I suppose this could be problem for theists who believe that God sends people to Heaven or Hell based on some kind of explicit assent to credal statements or other doctrines.
Not sure if most sophisticated theologians do, though, so the "tsunami" is unlikely to happen any time soon...
A sobering essay by John Michael Greer.
What he misses, though, is that before the era of absolute resource depletion and depopulation sets in, the great powers (and some not so great ones) can still use whatever they have left to bomb each other back to the Stone Age.
What *really* stops Israel from nuking Gaza, Iran from nuking Israel, Pakistan from nuking Iran, and Trump from nuking everyone? Or Russia from nuking Ukraine, for that matter. Only fear of the other side´s nuclear weapons, or the public opinion in your own country (irrelevant in some cases).
So in the decades ahead, we are probably headed, not for Adrianople, but for a messy combination of both high tech warfare, drones and terrorism.
Come to think of it, we seem to be there already!
Some people demand that Israel be kicked out of the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) due to the war in Gaza. You know, genocide, ethnic cleansing, that kind of stuff.
But there is *another* nation that could also be accused of genocide and ethnic cleansing by the same logic, which also participates in the ESC, and yet, almost nobody protests *its* participation.
Yes, that would be Azerbaijan. Why?
Guess the religion of their victims...
A truly bizarre headline...until you realize that it´s East Palestine, Ohio! And maybe that´s bizarre, too, who knows...
With apologies to Breitbart News.
| "Thank God I don´t live on Borneo, so I don´t have to care about the fate of the fair orang-utan" |
Some more info on the Jakarta situation, mentioned in a previous blog post. Jakarta, at the island of Java, is the capital of Indonesia, and is literally sinking due to extensive ground water extraction (read: overpopulation). The Indonesian government therefore plans to build a new capital at the island of Borneo, named Nusantara (which apparently means "Archipelago").
Are they "only" moving over 1 million civil servants to Borneo, or is the plan to move the entire 10 million Jakartan population there? I assume that would doom the Bornean ecosystem, but it may be pretty much doomed anyway...
The fate of the orang-utan at the hands of its evolutionary cousins is a sad one.
Libertarian (?) gloats over leftoid news outlets firing their staff for attempting to unionize/organize.
What if the black swan event already happened? Yes, that would be the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, 2023 against Israel.
It seems to have split the left-leftoid-centrist coalition in the West, just for starters...
| "Yeah, I´m surprised." |
Why are so many Republicans "isolationist" in relation to Ukraine, but staunchly "interventionist" when it comes to Israel?
Do they take their bibles - mostly the Old Testament - more seriously than geopolitics?
Which seem to dictate support to both. Even apart from that little "Prince of Rosh" thing...
Some cultural commentary on Taylor Swift. Yes, that girl again! The linked articles actually make some interesting points, all things considered...
Right-wing gadfly Richard Hanania believes that the Republicans come across as bigger freaks than the Democrats, since ordinary voters aren´t likely to notice most of the "Woke" stuff, while they *are* likely to react strongly against the anti-abortion measures imposed by the GOP. Various conspiracy theories surrounding the pop star Taylor Swift are just another example of this freakishness.
Not sure who Scott Greer is, but he is more critical of Swift and the "Swifties", seeing them as naïve Whites who just want to be left alone, while society around them is rapidly changing, presumably in a non-White direction. Swift´s image may be implicitly White and even "conservative" (as in normal or mainstream), but it´s all just a mirage of an Amerika long gone...
Jag kan inte riktigt släppa Aftonbladets kuriösa vuxenmobbning av sina politiska motståndare. Varför kallar de alltid statsministern för "Ulf" när de vill vara nedlåtande, medan klimatministern alltid är "Pourmokhtari"? Alltså efternamnet.
Är det för att hon är kvinna? Nej, så kan det inte vara, eftersom AB kallar KD-ledaren för "Ebba". Okej, är det för att Romina, förlåt, Pourmokhtari är både kvinna, ung och invandrare? Måste man tillhöra tre förtryckta grupper för att bli tilltalad med sitt efternamn om man är minister?
Eller är det precis tvärtom: just för att klimatministern uppfattas som en liten skitunge med vikariestämpel i pannan, så låter det *mer* nedlåtande att tilltala henne med efternamnet? Ungefär som att kalla en 13-åring för "fröken Larsson" eller "herr Jonsson"?
Observera förresten att Frankrikes president i urklippet ovan faktiskt tilltalas med sitt efternamn...
Are humans DIVINE after all? OK, maybe not, but there is some really weird information in this one!
I mean, listen to this:
>>>Time crystals are a form of matter that were first proposed in 2012 by Nobel-prize winning physicist Frank Wilczek. Time crystals are made in the lab and have the ability to cycle between two states of energy without ever losing energy. Because they don't reach equilibrium or a steady state, they are able to dodge the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the disorder, or entropy, of a closed system, always increases.
>>>Time crystals were created in a lab in 2017 and in 2021, Google announced that it had made a time crystal in a quantum computer, and that the crystal had lasted for 100 seconds before the ephemeral state disintegrated.
???????
