Coda

So I tried to read "Origins: How the Earth Shaped Earth History" (2018) by Lewis Dartnell. It was hard, and after a while, I started skimming some chapters rather than reading them in detail. This boring tome must be the ultimate nerd book! Think geology, plate tectonics, meteorology, palentology...you get the picture. But OK, I did glean some interesting facts from it. And if you are a nerd, well, you know what to do... 

The book is a "deeper" version of Jared Diamond´s popular "Guns, Germs and Steel" (1997). Unless I´m mistaken (I haven´t re-read Diamond for years), that book dealt with the impact of post-Ice Age geography on human history (and some of the pre-history). Dartnell takes us all the way back to the formation of the Earth about four billion years ago, and discusses how humanity, including modern civilization, is profoundly shaped by geological events that took place hundreds of millions of years ago. If they had been different, so would our civilization, or even our species! Perhaps we wouldn´t have existed at all...

The most obvious example is that the Industrial Revolution is dependent on the existence of abundant fossil fuels: coal, oil and gas. All three were formed by very specific geological processes. The coal deposits were mostly formed during the Carboniferous (hence its name), while the oil and gas is from the "Age of the Dinosaurs". The geology, the climate and the chemistry were exactly right during these periods, and (mostly) wrong during other eons. The abundance of iron ore is also the result of mostly unique mechanisms during a specific geological period. Without iron, the Iron Age would have been impossible. Iron is of course important for our industrial civilization, too. 

The climate is heavily influenced by the so-called Milankovic cycles, which are "cosmic" in nature, but also by plate tectonics. The short story is that our present geological epoch, the Quarternary, is an "ice age" during which temperatures on average are lower than usual during Earth history. Periods of glaciation and dry conditions alternate with interglacials when the ice recedes and leave room for an abundance of animals and plants (and rainfall), but still not at too high temperatures. We are at present in one such interglacial, the Holocene. Due to plate tectonics (more land on the northern hemisphere than on the southern), the climate has been unusually stable during the past 11,000 years, creating conditions for agriculture and civilization-building, which didn´t exist before that time. Plate tectonics also cause certain regions to have better arable land (and larger rivers) than others. Unfortunately, they are often volcanic regions, as well! Which explains why humans often settle uncomfortably close to volcanoes...

Geography and climate explains why Eurasia has been split (until the early modern period) between nomadic peoples at the great steppes of the hinterland, and agricultural ditto (and their high cultures) at the "periphery". Constant wars between these two groups raged for millennia. One of many reasons for the decline and fall of the West Roman Empire (and the contretemps of the Eastern one) were climatic changes in Inner Asia, which forced the Huns to leave their original territory for literally greener pastures, leading to a huge chain reaction, as the Huns were forcing the Germanic tribes to move even further west, eventually all colliding with the Romans. It´s also interesting to note that the horse evolved in North America, and migrated to Eurasia thanks to the same land bridge humans used to get in the opposite direction, the land bridge being the result of the "last Ice Age". Horses then died out in America, but have played a central role in Eurasian history... 

Other intriguing questions answered by geography, climate and geology include the longevity and relative stability of Egyptian civilization, why the Egyptians usually didn´t attempt to create vast empires, or why they were land-lubbers. The author also points out that the European distribution of varieties of Christianity to a great extent follow the Roman borders, which in turn are geographical. Danube functioned as a de facto natural border between the West and East Roman Empires, and its interesting to note that Catholicism is dominant in the west, and Orthodoxy in the east. Protestantism primarily exists north of the Danube and beyond the Rhine - areas usually outside Roman control.  

At times, the author probably goes too far (capitalism supposedly emerged in the Netherlands because of the area´s geology) or seems to have forgotten certain salient facts of history (you know, like Tenochtitlan being much larger than most European cities, or Cortes needing the support of thousands of Native troops). And what about the Barbary States? Didn´t they thrive on the southern shores of the Mediterranean? Dartnell believes in fusion power (sic) and seems to think that somehow this exotic form of energy (which is, ahem, geologically impossible) can save us from man-made climate change! 

That being said, I did get some personal insights from "Origins". For instance, the cold or unstable climate during "the last Ice Age" probably made it impossible to create a high culture during that period (which must be based either on agriculture or an abundant and stable hunter-gatherer food base). Goodbye to Atlantis and Lemuria! The author believes that it was easier to sail to America from the Spanish-controlled Canary Islands than from the Portuguese-controlled Azores, due to wind and sea currents, which probably means that Columbus really did reach America before the Portuguese (although I suppose it´s still possible that the latter could have sailed to Newfoundland through a northern route). 

But above all, the book is profoundly humbling. It shows that our species, and its fantastic modern civilization (only about 300 years old), need not have existed at all. Yes, we are "ingenious", we have "progress", and so forth, but the preconditions for these things are geological processes which, for all we know, could have been different. Our technological progress could have come to a grinding halt 300 years ago. The horse might not have existed. Agriculture might not have been possible. All Earth could have been a gigantic hot swampland inhabited by really bizarre creatures (but no humans). Or our planet could have belonged to archeobacteria, or experienced *constant* mass extinction events, or...

Dartnell claims that, paradoxically, man-made climate change might actually be a good thing, since it has cancelled the next Ice Age, if we could only get those fusion reactors online! However, I suspect what will really happen (if current climate models are correct) is that global warming will destroy modern civilization, and when the climate cycle reverts to normal, a new Ice Age will wipe out the reminder of the human race, except maybe some peculiar tribe in a refugium, which could perhaps prepare the next origins...

Serving two masters

I haven´t written that much about MLM on this blog, but I long suspected that this particular "business" often functions as a kind of quasi-religion. 

Clearly, I didn´t know half of it.

It seems that some MLM networks *are* religions sensu stricto. If they serve God or Mammon (or even Satan) is another question entirely! 

That´s all, folks!

Credit: Roman Pilipey/European Pressphoto Agency

World War III? 

EU member countries in talks to supply Ukraine with jet fighters

Den nationella rörelsens fall?

Vår ofrivillige grannbloggare (Hübinette förstås) fortsätter att gotta sig... 

Kommer Rysslands invasion av Ukraina 2022 bli en repris på Tysklands invasioner 1939?

Vem borde egentligen känna skam idag?

Krigförande part?

Sveriges beslut att skicka vapen till Ukraina fyra dagar efter att Ryssland invaderat kan tolkas på två sätt. Antingen som en idiotisk symbolhandling. Eller på fullaste allvar. 

