Can I link to this without endangering Sweden´s NATO application?

 

Hmmm...

Is this true?

A "revisionist" Christian YouTube channel arguing that the sacred city of Islam, Mecca, didn´t even exist at the time of Muhammad. Also, all qiblas before the early 8th century pointed to Palestine rather than Mecca! For some reason, the presenters believe it was towards Petra rather than to Jerusalem.

Huge if true. I used to think that at least early Muslim history was relatively well attested, but I´m beginning to wonder. Maybe it´s just as fake as that of, er, all other religions, big and small! 

Oh no, not again

 

Look who´s back...

Yes, it´s The Secret all over again. In other words, New Thought. 

Apparently, the New Thought practice of "manifesting" through affirmations exploded during the COVID pandemic. It´s especially popular among Millennial and GenZ women. In other words, the demographics most worried about the pandemic...and least likely to actually get killed by it.

In the clip above, two religious scholars discuss the recent uptick in New Thought, pointing out that its message is actually eminently well adapted to the Internet world of memes and short TikTok videos. An interesting point! There are also connections to influencers, multi-level marketing and such. The social base of the movement are female entrepreneurs. In other words, the privileged middle class?  

I admit that "positive thinking" isn´t my cup of Bud Light, but perhaps it *can* work if you see it as a purely spiritual techique. If you think the Milky Way will give you a brand new car, you should probably think anew - pun intended.

Note that Donald Trump shows up in the clip. There, I said it. 

Tantrism = Bisexual grooming?

 

On the perils of teaching sexual Tantra to handsome young men when you´re a 76 years old guru with a bisexual orientation, a former career as a call guy and an abiding love of hashish...

Seriously though, the above is quite interesting. Note the claim that the notorious Laws of Manu were pro-trans-women! It seems that the presenter himself identifies as "third sex". 

Attached to vortex theory

 

Some truly esoteric discussions about different stages of self-realization in Shaiva-Shakta Non-Dual Tantra, kundalini, chakras, how bhakti can lead to attachment, the conduct of an enlightened master, and something the presenter referes to as "vortex theory". 

The anonymous teacher claims to be a follower of the Sri Vidya tradition in southern India. A weird factoid is that his "sannyas guru" (never named in the clip) was actually Prabhupada! It seems our boy later started to experiment with other spiritual pastimes. 

I linked to this man´s content before, when the channel had the strange name Gnowly, and here apparently we go again...

Indecent exposure

 

Credit: Sharp Photography 

Leftists and liberals apparently think this is funny. A new conservative law in Utah against indecent books in elementary and middle school libraries backfires spectacularly when a trolling liberal parent demands the removal of the Bible and the Book of Mormon for indecency!

Of course, this inadvertently proves that both sides in the culture war want to ban books. 

Maybe the poor GOP lawmaker should have banned the rewriting of books instead? That would have hit the hypocritical wokesters in their soft underbellies. It would also be anti-capitalist, so presumably no action will be taken, then...  

Utah school district bans Bible

What is the Grail?

 

Credit: Birding Memes (Facebook)

In case you don´t get it, the meme shows a Bigfoot (a mythological creature) looking at an ivory-billed woodpecker, a real North American bird believed to be extinct. 

Many bird-watchers hope that the flamboyant avian is still out there somewhere. The ivory-bill has therefore been dubbed "the Grail bird" and is still included in US field guides just in case it´s still around! 

Scientists are apparently very skeptical of its continued existence, hence the funny meme above of a Bigfoot complaining that nobody will believe her if she reports a sighting...

The Nagas of Brazil

Credit: Dick Culbert 

I´ve heard of the Pachamama, but never the Sachamama. Any connection? Note the claims that this is an actual unknown animal! Rather than, say, a very angry nature spirit come to life...

Sachamama

Minhocao

Never let a woman do a man´s job

 

Credit: Government of the Russian Federation (sic)

With the risk of sounding like an Apolloist...

Never let a confused Jewish girl do the job of an Aryan male warrior. Or, I suppose, the job of a Scythian Amazon!

Beaver bombing

Credit: Steve 

 This is...wild. 

The secret movement bringing back Europe´s wildlife

The bottom of the OCEAN

 

Some interesting comments on the super-rich individuals involved in the Titan submersible incident, freely based on evolutionary psychology. 

Featuring "jolly" heretic Edward Dutton. 

Does he actually call the thrill-seeking personality type "OCEAN"?!

We are the Wonderchild

 

A quasi-Messianic tune composed by German-Romanian band Enigma. The video is unofficial (one of several such on YouTube). 

The lyrics plus translation can be found in the description. The tune apparently includes Sanskrit chanting, Latin song and some kind of Mongolian shamanistic stuff. And, I think, Michael Cretu singing in English!

Remember: the kingdom of God is within you!  

Våra nya allierade

Credit: Gobierno de Chile (sic)

En bra artikel av Oisin Cantwell i dagens Aftonbladet. Hoppas den förblir olåst! Och den som tror att den detta kommer att upphöra om Sverige faktiskt går med i NATO nu i juli kan nog glömma det.

Det finns förstås en lösning på problemet, men den är också geopolitiskt problematisk ur västvärldens synvinkel. Ja, ni vet, man skulle ju kunna stänga av Turkiet från NATO så länge landet har en multi-vektoralistisk nästan-diktator...

