Yet, the costs of this war are hardly done mounting because Iran plans to do a lot more destruction to US military bases in the region in order to drive the US out and a lot more destruction to US oil infrastructure. And events that happened overnight show how rapidly that can come about!

Most of those costs where that kind of damage was already rendered are not imputed yet into the cost of this war because it is not known if the US will rebuild. Most of the oil rebuilding costs will have to born by US oil companies that are making bank off the war unless the billionaires manage to get bailout money from congress - always a possibility in our brave new world; but that may be a tough sell in congress with the debt tower now leaning so hard that the Treasury secretary was unable with his first-round effort to prop it up at all. The props snapped immediately, showing he’ll need to place far stronger timber under the structure of US debt if he wants to prop it up.

We’re back to massive financial rescue measures or just facing the impossible cost of soaring interest. That is a no-win scenario because, as the war continues to drive inflation up (sure to rise rapidly with diesel not over $6/gallon), interest rates will continue to rise, and with central banks lately casting off Treasuries like sand bags of ballast thrown off a falling financial balloon, financing that interest is a real problem."

Full, most highly recommended article is here:

- https://www.thedailydoom.com/

"Osama Bin Trump"

"Osama Bin Trump"

by Chris Hedges

"Donald Trump, whose war on Iran is the greatest strategic blunder in United States history, is not responsible for triggering the decline of the American empire, but he is responsible for its fatal denouement. This is the end.

Hundreds of U.S. bases in the oil-rich Persian Gulf have been damaged or destroyed and I expect will not be rebuilt. Our allies, even those in Europe, are abandoning us. The decadence and immorality of American society, embodied in the vulgarity, stupefying ignorance and cruelty of Trump, are the defining characteristics of the Empire. The Global South, horrified at the Empire’s flagrant disregard for international humanitarian law, including the enabling of genocide in Gaza, sees us as the enemy. Abu Ghraib Prison may have receded from our consciousness, but for the rest of the world, its images of U.S. soldiers and contractors sadistically humiliating and torturing imprisoned Iraqis has replaced the Disneyfied version of America we once exported. The war on Iran, which has disrupted the world’s oil supply, is rapidly pushing the global economy over the cliff.

We are going down. And we will bring many with us.

Osama Bin Laden may be in a watery grave in the North Arabian Sea. Al-Qaeda may be a shadow of itself. But Bin Laden’s most fervent dreams have been realized in the last twenty-five years of gross miscalculations of the Empire — its squandering of trillions of dollars on military debacles and the ascendancy of our version of Ubu Roi, Donald J. Trump.

Rather than defeating supposed enemies, the U.S. has swelled their ranks. It and its colony, Israel, are the most reviled nations on the planet. Every advance by Iran in its asymmetrical war against the Empire is cheered across the globe.

The humiliating defeats, the diversion of resources and at least $8 trillion to mount one war after another, which has killed an estimated 4.5 to 4.8 million people, has hollowed the Empire out. Its infrastructure is crumbling. Its democratic institutions are impotent. It survives on an unsustainable $ 40 trillion debt. The jewels of its democracy, including its education system, fair elections and a free press, are discredited and degraded.

An abandoned working class, crippled by economic insecurity and a government that steadily strips away social programs that keep those in distress afloat, is propagandized to believe the palpable decline is the work of traitors and enemies within. It has led Trump supporters to turn on the very institutions and ideals designed to sustain democracy. The usual targets of fascism - the “radical left,” Muslims, migrants, intellectuals, artists, people of color and journalists - are persecuted under laws such as The Espionage Act. Lies permeate the airwaves buttressing the self-delusion that once internal enemies are silenced, or eradicated, the glory days of the Empire, defined by hyper-nationalism, patriarchy, stable jobs and white supremacy, will return.