Om det sistnämnda, är det ett vansinnigt beslut...om inte Sverige har fått *väldigt* trovärdiga säkerhetsgarantier från NATO. (Och kanske även då.) 

Alltså borde Magdalena Andersson få frågan i riksdagen imorgon vilka säkerhetsgarantier NATO har gett Sverige i händelse av ryskt angrepp. 

Ärligt talat är beslutet häpnadsväckande. 

Meanwhile in Grozny

 

"You know, Ramzan, you are creating trouble for me. I have to make the Alt Right think I´m the savior of the West and all that"

"Don´t worry, Vlad, if I could trick the Western liberals to support me when the Chechens were still fighting Russia, I can sure as hell trick the Nazis into supporting me now!" 

Tondöva Mello

SVT:s tondövhet är nästan underhållande, och detta av två skäl. För det första: SVT är såklart inte opartiskt när det gäller Ryssland och Ukraina. För det andra: Eurovision Song Contest har varit pro-ukrainskt och anti-ryskt sedan åtminstone Kiev 2005. Lillasyster fick säkert idén från det norska bandet Wig Wam som kuppade in en gigantisk orange sjal i sitt framförande det året (en symbol för den anti-ryska orangea revolutionen). Slutsats: SVT är autister. 

SVT:s hårda ord efter Lillasysters Ukraina-utspel

TILLÄGG: Mello pudlar. 

Melodifestivalchefen pudlar efter Ukraina-kommentar

Facing down World War III

 

Marmelad till brödet

Vår ofrivilliga grannblogg gottar sig i högerpopulismens kovändning efter att Putte ballat och faktiskt ingripit militärt-tekniskt i Lillryssland, förlåt, Ukraina. 

Historielösheten hos den här snubben är nästan underhållande. Tror han verkligen att den auktoritära nationalismen är uträknad på något sätt? Det är nog vänsterradikaler som stödjer globo-kapitalismen som satsar på "fel häst". Lite för mycket 1989-eufori á la "historiens slut" över det här inlägget...

"Nu överger de högerpopulistiska partierna Putin en efter en i realtid"

Entertainment Value Only

I´m sure this is some kind of teenage LARP, but come on! Note the name of the group: "Bewitch the Taliban". But sure, maybe witchcraft is the only thing that can save the DNC in the midterms, who knows...

Self-proclaimed witches want to talk some sense into Slavic War of God

Några historiska marginalia?

Vänstergruppen i EU-parlamentet (där Vänsterpartiet ingår) kräver att Ryssland avbryter attacken mot Ukraina, men även att de ryska regionerna i östra Ukraina får autonomi och att NATO:s utvidgning österut stoppas. De lyfter flyktingfrågan också. 

Flamman citerar även Jean-Luc Mélanchon, förmodligen den starkaste vänsterkandidaten i Frankrikes presidentval. 

Observera att vänstergruppens uttalande inte säger någonting om sanktioner mot Ryssland! Ärligt talat undrar jag om inte Flamman övertolkar situationen. Är det inte snarast så att vänstergruppen helt enkelt försöker rädda sitt eget skinn? 

Europas vänster enigare än någonsin: "Ryssland måste dra tillbaka trupperna"

EU must show urgent solidarity with the Ukrainian people following Russian aggression

Putin´s recognition of Ukraine´s regions a burning match to the petrol barrel

Barbarians at the gates

Told you so...

This is how Putin is "saving the West". Warned about this years ago. Alt Right branch in Grozny!  

Islamist Kadyrov ready to unleash thousands of Chechen fighters on Ukraine for Putin

Rubriken är clickbait

Håller kanske inte med om detta, men det är ett välformulerat debattinlägg för svensk neutralitet. Sedan kan man ju ha invändningar rörande historietolkningen: Bernadotte stödde faktiskt Rysslands krig mot Napoleon, et cetera.  

"Jag hade fel om Ryssland"

Remember the Revolution

Viktor Orbán just remembered who invaded Hungary in 1848 and 1956. And, I suppose, 1945...

Orbán pledges support for Russia´s disconnection from SWIFT

Ökänd multi-vektoralist svänger

Fin kille igen?

Orban pledges support for Russia ´s disconnection from SWIFT 

Titta vem som ändrat sig i frågan om Swiftsanktioner (på engelska eftersom jag inte hittar nyheten på svenska just nu). Det här är vintage Östeuropa, LOL. Är väl rädd för att förlora valet också, senare i år...

Earlier than you think

The cartefacts are increasing...

This is from 2017, but somehow I managed to miss it! 

A 130,000-year old mastodon threaten to upend human history

Vår "av-putinisering" och deras

 

"Ers majestät, Expressens krönikör vill att Sverige ska av-putinifieras! Ni måste tillbaka!"

"Var inte orolig, min käre Mazepa, när jag landstiger i Stockholm kommer det definitivt att bli en av-putinisering. Om Expressen gillar min version av denna excellenta politik, låter jag däremot vara osagt!"  

The irony is palpable

Yesterday, a Swedish reporter marooned in Moscow gave the following report on the situation in the Russian capital. A lot of anti-war protesters have been arrested by the police, the protests broken up rather brutally. Also, there is censorship on the web. For instance, Estonian TV have been banned from the Russian airwaves. Everyone who doesn´t follow the line of the regime risks repressive sanctions.

Undoubtedly true. And disturbing. And scandalous. Of course!

There is just one little problem.

Are there *some other* nations in the world where protests have been violently suppressed by a brutal police force? Where alternative viewpoints are censored on the web? Where the government goes after you, if you "spread misinformation" on social media platforms? Indeed, where elected officials are banned from such platforms, and (who knows) maybe even elections are rigged? 

Well, I don´t know. But I certainly heard, shall we say, rumours that such things are prone to happen in places like the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom...

I´ve even heard whispers about state of emergencies that lasted for two years, and government-approved stormtroopers and lumpen gangs roving the streets looking for people with the wrong kind of texts on their T-shirts.

Is it as bad as Putin´s Russia? Or as Kiev under Russian bombardment? Of course not. But at least now we know where "they" got the idea from! 

Ukraine is fucked

Those were the days...