Fast det kanske är värt det? Södra flanken är antagligen förlorad ändå... 

Polisen mörkar vapensmuggling från Turkiet

Complete shocker: Islam aint woke

 

Credit: Andrew Jameson

Liberals feel betrayed by Muslim immigrants, who apparently control a small American town with the peculiar name Hamtramck. 

Note the source: The Guardian, a left-liberal newspaper in the UK. 

Well, good luck, guys! Or rather gals, since the liberals seem to be White women. How long before the Muslim males ban feminist and leftist organizations? Or before the Alt Right starts supporting the Yemeni-Bangladeshi council? 

"A sense of betrayal"

The Deep Ones

 

This is not true, right?

Giant jellyfish

Free speech, testing testing

 

Well, there certainly is free speech on Twitter these days. Note that Elon Musk is among the people "threatened" in this truly dank meme!

The Mecca of historical revisionism

 

Some hard core historical revisionism concerning Islam...on a Christian channel. Which makes it problematic. Note that the Christian apologists don´t mind using a *heavy* dosage of the historical-critical method when discussing Islam, but what if an atheist (or even a Jew!) would apply the same technique to their own religion? 

I think all (or most, or many) religions started with genuine spiritual experiences and/or paranormal events, but then each got their own little "Mecca"...and here we are.

And can do no other?

Inter-interview

 

A 55-minute discussion between two Hare Krishnas (from the more "moderate" wing of the movement) about their respective conversions and their doubts. 

If they really have any! :-D

At least the first thirty minutes are interesting, but it´s possible that you need to have a working knowledge of Gaudiya Vaishnava theology to fully get it.

Best line: "This guy looked crazy...like a shepherd or something...and this was on the Lower East Side, where everyone looks a bit freaky".   

The semblance of existence

 

Some speculations...

"In the beginning, God created heaven and earth" doesn´t mean that heaven and earth are eternal. It means precisely that they were created.

So why does "in the beginning was the Word" mean that the Word was eternal? The Word, too, was created. That´s what the verse seem to suggest.

But what about "and the Word was God"? Doesn´t that prove that the Word is eternal? Nupe. It might simply means that God changed his form to become the Word, or that the Word is a lesser god. 

Why use the term "in the beginning" at all, if eternity is implied?

The hiddenness of aliens

 

Just call him an alien,
everyone will buy the story!

Imagine if I were to tell you that the universe is filled with powerful spirit-beings of a kind most people would consider divine or angelic. They are everywhere, create fantastic structures far more complex than stars, and have knowledge that would make even the most advanced human scientists gasp in wonder. Indeed, we can – at least in principle – reach the same level of gnosis as they, aye, we can *become just like them*.

There´s just one tiny little problem.

They are completely invisible. Indeed, nobody has ever seen them, or observed anything that remotely suggests that they exist at all.

Would you believe me?

Of course, I have a plethora of ad hoc hypothesis to explain away the somewhat awkward fact that nobody has ever perceived these divine beings. The gods don´t want to be seen. We, in fact, *can´t* see them, being on a lower elevation altogether. But they simply *must* exist because…well, because they must. Period. Finito. End of story!

Would you still believe me? Of course not.

But now, let´s imagine I tell you there are powerful space aliens out there. They are everywhere, create fantastic structures far more complex than stars, and have knowledge that would make even the most advanced human scientists gasp in wonder. Indeed, we can – at least in principle – reach the same level of technological knowledge as they, aye, we can *become just like them*.

There´s just one tiny little problem. They are completely invisible. Indeed, nobody has ever seen them, or observed anything that remotely suggests that they exist at all.

Of course, I have a plethora of ad hoc hypothesis to explain away this somewhat awkward fact. The aliens don´t want to be seen. We, in fact, *can´t* see them, not having the right mechanical instruments. But they simply *must* exist because…well, because they must. Period. Finito. End of story!

Would you believe me? Would you believe me *especially if* you were an atheist or a skeptic?

Evidence suggests that you just might. Indeed, you would probably join my trans-humanist cult if I were to tell you that…THE ALIENS ARE PHYSICAL BEINGS. You would never see the sheer weirdness of attacking theists for “the hiddenness of God” (or the gods) and your own unquestioning acceptance of the hiddenness of aliens…

After all, the mere words “they are physical beings rather than supernatural ones” make all the difference, doesn´t it?

Goodbye Milky Way

 

In 4.5 billion years, the Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way ditto will collide. Or "collide". Or merge. Or something-something.

The clip above features a tune composed by the enigmatic German New Age pop band Enigma (OK, OK, actually everyone knows it was Michael Cretu and Sandra) called "Goodbye Milky Way". 

Yes, it´s about the previously mentioned inter-galactic collision...  

The Eagle has landed

"Kampen om rymden" (The struggle for space) is a relatively short book by Björn Lundberg, a Swedish historian. It deals with the conquest of space, or rather the space race between the two superpowers. 

And that´s precisely the point! 