Does this mean that for 100 seconds, humanity had actually created an object that eluded the cosmic law that will one day destroy the entire universe?!
How does that not make us (and Google) into GOD?
| No relation to anything in the blog post! |
This may be somewhat obscure news unless you are very well versed in Early Medieval Central European history. Archeologists in the Czech Republic and neighboring nations have found peculiar belt buckles showing a snake devouring a frog-like creature. The meaning of the symbolism is unclear, but could be connected to the cosmogonic myth of some unknown pagan cult. The buckles are dated to the 8th or 9th century AD (this is not clearly spelled out in the article linked below, but I´ve skimmed the original paper) and are "typologically Late Avar".
The Avars were a nomadic people from the Eurasian steppes (northeast Asia, according to the original paper) who controlled Pannonia (today Hungary) during the Early Middle Ages, but aspects of their culture were also adopted by their vassals and neighbors, both Slavic and Germanic. Some of the belts were found at Lány in Moravia, described in the original paper as a multi-cultural melting pot at the northern periphery of the Avar khaganate. The metal used in the belts has been analysed and found to hail from the Slovak Ore Mountains, also outside the core area of the khaganate.
Well, aint that fantastic.
The reason why the above caught my eyes is that years ago, I read some Slovak history books with a nationalist or crypto-nationalist tendency, in which the Avars were always depicted as really henious oppressors of the usual rape-and-pillage type, eventually overthrown by the heroic and valiant Slavs, et cetera. Note that the Avars were based in the area that later became Hungary, the traditional enemy of Slovak nationalists. Anachronism, much?
So I thought it was kind of funny that the Slavs were culturally influenced by the Avars even outside the territory controlled by the khaganate. Even to the point of adopting an unknown pagan cult!
Medieval belt buckle might be from unknown pagan cult
OK, so I might as well link to the original paper, since I mentioned it three times already:
Copper-alloy belt fittings and elite networking in Early Medieval Central Europe
Apparently, the average "life span" of a vertebrate (chordate?) genus is 10 million years. Since the genus Homo is (perhaps) a bit under 3 million years old, that gives us 7 million years to go! Well, thank you. I think...
It might not be easy, though.
What´s the minimum number of people needed to survive an apocalypse?
What could drive humans to extinction?
Not sure how these two articles fit together. OK, they really don´t, since "Live Science" published them far apart. Still, I kind of wonder...
One of the articles says that although hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, might die as a consequence of climate change, a runaway greenhouse effect - killing everyone (and everything) on Earth - is extremely unlikely, indeed, virtually impossible.
But the other article (OK, it´s the first link) argues that the climate might become completely chaotic once a certain threshold is overstepped. Forever? But for how long can humanity survive a climate described thus:
>>>But in the worst cases, the researchers found that Earth's climate leads to chaos. True, mathematical chaos.
>>>In a chaotic system, there is no equilibrium and no repeatable patterns. A chaotic climate would have seasons that change wildly from decade to decade (or even year to year). Some years would experience sudden flashes of extreme weather, while others would be completely quiet.
>>>Even the average Earth temperature may fluctuate wildly, swinging from cooler to hotter periods in relatively short periods of time. It would become utterly impossible to determine in what direction Earth's climate is headed.
But sure, perhaps small groups of nomadic hunters and gatherers could weather (pun intended) even these conditions?
So the *moderate* alternative is that hundreds of millions die, but human civilization somehow survives? Got it.
 |
| Credit: Henk Caspers/Naturalis Biodiversity Center |
A highly disturbing look at the ocean´s smartest animal: the killer whale a.k.a. orca. They seem to be using their intelligence to really weird ends, such as killing substantially larger blue whales only to feast on their tongues, leaving the rest of the carcass to rot. Or killing sharks (including whale sharks) with the sole purpose of extracting their livers?!
But sure, I suppose the rest of the dead whales or sharks become food for other scavengers. And the reason the orca´s behavior looks disturbing to us, is presumably that *we* are the only animal who has the right to help itself to delikatessen. Or so we imagined.
Other orca behaviors are too bizarre to mention here.
It´s not clear whether the orcas are *really* getting smarter, but they are certainly changing their behaviors through social learning. For instance, the population off the Iberian coast that rams and sinks boats. New hunting techniques could have been developed in response to changes in the fauna due to climate change.
Still, it seems humans may yet have the last word. Off the coast of Washington State, overfishing has led to the dissolution of orca groups and hence their social bonds, as individual orcas strike out on their own in desperate search for food. But this also makes it more difficult to learn and pass on new hunting techniques.
Perhaps the killer whales aren´t really getting smarter at all. They are getting dumber! Something tells me many Homo wouldn´t mind...
| "What the heck are the anthropoids up to again?" |
Sea level rise due to climate change isn´t the only threat to cities at the US East Coast, it seems. There is also something called "subsidence": cities are literally sinking into the ground.
The factors driving subsidence are varied. Some are natural. Others are man-made, including extraction of ground water or the sheer weight of huge buildings. In the United States, subsidence is very slow, but could eventually cause widespread flooding and damage.
In other nations, subsidence is already a huge problem, for instance in the mega-city of Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, where extensive groundwater extraction is making the whole city sink at a rather alarming rate. In some neighborhoods, about 2.5 meters in just ten years!