I think it´s obvious that Ukraine is fucked. Not to put too fine spin on it. The United States and NATO are not going to intervene militarily to stop Putin´s full scale invasion. And the sanctions? Probably a joke. Biden said explicitly that the US are *not* going to sanction Russian oil. And oil prices are extremely high at the moment. Nor will Russia be excluded from the international SWIFT system, since the Western nations want to get payments for their exports! Russia will simply wait out the sanctions. If Ukraine surrenders relatively quickly, every globalist leech will try to crawl back to Kiev (or even Moscow) ASAP, the Germans will want to resume Nordstream 2, and so on. There will be mounting political pressure to lift most of the sanctions and accept the Finlandization of Ukraine as a fait accompli. So I think Natasha Russian Propaganda (or whatever her name was) will be able to resume her shopping rounds at Fifth Avenue, buy a house at Nice, and so on...

What, then, is the goal of the US in the present conflict? Obviously not to save the Ukraine. I assume the goal is to re-unite NATO and EU under US leadership ("America is back"). A new Cold War with Russia could be used to accomplish this. Germany and France must be made to fall in line, and the same is true of the various "East" European nations. It would certainly be a big prize for the US if Sweden and Finland joined NATO. 

If the Biden Administration (which doesn´t scare anyone, certainly not after the debacle in Afghanistan) can really accomplish this, remains to be seen. I suspect the answer is "no". For the reasons mentioned above. And perhaps a few others (fall out from the COVID crisis, the economic crisis, and so on). 

One thing that could upset everyone´s applecarts would be if the Ukrainians refuse to surrender, and start an armed uprising of some sort against Russian occupation forces and/or a quisling (or is it Kuusinen) regime in Kiev. Such a resistance could perhaps get support from dissident establishment factions in the West. What happens next, nobody knows.

One thing is for sure: Ukraine is geopolitically cursed, so unless Russia simply collapses in a new "time of troubles", this conflict will continue in various ways throughout our respective lives...  

The fringe of the surrey

 

"What the Spartacist League Really Stands For. A Self-Exposure by James Robertson (The Speech the SL Wouldn´t Print)" is a classic pamphlet by the otherwise mostly unknown Communist (T) Cadre (CTC). The pamphlet was probably published in 1977. 

Yes, we are in the murky demimonde of intra-mural Trotskyist polemics. While the CTC must have been an extremely small group, the other groups mentioned in the pamphlet weren´t particularly large or influential either, although the Spartacist League was notorious on the American far left (and occasionally outside it). In January 1977, the leader of the Spartacists, James Robertson, gave a public presentation in New York City titled "Towards the Rebirth of the Fourth International". While most of the speech was frankly boring and very "political" (judging by the excerpts published in this pamphlet), Robertson did say things which raised the eyebrows of two other Trotskyist groups present at the show, the League for the Revolutionary Party (LRP) and the already mentioned CTC. When the Spartacist League refused to publish a transcript of Robertson´s speech, CTC decided to do so themselves (they had tape recorded the presentation and the debate following it). Or rather extended excerpts from it. The LRP had already published their own account of the fracas. For years afterwards, Robertson´s scandalous speech was notorious among small Trotskyist groups all over the world. I´ve heard from an ex-Spartacist in Sweden that Robertson was drunk as a skunk during his presentation, and that he hardly showed himself in public after the 1977 debacle! 

What went wrong? Many things, but what most upset the non-Spartacist auditorium was Robertson´s blatant racism and chauvinism. This from a guy who claimed to be some kind of revolutionary internationalist Marxist. Most blatantly, Robertson referred to Albanians as "goat-fuckers" (strictly speaking, he claimed that Marx had done so) in order to poke fun at the Maoists who believed that Enver Hoxha´s Stalinist regime in Albania had something important to say. 

However, other ethnicities didn´t fare much better. The Greeks survive by "exporting their sons and selling expensive wrist-watches to each other". (However, Robertson believes that Athens is nevertheless "a big step up" compared to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem!) North European workers aren´t revolutionary since "North Europe is dripping with fat". Immigrant guestworkers aren´t revolutionary either. "When they are deported, they scream for the popular front". The US defeat in Vietnam isn´t important, since "not many people live in Indochina" (!). Blacks in the United States (in 1977, the Spartacist leader still calls them "Negroes") are reverse racists and want to kill Jewish shopkeepers, and this attitude is common even among the Black supporters of the Spartacist League. Blacks are also stupid, since they burned down their own ghettoes and now wait for the Jews to come back and rebuild them! 

But then, many White leftists also fall short of Robertson´s high standards. The official Fourth International mostly picks up hippies, and at one point, Robertson even implies that the membership of his own organization is "a big pile of shit". So they must have been, since the Spartacists in the audience laughed and clapped every time Robertson made a disparaging remark about non-Anglo ethnics, most of the roaring laughter coming during his remarks about Albanian bestiality. 

As Communist Cadre points out, Robertson´s remarks weren´t some kind of personal idiosyncrasy, but connected to Spartacist League politics on a deep level. Perhaps uniquely on the left, Spartacist defended the right of national self-determination of *all* peoples, including groups usually considered colonial settlers, such as the Boer in South Africa. They also defended the national self-determination of Israelis and Northern Ireland Protestants (not entirely uniquely, but almost). The Spartacist feared the "genocidal" nationalism of the oppressed, in effect painting the Third World as a gigantic whirlpool of reactionary tribalism, with one ethnicity constantly replacing the other as "the oppressor". Thus, Greeks and Turks were fighting it out on Cyprus, Turks and Armenians in Anatolia, Bengalis and Biharis in East Pakistan, pretty much everyone in Lebanon, and so on. And perhaps Blacks and Jews in the New York City ghetto? 

Rather than drawing the conclusion that *all* nationalism is therefore reactionary (the anarchist and ultraleft take), the Spartacist League de facto took the "right-wing" position that certain currently dominant groups have the right of self-determination already under capitalism, these dominant groups always being the most "Westernized" and "modern" ones. (Nominally, the Spartacist tendency does say that if two peoples are "interpenetrated", none of them can lay claim to national self-determination under capitalism, but their *actual* position is that some of them really can - the ones the Sparts deem rational enough not to go on a killing spree in the ghetto.) 

This went hand in hand with a generally Anglo-centric view of the world and the revolutionary struggle, clearly visible in Robertson´s speech, where all the important action takes place either in the United States or in the United Kingdom (which apparently isn´t "dripping with fat" in the same way as Scandinavia and Germany). The sole exception to the rule is Japan, which Robertson analyzed extensively (in contrast to irrelevant little Indochina), obviously because it´s the most modern Asian nation. Perhaps there is another exception, too, but in the opposite direction: Anglophone Canada, which the Spartacist leader simply writes off as "the fringe of the surrey" (the irony is palpable). Bizarrely, Robertson even asserts that the United States is the only nation in the world with a continuous revolutionary Trotskyist tradition *thanks to stable US bourgeois democracy*! Funny Lenin made it under conditions of Czarist illegality...