Violence against internal enemies along with election fraud are openly advocated by Trump and his court of sycophants, buffoons, grifters and Christian fascists. Attempting to bribe voters by promising them $5,000 if Republicans win the midterms, along with Trump’s contempt for the constitutional order, is the transparent admission that U.S. democracy is a farce. George W. Bush, who was appointed to the presidency by judicial fiat, planted these seeds of lawlessness and impunity. Trump has brought them to floraison.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) goons, masked and offered the kind of impunity that allowed the torture and killing of innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan, terrorize U.S. cities. They carry out military-style raids against unarmed civilians that look no different than those the Empire carried out in Fullujah or the Helmand Province in Afghanistan. They are setting up a network of squalid internal concentration camps.

The tools of subjugation the Empire used abroad, including the stripping of civil liberties and the implementation of mass surveillance, were legalized at home with the passage of The Patriot Act, with its watchlists, informants and racial and religious profiling. Empires in decay impose the tyranny familiar to those subjugated abroad on their own citizens.

I was in the Middle East when it all went wrong. Nearly all of the Muslim world was appalled by the attacks of 9/11. There were massive public expressions of solidarity, including candlelight vigils in Iran. If we had built on this empathy rather than demonizing Muslims and inflicting suffering and death on millions in the Middle East, we would be far more secure today.

Instead, we drank deep from the poisonous elixir of nationalism. We foolishly believed we were attacked, as Bush said, because “they hate our freedoms,” not because of our support for the apartheid and genocidal state of Israel, our callous indifference to human life beyond our borders, including the killing of over a million people in Iraq by U.S. sanctions, and our propping up of brutal Arab dictatorships.

The wreckage we have left behind from our forever wars include the obliteration of whole cities, along with 940,000 direct deaths in post-9/11 war zones, 3.6 to 3.8 million indirect deaths and 38 million people displaced.

The hijackers chose massive death and destruction on a city skyline to send a message. They spoke the language we taught them. It is the message our warplanes, missiles and drones have delivered from Vietnam to Iraq. We did not listen. We naively believed we could use our military to remake the Middle East in our own image.

The failure of the War on Terror is not simply a moral failure. It is a strategic failure. We refused to ask the obvious question. Why did many outside our borders feel so much hostility towards us that they were willing to kill themselves and thousands of our fellow citizens? Those of us who dared to raise these questions twenty-five years ago were vilified as supporters of terrorism and silenced.

The only way to defeat terrorism is to isolate those who carry out acts of terror within their own societies. It is to build networks of understanding and solidarity. We did the opposite. We became the terrorists we claimed we were seeking to defeat. We did what Bin Laden wanted us to do. We defeated ourselves. Trump is presiding over the last act."

- https://chrishedges.substack.com/

"What's About To Happen To Fuel Prices Will Shock You"

Bob Moriarty, 9/12/26

"What's About To Happen To Fuel Prices Will Shock You"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Prepare For Heavy Financial Losses - Who's Going Out Of Business Next?"

Jeremiah Babe, 9/12/26

"Prepare For Heavy Financial Losses - 

Who's Going Out Of Business Next?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Sea and Silence"

Deuter, "Sea and Silence"

"A Look to the Heavens"

Messier's famous catalog, but definitely not one of the least. About 170,000 light-years across, this galaxy is enormous, almost twice the size of our own Milky Way. M101 was also one of the original spiral nebulae observed by Lord Rosse's large 19th century telescope, the Leviathan of Parsontown. Assembled from 51 exposures recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope in the 20th and 21st centuries, with additional data from ground based telescopes, this mosaic spans about 40,000 light-years across the central region of M101 in one of the highest definition spiral galaxy portraits ever released from Hubble. 

The sharp image shows stunning features of the galaxy's face-on disk of stars and dust along with background galaxies, some visible right through M101 itself. Also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy, M101 lies within the boundaries of the northern constellation Ursa Major, about 25 million light-years away.”

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

"Bountiful Seed"

Full screen recommended.