The two articles linked below don´t factor in catastrophic effects of climate change, assuming that at least sea level rise will be extremely slow. But what would happen if the sea levels would suddenly rise with more than just a few millimeters or centimeters?
That´s a frightening thing to contemplate. But I´m sure the cornucopians will come up with something, right?
I recently reflected on what (if anything) could make me *truly* believe in God and/or follow a certain religion. Philosophical arguments? Probably not. Can you *really* prove anything by philosophy? Existential longing? Perhaps, but my longing doesn´t prove in and of itself that the object of the longing is true. Would I change worldview if my longing would change? Bayseian equations? LOL. No, only an experience would do it. An "empirical" experience in the broad sense of the term. Perhaps "phenomenological" is the right term.
As C S Lewis pointed out, however, seeing isn´t believing.
Let´s say I have an experience of Krishna and Radha dancing in the forest. It would have to be *very good* to cancel all my background knowledge and contextual knowledge, which points very much away from Krishnaism. And even such an experience wouldn´t be able to cancel out *all* my background knowledge. For instance, I know that other people have seen other gods dancing in the forest (Shiva comes to mind). How do I know which of these gods is the highest one? Krishna and his devotees say Krishna, Shiva and his sadhus say Shiva. There doesn´t seem to be any way to adjudicate their respective claims. Or let´s say I meet Christ on the road to another town, and Christ tells me that actually both Krishna and Shiva are demons! But I know that other people have experienced blessings from these deities. Indeed, I see that there are both blessed and cursed people on all paths. So pluralism seems to be the bottom line, even if I personally only see one god.
Is there any experience so strong that it could cancel out even pluralism? From the top of my head, the only one I can think of would be an experience of some kind of Divine Unity, either a blinding Light or a dazzling Darkness, which would turn all other experiences into fleeting dreams. But note that even such an experience wouldn´t "disprove" the phenomenal deities I´ve seen in the forest or on the road, it would simply relegate them to a "lower" level (if that´s even the word for it).
Somebody might respond that there is another kind of experience that is self-evidently higher than the one just described: the experience of ecstatic love towards a personal deity. If you have such an experience, you will know for sure. Compare Krishna or Christ. But why would this be self-evident? Let´s say I have an experience of complete freedom and power instead, like in some Shaiva traditions. Maybe I will consider *that* to be self-evidently true and self-evidently higher than ecstatic love. Then, I would appear in Varanasi and scare the hell out of the Aghori, who will know that I am the Lord! Or maybe I will have an experience of complete serene stillness, consider that self-evidently supreme and become a Buddhist...
End of meditation session. It seems at our present level of hominoid evolution (or is it dhyan-chohanic emanation), we really can´t know what form of the Divine (if any) is the highest. More positively put: maybe we don´t have to. No matter how long the road, the Dharmakaya will ultimately lure us towards It through countless upon countless of skilfull means...
| Me, dancing after a strange realization at the local library |
I´m so bad at botany that I didn´t realize that there are actually wild roses in Sweden. Wild, as opposed to feral. And I have a weird way of suppressing knowledge of those, too - do I subconsciously fear the thornes of feral roses?
I was even more surprised when I realized that a rose plant can grow two or three meters high, often at tree trunks?! Some checking in a voluminous flora at the local library confirmed the above (ChatGPT was lying as usual - but it did get the "wild" and "large" parts right).
Does this mean anything, except that I´m in need of reading more botany books (I won´t)? Probably not, but it must have been last year´s strangest realization!
Vad innebär detta? Med tanke på IS-återvändare, och så vidare.
UD har strukit svenska medborgare från listor - efter Säpoflagg i Sverige
If you have two hours to spare, I have a real treat for you. The YouTube clip above, "Alien apologetics", contains a discussion on the UFO phenomenon, featuring maverick atheist Emerson Green and all-around maverick Jimmy Akin. I think Green may believe in UFOs and aliens, while Akin (who is a Catholic) is clearly skeptical...*but* in this podcast, the latter plays the role of "Devil´s advocate" (or perhaps "alien apologist"). While I disagree with Green and Akin on a number of points, I admit that their conversation is extremely interesting.
Akin easily debunks or problematizes many common skeptical arguments against the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH). "Why do the UFOs crash, if they were built by an advanced space-faring civilization", "why don´t the aliens contact our leaders", "why are UFOs mostly a modern American phenomenon", "Bill Nye says that the government sucks at keeping secrets" (that´s a good one), "where are the whistle-blowers" (answer: everywhere, but the Skeptics refuse to listen), and so on. I´m embarassad to say that I often used some of these myself, although not on the authority of Bill Nye the Mermaid Guy! Of particular interest are the arguments in favor of a conspiracy of some sort. It simply isn´t true that the government (or the military, or the spook community) can´t keep a secret. Every year, millions of dollars are funelled into "black budgets" completely unaccounted for.