If there is any main character in the story, it´s not Neil Armstrong but rather Wernher von Braun. Perhaps we could call him an anti-hero? The book traces the space race back to World War II and the Nazi attempts to build a miracle weapon. In a sense, they did: the notorious V2 rockets. After the war, both the Americans and the Soviets raced to get their hands on what was left of the Nazi projects. I suppose the US got the jackpot in the form of Wernher von Braun himself! Another point strongly emphasized in "Kampen om rymden" is that the Cold War confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union was driving the civilian space programs of both nations. The real goal was military control of space, or at least a military presence there. 

As far as I can tell, the book deals shortly and succintly with all the major turning points in our space odyssey: the often quite kookish people who believed in space rockets long before it became fashionable to do so, Operation Paperclip, "the Sputnik shock", Laika, Gagarin, the charismatic John Glenn, the Apollo project, the space shuttles and space stations, Reagan´s Star Wars... 

One thing dealt with only in passing are the unmanned probes to other planets. There is also a short section on the conspiracy theory that the US never reached the Moon. The author has difficulty taking the "theory" seriously, but it *is* a real thing in some fringe circles. And speaking of kooks, although Lundberg does describe the Soviet space program in several chapters, he never mentions the Cosmists. He also has an annoying tendency to treat the terms Russia/Russian as interchangable with Soviet Union/Soviet, something that leads him into trouble when describing - guess what - post-Soviet Russia.

An intriguing twist with "Kampen om rymden" is that the author doesn´t seem to believe that our destiny lies in the stars (or at the very least the red dunes of Mars). To Lundberg, the main legacy of the space programs is the realization that Earth is an extremely small pale blue dot in a vast, cold, dead and unforgiving universe. There´s not much to see or do even on the Moon! He ends, not by bemoaning that the Mars mission has been cancelled, but rather by stating that it´s probably more important to save life on Earth than to spend enormous sums of money on roaming a vast emptiness for no good reason...

It seems the Eagle has finally landed. 

Explanation needed

 

Damn, I´m late to the lecture
on the meaning of the Sri Brahma Samhita!
Credit: Albert Kok (Ma Photo) 

Can anyone please explain the meaning of the Sri Brahma Samhita? Thought not. Well, at least I tried!  

PRABHUPADA ATTACKED BY COMMUNISTS

 

Prabhupada goes to Australia and is challenged by Christians and "Communists" in the audience. Was the world a more interesting place in 1974, I wonder? Or at least some university down under, LOL.  

Glad to have that sorted out

 

Always wondered what the "Rama" stands for in the Hare Krishna mahamantra. This prabhu tries to explain it. Thank you...I think. 

Democracy for dummies

 

The clip above is a 50-minute lecture by Irish Traditionalist Keith Woods about democracy (or modern “mass” democracy), arguing that it´s essentially fake. The presentation is based on the book “Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government” by Christopher H Achen and Larry M Bartels, which I haven´t read. The short story is that the so-called rational voter doesn´t exist, and neither does his/her close cousin the rationally ignorant voter. The authors quote various surveys showing that many voters don´t know the platforms of the political parties they vote for, nor their actual policies or the outcomes of these. Indeed, many voters are driven more by base party loyalty, group identities or irrational “values” rather than ideology or even general political preferences. Many potential voters are stunningly ignorant of even the most basic political or ideological issues, or even what parties are on the ballot!

I have several problems with this presentation. For instance, why should it be a *problem* that voters are group-oriented rather than individualist? This seems to be a very “American” or “classically liberal” way of looking at general elections. It´s of course interesting that not even US democracy works like this! In Sweden, by contrast, it was long *assumed* that of course most citizens vote according to which special interest group they happen to belong to. Industrial workers voted Social Democrat, farmers voted Center Party, other business owners voted Conservative, and so on. (I suppose skinheads voted Sweden Democrat?) Maybe the real problem with “mass” democracy is precisely that it claims to be something it really isn´t: a system in which rational individual voters transcend their group interests? But why is that taken to be an argument against modern democracy, per se? (In passing, Woods mentions that he isn´t opposed to local direct democracy, but of course the same problem applies there, too, unless the community is extremely small and everyone is equal – hardly likely in a “traditionalist” society!)

At best, democracy does lead to “responsive” governments by two (similar) routes: either the government arbitrates between different group interest, or one of the group interests (usually the emerging middle classes) integrate other groups into its orbits (such as the workers´ movement at one end and the traditional elites on the other). A peaceful transfer of government power is ensured, but so is a more fundamental continuity. The loyalty of the individual citizens to the system is assured by such things as freedom of worship, freedom to start your own business, the relative lack of corruption, and so on. At least in a 20^th century Western society, no better form of government was ever discovered…

From this, we can also predict what might destroy a democracy. One obvious factor is that the groups in society become too incompatible. Mass immigration with attendant failed assimilation is one such example. Another is a permanent economic decline, in which groups the interests of which could previously be reconciled start fighting each other again (workers versus corporations being the most “classical” example). Ironically, a less group-oriented approach to politics might also undermine really existing democracy, as the electorate becomes more atomized, especially if the atomization is coupled with “value”-driven individualism. Indeed, atomization and anomie in an electorate then leads straight to “value”-driven collectivism instead, as the populist Great Leader uses his charisma to “unite” the splintered people again...

But sure, the above might not strictly speaking be “predictions” at all, but rather statements made after the fact!

With that, I close this little discussion.