Blue Phoenix Tunes,

"Bountiful Seed"

I wanted to focus on a fantasy being that I haven't written about yet, so I chose a dryad. They are female nature spirits that inhabit trees. Instead of focusing on the negative aspects of their situation (ie, they can't leave their forest), I wanted the dryad to find the blessings in what she has, and what she gained along the way. Hope you enjoy!

"Why Time Is Going Faster Now and How to Slow It Down"

Full screen recommended.

Native American Elder,

"Why Time Is Going Faster Now

 and How to Slow It Down"

"The World Got Weird While We Were Working"

Full screen recommended.

Blues Masterpiece,

"The World Got Weird While We Were Working"

“The World Got Weird While We Were Working” is a sharp, relatable blues about waking up one day and realizing everything changed while ordinary people were just trying to survive and pay the bills. The singer reflects on modern life with humor, confusion, and a little exhaustion, wondering how things became so strange so fast. Driven by laid-back blues guitar and the sly, wandering cry of the harmonica, the song blends old-school Southern storytelling with everyday frustration. The voice sounds seasoned and amused, like someone shaking their head on the front porch watching the world spin sideways. We were busy working… And somehow the whole world lost its mind."

"Life Is A Question, You Are The Answer"

"Life Is A Question, You Are The Answer: 

Ursula K. Le Guin On Time, Life And Meaning"

The mind that watches itself transforms.

by Postanly Weekly

"Ursula K. Le Guin was one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated fantasy and science fiction authors. She won many awards, including a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize. Her body of work (dozens of novels, short stories, essays, poetry, and plays) explore the themes of time, life and meaning with an acute sensitivity and verbal brilliance that reveal a deep understanding of human nature.

She was prolific. Le Guin wrote 23 novels, 12 volumes of short stories, 11 volumes of poetry, 13 children’s books, five essay collections, and four works of translation. Le Guin’s ability to build fully realized worlds is one key to her success as a writer. These worlds are so fully realized that readers are easily transported there due to their compelling nature.

Another important factor is Le Guin’s willingness to experiment. She never stuck with any one genre for too long, instead constantly exploring new territory and building on previous successes. She was also one of the first writers to explore themes of gender and feminism in science fiction. In her work, she often used her childhood experiences to explore human nature and the roles we play as humans. Ursula K. Le Guin is best known for her sci-fi book, “The Hainish Cycle”, which is considered one of the most important works of science fiction literature.

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end,” she once said. Le Guin’s work is profoundly scientific and philosophical at the same time and often deals with big questions about meaning and life.

Few writers have captured the human experience more than Ursula K. Le Guin. In her writing, you can find her reflecting on themes such as time, life and meaning in a way few other authors manage. She explains through her brilliant writing that you can transform your life from one full of busyness and obligation into one centered on fulfilling your purpose and leveraging every minute of your existence.

Time is a crucial part of the human experience. It is the key to understanding our world, our history, and ourselves. Time is what separates one moment from another; it is what connects them; it is what happens now; it is what will happen later; it is the sum total of history and what is yet to happen.

“The thing about working with time, instead of against it, is that it is not wasted. Even pain counts,” Ursula K. Le Guin said.

We’ve become so accustomed to rushing through life that even a passing thought can feel like we’re being left behind. As a result, we’ve come to expect things to happen immediately and resent any delays that might cause us frustration or boredom. A life spent rushing through time can leave us feeling directionless and lost, seeking answers where there may be none.

Life is a question; you are the answer: “We decided that it was no good asking what is the meaning of life, because life isn’t an answer, life is the question, and you, yourself, are the answer.” - Ursula K. Le Guin. “The only questions that really matter are the ones you ask yourself,” she observed. Le Guin’s works explore the conditions necessary for people to flourish, the costs of keeping such conditions constant, and what it means to be fully alive.

Anytime you find yourself facing a challenge or a choice, it is important to ask yourself some key questions: What do I want? What’s my goal? What do I value? How do I make the most my finite time? Why am I doing this in the first place? How do my present experiences help me explore myself?