It struck me that the military sometimes unveils projects no whistle-blower ever exposed (except maybe to the Russians!): the nuclear bomb, the Skyhook balloon, the Stealth bomber. Trump hinted at the US having some kind of new super-missiles, but nobody knows for sure. And, as already pointed out, when supposed whistle-blowers come forward, Skeptics refuse to listen anyway, unless the informers have the right "vibes" and confirms the Skeptics´ deeply ingrained belief system. And, as already pointed out, Skeptics might not even *care* about alternative information, in the same way as people on both sides of the political aisle don´t care about news broadcasts from the "wrong" network...
My main objections to the ETH would be "how on Earth (pun intended) did they get here" and "why are they so consistently mimicking our latest science fiction flicks or magazines". Akin points out that if aliens are real, they might use robots or multi-generational ships to get here, and while that´s certainly possible (and not defeated by the objection that *we* couldn´t pull that off), it´s still very hard to see where the energy to power the space ship would come from, or how they could even approach something like the speed of light, let alone go beyond it. These may be hard physical limits no intelligent species could ever cross.
Green and Akin are dismissive of the claim that belief in UFOs is just a misguided religious impulse, a kind of "religion for atheists". By contrast, I think it´s pretty obvious that a large portion of "active" belief in aliens is connected to precisely such an impulse. The aliens really are substitute gods, indeed, many true believers in extraterrestrial UFOs were probably never atheists to begin with, but Theosophy-inspired. The strange way in which the phenomenon always mimics our latest pop cultural obsessions - and ancient mythology or folklore - surely suggest that it has some kind of connection to humans on planet Earth.
A skeptic would (of course) argue that aliens and UFOs simply are pop cultural, mythological or folkloric artefacts themselves, and that´s that. More "fringe" possibilities would include fairies, who according to folklore have the ability to read people´s minds and shape-shift! Sounds crazy? Perhaps, but it´s still different from the ETH, and able to explain why the "aliens" looks exactly like the angels and demons of our imagination...
Of course, a religious believer of some sort could easily explain (or perhaps explain away) the UFO phenomenon precisely by suggesting that it´s really supernatural. Akin, despite being a Christian, thinks that´s a too easy way out, and criticizes apologist Hugh Ross on this point, who suggests that "aliens" are really demons and the whole UFO phenomenon hence a Satanic deception. Akin´s own positions, when not playing advocatus Diaboli, is more skeptical towards ETH, although not entirely dismissive. He discusses the notion that the UFO phenomenon might be "staged" by the US military, mentioning the notorious Bennewitz case and Richard Doty (*that* guy shows up all the time in contexts like this one). Hoaxes also happen, Akin claiming that well-known contactee Steven Greer have faked UFO observations using flares.
With that, I close this little conversation. Happy hunting! And let´s be careful out there...
| Ashtar Command förklarar de geopolitiska realiteterna ur neo-shachtmanitisk synvinkel för en vänsterbliven dvärg |
Nej, EBU bör inte slänga ut Israel ur Eurovision Song Contest.
"Men EBU kastade ut Ryssland".
Ja, det stämmer. Men Ryssland är en EBU-medlem som oprovocerat attackerat en annan EBU-medlem. Al-Qassam-brigaderna är så vitt jag vet inte med i EBU. Dessutom har EU infört sanktioner mot Ryssland. Och de flesta EBU-medlemmar är även EU-medlemmar.
"Men EBU kastade ut Serbien".
Ja, eller rest-Jugoslavien. Detta för att EU hade en kulturbojkott mot det landet p.g.a. dess militära attacker mot Kroatien och Bosnien. Som var EBU-medlemmar.
"Men EBU kastade ut Belarus".
Eftersom landet är en näst intill öppen diktatur som undertrycker yttrandefriheten, ja. När har Israel gjort det? Hade EBU varit konsekventa hade de suspenderat Ryssland för länge sedan!
"Men det är hyckleri att kasta ut Ryssland, Belarus eller Serbien, men inte Israel".
Ja, det kan du ju tycka. Om du är kommunist. Eller pro-islamist. Inte om du stödjer västalliansen. Ryssland, Belarus och Serbien är västfientliga. Israel är västvänligt. Svårare än så är det inte! Är du landsförrädare, eller vad? Kommer nog inte köpa dina CD-skivor i fortsättningen!
OK, maybe not, but Jesus appearing somewhere in the vicinity of Mount Shasta in the Land of Desolation, surrounded by redeemed sons of Cain, does have a strange and wonderful Mormon quality to it...
From a Canadian YouTube channel called MountainBeastMysteries, narrated by someone named Justin Chernipeski (I think). It mostly covers Bigfoot (Sasquatch), but also has some UFO-related content. The content-creator, while not ruling out that Bigfoot might be a flesh-and-blood primate, favors a paranormal or supernatural explanation of the phenomenon.
Justin believes that the government (judging by context, he means the United States government) is covering up the truth about UFOs, or did so until recently, and therefore they are probably doing the same with Bigfoot. From this also follows that there could be some kind of connection between UFOs and Bigfoot. Perhaps Bigfoot is the result of some kind of extraterrestrial experiment? And perhaps we are, too? A more intriguing speculation is that *Bigfoot* was the intended end-point of primate evolution!