On the wrong side of secrecy

 

Has Swedish pop singer and would-be New Age prophet Thomas Di Leva finally taken the step into conspirituality? 

No idea, but three years ago (or perhaps three months ago?) he released an album called "The Hybrids" at which every track seem to be about the UFO phenomenon. Like the song above, "Men in Black", featuring...well, the MIBs of ufology lore fame (or is it infamy). 

Quite fun to find an old fashioned pop tune about saucer-related conspiracies! As usual, make of this content as you wish.  

The Why Files deception

 

Warning! Contains major spoilers!

Not sure what to make of this content. The Why Files talks about the Roswell incident as if it was true...until they don´t. Do they believe in Roswell or don´t they? I for one believe the government is telling the truth...well, kind of, at any rate.

Make of that sagely statement what ye wish!

 

GLAD MIDSOMMAR

 

Eller är jag kanske ironisk på något sätt, jag vet inte...

Deep universe

 

This clip is actually quite funny...if you know the "Star Trek: Deep Space 9" story universe by heart. If not, you will probably just find it incomprehensible!  

Truth in the toad

 

This is painful to watch. In fact, I didn´t watch all of it. The man is "tripping" on DMT extracted from the California River Toad (a.k.a. the Sonoran Desert Toad). Apparently, he met God...  

Våroffensiv mot Mondelez

 

Så IKEA, som alltså bojkottar produkter från Mondelez, har själva varuhus i Ryssland, men har lämnat Ukraina? Är detta riktigt uppfattat? 

What´s in a name?

 

Another submersible 
Credit: Isabeljohnson25

There is an old piece of lore (or superstition) that no sea-going vessel should be named after the Titanic. That also includes Titanic-like names. There is supposedly a curse associated with these names, which makes the vessels more likely to sink.

And the submersible that just disappeared off Titanic´s wreck in the north Atlantic is called...Titan. 

 

Politisk atombomb

Upp till bevis för alla som anser att vi behöver kärnkraft för att rädda världen från klimatkrisen? 

"Tycker vi behöver urangruvor i Sverige"

Miljöministern vill se uranbrytning i Sverige

Våroffensiv

Mondelez verkar inte vara de enda som har problem med "krishanteringen" just nu...

Historiskt haveri: H&Ms vd lät som en mytoman

Old novelty

 

I just feel like linking to some old novelty songs this evening, LOL. 

A blitz against entropy

 

Sabine Hossenfelder´s latest Blitzkrieg (pardon the bizarre joke, but she *is* German) is directed at the deepest lairs of the enemy. Yes, she takes on the “heat death” of the universe and the so-called second “law” of thermodynamics (which always disturbed me, at least philosophically).

According to Hossenfelder, entropy doesn´t always increase, the universe will never become a static cold place (yes, that´s what “heat death” actually means) and new life forms will always emerge, even in the distant future. 

That being said, the video is somewhat difficult to understand for a layman. It´s not clear to me whether Hossenfelder believes that entropy only seemingly increases due to some kind of measurement problem, or whether it actually increases, but “only” in some kind of human range. It seems our species is doomed (well, in the *very* long run – if we make it that far!) but not life as such and definitively not the universe.

I think I can live with such a perspective.  

Our Black Hole predicament

 

I never liked black holes. I like the idea of black holes evaporating even less. So first they destroy everything, including "information" itself, and then they just disappear? Wtf...

Can anyone plz debunk their very existence???

Meanwhile, I suppose we will have to settle for the lesser evil: Sabine Hossenfelder´s explanation for why "the Black Hole Information Problem" is unsolvable. Not in principle, but for all practical purposes, since it would presumably take thousands of years for humanity to make the required empirical observations to prove or disprove some particular theory about the problematique.

And this is Hossenfelder´s main point: sure, the Black Hole Information Problem can be solved mathematically ("the math works"), but this doesn´t mean much without empirical backing from the real world. Yet, many scientists confuse what "works" mathematically with what´s actually the case IRL. And in this case, many different mathematical "solutions" apparently "work", so how do you tell the good from the bad (or the really ugly) based on equations alone? 

Which somehow confirms my suspicions about mathematics, while making its ontological status even more opaque. Perhaps even more opaque than black holes... 

Hoyle contra mundum

 

A very short presentation on "epic fights in science" (or is it Science) featuring uncouth Gerrie mama Sabine Hossenfelder. 

The most interesting piece of info is that Fred Hoyle was essentially denied the Nobel Prize by some angry committee, although it´s not entirely clear why. But sure, Hoyle was controversial and the Nobel Prize olympians apparently decided to make an example of him. 

And no, I didn´t know that Edward Wilson and Richard Dawkins (of all people) had a public feud. Hmmm...

The string theory landscape

 

Sabine Hossenfelder calls out the pseudo-scientific scientists...again! But also some religious believers. In the first clip, she points out that the "fine tuning argument" isn´t properly scientific, since we (of course) don´t know the probability of the cosmic constants being what they are. 

In the second clip (which I have linked to before), she takes on the speculations about the multiverse, "string theory" and "the many worlds interpretation". And know what? They aren´t scientific either. Hossenfelder also believes that certain scientists (or are they math teachers?) confuse mathematics with reality...