These questions aren’t just tackled in her fiction; Le Guin was also interested in how we experience time and how this experience affects our sense of self, relationships with others, and ideas about purpose and meaning. She is one of the most influential authors in science fiction history because she can illuminate universal truths by exploring specific circumstances or events within broader narratives. In other words, she makes readers aware that these universal questions exist by exploring their implications with empathy and precision.

As we change and grow, so should our lives and the meaning we find in them. To thrive, we need to accept that everything changes over time and not get too attached to the idea of a permanent self or single life path. “The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next,” Ursula K. Le Guin observed.

Meaning can be found in the present moment as much as in anticipating a future full of promise and in recognizing death’s finality. Enjoy the present and the suffering that comes with it. “The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means,” she asks. “If you evade suffering you also evade the chance of joy. Pleasure you may get, or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled. You will not know what it is to come home,” Le Guin wrote in "The Dispossessed."

Whether through art and literature or personal experience, Le Guin reminds us that no matter how strange or hard times may seem - the potential for something better lies within us all. The freedom to explore who you truly are is deeply liberating. There’s more to your life than you can ever imagine. “All of us have to learn how to invent our lives, make them up, imagine them. We need to be taught these skills; we need guides to show us how. If we don’t, our lives get made up for us by other people,” she writes.

It’s your duty to explore your existence as deeply as possible without fear or restrictions. Don’t build walls - pursue your true north to find meaning. Ursula K. Le Guin writes, “The duty of the individual is to accept no rule, to be the initiator of his own acts, to be responsible. Only if he does so will the society live, and change, and adapt, and survive."

- https://postanly.substack.com/

Freely download "The Dispossessed", by Ursula K. Le Guin, here:

- https://files.libcom.org/files/

Freely download "The Left Hand Of Darkness", by Ursula K. Le Guin, here:

- https://bdebooks.com/en/books/

The Poet: Rod McKuen, “A Cat Named Sloopy”

Full screen recommended.

“A Cat Named Sloopy”

“For awhile

the only earth that Sloopy knew

was in her sandbox.

Two rooms were her domain.

Every night she’d sit in the window

among the avocado plants

waiting for me to come home,

my arms full of canned liver and love.

We’d talk into the night then,

contented,

but missing something.

She the earth she never knew,

me the hills I ran

while growing bent.

Sloopy should have been a cowboy’s cat,

with prairies to run,

not linoleum,

and real-live catnip mice,

no one to depend on but herself.

I never told her,

but in my mind

I was a midnight cowboy even then.

Riding my imaginary horse

down Forty-second street,

going off with strangers

to live an hour-long cowboy’s life.

But always coming home to Sloopy,

who loved me best.

For a dozen summers

we lived against the world.

An island on an island.

She’d comfort me with purring,

I’d fatten her with smiles.

We grew rich on trust,

needing not the beach or butterflies.

I had a friend named Ben

Who painted buildings like Roualt men.

He went away.

My laughter tired Lillian

after a time,

she found a man who only smiled.

But Sloopy stayed and stayed.

Winter,

Nineteen fifty-nine,

Old men walk their dogs.

Some are walked so often

that their feet leave

little pink tracks

in the soft snow.

Women, fur on fur,

elegant and easy,

only slightly pure,

hailing cabs to take them

round the block and back.

Who is not a love seeker

when December comes?

Even children pray to Santa Claus.

I had my own love safe at home,

and yet I stayed out all one night,

the next day too.

They must have thought me crazy

screaming SLOOPY!

SLOOPY!

as the snow came falling

down around me.

I was a madman

to have stayed away

one minute more

than the appointed hour.

I’d like to think a golden cowboy

snatched her from the window sill,

and safely saddlebagged

she rode to Arizona.

She’s stalking lizards

in the cactus now perhaps,

bitter, but free.

I’m bitter too,

and not a free man anymore.

But once upon a time,

In New York’s jungle in a tree,

before I went into the world

in search of other kinds of love,

nobody owned me but a cat named Sloopy.