Not sure why I link to this five o´clock in the morning, but the narrator doesn´t come across as crazy on a purely personal level, which may have lured me in...
I´m also reminded of Blavatsky´s ideas that the dhyan-chohans (?) incarnated in primate bodies to make evolution "jump" from ape-man to man, otherwise the evolutionary process would have been almost impossibly long and drawn-out. However, if the squatches are as smart as people claim, I suppose they are more likely to be some kind of Lemurians still stalking the forests of the boreal zone...
Have we finally found the Ark of the Covenant? So it was TRUMP who stole it!!! :D
So Donald J Trump knows that the ancient Israelites were polytheists who worshipped graven images in the Holy of Holies, one of them being a goddess?
HE IS THE MAN. SAINT GERMAIN HAS RETURNED TO SAVE HIS CHOSEN NATION.
If you have like three hours of your life to spare, the above could be worth your time. Maverick atheist Emerson Green discusses philosophy and Mormon theology with three members of the LDS Church. To be honest, all three seem somewhat heterodox and open-minded. I´m more used to the old style Mormons who were just as dogmatic about their peculiar version of Christianity as standard American evangelicals are about theirs. Green (who I think is ex-Pentecostal) originally agreed with Sam Harris, who famously said that Mormonism is the least probable religion, since it takes all the absurdities of Christianity and simply adds new ones on top. However, after thinking about it more (and discussing with actual Mormons), Green came to the conclusion that on some kind of philosophical level, Mormonism is actually *better* than mainline Christianity, although I assume he still considers the more "empirical" claims of the LDS Church to be somewhat out there (golden plates, et cetera).
The discussions cover a lot of ground, obviosuly, but here are some of the main take aways. Green believes that evangelicals who criticize Mormonism have a double standard, since many Mormon claims may just as well be true, if you have a supranaturalist worldview. If you accept the miracle stories in the Bible, why can´t the miracle stories surrounding Joseph Smith be true, just as well? If you accept the New Testament as new revelation, why can´t there be additional new revelations? As for the Book of Mormon being heavily anachronistic, well, what about all the anachronisms and contradictions in the Bible? (Apparently, Abraham´s camels are an anachronism, just as much as the Book of Mormon horses.) Green is right. It does seem very common for apologists of one religion to use the historical-critical method when attacking every other religion...except their own! (See also the Outsider Test of Faith or OTF á la John Loftus.) Interestingly, the Mormons Green is talking to don´t view Joseph Smith as infallible, pointing out that the Biblical prophets or even the Christian apostles weren´t infallible either.
The Mormons featured in the discussions are universalists, or near-universalists. They seem sympathetic to panpsychism or panentheism. There is even a streak of "physicalism" in their reasoning. God is seen as a being within the universe, not standing outside it and creating it ex nihilo. In other words: God isn´t all-powerful, at least not in the standard Christian sense. Green sees this as a philosophical advantage, since Mormons don´t have to explain why a perfectly good, loving and just god who is omnipotent doesn´t simply eradicate evil and suffering. It seems some of the LDS members he talks to don´t accept the "orthodox" Mormon view that humans can become gods since God himself was once a human. There is an eternal God who has always been God, but - as already indicated - he exists within the universe and is subject to certain cosmic laws. (Avid readers of my content may recall process theology here.)
One of the Mormons featured is African-American, and freely admits that this was a huge problem for him when as a teenager he started investigating Mormonism. For a long time, the LDS Church held White supremacist views of Blacks, denying them "the priesthood" and access to the secret temple rituals (since most Mormon males are "priests", this effectively barred Blacks from most positions in the Church). However, it has surfaced that Joseph Smith actually appointed at least one Black male to the priesthood, Elijah Abel. (I assume this is what is alluded to in the discussion.) It could therefore be argued that the racist view is really a deviation from the original stance. It was officially rescinded already during the 1970´s.
I´m sure more (much more) could be said about this topic, but three hours may be just enough right now...
Sabine Hossenfelder´s most pessimistic video on the climate crisis yet. Short story: climate zones will move, the areas around the equator will become uninhabitable, giant migrant streams of climate refugees will move north, and this will lead to "political instability" (she really means full-scale war, but maybe that´s too spicey for YouTube censors).
Meanwhile, the Global North will continue to use fossil fuels, ironically as a way to fend off the immidiate consequences of climate change (which is caused by said fuels in the first place). Fertilizer and irrigation to keep agriculture going are dependent on fossil fuels, and so is air conditioning on a truly massive scale.
Ironically, Hossenfelder´s own "solution" is also dependent on a fossil fuel-based economy. How can we expand nuclear power, without fossil fuels lurking menacingly somewhere in the background?
She´s right about the mass death and violence.
The new US strategy for Ukraine is completely compatible with the secret Russian "peace plan" reported earlier. If Ukraine is no longer trying to retake occupied territory, it will become easier to sign a "peace deal" in which said territory is formally ceded to Russia.
Unless the "peace plan" is Russian disinfo, "leaked" in advance of the US change of strategy, precisely in order to make the Biden admin look weak!
Two other (not unrelated) things also struck me.
