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No real news here, tbh. Maybe somebody should show this to Greta Thunberg or Professor Dave. Or the Slovenian public broadcaster...
New report details systematic rape and sexual violence during Oct 7 Hamas terrorist attacks
Wednesday, May 13, 2026
No surprise
A propos Boy George
A small "grassroots" breakaway group from the ISKCON manages to enter a Boy George book signing event without tickets, et cetera. Kirtan follows (of course). Note that Boy George claims that ISKCON founder Prabhupada liked Baccara (!) while one of the devotees say he loved Charlie Chaplin (!!). Ooookay.
Wtf, I löööv my man prabhu now!
Always good to be friends with an excentric pop singer, especially if he is British and hence relatively polite. And no, I don´t have any of the books featured in the YouTube clip. Damn.
Tuesday, May 12, 2026
Welcome to the Holarctic
Gemini has a more dramatic take on the Pashupati prompt from the previous blog post...
An ancient god
This is supposed to be "Pashupati" (the Indus Valley Civilization deity) in a rainy northern forest. I suspect Copilot might have gotten some inspiration from Cernunnos, though. Note the coy wolf (pun intended) and the squirrel?! The bird is probably a quail.
Current mood?
Good news or soylent bees?
A propos Anton´s latest video on YouTube: like everyone else, I assumed the "bizarre discovery" was that honeybees EAT DEAD HUMAN BODIES and that this somehow ends up in our honey, making it SOYLENT GREEN.
Instead, the (non)bizarre discovery is that millions of mining bees live at a New York cemetery and turn out to be extremely important pollinators of commercial crops (in this case, apples). Which might mean that the "bee apocalypse" has been postponed...again. Thank god, by the way!
I prefer apples to soylent any day.
Faith alone
This content-creator, who calls himself Shaku Joshin, promotes a peculiar form of Buddhism. The group calls itself Amidaji International Temple, Amidaji for short. It seems to be a small breakaway faction from the Japanese Pure Land denomination Jodo Shinshu. Many members (including the founder) are White. This could be a thing, since Amidaji very strongly implies that their little sect are the only true Buddhists. White people telling Asians how to practice the Dharma? OK, bruh.
What struck me most when listening to Shaku Joshin is that he has almost exactly the same mentality as a evangelical or charismatic Christian. Indeed, he was one in his younger days. It´s all in there. The strong emotional investment in a loving savior-figure? Check. Except that the savior in this case is Amitabha Buddha (called Amida in Japanese) rather than Jesus. The evangelistic mindset? Check. The constant attacks on co-religionists for getting it wrong? Check. The sectarian attitude that your path is the only path to salvation, everyone else be damned? Check. While the content-creator doesn´t seem to believe in hell, he does regard this world as rather hellish, so being stuck here rebirth after rebirth might as well be damnation.
There are even doctrinal similarities. Pure Land Buddhists do teach a kind of salvation by faith and grace. Many have remarked on the similarities between this and Protestantism. But just like evangelicals attacking each other, Shaku Joshin claims that only Amidaji teaches *real* salvation by faith/grace alone. I encountered a similar small group of White American Amidists on the web about ten years ago, and I can´t help wondering if this is the sequel! Maybe the two groups actually are connected somehow.
I used to think that White American Buddhists are very tolerant and liberal (or at least pretends to), but here we have an explicit exception. I can´t say Quasi-Japanese Buddhism with a Bible Belt psychology is much of an improvement, though...
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