Looking back,

perhaps she’s been

the only human thing

that ever gave back love to me.”

- Rod McKuen 

The Daily "Near You?"

Argyle, Texas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Information Off The Internet..."

Oh yeah...

Blogging! LOL

"The World..."

"The world is a comedy to those that think,

a tragedy to those who feel. "

- Horace Walpole, In a Letter, 1770

"The Collective Stupidity That Stops You From Thinking – The Fall of Consciousness"

Full screen recommended.

The Psyche,

"The Collective Stupidity That Stops You

From Thinking – The Fall of Consciousness"

"We live in an age of endless information - yet true wisdom is disappearing. People talk more than ever, but say almost nothing. Opinions have replaced understanding, and the crowd has replaced the mind. This video exposes one of the greatest dangers of our time: collective stupidity - the fall of human consciousness. Discover how society, media, and the illusion of belonging have hijacked your ability to think for yourself. Learn why questioning has become rebellion, why truth no longer depends on facts but on popularity, and how this mass hypnosis keeps humanity asleep. Drawing on the ideas of Schopenhauer, Jung, Plato, and Nietzsche, this video reveals the hidden psychology of conformity and how it disconnects us from our inner intelligence - our soul. More importantly, you’ll learn how to break free from it. If you’ve ever felt like something is deeply wrong with the way people think, this video will confirm what you’ve sensed all along - and show you the way out. Awaken your mind. Reclaim your consciousness. See beyond the illusion."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Pick and Choose Your Own Truth"

"Pick and Choose Your Own Truth"

by Todd Hayen

"Here I go again. Getting perplexed by the sheep-types in my life. I seem to be in a constant state of cognitive dissonance. I’ve whacked my forehead so many times with the heel of my hand that I am surprised I have not seriously damaged my brain. Well, maybe I have!

It’s really crazy to me, how something can come forth that makes a point we have all made in the past into an incontrovertible truth, and these sheepsters will still not see it. I just got around to watching Mikki Willis’ "Follow the Silenced," and after getting 20 minutes into it, I said, “What could be better evidence of the truth that these vaccines were bad news?” I shared this with someone close, who is, believe it or not, a sheep, and they said, “That just isn’t true.”

What? They were quite casual about it, too. Like there wasn’t anything to argue about. It would be the same as if I showed them a movie of a human walking around with a rat’s head. They wouldn’t be freaked out wondering if it might be true; they would just know it wasn’t. No question. No second thoughts. “That just isn’t true.” Of course, this is different than a rat-headed human (although with AI these days it would be an easy “untruth” to pull off). I am talking about things that are facts, no question, clear and simple. Facts.

Sure, Willis’ film probably isn’t 100% factual. Or at least, what IS factual doesn’t necessarily prove it is widespread. But much of what is presented is factual. And the argument that what Willis is presenting is all play-acting just doesn’t cut it. Sure, that happens too, but there are times when that sort of manipulation is plausible. Willis’ film is not one of them.

And since when does something presented have to be 100% factual for it to be considered? We used to live in a time where we determined what was worth paying attention to by assessing its relevance, the percentage of accurate information compared to the whole, and the context of what was presented. Now, any idea at all must meet the “100%” test. This reminds me of the fact check that stated Paul Revere’s ride, where he is shouting “The British are coming, the British are coming!” was not a fact, because not ALL of the British Empire was invading the country, only a small military faction. So, the whole statement then is deemed incorrect. This is standard “fact-checking” on social media, and it is insane.

Still, there are many other examples of this demonstration of picking what you choose to believe. And there is something psychologically weird about how people respond to this stuff. So, what else is new? We truly have entered into a time where people are truly whacked. And I’m a psychotherapist! You can’t find this stuff in a textbook.

Take the whole climate change debacle, for instance. I’m not here to debate whether the planet’s getting hotter or if it’s all a cosmic prank - though I’ve got my suspicions about the latter. But watch how the sheep latch onto “their truth” like it’s the last lifeboat on the Titanic. On one side, you’ve got folks who swallow every alarmist headline hook, line, and sinker: polar bears drowning, cities underwater by next Tuesday, all because we dared to drive SUVs and eat steak.