First, note that Ukraine is completely dependent on US (and more broadly, Western) military and financial assistance to fight the Russians. I suppose this could be a problem for those leftists who support Ukraine, while still pretending to be against NATO and the US. How is Ukraine *not* an "imperialist stooge" fighting a NATO proxy war against the Russian Federation? I support Ukraine, but logically that means that you can´t just "dissolve NATO". That would be like biting the hand that feeds you!
Second, it´s perfectly possible that the new strategy is necessary, not simply because the famed Spring Offensive was a failure, but precisely because the West no longer has the capacity to arm Ukraine to the extent necessary. But the reason for *that* must be that the *Western arms industry* is lagging behind schedule. It´s not "Ukraine" (such as it is) that is loosing its war with Russia (with our friendly support), it´s *the West itself* failing to fight Putin´s advances.
But that, in turn, means that NATO can essentially never be dissolved, since the only way to stop Russia is a NATO re-armament. Therefore, the leftists who support Ukraine are faced with a stark choice in the years ahead.
OK, let me guess. Most of them will dump Ukraine and pivot towards supporting Gaza and mass immigration? Or defending Iran...
More Nazi than thou? A criticism of Strasserism (the real one) and the "Strasserite meme", arguing that Strasserism, real or imagined, doesn´t constitute a threat and is hardly even a thing. Especially not on the left.
A problematic article in many ways, but I can´t help linking to it. From the same guy who gave us "Louis Althusser was a pedophile".
So according to rumors, cited by Bloomberg, a secret Russian delegation recently visited the US with a "peace proposal" concerning Russia´s war against Ukraine. The deal would be to let Russia keep all the occupied territories. In return, the rest of Ukraine would be allowed to join NATO and (I presume) the EU.
In other words: Western surrender.
First, Putin has long advocated the partitioning of Ukraine, once even telling Poland that they can have the Western part. This was when Eastern Ukraine (including the ethnic Ukrainians there) still voted for pro-Russian parties. Western Ukraine, by contrast, has always been more nationalist. So Putin wouldn´t lose *that* much by effectively ceding most of Ukraine to the West.
Second, Putin has Trojan horses in NATO and the EU. Yes, in NATO, that would be Turkey and Hungary. And perhaps Slovakia. In the EU, that would be Hungary. And perhaps Slovakia. They could block Ukraine´s membership in NATO-EU even in the event of a "peace agreement".
Third, the occupied territories have the largest natural resources and access to the Black Sea. They could perhaps be integrated into the Russian economy (which is largely unhurt by the "sanctions"). The rest of Ukraine is an economic basket case and probably can´t be integrated just as easily into the EU. And while it´s possible that both parties have lost an equal number of men in the brutal war, Ukraine has a smaller population and may have lost its best fighters, while Russia has mostly lost dispensable cannon-fodder.
Fourth, and following from the above, there won´t be any lasting "peace", just a temporary cessation of hostilities, until the Evil Empire decides it´s about time to resume the Drang nach Abendlandes...
"Peace in our time."
Bing AI´s take on "Brahman". OK, so I assume there is a cattle breed called Brahman? Still, since Brahman is supposed to be Everything, I suppose I can´t really complain!
When I asked Bing AI to create a picture of an "impersonal god", the above came up.
It seems not even Artificial Intelligence can help anthropomorphizing?!
If I just give Bing AI the prompt "God", I get four pictures like the one above. So AI knows that God is Love, and that he gave his only Son, et cetera.
Aftonbladet tvår sina händer. Eller? Ovanligt frispråkig artikel, trots försöken att bortförklara och lägga till rätta...
Men okej, originellt att anklaga en muslim för dubbla lojaliteter.
Så Turkiet, som spelar under täcket med Putin och stödjer Hamas, kommer med stor sannolikhet att få F-16-plan från USA. Och Ungern, som verkar vackla mellan att vara Turkiets sista sandjak och Rysslands enda sovjetrepublik, leasar svenska JAS-plan?!
Och dessa stater har i *två års tid* blockerat Sveriges NATO-medlemskap utan att USA har velat eller kunnat göra något.
Det verkar vara en jäkligt trovärdig militärallians, det här...
Och presidentvalet i USA senare i år står mellan en senildement tomte som knappt vet var han befinner sig, och en tokstolle som ständigt appellerar till amerikansk exceptionalism och isolationism.
Ja, vad ska man säga?
I admit that I never really cared about "Paranthropus" before, but clearly I should have! An extinct sister group to the genus Homo, the paranthropi (I assume that´s the plural, LOL) were huge, bipedal herbivores. Or were they? A recent excavation in Kenya (where else?) may problematize this picture, although we can´t really be sure until further and perhaps sensational new finds are uncovered.
The site is about 3 million years old, features some Paranthropus teeth and a number of Oldowan tools, in fact the oldest such tools ever discovered. Oldowan is the first known "stone tool industry", but it´s usually associated with Australopithecus and/or early Homo. If Paranthropus used identical tools, that sure raises all kinds of questions. Did they steal them from australopithecines, manufacture them themselves, or what? Whoever used the tools at the site, were butchering dead hippopotami. That doesn´t sound like a herbivore to me...