"The many worlds interpretation" is so obviously absurd that it frankly gives science a bad name. Note that Hossenfelder attacks both the religious version of "fine tuning" and the secular attempt to explain away its God-friendly implications by appealing to a multiverse.

Does this hardboiled German mama have any friends at all, I wonder? :D   

Weckans Strasser

 

Plötsligt bara händer det...

Veckans Strasser är tillbaka. Denna gång går utmärkelsen till Åsa Linderborg. Inte helt oväntat, kanske? 

Det skjuts som fan - då skyller partiledarna på varandra

De konstnärliga vapnens kritik

 

"Vad fan är problemet,
jäkla snorungar?" 

Kan inte klimataktivisterna attackera modern konst istället? Då hade jag nästan kunnat tänka mig att stödja deras aktioner. Monet är inte tillräckligt modern, era jävla misslyckade konstkritiker!  

Harbingers of the apocalypse

 

Credit: GerifalteDelSabana

Credit: Zeynel Cebeci 

Credit: Penarc 

Credit: FBI 

Unabomber postmortem

 

Not sure if anyone wants to listen to a two-hour presentation by Irish Traditionalist Keith Woods about why Ted Kaczynski was wrong, but if you do, well, see link above. 

The most interesting part of the slide show might actually be that Woods doesn´t sound particularly Traditionalist. But, as somebody else pointed out, Traditionalism is forever new. And forever heterodox... 

Invitation

 

"When you get tired of all this 2023 shit, my dear human brethren, you are welcome to join me in nirvana, where time has no meaning"...

Accelerationism

 

Based heretic Edward Dutton argues that evolution can happen very fast. Translation: our IQ is going down, and it´s genetic. Solution: Unknown. Eugenics?  

The day the UFO stood still

 

An interesting introduction to "UFO religions", here New Religious Movements with a kind-of-traditionally-religious-or-spiritual attitude towards UFOs and space aliens (as defined by American post-war pop culture and ufology). 

This kind of UFO religions emerged after World War II. The narrator points out that they were influenced by Theosophy, but I think one could go even further and argue that many of them *were* Theosophists, rather than merely "influenced" by them. That is, Theosophists in the ideological sense, as opposed to card-carrying members of the Adyar society. 

As one of the commentators to the first video points out, religions postulating the existence of extraterrestrials certainly existed already before the UFO craze (the Urantia Book), which brings me to the second video. 

Would the confirmation of extraterrestrial intelligent life destroy religion? The obvious answers is "no", and this for two reasons. First, religion always adapt to changes in society´s reality-perception, so why not here? This reason is mentioned by the narrator. Second, ETs might fit into traditional religious frameworks, for instance by declaring them to be demons or asuras. Indeed, some Christians and Hare Krishnas are already doing this! 

However, there is yet another reason for why an ET-UFO disclosure won´t be as dramatic as many people think. *The idea that there are super-intelligent demigod-like space aliens is part and parcel of the secular-atheist mythology of our time*. It´s the notion that we are alone that would truly shock people...secular people, that is. 

Maybe that´s why they are constantly sperging about Christianity collapsing due to evidence of extraterrestrial life...

Based habibi

 

Tidigare känd som "Veckans Strasser". 

Vänstern rasar mot Bilan Osman

Freedom on trial

 

LOL. This is promoted on YouTube as some kind of stunning predictions about the present world situation, from former US president Richard Nixon back in 1994.

Sure, Nixon does say a few prophetic words. But what really stands out is of course the almost endearingly naïve optimism. In reality, there was never any chance that Russia would become a "democracy" (like Nixon´s America?) and "export freedom". 

And although I´m not a big fanboy of things Greater Russian, Tricky Dick´s perspective of turning the Russian Federation into a docile exporter of its mineral wealth to the West probably didn´t do much to endear the Americo-sphere east of the Donbass. That, and the neo-liberal disaster area that was Yeltsin´s presidency!

Yes, "freedom" was indeed at trial in Russia during the 1990´s. It was found wanting. And now the chicken and, I suppose, the sakers are coming home to roost...   

Uncle Ted, Uncle Dead

 

Apparently, Ted Kaczynski died a couple of days ago. Better known as the Unabomber! The link below goes to my take on the Unabomber Manifesto...

The Unabomber Manifesto

Namnet över alla namn

 

Har just insett att Dionysos och Dionysios är två olika namn. På engelska Dionysus resp. Dionysius. (Det uttalas dessutom olika på engelska: Dajonajsus resp. Dajonisius). Men vad i helvete...

Dionysisk galenskap?

The God-Emperor at Miami

 

The Code of Lëke Dukagjini

 

A short clip from one of the more bizarre Star Trek episodes, "Captive Pursuit" from the first season of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine". It´s also one of the more well known and popular. What a shame that the green alien is called Tosk, I mean, DS9 will never be shown in southern Albania!

When I saw it the first time, I was somewhat surprised that the Star Trek franchise had turned "based" or even "fascist", but it seems the shock value of the episode was quite intentional...

Of course, it subsided somewhat once it was established that the Tosk are genetically engineered beings, and maybe the Hunters are too?!    

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra

 

An autistic girl from Sweden (who speaks excellent English) discusses the Star Trek TNG episode "Darmok". 