Show them data suggesting natural cycles, solar flares, or even historical warm periods like the Medieval Warm Period (when Vikings were farming Greenland, for crying out loud), and they glaze over. “That’s denialism,” they say, as if the word itself is a magical shield against inconvenient facts. Why? Because it fits the narrative they’ve been fed - the one that makes them feel virtuous for recycling their plastic straws while ignoring the private jets of the elites preaching the gospel.

Flip the coin, and you’ve got the other crowd, convinced it’s all a hoax cooked up by globalists to slap carbon taxes on the little guy. Present them with satellite images of melting ice caps or rising sea levels, and they wave it away as manipulated data or “weather, not climate.” Both sides dig in their heels, not because the evidence is lacking, but because admitting the other side might have a sliver of validity would shatter their worldview. It’s tribalism on steroids, where “my truth” isn’t about seeking reality - it’s about belonging to the right club. Psychologically, this stems from confirmation bias, that sneaky brain trick where we cherry-pick info that strokes our ego and ignore the rest. Add in a dash of fear - fear of change, fear of being wrong, fear of the unknown - and voilà, you’ve got a recipe for intellectual stagnation.

Another prime example hits closer to home for me as a therapist: the mental health industry’s love affair with pharmaceuticals. I’ve seen clients come in, desperate for relief from anxiety or depression, and the first thing their doctor does is scribble a script for SSRIs like they’re handing out candy. Never mind the black box warnings, the withdrawal horror stories, or studies showing placebos work just as well in many cases. Show a sheep-type patient footage of people recounting their nightmare experiences - zombie-like side effects, suicidal thoughts, the works - and they’ll shrug it off.

“My doctor says it’s safe,” they insist, as if the white coat confers infallibility. Why do they cling to this? It’s easier. Popping a pill absolves them of the hard work: therapy, lifestyle changes, digging into root causes like trauma or diet. It’s the illusion of control in a chaotic world, wrapped in the comfort of authority. Question that authority, and suddenly you’re the crazy one, labelled an “anti-vaxxer” equivalent for mental health. But facts are facts: the overprescription epidemic is real, backed by whistleblowers and buried FDA reports. Yet, “their truth” prevails because facing the alternative means admitting the system might be broken - and who wants that headache?

Or consider the origins of COVID itself. Lab leak theory was once “conspiracy nonsense,” ridiculed by fact-checkers and banned on social media. Now? Even the FBI and DOE lean toward it, with emails showing scientists privately admitting it while publicly denying. But try telling that to the die-hards who still parrot “wet market” like it’s gospel. Why? Emotional investment. If it were a lab leak, funded by our own tax dollars no less, it would implicate heroes like Fauci and shake our faith in science. Easier to dismiss whistleblowers as cranks than confront the betrayal. This isn’t new; history’s littered with it - think Tuskegee experiments or MKUltra. People pick “their truth” to preserve sanity, avoiding the abyss of realizing power structures lie.

At its core, this “pick and choose” phenomenon signals a deeper malaise: the death of objective reality. We’ve traded shared facts for personalized bubbles, curated by algorithms and echo chambers. Why? Technology plays a part, sure - endless scrolling reinforces biases. But psychologically, it’s about vulnerability. In an uncertain world, clinging to “my truth” offers certainty, even if illusory. It’s a defence mechanism against overwhelm, a way to simplify complexity. As a therapist, I see it daily: clients rewriting personal histories to avoid pain, ignoring red flags in relationships because “love conquers all.” Scale that up societally, and you get mass delusion.