One possibility, mentioned only in jest by the content-creator above, is that both the hippos and the poor Paranthropus found at the site were butchered by party or parties unknown. But why is that so far fetched? Maybe someone in East Africa 3 million years ago liked to feast on the tender flesh of herbivorous ape-people? The possibility entertained by the scientists who made the discovery is apparently that Paranthropus was omnivorous. Perhaps it could opportunistically adapt to eating meat when such became available. I seem to recall that even the "vegan" bonobo doesn´t say no to munching on other Animalia, perhaps to the consternation of dietary fanaticos in the Golden State.
I think Erika (the content-creator, who looks like a real nerd) points out that if even Paranthropus could make and/or use tools and butcher dead animals, that would make humans even less unique than before...again! This is an apt point. Especially since we are dealing with the "wrong" side branch of evolution. That some chimp-like direct ancestor to Homo invented tool use is still compatible with the idea that the fair Victorian gentleman (or American astronaut, or perhaps nerdy paleoanthropologist?) is the ultimate end-point of abiogenesis and evolution.
The discovery that the first tools may have belonged to a mini-gorilla squatch on the wrong side of hominin progress who used them to help itself to a hippo burger now and then, while otherwise being hooked on such primitive diets as grass and fruits, does put things in some (perhaps unwanted) perspective. Tools weren´t heroically invented by chimp-like proto-scientists, and then off to the stars, but by some gorilla-man who simply wanted a better Friday snack!
But sure, the Victorians could still say that the tools were thankfully co-opted by more able ape-men...
Indian PM Modi consecrating the new Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, at the location of a demolished mosque. The mosque, in its turn, may have been built after the Muslim rulers of Early Modern India erased some kind of Rama-related buildings on the site, believed to be the exact birth place of Rama, an avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu.
I´m not a big fanboy of really existing Islam, nor of ditto Hinduism, but it´s kind of fascinating to watch how a polytheist "pagan" religion reclaims ground from monotheism. Note, for instance, that they use the English word "idol" in a positive sense!
Emerson Green is a self-proclaimed atheist (I sometimes wonder where he´s really at) who is very skeptical (pun intended) of the really existing atheist/skeptic online community. I previously linked to a video in which he discusses conspiracy theories and the blank denial of such by the Skeptics (who seem to be skeptical of everything...except their own government and military-industrial complex).
In the video above, Green takes on Fallacy Man, pointing out that many "fallacies" sperged about by Skeptics are really thought-stoppers and not "fallacies" at all. At the very least, certain kinds of fallacious reasoning are actually pretty close to perfectly sound reasoning, making the topic somewhat more complicated than Skeptics like to admit. Others are just strawmen.
As an example of the former, why is it always wrong to point out that a person defending a certain proposition (X) has a vested material interest in defending precisely X? Why is that information irrelevant, an "ad hominem" or a "logical" (sic) fallacy? Maybe it´s very relevant indeed that rich people oppose higher taxes on rich people.
An example of the latter would be to counter, say, a political argument with the claim that the person putting it forward is a ginger. True, that would be "ad hominem", but how many people use arguments *that* dumb in a political debate? Almost nobody, making the "fallacy" a strawman (in itself a fallacy, I believe).
It´s almost as if Fallacy Man is a midwit!
Have conspiracy theory finally come of age? This is an interesting video in which a moderately alternative guy, William Brown, interviews Gregory Little, who seems to be an associate of Andrew Collins, a Graham Hancock-type character. What makes the interview somewhat intriguing is that Little, who is presumably very "fringe", actually comes across as pretty reasonable!
In conspiracist circles, there has long been an idea that the Smithsonian Institute discovered and then covered up giant skeletons found in North America during the 19th century. Brown and Little believe that this is true, but with a few twists. The relevant skeletons were between seven and eigth feet tall - not literal giants, but extremely large anyhow. About 30 such skeletons were found, something Little believes is virtually impossible by chance alone. We must be talking about an actual population of really tall people. The Smithsonian *did* cover them up, probably due to racism. The idea of American Indians having an advanced "mound-builder" civilization was anathema. Little emphasizes that the "giants" would have been colored or brown-skinned, not White. He speculates that they may have formed a kind of elite caste within Native society. Brown mentions Native legends about cannibal giants overthrown by the common people. It *is* interesting how the previously bleached Mound Builders (think Book of Mormon!) have been recast as evil POC overlords overthrown by...good POC commoners.
Somewhere here, Little goes off track and starts speculating rather badly, making a tie-in to the Denisovans, a vanished human species remains of which was recently discovered in a Siberian cave. Very little is known of the Denisovans, but there is essentially zero evidence that they were giants. Rather, they seem to have been similar to Neanderthals. Not the kind of guys you would want to mess with, for sure, but still a far cry from the Nephilim-like skeletons found in American mounds from a much later time period. What is true is that Homo sapiens interbred with Denisovans, but there is currently no evidence that this happened in North America. Indeed, the cave in Siberia may have been a distant Denisovan colony, the species having its main range in southeast Asia. Denisovan genes among American Indians were probably the result of earlier interbreeding in Asia.
That being said, I do think this little clip raises some interesting question. Next week, INCREDIBLE HISTORY promises to have a look at the Little People!