On another point, the CTC analysis was soon proven wrong. The CTC identified with the Marcy-Copeland Tendency, something as peculiar as a pro-Stalinist Trotskyist current (you heard me). It´s main organizational expression in the United States was and is the Workers World Party (WWP), founded by Sam Marcy, a defector from the more properly Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Outside the WWP were a couple of small and ultra-obscure groups which tried to be "more Marcyite than Marcy", among them the CTC. Naturally, the CTC attack Robertson for not being pro-Stalinist, even calling him a "neo-Shachtmanite". Max Shachtman was another defector from the SWP, but in the exact opposite direction compared to Marcy, charging the Trotskyist movement for not being anti-Stalinist enough. 

The litmus test for all these groups came in 1956 when the Hungarians rose in rebellion against the local Stalinist regime and the Soviet Union. Marcy supported the Soviets, arguing that the Hungarian uprising was counter-revolutionary. The SWP, Robertson and (unsurprisingly) Shachtman supported the Hungarian rebels. To the CTC, which upheld Marcy´s position, this was Robertson´s original political sin. The CTC thus predicted that Robertson would soon evolve in an even more anti-Stalinist direction. They weren´t *entirely* out of their league, since Robertson´s peculiar speech only mentioned two Communist regimes, Albania and Vietnam, and then only to disparage them. However, Robertson´s actual trajectory turned out to be the exact opposite: around 1980, the Spartacist League became almost as pro-Stalinist as the Marcyites. Still, it´s interesting to note that the object of their Stalinophile appetites was the modern White European-dominated Soviet Union, rather than China, Vietnam, North Korea or Albania (or even Cuba). The LRP, the other small group present at the meeting, believed that the Spartacists were really yearning for a Sovietized America, hence in some sense still being Anglo-chauvinists. 

The Spartacist League and the LRP still exist, but their websites are seldom updated anymore. There is, however, a kind of neo-Spartacist League in the form of the Internationalist Group, led by Robertson´s lieutenant Jan Norden (who had a fall out with the líder maximo circa 1996). The SWP and WWP are still around, too. The CTC has long disappeared. I´ve heard from a reputable source that the "T" in their abbreviation stands for "Trotsky", but usually the group´s name is spelled out "Communist Cadre", although "Communist T Cadre" is actually used at the front page of this pamphlet. I found it intriguing that the CTC, despite their highly sectarian nature, don´t sound completely insane. In fact, they come across as more politically serious than Robertson, whose speech is frequently rambling or just plain weird. 

With that observation, I close this admittedly somewhat esoteric discussion. 

Revelation on the road to Ottawa

The original social-Trudeauite as a baby

Latest gossip from the Trotskyist fringe. The post-Robertsonite Spartacist League goes full Strasser here. Both hits and major misses in these frankly rather confused statements from their Canadian affiliate, the Trotskyist League (really just the Spartacist station on the fringe of the surrey). 

"Labor must defend the truckers"

"Socialist" Fightback: Social-Trudeauites

Sermon

Christian apologists claim that you can´t live a meaningful life without God. Atheists of course beg to differ. After all, *they* live meaningful lives so what´s the problem? But on this point, I think the apologists have a point. Not only are the atheists being philosophically inconsistent (no terrible crime, in my opinion). Virtually all atheists believe in a form of atheism according to which the universe must cater to *their* specific subjective preferences. Isn´t that strange?

Remember, most atheists are materialists and reject teleology. Evolution isn´t goal-directed, and so on. It´s driven by a combination of brute necessity and random chance. In other words, a completely blind process. And yet, this blind brutality *always* leads to the outcome desired by the particular atheist making the claim that of course everything is just blind. I could name names, but this isn´t intended as a personal polemic. Libertarian atheists always end up with a human nature that´s essentially libertarian. Victorian gentlemen atheists end up with a human nature that´s quintessentially British. Socialist atheists end up with an inevitable historical dialectic pointing towards a classless society. Atheists who shout at the top of their lungs that the cosmos is meaningless and that only infinite time and chance can lead to outcomes desired by someone somewhere at some planet, neverthless find themselves living at exactly the random moment in time (and at the right planet) when the outcome desired by *them* unfolds right in front of their very noses (utterly blindly, of course). Isn´t that strange? 

There are only two exceptions to this rule: Charles Darwin (and he probably wasn´t consistent on this point) and Richard Dawkins. Yet, even Dawkins has a crypto-teleological loophole in his theories: the evolution of evolvability. Perhaps crypto-left-Labourites are inevitable even on Mount Improbable? 

The plot thickens when we realize how many atheists (yes, self-avowed atheists) believe in human immortality. Even in the meaningless, pitiless, merciless existence there is always a certain chance (which becomes inevitably given enough time, or enough planets, or enough genial human ingenuity by some "Brights") that we (and they really do mean us) can experience a "singularity", download our minds into a quantum computer, upload our minds into interstellar space and become like gods, or some other goal suspiciously similar to Heaven or the Millennium of those pesky little Christian apologists. Isn´t that strange?

It´s almost as if materialist atheists don´t really believe that there could be any meaning in a blind materialist universe...

And they are right, of course. A reductionist must claim that our deep-seated feelings of meaning and meaninglessness (the latter impossible without the former, nota bene) are just irrational hot air caused by misfiring neurons, or some kind of really elaborate self-deception that arose through blind natural selection to make us cope with brute existence. The only "meaning" we can possible experience is related to food, shelter, sexual release, and other reductively material pursuits. But this is unconvincing. First, humans obviously have needs that can´t be so reduced. And how can even the *illusion* of meaning be blindly selected for in a universe that lacks such concepts in the first place? 

Here´s a radical idea: what if beauty, love, morality and transcendence can´t be reduced to anything else, but exist in and of themselves as part of objective human nature? That´s certainly how they seem to come across. (Yes, people have different ideas about what counts as "beautiful", but the concept of "beauty" seems to be universal.) Even if we assume that these concepts are "only" intersubjective for the genus Homo, they are hard to explain simply on the basis of reductively materialist blind evolution. It´s almost as if humans evolved to adapt to a pre-existing noosphere or theosphere. Or did the noosphere-theosphere emerge from human consiocusness? That too would take a lot of explaining. Why does blind necessity and chance work like *that*? Does the blind process cancel itself, purely by chance? Or by necessity, perhaps.