Yet, here’s the rub - and maybe a sliver of hope. If everyone’s got “their truth,” then mine’s as valid as any. So why not question everything? Peel back the layers, demand evidence, and risk being the odd one out. It’s exhausting, sure, but it beats forehead-smacking frustration. In the end, truth isn’t a buffet; it’s a hunt. And if we all stopped grazing like sheep and started tracking like shrews, we might just uncover something real. Wouldn’t that be a plot twist worth waking up for?"

- https://off-guardian.org/

Todd Hayen PhD is a registered psychotherapist practicing in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He holds a PhD in depth psychotherapy and an MA in Consciousness Studies. He specializes in Jungian, archetypal, psychology. Todd also writes for his own substack, which you can read here.

"How It Really Is"

 

Yeah, starvation works pretty well, too...

"US 2026 Budget Deficit Hits $1.97 Trillion With One Month Left; Interest At Record $1.4 Trillion"

U.S. National Debt Clock, Real Time

"US 2026 Budget Deficit Hits $1.97 Trillion 

With One Month Left; Interest At Record $1.4 Trillion"

by Tyler Durdin

Excerpt: "With DOGE disbanded more than a year ago, and tariffs struck down by the Supreme Court, the US is no longer even pretending that there is any hope to normalize spending, or any kind of happy ending to the US debt trajectory. At 2pm on September 11 the US Treasury published the latest, August, monthly budget deficit data, and it should come as no surprise to anyone that things are looking ever worse.

Total US receipts were $360 billion, a modest improvement from the $344 billion a year ago, with individual income taxes accounting for $179 billion, or half of the total, and the bulk of the balance coming from Social Insurance and Retirement receipts of $141 billion. On the spending side, things were ugly: total outlays were $527 billion, a modest improvement to the $689.1 billion a year ago, but much of that had to do with the calendar impact of tariffs.

Click image for larger size.

Putting receipts and spending in context, a chart of the trailing 6 months of government revenue and spending shows that the two trendlines are rapidly diverging, with spending on pace to surpass the covid all time high, even as government revenue remains stuck in a much more narrow range."

Full, most highly recommended article is here:

- https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/

o

Jeffrey Sachs, "The Collapse Already Begun..."

"The biggest financial risk isn't just inflation or a market crash. It's a world where major powers keep spending trillions of dollars preparing for a war that could destroy the global economy. The United States alone is running a massive military machine, spending roughly 1.5 trillion dollars a year while maintaining hundreds of overseas bases. And that spending doesn't happen in isolation. It adds pressure to government deficits, debt, taxes, and ultimately the financial system investors depend on."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"12 Popular US Restaurant Chains Are Shutting Down FAST (And 3 Survivors )"

Full screen recommended.

Explore US States, 9/12/26

"12 Popular US Restaurant Chains 

Are Shutting Down FAST (And 3 Survivors )"

"These 12 popular U.S. restaurant chains are shutting locations fast as weak traffic, franchise bankruptcies, rising costs, shrinking footprints, and changing customer habits force companies to close, convert, or completely exit underperforming concepts. From Sonic, Denny’s, Applebee’s, Carl’s Jr., Noodles & Company, Bahama Breeze, Ruby Tuesday, Checkers & Rally’s, Fuzzy’s, Bravo and Brio, and Maple Street Biscuit Company to O’Charley’s, this video looks at why some familiar names are disappearing while others keep losing ground. But the market is not dead - Chick-fil-A, Texas Roadhouse, and Chili’s show that customers are still spending when value, execution, and the overall experience feel worth the money."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Be Ready For Something Major That Is Coming To America"

Full screen recommended.