Just as I expected, "Darmok" is extremely popular among autistic (and perhaps non-autistic) language nerds. The plot centers around the attempts by Captain Picard to speak with a race of space aliens who only communicate through mythological metaphors. 

The YouTube clip above also explains why the Star Trek universe in general is popular among neurodivergent individuals. 

Interesting, after a fashion.    

Just another Tuesday in Rajasthan

 

American explorer Dakota of Earth pushes his luck in India again. I assume both clips are from Rajasthan. In the first, Dakota meets Aloo Baba, a Shaiva holy man whose spiritual vow is to only eat potatoes. 

The second clip is more bizarre, with people on a busy Rajasthan street taking selfies while a literal exorcism is going on?! Dakota also visits a Vishnu temple used as the model for a fantasy temple in a Batman movie...

Not sure what to make of this content, tbh.   

Biohackers

Sabine Hossenfelder takes on the "transhumanists" and "biohackers" (a subset of the former) in this YouTube clip. She seems pretty skeptical of the entire concept! Clue: Hitler, Hitler, Hitler...

The people-class revisited

 

Abram Leon (1918-1944) was a Belgian Jewish Trotskyist killed by the Nazis in Auschwitz. Posthumously, Leon´s surviving comrades published his book “The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation”. I´m not sure about the works´ present status, but during the 1970´s and 1980´s it was often marketed by Trotskyist groups as some kind of definitive Marxist analysis of the Jewish problematique. I never read the book (although I do have it), but I´ve heard it discussed among un-ironic Trotskyists and related denizens of the far left demimonde. 

One idea addressed by Leon is the weird longevity of the Jewish people – weird, at least, to many Marxists who regard “nations” as a modern phenomenon and “peoples” as ever-changing. His solution was to regard Jews as a “people-class” of merchants and usurers who for these eminently materialist reasons managed to survive for millennia. Apparently, Leon also believed that with the advent of capitalism, the Jewish people-class would be dissolved, presumably making him an assimilationist and anti-Zionist.

In 1998, a small Trotskyist group in Britain, simply called the Trotskyist Group, published extensive excerpts from a criticism of Leon´s book in their magazine Workers Fight. The article is titled “Jews: Never a `People-Class´: The Anti-Marxist Nature of Abram Leon´s Theory”. The pamphlet has a somewhat different title and is 72 pages long, written by Lisa Tailor, presumably a member of the Trotskyist Group. I haven´t been able to locate the pamphlet. The link below goes to the relevant issue of Workers Fight. (For those interested in such things, the Trotskyist Group was the “minority” faction of the Workers International League, one of the less crazy Trotskyist denominations in the UK, but – alas – also one of the smallest!)

Tailor´s argument can be summarized thus. The Jews quite literally never were a “people-class”. The Jewish community has always been class-divided and hence has never been qualitatively different from any other historical or modern “people”. Many Jews have been peasants or artisans, and most of the “merchants and usurers” were really small shopkeepers and peddlers. In all societies where Jews were allowed to take up so-called productive activities, many did so *without being assimilated*. 

Tailor believes that Leon inadvertently gives ammunition to the anti-Semites by picturing Jews as voluntarily parasitical, which in turn would make anti-Semitic hatred against them in some sense rational. Tailor emphasizes the Christian oppression of the Jews, making their choice of occupation far from voluntary. She also points out that anti-Semitism simply continued and in a sense became even worse with the advent of capitalism, falsifying Leon´s prediction that it would become less prevalent and replaced by workers´ unity. 

It´s not clear to me what political conclusions the author (and the Trotskyist Group) drew from this, however. Support for Israel, a two-state solution, or what? I originally assumed that Workers Fight must have been published by the Alliance for Workers´ Liberty! With that, I end this perhaps somewhat esoteric discussion.

Link to Workers Fight back issue:

Workers Fight Winter 1998-99

The ghost phone

 

Whoa, is this even true?! A genuine "Nikola Tesla conspiracy", with Edison thrown in for good measure. It seems both men experimented with devices to communicate with the spirits of the dead. Edison´s version was called "the ghost phone" (or the "spirit phone"). How´s that for a long-distance call? Can I call back collect? Tesla´s device is apparently still used (kind of) by latter-day ghost-hunters. 

I admit I had no idea.  

Out of alignment

 

Christopher Wallis is a scholar of religion and philosophy who also practices a form of Indian Tantrism. Here, he criticizes the notion that Artificial Intelligence (AI) can become conscious and somehow take over the world, exterminating all humans in the process. Or, in a more benign version, co-exist with us while enjoying all the usual human rights. (I can already see libertarians and cornucopians campaigning for the rights of robots.) Both scenarios are equally absurd, according to Wallis.

For starters, “consciousness” and “intelligence” are not the same thing. Consciousness simply means subjective experience. Your pet has it. Intelligence means problem-solving ability. A machine could have advanced problem-solving abilities (Wallis´ example is a computer that can solve problems associated with the complex strategy game “Go”) without having any consciousness at all. On a deeper level, Wallis´ objection is that materialism (here called physicalism) is simply wrong or at the very least unproven. The idea that AI can become conscious is clearly based on a physicalist metaphysic, in which consciousness arises (perhaps inevitably) once matter is organized in a particularly complex manner. This is what might turn robots or computers into Terminators (or benign right-holders). As a Tantric, Wallis is a metaphysical idealist. Consciousness is the basis of Reality and our “material” world exists *within* this universal consciousness, almost like a dream.