Ultimately, of course, you can´t "prove" things like this philosophically. You just have to decide in practice how you want to live. Strangely, it seems easier to live as if meaning was real, than to pretend that it´s just a very elaborate illusion. It´s almost as if the Universe wants to tell us something... 

Jonna tar värvning

Ren vulgärpropaganda. Okej, vem väljer Jonna: Donald Trump eller Vladimir Putin? Trump var en folkvald president. Och nej, han gick inte i Putins ledband. Det är konspirationsteorier.

Och när det gäller folk med "nära kontakter med Putin". Vad sägs om Angela Merkel? Du vet, Jonna, den där gasledningen, vad den nu hette. Nordström? Eller socialdemokraten Gerhard Schröder, som är styrelseordförande i ett statligt ryskt gasbolag? Eller killarna i Lincoln Project (republikaner som stödde Biden)? Var inte en av dem officiellt registrerad lobbyist åt ett annat statsägt ryskt bolag inom energisektorn? 

Ska vi gå igenom vilka kapitalister och "liberaler" som haft goda relationer med Kina...?

Det, och håll käften. 

"Kristersson får Åkesssons Putinkramande på köpet"

Testa gränserna

Ukrainas moderna gränser är faktiskt en kommunistisk skapelse. Det gäller alla gamla sovjetrepubliker utom Estland, Lettland och Litauen. När Sovjetunionen upplöstes 1991 behöll de nya staterna de gamla sovjetrepublikernas gränser. Det kanske var den mest pragmatiska lösningen just då, men det orsakade även en hel del problem och konflikter. Områden med rysk befolkning hamnade plötsligt på "fel" sida nygamla gränser. Exempelvis de mångomtalade regionerna Krim, Donetsk och Luhansk. Något svenska liberaler såklart skiter i. Men ryssarna skiter inte i det. 

Och inte armenierna heller...

Rötterna till konflikten om Nagorno-Karabach går också tillbaka till Sovjets upplösning. Under den sovjetiska tiden lydde Nagorno-Karabach under den azeriska sovjetrepubliken. Den nya staten Azerbaijan fick alltså behålla Nagorno-Karabach. Problemet är att en stor del av området har armenisk befolkning. De ville tillhöra Armenien. Det tyckte Armenien också. Och då blev det krig.

Naturligtvis gäller även det motsatta: områden där det knappt bor några ryssar hamnade i Ryssland. Ett välkänt exempel är Tjetjenien. Området ville bli självständigt, men eftersom Tjetjenien inte varit en "riktig" sovjetrepublik utan sorterat under den ryska sovjetrepubliken (RSFSR) var detta omöjligt. Tjetjenien fortsatte att vara under rysk kontroll även efter kommunismens fall. När Tjetjenien trots detta utropade sin självständighet, svarade Ryssland med att bomba området tillbaka till stenåldern. 

Ovanstående är inte i sig självt ett argument för att ändra de nuvarande "sovjetiska" gränserna (även om det givetvis *kan* vara det). Det är likväl viktigt att känna till bakgrunden. Annars framstår man som ett korkat mähä som i stort sett inte fattar just någonting alls. Svenska reportrar verkar genuint förbryllade över att befolkningen i Donbass hälsade Putins erkännande av "folkrepublikerna" med att hissa ryska flaggor och smälla av fyrverkerier. De är fortfarande förvirrade över att i stort sett alla på Krim röstade för Rysslands annektering av halvön 2014. Men varför är det konstigt att ryssar vill tillhöra Ryssland? Det är väl inte konstigare än att ukrainare i allmänhet *inte* vill göra det. Eller balter. Eller tjetjener. Eller judar...

Jag tror att många förståsigpåare i Sverige fortfarande inte har förlikat sig med att de flesta i det forna östblocket faktiskt inte var goda västerländska liberaler (och absolut inte vänsterliberaler). De bara låtsades vara det så länge detta renderade dem stöd från västvärlden. I själva verket var de alltid i grunden auktoritära nationalister, religiösa konservativa, eller rena skurkar. De gillade inte judar heller. Jag är fortfarande uppriktigt förvånad över att Zelenskyj kunde bli vald till Ukrainas president. De anti-semitiska traditionerna i Ukraina har länge varit ungefär lika militanta som i Ryssland. (Zelenskyj är alltså jude.) 

Jag undrar vad som händer när den svenska medieeliten inser att ukrainarna faktiskt inte är homosexliberala Femen-aktivister med drömmar om att bli konsulter i Wärdegrund på TikTok, utan i allmänhet är grekisk-katoliker med en märklig fixering vid "språket" (ja, detta märkliga "språk" som underligt nog har något med nationell identitet att göra, tänka sig). Förmodligen händer just ingenting alls, eftersom de fortfarande inte kommer att gilla Putte. Vilket jag inte tenderar att göra heller. Fast bakom kulisserna kan moralpaniken ju bli riktigt, riktigt intressant...

Welcome to the real world, Neo! 

En resa till Gårdarike

Lyssnade just på Carl Bildts dumheter i TV-Aktuellt. I själva verket har Putte en poäng när han säger att Ukraina är en skapelse av "det kommunistiska Ryssland". Ukrainas gränser *är* nämligen kommunistiska. De är den ukrainska sovjetrepublikens gamla gränser. Vilket Bildt förstås vet. Ukrainas nuvarande gränser växte fram under Lenin, Stalin och Chrusjtjov. Det är ett faktum. När Ukraina blev självständigt 1991 hamnade miljoner ryssar (inte "rysktalande" utan just ryssar) på fel sida gränsen. Carl Bildt är kanske en sann europé, men de flesta ryssar i Ukraina skulle nog hellre vilja tillhöra Ryssland. Sedan kan man naturligtvis anse att detta av realpolitiska skäl är omöjligt, men det är en annan sak. (Jämför Sudetlandet på 1930-talet, som var bebott av "tysktalande", men av realpolitiska skäl likväl inte borde ha införlivats med Tredje Riket.) 

Problemet med Putins tal är att han de facto verkar förnekar ukrainarnas rätt till nationellt självbestämmande över huvud taget. Vilket givetvis är absurt. Kievrus grundades av skandinaviska vikingar. Det är anakronistiskt att kalla (det senare) Kievrus för den första ryska statsbildningen. Man skulle lika gärna kunna kalla den för den första ukrainska statsbildningen! Fast det vore lika anakronistiskt. Putin vill återupprätta det gamla ryska imperiet. Eller ska vi säga muskovitiska imperiet? 