Epic Economist, 9/12/26

"Be Ready For Something Major 

That Is Coming To America"

"Eighteen months without power. That is the number in the warning that reached the news, and it is the reason the people in this video stopped waiting to find out. A county that lost power last night. Five states dealing with outages at the same time. Up to 800 hours of blackout a year expected by 2030. A declared national emergency on the grid, and an official warning that the grid is a target. They do not agree on what hits first - and that is the part worth sitting with. This many strangers, in this many states, do not independently start saying the same thing in the same season for no reason. What this video covers: • A warning that the U.S. grid could go down for 18 months - and what that number actually means. • Up to 800 hours a year of blackout expected by 2030. • A county that lost power last night, told in the hour it came back. • Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Tennessee and Hawaii dealing with outages at the same time. • A declared national emergency on the grid, and what a state of emergency allows. • The repeated official warning that the grid is a target for attack. • A grocery store shelf read as the first indicator, before any headline. • Long lines, closed gas stations, questionable water - the order it arrives in. • A federal shutdown, and the people who started preparing for it early. Every clip is a real person, filmed on their own phone, in their own words. No news montages, no stock footage, no title cards. Nothing here is staged.'

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Martin Armstrong, "This Will End Badly..."

"Martin Armstrong warns of growing risks from oil prices, global conflict, rising debt, and government market intervention. He explains why geopolitical tensions could trigger major economic instability and why the debt crisis may become increasingly difficult to contain."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "Everybody Is Ripping You Off"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 9/12/26

"Everybody Is Ripping You Off"

"Everybody is ripping you off - and in this video, I show you exactly what that looks like. A Kentucky bank manager is accused of taking $335,182 from customers, while an Orange County high school football booster club treasurer is accused of misappropriating $411,761 and allegedly using some of the money to pay personal expenses. We also look at how much of our personal information is being collected and sold by data brokers, and why protecting your identity and privacy matters. Plus, I explain what you need to know about illegal streaming boxes, copyrighted movies and sports, the NFL, Netflix, UFC and the growing crackdown on unauthorized streaming. And then there is the story that really got me: a St. Louis postal carrier accused of throwing away approximately 30,000 pieces of mail over a period of years. That mail allegedly included checks, bills, tax documents, medical correspondence, financial information and government correspondence. These stories may look completely different, but they all come down to one thing: TRUST. Whether it's your money, your personal information, your entertainment, or your mail, you have to pay attention to what is happening around you. Check your bank statements, protect your personal information, and don't assume that illegal streaming is harmless or that nobody knows what you're doing online."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Judge Napolitano, "INTEL Roundtable w/Larry Johnson & 9/11 Whistleblower Coleen Rowley"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 9/11/26

"INTEL Roundtable w/Larry Johnson & 

9/11 Whistleblower Coleen Rowley"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Alert! Total Destruction in Saudi Arabia, It's Really, Really Bad. The Real War Starts Soon"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 9/11/26I

"Alert! Total Destruction in Saudi Arabia,

 It's Really, Really Bad. The Real War Starts Soon"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"The Shortage Of Everything Is Coming And It's Scary"

Full screen recommended.

Epic Economist, 9/11/26

"The Shortage Of Everything Is Coming And It's Scary"

"A shortage used to be one thing at a time. One shelf, one season, one story you heard about for a week and then forgot. Not anymore. This is one month, sixty-seven different places, and the same sentence at every counter: we do not have it, and we do not know when. Put them side by side and the pattern comes up out of the floor. Not one of these people is describing a panic. Every single one of them is describing an ordinary day where one specific thing was not there. That is what a shortage actually is. Not crowds and stripped aisles - a gap, in one place, that somebody local has to stand there and explain to a stranger: a stocker, a pharmacist, a rancher, a manager who knows exactly which truck did not come. And every one of those gaps was decided years ago, somewhere else, by somebody who is not in the story. A herd sold off in a drought, and a cow takes two years to make a cow. A generic nobody wants to manufacture anymore because the margin is gone. A definition that lets the government say there is no shortage, while not one pharmacy within driving distance of you has it on the shelf. None of it was announced. It reaches you as a sign taped to a shelf, and an employee apologizing for a company that never told them either. That is why Americans have stopped waiting for anyone to make it official, and started preparing on their own."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jeremiah Babe, "We're About To Witness A Crisis: $10 A Gallon Diesel"

Jeremiah Babe, 9/11/26

"We're About To Witness A Crisis: 

$10 A Gallon Diesel"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/