Wallis argues that consciousness is made up of four interrelated powers or “shaktis”: enjoyment, desire/will, cognition and action. There is also a kind of meta-capacity: autonomy or freedom. There is also a force Wallis calls “prana”, usually translated “life force”, but here more algebraically interpreted as “that which biological entities have in common”. AI of course isn´t biological. Only conscious beings develop desires that are in conflict with those of their “creators”. AI can´t do this. There is no “alignment problem” here, except in the sense that AI can be used (by humans) in ways detrimental to society. The game-playing computer mentioned earlier was actually defeated by a “lower-ranking” human player who assumed that the machine doesn´t really know what it´s doing!

Of course, if you believe in some particularly dark-side form of Tantrism, I suppose you could still argue that robots with positronic brains could be possessed by demons, and then it´s off to Terminator land anyway, but this particular scholar seems to be a moderate…

Absolute discretion

 

"The Game" is a film from 1997 featuring Michael Douglas in a plot I always found incomprehensible. However, it seems that the "game" of the film is a real thing. It´s called "immersive experience" and could best be described as a very advanced form of LARP. 

In the clip above, the Why Files discusses one such immersive experience, known as The Latitude, developed by artist Jeff Hull. It´s essentially a fake Masonic lodge with all the usual paraphernalia. Or perhaps even better, since many "members" didn´t want to leave when Hull declared the game to be over! 

Only in Amerika, right...? 

Socialist Worker: Tool for Terminator?

Occasionally, Socialist Worker (UK) gets some kind of strange fits of rationality, and actually publishes something that´s worth the while reading. 

Like this relatively short piece on AI, where SW asks if Elon Musk & Co are *really* afraid of an AI global takeover á la Terminator, or if something more mundane is going on.

If "power and profit" are mundane things in the world of the super-rich...

Who is served by tales of an AI global takeover?

They say you want a revolution

 

"My spiritual beliefs are very eclectic". Bingo! ;-)  

Canadian counter-cultist activist Henri Jolicoeur is in India at the moment, and here he visits the abandoned ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of TM and for a while the guru of the Beatles. Note that the Beatles are depicted on the ashram walls together with Maharishi! 

When Henri was a Hare Krishna devotee, he actually met the Beatles, including George Harrison and John Lennon. The video upload ends with a John Lennon song. 

I´m not much for travel, but some of the vistas Jolicoeur has visited do seem quite interesting! 

The modernist mythology

 

John Michael Greer again! 

The Myth of Modernity

Scorched earth tactics

 

A female art colony?

 

“Ljus över hav och land. Önningebykolonin på Åland” is a book and exhibition catalogue published by Waldemarsudde in Sweden. The publication year is 2022. Waldemarsudde is an art museum in Stockholm and the former domicile of Prince Eugen (1865-1947), who was a patron of painters and a painter himself. And yes, the “prince” is his actual title, Eugen being the son of King Oscar II. This particular book has no connection to Eugen´s artistic endeavors, however. Frankly, “Ljus över hav och land” is quite boring, unless extremely local landscape painting is your thing, the locale in question being Önningeby at Åland, or perhaps Åland in general. Late 19^th century Åland, that is. Think peasant women working, peasant men working just as much, trees, windmills, coastlines, that kind of stuff.

Åland is an archipelago in the Baltic Sea. The population is Swedish, but Sweden lost Åland to Russia after a major war in 1808-1809. During the same conflict, Sweden also lost Finland to the Russians. Åland was administered as part of the so-called Grand Duchy of Finland until 1917, Finland of course being under Russian overlordship. When Finland became independent in 1917, Sweden wanted Åland back, but eventually the islands became a self-governing territory sorting under Finland, a status they still enjoy.

In 1886, an “art colony” was established at Önningeby, a farming village at Åland. Such “colonies” were apparently quite common all over Europe at the time, forming part of an emerging artistic subculture. Or perhaps demimonde? The colony lasted until 1914, when World War I broke out and the artists left in a hurry. Most members of the colony seem to have been Swedish painters from Finland (there is a Swedish-speaking minority in Finland), which is natural, since Åland´s farming population presumably only spoke Swedish. Most of the artists rented rooms or houses from the local peasants. The leaders of the colony were Victor Westerholm and his wife Hilma (who wasn´t a painter). Another prominent member was the Sweden-Swedish (to coin a phrase) J. A. G. Acke. What made the community unique among European art colonies was that the majority of its members were female, many of them painters in their own right.

I don´t think the articles in the exhibition catalogue are *that* good at explaining this peculiar state of affairs. As already noted, art colonies were an important part of the lifestyle and networking of a certain kind of late 19^th century European painters. There must have been something counter-cultural about them, August Strindberg (the famous writer from Sweden) complaining about rank lesbianism when visiting a French art colony! Önningeby seems to have been much less raunchy, but it was still vaguely alternative since it offered female painters an opportunity to socialize, paint and sell their art. The usual norm at the time was that women were supposed to give up their educations and careers (if any) at marriage.