Sedan är det närmast underhållande vilka oskulder svenska journalister verkar vara när det gäller nationalism. "Putin betonar språket, det handlar om språket, språket, hur kan man tro att alla med samma språk är samma sak, sprrrååååket". Suck. Ja, jag vet inte, läs en historiebok någon gång. Gärna med betoning på 1800-talet och det tidiga 1900-talet. Whatever. Hint: nej, det handlar faktiskt inte bara om "språket"... 

Men okej, nog med nördiga akademiska radanmärkningar för den här gången...

This is science

Feminism 2022. This will simply continue until the main-stream feminist movement wakes up. Which they probably won´t. Therefore, transgenderism will only be abolished by fascism. Which will simply reimpose the usual kind of patriarchy... 

California "Science" Camp

Transgender man beats women

Nurses fired for questioning transgender policies

Twin world

 

"Cosmic Front: Saturn´s Moon Titan - Another Earth?" is a 2012 documentary about Titan, Saturn´s largest moon (and the second largest moon in the solar system). Titan turns out to be a highly anomalous planetary satellite. It has a dense atmosphere, and large lakes of liquid methane have been discovered at its icy surface. The moon has seasonal variations in weather patterns, clouds, haze and heavy rains. Volcanoes are believed to spew out a mixture of water and ammonia. Apparently, ammonia-rich water can stay liquid at extremely low temperatures. Scientists theorize that an underground ocean exist below Titan´s ice crust. As far as I understand, Titan is unique among moons in having a "real" atmosphere, and at least in 2012, Titan was the only object in the solar system apart from Earth where liquids had been found. 

Even more sensational, Titan may harbor life. While no evidence for such exists (yet at least), organic compounds of various kinds are constantly being produced in the moon´s upper atmosphere. Scientists believe that the sand on Titan´s surface consist of organic compounds. During experiments made on Earth simulating the conditions at Titan, all four nucleobases needed for DNA were created. The speculation is that organisms resembling archaea (archaebacteria) could live on Titan. An exobiologist interviewed wonder aloud if these could be big and flat, despite being unicellular! But could any living being really survive on Titan?

The documentary makes a little detour through Trinidad (here on Earth), where there is a large natural deposite of asphalt, known as Pitch Lake. About 600 new kinds of archaea have been found in the asphalt, despite the fact that it contains almost no water. The microorganism sustain themselves on methane. And methane is abundant on Titan. However, the docu never explains how these life forms could thrive at Titan´s extremely low temperatures between minus 100 and 180 degrees Celsius. 

Most of our knowledge about Titan is due to the 1997-2004 (unmanned) Cassini-Huygens mission. The probe Huygens (named after the astronomer who discovered Titan back in 1655) penetrated the moon´s dense atmosphere and eventually landed on the surface. It picked up the sound of the wind in Titan´s atmosphere - the first sounds ever recorded from an alien environment. Huygens also took the first and only photo of Titan´s surface, showing it to be a desert-like icy landscape with large chunks of "stone". 

The documentary is somewhat boring at times, and the background music is terrible, but you may nevertheless learn a thing or two if you watch all of it. And if there really is some kind of weird life form on Titan, it is probably safe from our prying eyes, being ensconced in an underground ocean on a moon that takes seven years to reach, and then only with unmanned probes...

We will never know the truth about our twin world. 

Inget fel på appen

Faktiskt ganska underhållande att så många tror att tråkmånsen Lisa Miskovsky skulle ha fått fler röster bland tonåringar och unga vuxna än trans-soj-pojkarna Tribe Friday. Självklart är det tvärtom. Kul diversion från krisen i Ukraina...  

Melodifestivalen bla bla bla

Straffrabatt för sexköp, alltså

Credit: Greg Hume 

Glömde nästan bort att Miljöpartiet fortfarande sitter i riksdagen. Whatever. Vi slipper dem senare i höst!

"Sexköp ska dömas som våldtäkt"

Mitt tal till nationen

Både "Ryssland", "Belarus" och "Ukraina" är artificiella skapelser av bolsjevismen. Ukraina är den första skandinaviska statsbildningen i historien. Kievrus är vårt moderland. 

Ja, Roslagens naturliga sydgräns går vid Svarta Havet. 

Därför erkänner jag Gammalsvenskbys självständighetsförklaring och kommer att skicka fredsbevarande vikingar och väringar till Republiken Nya Sverige!  

Only got half of it

This was written by a guy who is supposed to have an IQ of 200. Since my IQ is 100, I obviously only got half of it, but it seems to be another version of neo-Hinduism. Some of the concepts are similar to Brahman and Shakti. 

The inventor of CTMU, Chris Langan, tries to synthesize this more pantheist conception with theism and even something that sounds like...I don´t know...cyberpunk, the quest for AI, or something like that? 

Langan is popular on the alt-right, we are direly warned by Wikipedia. Just so you know! 

I may or may not return to this problematique in the future. Haven´t yet recursively self-configured my élan vital... 

The Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe

Putin recognizes Donetsk and Luhansk

 

Putin recognizes that he really does control Donetsk and Luhansk (since 2014). 

Book of the Year?

Credit: Calebrw

Hillary Clinton supposedly wrote a crime novel... 

Hillary Clinton tries her hand at a thriller in new novel

Goryeo Supremacy

 

Credit: Steve 46814

God is an old, bearded *Korean* man. There! 

Rainbow Warrior

 

This is supposedly an authentic Native American prophecy, revealed in 1986 by Lee Brown at the Continental Indigenous Council in Alaska. It was recently reposted at a YouTube channel of a New Age-conspiracy-libertarian bent. 

Some quick research on the web reveals that the prophecy is fake, or at the very least not American Indian. Nor does it reveal anything about "our own time" (presumably the early 21st century). The prophecy is supposedly very ancient and was revealed for the first time during the 1960´s, but since nobody seems to have heard about it before 1986, its predictions about a manned mission to the Moon and similar things, can´t be checked. Its future predictions are about a coming thermonuclear war. It´s at least implied that it could take place during the 1990´s. Of course, World War III was on everybody´s mind during the Cold War II of the 1980´s. Why doesn´t the prophecy say anything about COVID, climate change, the Ukraine crisis or Donald Trump? Instead, it mentions the Iran-Iraq War which was in the news at the time the message was given...