I just realized that there is something terribly wrong with my romantic "mood pictures" of mute and black swans.
No, it´s not that the mute swan is mute (IRL it really isn´t).
It´s - of course - the black swan. Silly me. "Black swan" is high brow slang for "entirely unexpected event". It could be a good one, I suppose, but in 2024, everyone expects the black swan to be a virtual horror show!
On the other hand, if everyone expects something, it´s no longer a black swan event, is it? And since white swans are some kind of sacred Hindu symbol for Paramatman or something to that effect, maybe we are all subliminally saved...
Why are rich people suddenly buying up islands all over the world? Edward Dutton and PJW comments...
I´m sure this isn´t a conspiracy of any kind. I mean, it´s already been exposed, right? :D
I recently discovered this YouTube content-creator, Emerson Green. He is something as unusual as an atheist who isn´t a materialist. Rather, he seems to be a kind of ontological pluralist. Several of his videos feature long interviews with non-naturalist moral realist philosopher Michael Huemer. His book "Ethical Intuitionism" made a brief guest appearence on this blog years ago.
In the clip above, Green explains why he left the Skeptical community. His criticism speaks for itself, but I can´t help making a brief summary here. While I disagree with Green´s radical leftism (he supported Sanders in 2016 and seems to be a kind of leftist conspiracy theorist), he does make several good points and pertinent observations.
The most obvious is (unsurprisingly) that the Skeptics aren´t particularly skeptical to begin with. They are pseudo-skeptics, uncritically beholden to a dogmatic atheist-materialist worldview. Nay, more: they aren´t simply atheists or materialists, they are enamored with the *aesthetics* of "Science", "Rationality" and "Skepticism". Things like parapsychology, conspiracy theory or UFOs simply *must* be wrong, since they have the wrong "vibe", and no further investigation into the matter is needed. The Skeptic (TM) *knows* that X is wrong...since the Establishment he is so fascinated by and wants to emulate says so. Everyone else is simply psychologically irrational, and that´s that.
The "skeptical" attitude of these people is often of a lazy armchair variety, with no actual research being done. Even established scientists can come under attack, if they take the "wrong" side. Green points to the case of ´Oumuamua, which the Skeptics insisted simply *couldn´t* be an alien craft of some kind, despite Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb having published research to that effect. Them vibes are all wrong, dude!
Green wonders why the Skeptics aren´t skeptical of the establishment, of power structures in society, and so on. Isn´t it strange that they never, even by chance, criticize the official narratives? Most Skeptics according to Green are "socially liberal but fiscally conservative", which I assume would make them centrist Democrats or liberal Republicans. Very often, the Skeptics spend considerable time debunking topics Green considers downright silly, such as Bigfoot, but they never seem to probe more important topics pertaining to politics or the economy.
Green discusses conspiracy theory at some length, and plays an interesting clip featuring "honest Skeptic" Michael Shermer (not to be confused with Michael Huemer) and UFO researcher Nick Pope. Both point out the fallacy of the common anti-conspiracist argument "all conspiracies are exposed" or "it would take too many people". And while Green doesn´t explicitly endorse 9/11 Truthers, he holds that their motives are more complex (and in a sense more understandable) than Skeptics give them credit for. In Skeptical books, Truthers are usually depicted as irrational "anomaly-hunters" who simply can´t accept that a few discrepancies might exist in the official version. But according to Green, many Truthers have a left-wing background of well-founded skepticism towards the military and the political establishment. The US vice president at the time of 9/11, Dick Cheney, had a longstanding interest in pushing through something like the Patriot Act, there were forces which for geopolitical reasons wanted to start more foreign wars, and so on. So is 9/11 Trutherism really completely irrational?
All things considered, Emerson Green seems to be an interesting maverick. I might continue watching this channel in the near future.
Of course, it´s also important to be skeptical of left-wing establishments and Russian disinfo operations! :P
Can anyone please teach the Amerikan barbars at Breitbart News the basic facts of European geography?
Slovakia is one of the EU´s smallest member-states, and has a population of less than six million people. Indeed, Slovakia is smaller than the territory their Prime Minister wants Ukraine to cede to Russia!
In fact, I doubt even the Slovaks themselves refer to Robert Fico as a "world leader"...
LOL.
Not entirely wrong, if you ask me...
In other news, Ron DeSantis just dropped out of the POTUS race, endorses Trump!
Sabine Hossenfelder calls out a new attempt to counter "misinformation" on YouTube. In reality, to censor it. This time around, it´s climate change denial that should be stopped, and it seems the definition of what constitutes such a denial has broadened considerably. "The new climate denial" include people who are skeptical of the officially approved solutions to climate change. By that "logic", I could be censored for pointing out that Elon Musk´s EVs don´t work in the dead of winter!
I assume the "NGO" behind the proposal is connected to the fake "Green transition" wing of the political establishment, and that their staff consist of former climate activists who turned 22 this winter?
If you want to know what the powers-that-be (or one of their wings) are afraid of, look no further than to who they want to censor! But yeah, I have a long list of people *I* would like to kick off social media platforms. So there´s that, I suppose.