Other factors also contributed to the establishment of art colonies in the rural hinterland, such as new trends in painting itself, landscape and portrait painting becoming more realistic than before. There were also more or less explicit nationalist sentiments at work, the painters perhaps trying to find something “authentically national”. This kind of art colonies apparently disappeared with the advent of so-called modernism in art, since the modernists extolled the city over the countryside, and weren´t interested in artistic realism anyway. Still, counter-cultural communes certainly continued to exist even after World War I, so perhaps the authors´ perspective is a bit narrow here?

All that being said, “Ljus över hav och land” is mostly just an art book with Åland-related landscape and portrait paintings (and some still lifes thrown in for good measure). Good if you are an Ålandese local patriot, I suppose.

Finlands sak är svår

 

Håller kanske inte med om *precis* allt i denna artikel, men den är ändå relativt intressant. Största problemet är väl att den kallar 1523 års Sverige för "nationalstat". Ähum, det fanns inga nationalstater på 1500-talet. Har författaren i brådrasket glömt bort den östra rikshalvan? Vad hette den nu igen...?

Så blev PR-geniet Gustav Vasa rikskändis

Favorit i repris

 

Apropå Gustav Vasa, och så vidare. 

The rehabilitation of Uppland

Credit: Algirdas (Lithuanian Language Wikipedia)

Originally posted on July (sic) 6, 2020. Since Sweden celebrates "500 years as a nation" today, June 6 2023, I thought this might be of more than passing interest...

"Det svenska rikets födelse" (The Birth of the Swedish Kingdom) is a book by Dick Harrison, a Swedish professor of medieval history. The book is part of a long series of short popularized books on Swedish and European history written by the same author. However, it sounds more scholarly than most of the others, perhaps because the Swedish Middle Ages is close to Harrison´s main field of expertise. 

During most of the 20th century, the standard view among Swedish historians was that the Swedish kingdom emerged during the Viking Age, more specifically the 11th century, and that the center of the kingdom was Old Uppsala and Uppland more generally. After all, this was what the written sources suggested. To take just one example, in Snorri Sturluson´s "Heimskringla", Old Uppsala is prominently featured everytime the Icelandic writer mentions Sweden. While it´s true that Snorri was often retelling mythology, it could still be asked why *that* particular mythology? Archaeology also seemed to confirm the importance of Old Uppsala and Uppland. However, at the end of the 20th century, a new paradigm emerged which argued that the Swedish kingdom didn´t start to emerge until the 12th and 13th centuries, with the culmination point during the time of Birger jarl (de facto ruler 1248-1266). Even worse for the Uppland local patriots, this new scenario suggested that Götaland, Västergötland in particular, was the cradle of the Swedish kingdom, while Uppland was peripheral. One of the foremost popularizers of this perspective was novel writer and media personality Jan Guillou. Another was Dick Harrison...

Personally, I have no horse in this game, but I always found the Götaland hypothesis somewhat problematic, since it´s obvious that Uppland couldn´t have been a "periphery" in any meaningful sense of that term. Why did king Olof Skötkonung (who was indeed baptized in Västergötland) build a new town in Uppland, Sigtuna, which had the right to mint coins? Why were there royal halls in Uppland? What about all the runestones? And although no "real" Swedish kingdom existed during the 5th century, the gigantic burial mounds at Old Uppsala surely suggest some kind of powerful chiefdom? And what about those pesky written sources...

I therefore find it interesting that Harrison seems to have abandoned the Götaland-centric perspective of his previous popularizations. Instead, he paints a more sophisticated and therefore more believable picture of constantly evolving interactions between Götaland and Uppland. These interactions in turn were part of even broader networks of trade, political alliances, Church missionary activity and cultural diffusion, spanning all of northern Europe from England in the west to Kievan Rus in the east. In this scenario, there is no longer any "cradle of the Swedish kingdom", the whole concept being an anachronism (of course, in a sense it was an anachronism under the Götaland hypothesis, too, since kingdom-formation was seen as a gradual process). 

However, on one point Harrison is adamant: if there is a "founding father of Sweden", it really is Birger jarl. On that point, he is surely correct. Birger Magnusson (his real name) was the first Swedish ruler who created a "real" kingdom with a centralized administration, bailiffs to collect taxes from the peasantry, castles as outposts of the central power in various provinces, and national laws on top of the local ones. After Birger jarl, even virtual civil wars between factions within the nobility were about control of the state. Before Birger jarl, there essentially was no state. A very succesful ruler could create a vast "kingdom" or dominion by prowess in battle and/or clever marriage alliances, but the construction was unstable since it was tied to the king´s person and dependent on support from various local elite groups. Erik Segersäll comes to mind. But, of course, this is not the same thing as a kingdom sensu stricto. 

The main take aways from this extremely interesting book is that the Swedish kingdom evolved slowly through constant interchanges between different regions, that the process could have ended otherwise (perhaps with a much smaller Sweden, or with a Scandinavian kingdom, or with Scandinavia becoming a northern outpost of Germany), and that the process didn´t really reach its fruition until the mid-13th century. It´s also interesting to note the role of Christianity in the kingdom-building process. At this time, Christianity was the "royal" religion which legitimized the idea of an elevated ruler - one god, one king. Which makes me wonder what would have happened if Scandinavia remained pagan...

With those reflections, I end this review of Dick Harrison´s "Det svenska rikets födelse".