I don´t know who Lee Brown is. On old web forums from circa 2005 he is described as a Cherokee resident in Washington State or British Columbia. His prophecy is usually described as Hopi (a completely different Native people), but is also included on obscure websites about Cherokee prophecies. It is obviously nothing of the sort, since it contains near-explicit references to the Bahai faith. The Bahai, a peculiar religious group originally from Iran, have evangelized heavily at American Indian reservations. One of their websites confirms that Brown is a convert. The Bahai have an apocalyptic perspective and have apparently used the "Rainbow Warrior legend" in their missionary outreach to Natives. This "legend" (from the 1950´s) states that the four main races will be reunited in North America at the end of days. It was originally used or even invented by Christian missionaries. Mormons have also used it. 

In Lee Brown´s version, the White race are "the people of the North" and "the people of Baha" (sic) who will bring their "fire" to the American Indians. (In some versions of Brown´s speech, all references to Bahai have been excised.) There are also hidden references to Theosophy (or perhaps Max Heindel´s form of Rosicrucianism) in the "prophecy". I´m refering to the claim about different "cycles": spirit, mineral, plant, animal, human. That, and Atlantis!

I´m not terribly interested in this kind of spirituality, but since the clip came up in my feed (not sure why), I decided to deconstruct it for your benefit... 

Under the heat dome

 

Science educator Sabine Hossenfelder argues that climate models often *under*estimate the frequency of extreme weather events. This suggests that AGW might be even worse than usually claimed!

Not sure if I like the implications of this...  

Genocide games

 

The official anthem of the Beijing olympic winter games 2022. Apparently, all snowflakes are part of the same big family and shine in the same way... 

The 8th Wonder of the World

"King Kong" is a film from 2005 directed by Peter Jackson, and it shows! Jackson simply can´t stop rehashing his magnum opus, and this is no exception. Yes, that would be the "Lord of the Rings" (LOTR) film trilogy. "King Kong" comes across as a cross between LOTR, "Jurassic Park" and (perhaps) the original "King Kong" flick from 1933. 

The Natives on Skull Island are depicted in an incredibly racist way, and actually look like a Black African-Orch hybrid. The women and children are particularly evil. Naturally, they offer the White heroine as sacrifice to the island´s murderous "god", the super-sized gorilla King Kong. Meanwhile, the rescue team have to fight off the inevitable Deinonychi and Tyrannosaurs, not to mention flying orchs (vampire bats?) and assorted evolutionary cousins to Shelob. Kong himself also takes on the T-Rexes in this far too long production (three hours - think LOTR again). Despite the extensive running time, Jackson never explains what happens to the Skull Islanders after their (de facto botched) human sacrifice. They are nowhere to be seen for the rest of the film. 

White Woman naturally falls in love with her gorillid captor, and their later reunion during Christmas season in New York City is something to behold. As always, the story ends with "The 8th Wonder of the World" being killed by a surprisingly primitive US military ontop the Empire State Building. The entire film feels ultimately pointless, but I suppose it could appeal to people who like some kind of early 1930´s retro-nostalgia. 

Can´t say this version of the gorilla scare moved me, although I did get vertigo during the last part of the flick! Now, we would all like to see Peter Jackson making a film based on..."Beowulf". LOL. 

Where´s the flux?

 

Another Sabine Hohenstaufen extravaganza. This time she takes on my favorite alternative claim: that the mysterious object with the "woke" name ´Oumuamua was an alien space probe. Apparently, it was just a big shitty chunk of nitrogen?! 

Alien nitrogen, hopefully. 

Other claims debunked in the clip are the canali on Mars, the little green men who turned out to be a pulsar, and...the ridiculous "Dyson sphere" which people take seriously only because Progress is their Religion (but since Dyson spheres are "material", that somehow makes them alright). 

Nothing about Roswell, Mothman or the Jersey Devil, but maybe next time? 

It´s official: Reality does exist (thank´s for noticing)

 

Posted this weekend. Best take down of quantum mechanics I´ve seen. And yes, the crazy German lady in ze klipp is a quantum physicist herself. She sounds more "realist" here than in the contribution I linked to earlier (see "Do Mach and Avenarius exist?"). Now, if QM elite scientists can be so full of shite, why should we believe the rest of science is so damn unproblematic? 

This weekend in shit

Lustigt att sossarna vill stänga gränsen när vita européer med giltiga asylskäl knackar på dörren. Ironiskt nog verkar SD dock ha samma linje... 

Sverige tänker inte ta emot ukrainska flyktingar

Under tiden i USA. Trolling? 

Gejmingprofil identifierar sig som svart

Det finns ingen somalisk kultur. Det finns bara kultur i Somalia. Det finns ingen aboriginsk kultur. Det finns bara kultur i Nordterritoriet. Det finns ingen samisk kultur. Det finns bara kultur i någon jävla lappmark. Det finns absolut ingen judisk eller romsk kultur, det finns bara kultur i ghettot och tattarstan.

Eller nej? 

"Det finns kultur i Sverige"

Northites: From provocation to parody

I didn´t realize David North´s dwindling band of faithless fighters were *so* pro-Russian and pro-Chinese. The logic of their position seems to dictate "military support" to Russia and the PRC in the event of a shooting war with the US. Here, the Northites sound almost like the Spartacist League circa 1984, those peddlers of parody Soviet propaganda! 

"The vicious US media campaign against Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva"

Huston´s hummingbird

Huston Smith is a "soft" Traditionalist and perennialist who is mostly known for his book "The World´s Religions", a best seller in its day which was also widely used as a school textbook in the United States. "Forgotten Truth: The Common Vision of the World´s Religions" (first published in 1976) has been marketed as a sequel to "The World´s Religions" (at least in its 1992 incarnation), but is really nothing of the kind. Rather, it´s Huston Smith´s personal statement of belief. Nothing wrong with that, per se, but as a good perennialist, Smith of course claims that his take on Traditionalism is the hidden kernel of all religions. 

"Forgotten Truth" comes across as a peculiar combination of standard Trinitarian Christianity and Advaita Vedanta (or something close to it). Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Platonism and Native American spirituality are also referenced. Without attribution, there are a few borrowings from Theosophy. It´s almost fascinating how seamlessly the author navigates the diverse religious landscape as if it were a unified whole. Of course, he also quotes various Traditionalist writers. The book contains an appendix with the very 1970´s title "The Psychedelic Evidence", discussing Stanislav Grof´s research into LSD as evidence for the objective reality of the soul and the spiritual realm. (It´s a public secret of sorts that Smith was a buddy of Aldous Huxley and probably "tripped" together with him.) Incidentally, this isn´t necessarily intended as criticism. While "Forgotten Truth" is hard to read, it´s also quite interesting...

Summarizing Huston Smith´s points is hard, but much of the book revolves around a criticism of modern science, scientism and something the author calls "prevolution" (progress + evolution). Smith is careful not to repudiate modernity in toto - he believes that the abolition of slavery is a good thing, for instance - but he clearly believes that the modern West have lost something very fundamental when it broke with "tradition" and embraced a fully materialist worldview. It´s time for us to "rejoin the rest of humanity". In the same vein, Smith is careful not to idealize premodern society (although he does have a soft spot for Muhammad and the Muslim empires, but also for Paleolithic hunters and gatherers). What he wants restored isn´t so much the social structures of premodernity, but the mystical religion and the idea that humanity is part of a much vaster cosmos than the physical one, a cosmos crowned by God and Infinity. That´s our true destiny.

In Smith´s theology, both the personal god of theism and the "impersonal" spirit of certain forms of Hinduism are equally real. The Infinite is higher than the personal god, but on his own level, God is equally real. One thing that surprised me when reading the book is Smith´s strong emphasis on bhakti and the love of a personal god, and also the idea that God reciprocates by loving the devotee. Indeed, all love ultimately comes from God, the devotee simply giving God´s love back to him. I had assumed that Smith was more into the Infinite end of things. However, the author believes that there isn´t any contradiction. The mystical unity with the Infinite Spirit necessarily goes through loving devotion of an anthropomorphic deity, since love breaks down the barrier between the lover and the beloved, and hence creates a "unity" already on this level. I assume this is the perspective of some Hindu schools, but I have never seen it spelled out this clearly before.

The weakest part of "Forgotten Truth" is Smith´s rejection of evolution, and he even predicts that most readers will find his musings on the topic downright crazy. Well, he´s right. This is where Smith writes that animals are incarnations of eternal archetypes which simply dropped down from heaven ready made, without any prior evolutionary development. The hummingbird is the Platonic form of a bird pretending to be a butterfly! Er, wut? Since Smith is an "old earth creationist", he is locked in the same contradiction as his evangelical Christian counterparts: why do the Platonic forms drop down from the deep blue sky in a rough evolutionary sequence? At one point, Smith dares to go further, suggesting that perhaps degeneration is present in the fossil series in the form of "prehuman" forms which are really "posthuman". This is probably taken from the Theosophical speculation that apes are degenerate humans, rather than evolutionary cousins of our ancestors. 

Smith freely admits that his non-belief in progress will be just as hard to accept for the modern reader as Gurdjieff´s statement that the Moon eats people. This may have been true in Space Age 1976 and even more in 1992 (when Fukuyama won the Cold War). Today, it´s the easiest part to believe! What´s harder is Brother Huston´s insistence that there is hope, a transcendetal hope to be sure, and that somehow our earthly sufferings will all prove to be a necessary part of a larger perfection...

Why I hate philosophers

 

This is why philosophy should be banned. (The raven must be of an unknown species, btw. I mean, a yellow-billed and yellow-legged raven?) 

Do Mach and Avenarius exist?

 

This is bullshit. 

Maybe "climate change" is just a useful concept, and we should leave to philosophers to answer whether or not it´s really real. Same with "evolution through natural selection working on random mutations". 

Not to mention "Angela Merkel". 

Up from the rabbit hole

 

Scientific educator extraordinaire Sabine Hossenfelder (with a name like that, you just can´t fail) takes on the "simulation hypothesis" and wins on KO. Of course it´s bunk. It´s really just a secularized version of Intelligent Design. Which in its present form is just a theologized version of the computer revolution. It seems the Matrix doesn´t have us, after all!

Mission to Mars

 

Quantum physicist and YouTube science educator Sabine Hossenfelder (yes, she´s a real life Gerrie) isn´t terribly impressed by the idea that we can all just move to Mars if we screw up Earth. For starters, Mars doesn´t have a magnetic field, its surface temperature is way below zero, and - wait for it - no life can survive there. On the plus side, it only takes seven months to reach the darn place! 

But what about terraforming? Well, if you build an enormous relay station 100 times the mass of the Eiffel Tower made of bismuth mined from asteroids, you might actually create a magnetic field on the red planet. Releasing all the carbon dioxide from the Martian ice caps into the planet´s atmosphere will raise its average temperature to a stunning minus 50 degrees Celsius. 

Growing plants at such a low temperature is of course impossible, and how do you water plants if all water is frozen? Even apart from the fact that Martian soil is extremely thin...

However, there might be a genial solution: cover patches of the planet´s surface with a material known as "aerogel" (which actually exists for real). This could make plants grow in the tiny space between the aerogel and the ground. While oaks and redwood trees are thus out of the question, at least we could grow algae! (Or mosses?) 

Unfortunately, due to the low air pressure on Mars, when the Martian ice melts and turns to water, it would immidiately evaporate...

Plants, of course, need water to survive.

It seems we are forever stuck on Earth together with Elon Musk. 

  

Hidden Variables

 

Quantum physics are a bit over my head (say no more), but this short presentation by Sabrine Hossenfelder gave me *some* kind of inkling of the differences between Bohm and the Copenhagen Interpretation. Hossenfelder prefers the Copenhagen Interpretation since something called "quantum field theory" can be derived from it (presumably there is some practical application at CERN), but otherwise, I get the impression that Bohm tried to be more rational and commonsensical than the Copenhagen people, whose speculations opened the door to all kinds of quasi-occult mystification... 

Trust your leaders

 

I don´t think this will convince any flat earther, tbh, precisely because the rosy situation described with Science (TM) delivering the goodies is no longer true. But sure, scientists must (even if it takes them 1000 years) do something to repair their own game. See: replicability crisis, and a few other things Big Brother doesn´t want me to talk about. Full disclosure: I´m a Globe Earth fan boy! I trust Eratosthenes.  

Hyper hyper

 

Is *everything* a lie? This YouTube channel argues that hypersonic missiles probably won´t work any better than "regular" missiles, and that they are a, shall we say, hyped up threat...

Sabine Hossenfelder constantly disses TED talks, too, making me wonder how much of *them* can be trusted?

She seems to be a Big Bang skeptic, as well. Will probably look further into this channel! 

The real Q

 

An EXTREMELY interesting clip about fusion power, which (perhaps unwillingly) exposes what utter fraud "fusion power research" really is. 

Scientists and their propagandists confuse two different "Q ratios" to paint fusion power as more viable than it really is. If *all* energy used to power a fusion reactor is factored in, the gains suddenly don´t look very impressive. 

Confusion about fusion? Or just a long con? Shut down this subsidy sink now!